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The Railway and the Treaty: Boyhood, History, and Racism

© Irene Tanner-Yuen

Across the Steel River
Ted Stenhouse
Kids Can Press
ISBN: 1553370155
2001

A Dirty Deed
Ted Stenhouse
Kids Can Press
ISBN: 155337360X
2003

Ted Stenhouse's first novels for young readers, Across the Steel River (2001) and A Dirty Deed (2003), are set in post-World War II Grayson, a small Alberta town. The young protagonists of the stories are Will Samson, a poor white boy, and his best friend Arthur, a Blackfoot Indian. The boys form an unlikely--and for some Grayson residents, controversial--friendship, based on jokes, their mutual poverty, and traditional boys' experiences--bullies, adventure, and competitive one-upmanship. Both books are growing up narratives set against historical fact, using a simple story of two boys from different worlds to explore cultural differences and racism in a rural town.

Across the Steel River establishes Arthur as the friend from the wrong side of the tracks, literally and metaporically. In the context of the story and Canadian history, the train tracks are significant for many reasons; the building of the railway culminated in the infamous Treaty Seven. * The 'steel river' separates Indian from white, and the tracks are where the boys encounter their first mystery, exposing the undercurrent of hatred in their town. Goofing around one night, Arthur and Will see an Indian called Yellowfly lying, beaten and left for dead, by the tracks. It is clear that the Mounties are not going to investigate the beating--that they are really protecting their own kind (whites)-- when they smugly note that the Indian was just hit by a train. Will says that "Yellowfly had been a soldier in the war. In France, he had even been a hero. But in Grayson, people never noticed if an Indian was a hero. They only noticed if an Indian was a drunk." In this case, the town chose not to see that the white perpetrators of a violent crime would go unpunished, and thus condoned.

Arthur and Will soon discover that a supervisor at the Heavy Shield school for Indian children and the neighbourhood bully, Woody, are implicated in the crime. One day they see the two humiliate an Indian student who is shoveling manure as a punishment for some infraction. Will and his unfortunate classmate, Sammy, who is overweight and smells bad, are tormented by Woody, a boy who hangs around older roughnecks and drinks alcohol. The showdown that finally occurs between the boys effectively puts away the men involved with the beating, and impels some people, like schoolteacher Mr. Parks, into thinking that things must change in Grayson. He says, "'[W] e can start by not accepting it, by saying, even to yourself, that it's not right. '"

Across the Steel River

A Dirty Deed

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