Rudy Wiebe


Rudy Henry Wiebe 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, 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, The Blue Mountains of China, The Temptations of Big Bear, The Scorched-wood People, The Mad Trapper, My Lovely Enemy, A Discovery of Strangers, Sweeter Than All the World, and Come Back. 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 and A Discovery of Strangers. 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

Novels

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

Short stories

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

Nonfiction

War in the West: Voices of the North-West Rebellion, McClelland & Stewart, 1985Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic, NeWest, 1989Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1999Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, Vintage Canada, 2007Extraordinary 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