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Firebird
Firebird explores a period in our history — one year in particular (1915–1916) — when a massive number of newcomers were deemed “enemy aliens,” arrested and put into internment camps set up all across Canada. Alex Kaminsky, a fourteen-year-old Ukrainian immigrant boy, suffers burns to his hands and face when his uncle’s farmhouse burns down. Rescued by a neighbour, he is tended to by a backcountry midwife before being taken in by a local postmaster. Determined to search for his older brother, an itinerant farm worker (and talented artist) who has disappeared, Alex follows Marco’s trail from a Vegreville farm to Edmonton. From there he is on the run from officials to Calgary and finally Banff, where he finds his brother close to death in the Castle Mountain Internment Camp. In many ways it is a voyage of discovery for Alex, discovery of the hatred harboured by many for immigrants who once lived happy lives in what has become an enemy empire. But also the discovery of those with a strong sense of humanity who decry Marco’s treatment and go the extra mile to help the brothers. For readers who believe such internment camps began only with Japanese Canadians in WWII, Firebird will be an eye-opening experience.
290 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2020
About the author
Glen Huser
16 books11 followersGlen Huser was born in Ashmont, AB, on February 1, 1943 - he was, in fact, born in Elk Point, AB, as Ashmont did not have a hospital. A former teacher-librarian, he is the founder of Magpie, a quarterly magazine that showcases student writing and graphics.
He has served on the board of directors of both the Young Alberta Book Society and the Edmonton chapter of the Children’s Literature Roundtable, and he is the long-standing children’s book reviewer for the Edmonton Journal. Glen currently teaches library and information studies at the University of Alberta.
He has served on the board of directors of both the Young Alberta Book Society and the Edmonton chapter of the Children’s Literature Roundtable, and he is the long-standing children’s book reviewer for the Edmonton Journal. Glen currently teaches library and information studies at the University of Alberta.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 7, 2023
“When I think that you came to this country—a kind of golden dream before you—and this is what the dream turned into, it makes me ashamed.”
Huser’s novel for older children and young adults focuses on Canada’s World War I internment of enemy aliens from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, most of them Ukrainian Canadians. The author brings this shameful piece of Canadian history to life through the story of two orphaned brothers, Alex and Marco Kaminsky. His telling is enriched with Slavic and Ukrainian folksongs and tales, art and music. As the book opens, Alex, who’s about 14, is living with his uncle; his older brother, Marco, has gone off to work as a farmhand on the Granger farm in Vegreville, Alberta. He is expected to return in December.
Uncle Andrew is known to love his moonshine. Drinking heavily one early winter’s night, he knocks over a kerosene lamp and sets his farmhouse ablaze. Alex, awakened in the loft by the smoke, tries unsuccessfully to save his uncle, only to have his own hands and face badly burned. He’s rescued and taken to the home of a local rural nurse. Once sufficiently recovered, he is determined to find Marco, who mysteriously and uncharacteristically did not return to Uncle Andrew’s farm when he said he would.
Huser’s novel details Alex’s quest to find his brother. Young, penniless, and not yet entirely fluent in English, Alex is helped along the way by a postmaster/shopkeeper, another Ukrainian immigrant, and a Norwegian carpenter, as well as a sensitive schoolteacher and the moneyed aunt who raised him. It turns out that a confrontation with the farmer who cheated him of his wages was enough to have Marco arrested, detained, and used as slave labour in an internment camp in Banff, Alberta. Conditions are brutal for the imprisoned men. Many become ill and die. Some try to escape: a few are successful; others are tracked down or shot.
While Alex’s determination to find his brother is rewarded, the story is ultimately one of great sadness. A secondary plot strand focuses on Stella, a young Ukrainian-Canadian woman forced into marriage at 15 to a man over twice her age: Granger, the brutish farmer who held back Marco’s wages. During Marco’s time on her husband’s farm, Stella and the young man fell in love, which further fuelled Granger’s domestic abuse.
Huser manages to communicate a great deal about conditions in rural Alberta during the second decade of the twentieth century. Canada was then a rigidly WASPish place; bigotry towards Eastern Europeans was rampant and intense. Through Stella’s story, Huser also manages to give young readers a sense of immigrant women’s difficult lot—their lack of agency and access to education, poverty, and, once married, their endless pregnancies. (I know this fairly intimately, as my Ukrainian-Canadian grandmother was one of these women.)
I’ve read two other of Huser’s novels for young people and know him to be a sensitive and skillful writer. In this story, I believe he attempted to counterbalance the distrust and prejudice of many Anglo-Canadians towards immigrants by having his likeable main character assisted by people with great generosity of spirit, but I was not wholly convinced that this would really have been the way things were for a boy in Alex’s shoes. Given the sadness of the story, however, I understand that decision in a novel for young people.
Huser’s novel for older children and young adults focuses on Canada’s World War I internment of enemy aliens from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, most of them Ukrainian Canadians. The author brings this shameful piece of Canadian history to life through the story of two orphaned brothers, Alex and Marco Kaminsky. His telling is enriched with Slavic and Ukrainian folksongs and tales, art and music. As the book opens, Alex, who’s about 14, is living with his uncle; his older brother, Marco, has gone off to work as a farmhand on the Granger farm in Vegreville, Alberta. He is expected to return in December.
Uncle Andrew is known to love his moonshine. Drinking heavily one early winter’s night, he knocks over a kerosene lamp and sets his farmhouse ablaze. Alex, awakened in the loft by the smoke, tries unsuccessfully to save his uncle, only to have his own hands and face badly burned. He’s rescued and taken to the home of a local rural nurse. Once sufficiently recovered, he is determined to find Marco, who mysteriously and uncharacteristically did not return to Uncle Andrew’s farm when he said he would.
Huser’s novel details Alex’s quest to find his brother. Young, penniless, and not yet entirely fluent in English, Alex is helped along the way by a postmaster/shopkeeper, another Ukrainian immigrant, and a Norwegian carpenter, as well as a sensitive schoolteacher and the moneyed aunt who raised him. It turns out that a confrontation with the farmer who cheated him of his wages was enough to have Marco arrested, detained, and used as slave labour in an internment camp in Banff, Alberta. Conditions are brutal for the imprisoned men. Many become ill and die. Some try to escape: a few are successful; others are tracked down or shot.
While Alex’s determination to find his brother is rewarded, the story is ultimately one of great sadness. A secondary plot strand focuses on Stella, a young Ukrainian-Canadian woman forced into marriage at 15 to a man over twice her age: Granger, the brutish farmer who held back Marco’s wages. During Marco’s time on her husband’s farm, Stella and the young man fell in love, which further fuelled Granger’s domestic abuse.
Huser manages to communicate a great deal about conditions in rural Alberta during the second decade of the twentieth century. Canada was then a rigidly WASPish place; bigotry towards Eastern Europeans was rampant and intense. Through Stella’s story, Huser also manages to give young readers a sense of immigrant women’s difficult lot—their lack of agency and access to education, poverty, and, once married, their endless pregnancies. (I know this fairly intimately, as my Ukrainian-Canadian grandmother was one of these women.)
I’ve read two other of Huser’s novels for young people and know him to be a sensitive and skillful writer. In this story, I believe he attempted to counterbalance the distrust and prejudice of many Anglo-Canadians towards immigrants by having his likeable main character assisted by people with great generosity of spirit, but I was not wholly convinced that this would really have been the way things were for a boy in Alex’s shoes. Given the sadness of the story, however, I understand that decision in a novel for young people.
December 18, 2020
This novel, set in Alberta, Canada is a curious setting for a First World War story. The war is overseas, and quite in the periphery, yet it’s the catalyst for the story’s plot. Much like the internment of the Japanese during the Second World War, Canada’s Ukrainian immigrants were stigmatized and forced into labour camps during the Great War.
The author does a great job of showing the diverse settlers in the Alberta area. It’s a great conversation starter about inclusion, about prejudice, about tuberculosis and about the history of this country since the invasion of the Europeans. I think it would be a great book to use as a comparative study to examine how attitudes have changed in the last hundred years—if indeed they have.
Huser also refers to women’s rights, when Aunt Mattie, who embodies open-mindedness and generosity says, “. . . After all, this is the twentieth century. Slaves were freed in the last century; we’re working on freeing women now.” (page 270).
History lessons told in novels like this help us understand our past so we can adjust our paths into the future. It's a book about a teenage boy, but adults will appreciate his journey, too.
The author does a great job of showing the diverse settlers in the Alberta area. It’s a great conversation starter about inclusion, about prejudice, about tuberculosis and about the history of this country since the invasion of the Europeans. I think it would be a great book to use as a comparative study to examine how attitudes have changed in the last hundred years—if indeed they have.
Huser also refers to women’s rights, when Aunt Mattie, who embodies open-mindedness and generosity says, “. . . After all, this is the twentieth century. Slaves were freed in the last century; we’re working on freeing women now.” (page 270).
History lessons told in novels like this help us understand our past so we can adjust our paths into the future. It's a book about a teenage boy, but adults will appreciate his journey, too.
January 5, 2021
I loved this book! Alex's story was gripping and I was rooting for him from the start. His difficult journey was mitigated by the heartwarming kindness of strangers who helped him along the way. The writing is rich with beautifully captured moments, and I learned about a shocking period of Canadian history that echoes today, over a century later, as a story of the challenges immigrants may face when they enter our country, hoping to build a new life.
September 30, 2023
This is an historical fiction novel set in Canada focusing on the internment of Ukrainian men in Lethbridge and Banff during World War I. I was not aware of these internments and police treatment of Ukrainians at this time. The story is interesting and informative as it follows Marco and his younger brother Alex, who are immigrants from the Ukrainian province of Galicia. The story highlights both the fear, ignorance and brutality harbored by some and the compassion, kindness and generosity of others.
June 16, 2021
A beautifully rendered YA story by a personal friend and very talented author.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews