On a sun-drenched day in the summer of 1999, I had the rare pleasure of lunching with Canada’s most beloved storyteller. The transcript of our conversation is listed in the bibliography of Robert Thacker’s long-awaited biography of Alice Munro and it is described as having taken place in Stratford, Ontario. This is a glitch in an admirably accurate biography. Because neither Alice nor I could drive, our respective husbands drove us to the place she suggested—the Little Inn in Bayfield, Ontario. My husband, killing time out on the street, was under orders from me not to take photographs, but when Alice emerged and walked to a telephone booth to phone for her ride, he could not resist.
When he showed me the picture afterward, I thought of the various sinister photographers in her fiction and reproached him. He was unrepentant and gleefully pointed to a billboard on the brick wall behind her that said: ONE OF A KIND. As if that made it all right. I...
Magdalene Redekop is a professor emerita in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and the author of numerous articles on Mennonite culture. She is writing a book entitled Making Believe: Mennonites and the Crisis of Representation.
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