in every four farm families, left their homes in Saskatchewan. The province eventually went bankrupt and sought federal assistance to pay for relief. By the end of the decade, around 250,000 people had moved away from the prairie provinces.

Other provinces also faced significant challenges, especially those dependent on agriculture or forestry. Newfoundland, which was self-governing at the time, had to surrender its government to Britain in exchange for financial aid. The industrialized regions of Ontario and Quebec were the least affected by the Depression.

Domestic Policies

Bennett’s government also implemented laws and policies that were not solely focused on economic recovery. In 1932, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission was established as a publicly owned radio network. It was later reorganized into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which was given greater authority to regulate all private broadcasting in Canada.

In 1934, the government established the Bank of Canada. This new national bank was tasked with overseeing the country's monetary system. It managed currency and credit, acted as a bank for other banks, advised the government on financial issues, and printed money.

Canada and the British Commonwealth

In 1931, the Statute of Westminster acknowledged the formation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, replacing the British Empire. On December 11 of that year, Canada became a sovereign state. However, Canada still lacked the authority to amend its constitution. Although Canada was largely independent, full legal autonomy was not achieved until 1949.

In 1932, Canada joined eight other countries at the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa to discuss easing trade barriers. Britain agreed to increase tariffs on goods from nations outside the British Commonwealth, while giving Canada preferential treatment for importing several primary products. Unfortunately, these agreements and new tariffs could not counterbalance Canada's minimal trade with Europe and the United States.

Canada and the League of Nations

Despite being a member of the League of Nations (formed after World War I), Canada’s leaders favored a policy of relative isolationism. In 1931, Japan's invasion of Manchuria triggered a global crisis. Following Britain's lead and that of other League members, Canada chose not to take military action to stop the aggression. Canadian leaders believed Japan would cease the invasion on its own to avoid alienating western powers and did not want to jeopardize trade relations with Japan.

In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. The League of Nations decided to impose a trade boycott on Italy. Canada's representative, W. A. Riddell, proposed adding oil, coal, iron, and steel to the list of sanctioned goods, recognizing their importance to Italy's military campaign. However, Riddell had not consulted with the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, before making this proposal. King, concerned about potential controversy in Canada and observing that other powerful nations seemed reluctant to take firm action against Italy, dismissed the suggestion. Ultimately, the League of Nations also disregarded it, and the invasion of Ethiopia proceeded unchecked.

Canada Enters World War II

Initially, the King government appeared determined to keep Canada out of international conflicts. King commended Great Britain's appeasement strategy regarding Nazi aggression in Europe. In fact, after meeting German leader Adolf Hitler in 1937, King was convinced that Hitler did not pose a significant threat. King steadfastly believed that peace could be maintained. However, this illusion was shattered when Hitler's forces invaded Poland in September 1939. Britain and France swiftly declared war on Nazi Germany, and one week later, the Canadian Parliament also announced the country's entry into the war. Canada immediately began to bolster its military strength. Volunteers enlisted in the armed forces, and by the end of September, the army had grown to 55,000 men. The first Canadian troops departed for Europe on December 10, 1939.

Ms. Munro was born in, resides in, and primarily writes about the same region—rural southwestern Canada. This area also serves as the backdrop for her novel, set in Tuppertown, "an old town on Lake Huron, an old grain port." The town is surrounded by fertile farmland, and Lake Huron adds an element of ritualistic wildness to the setting, subtly reflected in the inhabitants. Although people generally go about their routines and greet each other formally, there's an underlying sense of unease that contradicts their outward complacency.

The narrator and her father frequently walk to the lake together, but the journey they undertake on the day the story unfolds goes beyond their usual routine. Her father takes her and her brother to visit an old lover's home, far off his Walker Brothers' usual route. As they drive, the road becomes increasingly wild and sparsely populated, and they travel faster than usual.

We are backing out of the driveway with the rising hope of adventure, just the little hope that takes you over the bump into the street, the hot air starting to move, turning into a breeze, the houses growing less and less familiar as we follow the shortcut my father knows, the quick way out of town.

The characters are deeply connected to their environment. As the narrator and her father walk down to Lake Huron, he recounts the story of how the Great Lakes were formed. He explains how ice once pushed into the plains that now form the lakes, and how it later retreated, leaving behind the lakes' indentations. This creation story prompts the narrator to reflect on her place in the world, and she becomes overwhelmed by the earth's immense age compared to her brief existence. However, she quickly dismisses these thoughts: "I do not like to think of it. I wish the Lake to be always just a lake, with the safe-swimming floats marking it, and the breakwater and the lights of Tuppertown."

Munro uses the setting to illustrate the creeping presence of poverty in the town. As the narrator journeys from her house to the lake, she vividly depicts the scenery, making it evident that the town has experienced a recession. Numerous farmers in the region have lost their land. Her own family lost an entire fox farm. She mentions that the family once lived in a place called Dungannon, and back then, they would visit a part of town where farmers and their wives would arrive in their Sunday best at a "long dark-green building, like a roofed veranda, called the Pavilion." As she walks with her father, she observes a factory with boarded-up windows and tramps loitering around the docks where "grain boats, ancient, rusty, wallowing, mak[e] us wonder how they got past the breakwater let alone to Fort William." The skies are also bleak and fractured, filled with gray clouds.

Point of View

‘‘Walker Brothers Cowboy’’ is narrated from a first-person perspective, with the story unfolding through the eyes of a young, unnamed girl. Despite her youth, her keen observations provide a vivid depiction of her community, her parents, and the nation's economic struggles. Her narration is colored by her past experiences and her perceptions of others. Through her eyes, we see her mother as a proud woman whose pride sometimes disrupts the family's unity, and her father as a man striving to keep the family's spirits high despite their financial hardships.

Setting

The story is set in a small Ontario town during the 1930s, a period when Canada was grappling with the Great Depression. This era's poverty is evident in the narrator’s neighborhood and in her father’s recent bankruptcy from his fox farm business. The narrator describes their financial troubles:

Up until last winter we had our own business, a fox farm. . . . Prices fell, my father hung on hoping they would get better next year, and they fell again, and he hung on one more year and one more and finally it was not possible to hang on any more, we owed everything to the feed company.

Much of the narrative occurs in the rural areas around Tuppertown, which are also marked by poverty. The narrator describes the land as "scorched," indicating its inability to support those who work it. She observes, “The men, if they are working in the fields, are not in any fields that we can see.” The backcountry homes are unpainted and lack indoor plumbing. The setting is devoid of color: buildings are gray, yards are brown, and dogs are black or brown. The only hint of color comes from the "rainbow patches" on rusty old cars. This bleak environment mirrors the narrator’s home life, which, while materially sufficient, is emotionally lacking.

Structure

The story is divided into two parts: a brief first section and a longer second section. The first part is more abstract, setting the stage for the more detailed and specific events described in the second part.

In the opening section, the narrator introduces the theme of the transience of time and existence, while also hinting at the changes her family has experienced. The initial paragraphs reveal how the narrator and her family are now distinct from their neighbors and no longer hold their previous social status. Their decline in social standing is illustrated by their perspective of the lake—sitting on a bench with a missing slat in a vacant lot—and the tramps who approach them. The concluding paragraph of this section delves into more abstract concepts, suggesting that each person occupies the earth for only a brief period, though it may seem long to them. As the narrator writes, "Even my father, who sometimes seems to me to have been at home in the world as long as it has lasted, has really lived on this earth only a little longer than I have, in terms of all the time there has been to live in." The narrator also struggles to imagine a time when dinosaurs roamed the area, even before the Ice Age that formed the Great Lakes, or when Native Americans lived along the lake's banks. Her reflection on time sets the stage for her mother's yearning for the past—explored more deeply in the second section—and her father's nostalgic visit to Nora, his youthful girlfriend.

The second section of the story is more tangible, allowing the author to expand on the abstract ideas previously introduced and play them out through real characters and situations. This part further elucidates the family's financial situation and the interpersonal dynamics resulting from the loss of their farm, while also exploring the father's own perspective on the past.

Munro selects a first-person narrator for "Walker Brothers Cowboy." The most intriguing aspect of this narrator is her precociousness. She is young and may not fully grasp all the actions and conversations of the adults around her. However, she possesses a keen sense of the significance of events. Munro ensures that the narrator's descriptions are infused with only the level of understanding a young girl would realistically have, yet she remains perceptive. This gives Munro the liberty to let the young narrator comment on the unfolding events. For instance, after visiting one of her father's former girlfriends, the narrator perceives the importance of the shared experience with her father.

My father does not say anything to me about not mentioning things at home, but I know, just from the thoughtfulness, the pause when he passes the licorice, that there are things not to be mentioned. The whisky, maybe the dancing. No worry about my brother, he does not notice enough.

Similarly, at the end of the story, the narrator reflects on the day's events as she, her father, and brother return to Tuppertown.

So my father drives and my brother watches the road for rabbits and I feel my father's life flowing back from our car in the last of the afternoon, darkening and turning strange, like a landscape that has an enchantment on it, making it kindly, ordinary and familiar while you are looking at it, but changing it, once your back is turned, into something you will never know, with all kinds of weathers, and distances you cannot imagine.

These are clearly the reflections of a mature individual, allowing Munro to blend the writer-narrator's insights with the child-narrator's perspective. Balancing between the writer and the child character is highly effective, especially since Munro has crafted a young girl wise beyond her years, capable of becoming the author's muse. It almost feels as though the young girl is recounting her story from an older age, yet narrating it as if it were happening in the present.

Munro's love for language is evident; she seamlessly transitions between the narrator's simple speech and the more sophisticated language of her thoughts. While riding with her father, the narrator recounts the following:

I notice in a little while that we are not turning in any more lanes, though it does not seem to me that we are headed home. "Is this the way to Sunshine?" I ask my father, and he answers, "No, ma'am, it's not." "Are we still in your territory?" He shakes his head. "We're going fast," my brother says approvingly, and in fact we are bouncing along through dry puddleholes so that all the bottles in the suitcases clink together and gurgle promisingly.

Munro's skillful use of language captivates readers of all kinds. Young adults can feel the excitement and aspirations of accompanying one's father on his job. For adults, the narrative offers rich layers of meaning in the dynamics of a man-woman relationship. Additionally, the vivid portrayal of rural life will likely attract readers from various genres. The more detailed Munro's descriptions, the more poetic her language becomes. For example, she has her narrator recount a part of their journey in the car with her father and brother:

One yard after another, then, the old cars, the pumps, dogs, views of gray barns and dilapidated sheds and idle windmills. The men, if they are working in the fields, are not in any fields that we can see. The children are far away, following dry creek beds or searching for blackberries, or else they are hidden in the house, spying on us through cracks in the blinds. The car seat has become slick with our sweat. I dare my brother to sound the horn, wanting to do it myself but not wanting to get blamed. He knows better.

The imagery is vivid both inside the car and in the surrounding landscape. Munro deftly switches between the inner dynamics of the family and the outside world, challenging the reader to find a clear division between the two. A family is a microcosm of the larger world, simultaneously a distinct entity and a part of a larger whole. Munro suggests it is impossible to separate the events and emotions within a family from the community in which they live. Throughout the story, these mental snapshots of the landscape, the relationships between the narrator and her family, and the everyday lives of the characters are interwoven. Munro's deep affection for the central Canadian farmland communities she writes about imbues "Walker Brothers Cowboy" with authenticity and depth that resonate with the reader.

Munro depicts a family living in poverty. This is never overtly stated; instead, she subtly reveals their situation through the narrator's observations of family activities and their interactions with the outside world. In the opening paragraph, the reader discovers that a new school year is approaching, and the narrator's mother "has ripped up for this purpose an old suit and an old plaid wool dress of hers, and she has to cut and match very cleverly and also make me stand for endless fittings, sweaty, itching from the hot wool, ungrateful." The young girl is dissatisfied with their circumstances and describes them in a way that conveys their financial struggles as a source of frustration.

As the narrator and her father walk into town, they pass by the homes of families whose children the narrator's mother forbids her from playing with. Despite their poverty, the mother frequently reminisces about when the family was relatively prosperous. The narrator adapts to her mother's biases by maintaining an emotional distance. The mother insists that the narrator cannot play with the other children because she must look after her younger brother. The narrator rationalizes the situation in her mind:

I am not so sad to watch their evening games because the games themselves are ragged, dissolving. Children, of their own will, draw apart, separate into islands of two or one under the heavy trees, occupying themselves in such solitary ways as I do all day, planting pebbles in the dirt or writing in it with a stick.

As children often do, the narrator learns to navigate within the constraints she is given, rationalizing where necessary to reconcile the difference between her desire to play with others and the rules imposed on her.

The narrator is acutely conscious of how adults often treat children as peripheral. When her mother feels unwell and declines her husband's invitation to join him on a Walker Brothers sales trip, her father suggests taking both children along to "give [her] a rest." The narrator then questions, "what there is 'about us that people need to be given a rest from? Never mind.'" She feels irritated to be regarded as someone from whom rest is needed and abruptly shifts the narrative, possibly assuming the reader, being an adult, accepts this view of children. Her frustration re-emerges when her father converses with Nora and suggests that the narrator and her brother go outside to entertain themselves. "Amuse ourselves how?" she retorts, though it's unclear if she voices this question. Regardless, she chooses to remain in the room, and her father does not challenge her decision, indicating that she may have gained some ground on the path to adulthood.

1920s: In the decade preceding the Great Depression, Canadian society is nearly evenly split between urban and rural populations. Approximately 4.4 million people reside in rural areas, while about 4.3 million live in urban settings. Agricultural output is valued at roughly $1.4 billion (Canadian) annually, compared to industrial output which is about $2.7 billion (Canadian) per year.

1990s: By the 1990s, the Canadian population is predominantly urban. About 76.6 percent of the population lives in urban areas, with the remaining 23.4 percent in rural locations. Agriculture contributes merely 2 percent to the gross national product, whereas manufacturing accounts for 17 percent.

1930s: In 1929, before the stock market crash in New York, Canada exports 40 percent of its goods to the United States. By 1931, U.S. imports from Canada drop to one-third of pre-Depression levels. 1990s: By the late 1990s, Canada exports $195 billion (Canadian) worth of goods annually. The nation’s primary trading partners include the United States, Mexico, South Korea, and China. In 1995, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed by the United States, Canada, and Mexico to enhance trade among the three countries.

1935: By the mid-1930s, 10 percent of Canadians rely on some form of public assistance. 1990s: In 1995, slightly over 3 million Canadians receive welfare benefits.

1930s: By the end of 1932, around 600,000 Canadians out of a population of approximately 10 million are unemployed. Additionally, one million people can only find part-time employment. By the end of 1933, 23 percent of the labor force is jobless. 1990s: In 1992, 9.2 percent of Canadians aged 16 and over are unemployed. By 1999, out of 14.5 million workers aged 15 and over, about 2.7 million are employed part-time.

Although no other stories by Munro feature the same characters as those in "Walker Brothers Cowboy," the settings she crafts are a recurring element across her works. Nearly all of her stories are situated in small-town communities. Munro has often been likened to Flannery O'Connor. For a comparative read to "Walker Brothers Cowboy," consider O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955). Other notable O'Connor stories include "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1955) and "The Artificial Nigger" (1955).

There is a rich array of female short story writers whose work merits comparison to Munro's. Eudora Welty is certainly among them, with her writing sharing a similar delicate touch. "The Worn Path" (1969) narrates the journey of an elderly black woman traveling to town to procure medicine for her grandson. Edna O'Brien's "A Journey" (1974) explores the story of a married Scottish couple embarking on a trip to deliver a lecture to a group of technical students. Carson McCullers' "Wunderkind" (1955) delves into the anxiety of a young girl's piano lessons and the high expectations of her piano teacher.

Rasporich, Beverly Jean. Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro. Edmonton, Alta., Canada: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Rasporich explores Munro's use of female characters to highlight the inherent differences in how men and women emotionally navigate life.

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. Alice Munro: A Double Life. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. This biography offers a clear overview of Munro's life and literary works, presenting a timeline of key events and examining the connections between her personal experiences and her writing.

Updike, John. "Magnetic North." New York Times (October 27, 1996). In this general review of Selected Stories, Updike briefly discusses the developing sexual consciousness of the main character in "Walker Brothers Cowboy."

Sources

Blodgett, E. D., Alice Munro, G. K. Hall and Company, 1988.

Dahlie, H., Review of Dance of the Happy Shades, in World Literature Written in English, April 1972, pp. 42–48.

Oates, Joyce Carol, Review of The Progress of Love, in New York Times Book Review, September 14, 1986, pp. 7, 9.

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick, ‘‘Alice Munro,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 53, Gale Research, 1986.

Woodcock, George, ‘‘The Plots of Life: The Realism of Alice Munro,’’ in Queen’s Quarterly, Summer 1986, pp. 235–50.

Further Reading

Beran, Carol L., ‘‘The Luxury of Excellence: Alice Munro in the ‘New Yorker,’’’ in Essays on Canadian Writing, Winter 1998, p. 204. This interview with Munro delves into how her fiction aims to depict human behavior and experiences.

Braithwaite, Max, The Hungry Thirties, 1930–1940, Canada’s Illustrated Heritage, 1978. Braithwaite offers an illustrated examination of Canada during the Great Depression.

Broadfoot, Barry, Ten Lost Years, 1929–1939, Doubleday Canada, 1973. Ten Lost Years compiles personal stories from individuals who lived in Canada during the Depression.

Carrington, Ildiko de Papp, Controlling the Uncontrollable: The Fiction of Alice Munro, Northern Illinois University Press, 1989. In this article, Canadian critic de Papp Carrington analyzes Munro’s literary works.

Conron, Brandon, ‘‘Munro’s Wonderland,’’ in Canadian Literature, Autumn 1978, pp. 109–23. Conron discusses Munro’s narrative style and techniques in her early short story collections in this article.

Munro, Alice, ‘‘Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories,’’ Vintage, 1998. This is a collection of Munro’s short stories.

Munro, Alice, Pleuke Boyce, and Ron Smith, ‘‘A National Treasure,’’ in Meanjin, Vol. 54, No. 2, 1995, pp. 222–32. This essay explores Munro’s short stories published in the New Yorker, asserting that her writing offers both intimate and universal appeal to readers.