• Source: Rudy Wiebe

Rudy Henry Wiebe (born 4 October 1934) is a Canadian author and professor emeritus in the department of English at the University of Alberta since 1992. Rudy Wiebe was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in the year 2000.




Early life


Wiebe was born at Speedwell, near Fairholme, Saskatchewan, in what would later become his family's chicken barn. For thirteen years he lived in an isolated community of about 250 people, as part of the last generation of homesteaders to settle the Canadian west. He did not speak English until age six since Mennonites at that time customarily spoke Low German at home and standard German in church. He attended the small school three miles from his farm and the Speedwell Mennonite Brethren Church. In 1947, he moved with his family to Coaldale, Alberta.
He received his B.A. in 1956 from the University of Alberta and then studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tübingen in West Germany, near Stuttgart. In Germany, he studied literature and theology and travelled to England, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In 1962, he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg, now Canadian Mennonite University.




Career


While in Winnipeg, he worked as the editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position he was asked to leave after the publication of his controversial debut novel Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962), the book that heralded a wave of Mennonite literature in the decades that followed.
Wiebe taught at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana from 1963 to 1967, and taught at the University of Alberta in Edmonton for many decades after that.
In addition to Peace Shall Destroy Many, Wiebe's novels include First and Vital Candle (1966), The Blue Mountains of China (1970), The Temptations of Big Bear (1973), The Scorched-wood People (1977), The Mad Trapper (1980), My Lovely Enemy (1983), A Discovery of Strangers (1994), Sweeter Than All the World (2001), and Come Back (2014). He has also published collections of short stories, essays, and children's books. In 2006 he published a volume of memoirs about his childhood, entitled Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest. His work has explored the traditions and struggles of people in the Prairie provinces, both settlers, often Mennonite, and First Nations people.
Wiebe won the Governor General's Award for Fiction twice, for The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and A Discovery of Strangers (1994). Thomas King says of The Temptations of Big Bear that "Wiebe captures the pathos and the emotion of Native people at a certain point in their history and he does it well ... Wiebe points out to us that Canada has not come to terms with Native peoples, that there is unfinished business to attend to." Wiebe was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1986. In 2000 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2003 Wiebe was a member of the jury for the Giller Prize. In 2023 Guernica Editions published, Rudy Wiebe: Essays on His Works edited by Bianca Lakoseljac which includes 20 articles devoted to Wiebe.




Personal life


In 1958 he married Tena Isaak, with whom he had three children.




Awards


1973 Governor General's Award for Fiction for The Temptations of Big Bear
1994 Governor General's Award for Fiction for A Discovery of Strangers
2007 Charles Taylor Prize for Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest
2009 Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Alberta




Bibliography






= Novels

=
Peace Shall Destroy Many, McClelland & Stewart, 1962
First and Vital Candle, Eerdmans, 1966
The Blue Mountains of China, Eerdmans, 1970
The Temptations of Big Bear, McClelland & Stewart, 1973
The Scorched-Wood People, McClelland & Stewart, 1977
The Mad Trapper, McClelland & Stewart, 1980
My Lovely Enemy, McClelland & Stewart, 1983
A Discovery of Strangers, A.A. Knopf Canada, 1994
Sweeter Than All the World, Vintage Canada, 2002
Come Back, Penguin Random House, 2015




= Short stories

=
Where is the Voice Coming from?, McClelland & Stewart, 1974
Alberta, a Celebration (with Harry Savage and Tom Radford), Hurtig Publishers, 1979
The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories, McClelland & Stewart, 1982
River of Stone: Fictions and Memories, Vintage Books, 1995
Another Place, Not Here, Knopf Canada, 1996
Collected Stories, 1955–2010, University of Alberta Press, 2010




= Nonfiction

=
War in the West: Voices of the North-West Rebellion (with Bob Beal), McClelland & Stewart, 1985
Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic, NeWest, 1989
Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman (with Yvonne Johnson), Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1999
Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, Vintage Canada, 2007
Extraordinary Canadians: Big Bear. Toronto: Penguin Group Canada, 2008




= Plays

=
Far as the Eye can See: A Play, NeWest, 1977




= Children's literature

=
Chinook Christmas, Red Deer Press, 1993
Hidden Buffalo, Red Deer Press, 2003




References

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Stadion Inter&Co
• Rudy Wiebe
• Jean Val Jean
• Peace Shall Destroy Many
• Wiebe (surname)
• Alberta Literary Awards
• 1973 Governor General's Awards
• Playing dead
• Hugh MacLennan
• Francis Dickens
• 1994 Governor General's Awards