Gina Rae Mitchell

Them Days by Glenn P. Booth |  Excerpt, Guest Post, and $15 Giveaway | #Fiction #Historical #ComingOfAge

A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.

Book Details

Them Days by Glenn P Booth
Published by Tellwell Talent on 04/22/2022
Genres: Coming of Age, Fiction, Historical Fiction
Format: eBook, Hardcover, Paperback
Pages: 332

Discrimination, war in Europe, a pandemic. . .
Sofiya, a young Ukrainian immigrant, experiences all of this and more. It could be 2022, but it's Manitoba in the early 1900s.

Sofiya is the third consecutive girl born on a poor homestead near Gimli in 1903. She is bright and feisty but nothing more is expected of her than to be a domestic, and at age thirteen she is sent to be a maid to a wealthy family in Winnipeg. There, she experiences the condescension of the English towards the 'Bohunks', while her half-brother is interned during WW1, deemed an enemy alien.

While the Great War is raging in Europe, an undeclared war between the classes is being fought at home. This conflict comes to a head in the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 when the working classes rise up against their English masters, shut down the city and demand a better deal. The city is divided and everyone must choose a side.

Them Days takes you on Sofiya's journey, as she discovers what it means to be an immigrant and a woman, struggling to find love and her identity - at the same time that Canada is breaking free from Mother England's apron strings.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt from Them Days

“In them days, we wuz poor but happy.”

You’re probably laughing at how trite this is. But I’ve heard my sister Helen, and several other members of my family, speak those exact words more times than I care to remember. And it’s exactly how they remember “Them Days.”

For us, Them Days goes back to growing up north of Winnipeg on marginal farmland at the turn of the 20th century. Like tens of thousands of Ukrainian and other Eastern European immigrants, my family had come searching for a better life in Canada, lured by the promise of free land.

For the most part, the promises were kept, although, as it would turn out, a few “extras” were thrown into the deal. Unfortunately for my family, like many Ukrainians, they had requested land with wood on it. Back in the old country, they had often frozen through long winters on the Steppes because of a lack of wood for building fires. The Canadian government’s land agent obliged, and they were given some scratchy stony ground near Gimli, Manitoba, where the fertile prairie gives way to swampy Boreal forest. But it had wood!

With this endowment, it was bound to be a hard life. But my sister still remembers it as a time of happiness.

Memories—how they play tricks on us—and how they vary from person to person. It never ceases to amaze me how my family members remember the same events so differently.

It was a warm June day in 1982, the last time the seven of us who had survived to late adulthood had gotten together for an informal family reunion. We were sitting in my youngest sister’s trailer, which was parked on the old family homestead. None of us were regular drinkers, but the occasion had inspired my brothers to have a little whiskey, and my sisters and I were sipping some white wine.

Sure enough, whether it was the heat, the alcohol, or just our age and the occasion, my siblings waxed maudlin. And it didn’t take long before Helen spoke those familiar words, “In them days…,” and my brothers nodded in agreement. Soon, happy stories of Them Days came pouring out like a prairie river spilling over its banks in the spring.

Excerpt provided by the author/publisher for use in this post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Purchase Links for Them Days

Amazon – OneLink for every country   

Bookshop/IndieBound     Kobo      Waterstones 

AppleBooks/iTunes     The Book Depository     Blackwell’s

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Guest Post from Glen P. Booth

Discrimination in Canada

A major theme of my novel, Them Days, is the blatant discrimination against eastern Europeans by English Canadians in the early 1900s.

This discrimination was demonstrated most dramatically in the internment of over 5000 Ukrainian Canadians in labour camps during WW1, along with the suspension of all normal legal rights. The Canadian government was initially reluctant to intern the Ukrainians, but English Canadians and their newspapers lobbied hard to do something about the “aliens in their midst”. As the Canadian Encyclopedia article on the WW1 internment states, “white society generally viewed them as dirty, indecent, inferior peasants who resembled animals”.

Many of the readers of Them Days have expressed surprise, and have told me that they didn’t know about the internment. They also express surprise about the degree of discrimination against other ‘white’ people.

This surprise reminds me of the reaction of many Canadians to the revelations of the mistreatment of First Nations peoples in Canadian residential schools over the years. A common reaction has been “I didn’t know.”

When confronted with this response, most First Nations people that I have heard speak on the matter express frustration and do not accept that as an excuse – their reaction tends to be along the lines of “How could you not know?” and “It is your responsibility to know your past. You can’t escape responsibility by saying ‘you didn’t know’.”

While I understand their reaction, I also understand the reaction of white Canadians who say ‘they didn’t know’. We don’t obtain knowledge out of thin air – we have to be informed and taught, and for this to happen there has to be education. With respect to the internment, for example, it is not taught in our schools and the federal government intentionally burned all records of the internment in 1954.

I would agree that, once we know of an injustice, it is our responsibility to become further informed about it. But the first step is knowing, and one of the main reasons I wrote Them Dayswas to share the knowledge about the discrimination that occurred at the time.

Most Canadians (myself included) are proud to consider Canada to be one of the most tolerant, inclusive countries in the world. Canadians do not like being confronted with facts that show that, in truth, we have a long history of discrimination and racism. However, if we don’t face up to our history, particularly with respect to First Nations, how can we hope to move forward to truly be that inclusive country we want to be?

A quick overview of our history shows that there has been pervasive discrimination against First Nations, against eastern Europeans, against Asians (as most evidenced by the internment of the Japanese during WW11), against Jews, blacks, and most recently, Muslims. Today, many immigrants are experiencing discrimination in their inability to find jobs because their credentials and experience aren’t recognized in Canada.

It is indeed ironic when one considers that many of the Ukrainians who were interned during WW1 complained that the Canadian government had invited them over to settle and then put them in concentration camps when work wasn’t available – and today the Canadian government routinely awards points to new immigrants for their educational background, only for those immigrants to find out upon arrival that their credentials aren’t recognized here. Hence, we have the current situation across Canada of hundreds of thousands of well–educated immigrants working in menial jobs, living in near poverty, with their talents being wasted. This situation begs the question ‘Will discrimination ever end?”

While I certainly don’t have all the answers, I do think the first step is education and gaining a true understanding of our history and of what is really happening currently. Without knowledge, we will only act out of ignorance, and ignorance has always been the fertilizer that feeds racism.

In that vein, I hope that Them Days will shed some light on one of the dark aspects of our history, but that readers will also realize that we overcame our prejudices against eastern Europeans and they became fully accepted members of our society. If we’ve overcome those prejudices in the past, surely we can do it again today, can’t we?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love my Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription. So many books, so little time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Purchase Them Days online from a local bookstore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click here –>Amazon – OneLink for every country   

Them DaysShop on Amazon Them DaysShop on Amazon Them DaysShop on Amazon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Giveaway!

Glenn P. Booth will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Visit more stops on this Goddess Fish tour for extra chances to win!

Official Tour Page for Them Days

Full Tour Schedule:

July 11: Straight From the Library
July 18: Hope. Dreams. Life… Love
July 25: The Pen and Muse Book Reviews
August 1: Viviana MacKade
August 8: All the Ups and Downs
August 15: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
August 22: Fabulous and Brunette
August 29: The Avid Reader
September 5: Gina Rae MItchell
September 12: Novels Alive
September 19: Our Town Book Reviews – review only
September 26: Long and Short Reviews

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shared on:

Twitter

Pinterest

Instagram

If you would like to review books for Goddess Fish Promotions, please click the link below:

Goddess Fish Virtual Book Tour Host