Bill Hartley's life was shaped by a panoramic sweep of Canadian history. An illiterate prairie boy, he enlisted in 1914. Survived the Great War. Returned with a British war-bride nurse and their baby. Broke the virgin Saskatchewan soil of his soldier's homestead grant. For a decade grew wheat and bore more children. Sold his farm and moved his family west, like so many others, searching for a better life in Vancouver.

But there they found themselves plunged into the Great Depression. This ordeal passed easily for Tom, the youngest son, still a child during the struggles that drove his father into a frustrating attempt to educate himself and escape poverty. Looking back at his father's life, both having achieved success after the Second World War, Tom is caught up in his effort to understand the challenges his father endured. His strengths and weaknesses. The obstacles he overcame. The mistakes he made. And also the many ways, through the best and worst of times, that Tom's mother bravely played out her wifely part.

How should his father be judged? In what ways, if at all, is it Like Father Like Son? Tom is helped in his judgments by Max, family friend, almost an older brother, who has his own father-son relation to puzzle over. Both have complex memories of Bill Hartley's turbulent life as it touched theirs. Finally they may only agree that for all the sadness, there is life worth living after the funeral.

More fiction by F.W. Watt

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