Abstract

The short stories in this collection explore the effects of having belonged to the Canadian subculture of treeplanters. Most of the main characters are ex-treeplanters: young, or to their dismay, not so young, middle class women and men who have experienced hard, seasonal labour in the Canadian wilderness. They may have taken up planting in the first place as a means to pay for university or travelling, or to support their music or art, but most of them returned to it year after year, finding in it something more compelling than just the money. Now, they have quit, or are on the brink of quitting planting, in some cases due to the physical injuries caused by the job. They are trying to get a life outside of planting but are crippled by their connections to their past planting experiences. The protagonists' attempts to grapple with these connections--connections which take the form of relationships, fears (of bears or nine-to-five jobs), environmental or class awareness--are often ambiguous or ineffective. But by the end of the stories their view of planting, whether utopic or dystopic has been tested. They are forced to see how their view affects the people around them and the choices, or lack of choice, it provides.