The Miss Hobbema Pageant

by W.P. Kinsella

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Canada, Canadian Literature, Short Stories

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.

William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.

As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.

Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.

Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.

Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.

In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.

W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.

Reviews

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up an inscribed copy of this 7 or 8 years ago in Halifax, Nova Scotia for $6. For some reason - probably the buck ugly cover illustration - I didn't read it until last week.
Bo Diddley (along with some others) said: "You can't judge a book by it's cover." He was right about that.
I say: The Miss Hobbema Pageant is a worthy addition to the Silas Ermineskin tales. I think that I'm right about that.
"A Hundred Dollars Worth of Roses" is a wonderful story.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned some things while reading this book: 1) WP Kinsella wrote the book Shoeless Joe which was turned into the famous and beloved movie Field of Dreams and 2) despite writing a lot of stories about First Nations characters Kinsella was white. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, to Irish-Canadian parents. So now I have super mixed feelings. The stories are hilarious and real, but they're also written by a white man and co-opting First Nations voices. Voices that could be telling their own stories. Kinsella has been criticized for this in the past, in fact, and handled it with what I can only describe as arrogance and entitlement, claiming that accusations of cultural appropriation are, "the nonsense of Eastern Canadian academics" and that a writer has the license to create anything he chooses. To that I would argue that while a writer can create any world they desire, stealing someone else's world is is more and more frowned upon. There was absolutely nothing stopping Kinsella from writing stories about white people. He argues his stories are positive, and they are, and that oppressed people use humour to fight back against the oppressors, which they do, but he still can't see how the fact that his decision as a white author to use First Nations characters in his work contributes to the continued oppression of First Nations peoples. The publishing world does not, unfortunately, have infinite space for infinite books and Kinsella writing First Nations stories takes up a place that could have gone to an actual First Nations writer. While the stories were funny and - ironically enough - seemed genuine, there are lots of short story collections written by Aboriginal Peoples that you could be reading.

[Gary Sites · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of memorable stories featuring Silas and his friends and family on the Ermineskin Reserve. Some are laugh-out-loud funny. Some cut to the bone. Some are a little of both sadness and joy. All are alive with characters I’ve grown to love. What follows are my thoughts about each story.

Being Invisible

A delightful story of Frank Fencepost’s quest to learn to read.

Snitches

Silas’ no-account father shows up on the reserve with the idea to start his own moon-shine making business. This is a rather dark tale with just enough humor to make it resonate.

Pizza Ria

Silas, Frank Fencepost, and a few of their friends, including Mad Etta and Father Alphonse, help Bobby Billy run the Pizza Ria he just inherited. How they get the business going in the right direction is Kinsella at his most humorest and imaginative best.

A Lighter Load

Wonderful story that shows off Mad Etta’s unorthodox wisdom.

The Miss Hobbema Pageant

Frank Fencepost enters the local beauty pageant. How will a tall, skinny Indian with a mustache and a bosom made of pieces of sofa cushion fare in the contest? Kinsella shows us in the most hilarious way.

Forgiveness Among Animals

The strange story of how Freddy Powderface, mimicking badgers, ran circles around his house for a month in search of forgiveness from his wife. Reminded me of something that Tristan Egolf might have written, only much shorter.

Tricks

Frank Fencepost plans a National Trick month and bets he can play a trick on all eleven of his friends within ten days. If Frank succeeds he gets $10 from each. If he loses he has to pay for everyone’s pool games for an evening, plus provide Pepsis and Frito chips. Silas is bound and determined that Frank won’t be able to trick him.

Graves

Silas and Frank bury Phil Cardinal alive in his front yard. Nothing mean-spirited about it—Phil requested the deed and also hired them to keep watch over the air pipe coming up from Phil's concrete tomb under the ground for six weeks while Phil tries to find himself. There’s often some profound thought running just below the surface in a Kinsella tale, but especially so in this one.

Coming Home to Roost

Silas is driving himself crazy over the thoughts of his younger sister, Minnie showing signs of growing up too fast. He’s always felt responsible for her, more like a father than a brother, and he’s learning the hard way that he’s holding on to her a little too tight trying to protect her. A good story but not very enjoyable.

The Sundog Society

Although it had a few good lines, this story didn’t do much for me. Weird and sad.

The Election

Politics are not a strong point for Silas and his friends. They learn this the hard (and funny) way when they attempt to unseat Tom Crow-eye as chief of the tribe. Frank Fencepost says he’s the logical choice to run against Chief Tom because he’s the perfect politician. “I been to bed with over half the women under 30 on this here reserve, and a few over 30 too. That the best preparation for political office I know of, if you’re a politician you spend all your time screwing people.”

Homer

Silas tells the story of Homer Hardy, an old prospector of gold who shows up periodically on the reserve to tell his stories and seek a stake for his next expedition from anyone who’ll listen. This is a great story about the bridges that are possible for us to build between each other.

A Hundred Dollars’ Worth of Roses

The most touching story in the collection. It’s about pursuing your dreams despite your fears. Wonderful stuff.

The Medicine Man’s Daughter

It begins: “My friend Frank Fencepost insists that the most feared words in either English or Cree are not ‘You’re under arrest,’ or, ‘Guilty as charged,’ but, ‘I’m pregnant.’” When Silas hears those most feared words from his girlfriend Sadie, you can imagine how his world is about to change. What you probably can’t imagine is the secret Mad Etta has been holding on to for over 45 years. This wasn’t a proper story to end the collection with. Leaves a sad, kind of hopeless taste in my mouth.

[Aubrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I was thoroughly engaged, but then I learned that the author has no indigenous background himself and I couldn't appreciate the stories anymore.

[Shelby Nagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, REALLY engaging. There wasn't a single story in this collection that I didn't like...though the final one almost made me tear up. The 'Rez' dialect was definitely a nice touch, and helped add humor and relatibility to the stories.

Highly reccommended.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious!!

[April Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

WP Kinsella makes me laugh out loud.

[Bear Wiseman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories are hilarious and clever, while others are a tad dull or the point is a little lacklustre.