The gains from the misadventure

Unorganized Territory: A Boy’s Own Memoir
by David Gurr

Victoria: Stonehewer Books, 2025
$25.95  /  9781738993383

Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski

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Tired from a day’s work making hay, a boy decides to risk riding home atop a feisty horse—bareback. Everything goes horribly wrong. Breaking into a gallop, the horse careers towards an “impossible jump.”

Many decades later, prominent Victoria writer David Gurr recalls, “I was going to come off and probably die.” 

A book entitled Unorganized Territory: a boy’s own memoir should, of course, contain adventures. Correct? After all, for decades the titles of boys’ adventure books brandished the words used here, namely, “A Boy’s Own.”

What Gurr writes next, though, subverts any such expectations: “I apologize for the phony melodrama—but it didn’t seem phony at the time.  How Grizzle made that impossible jump, and how I stayed on her back while she did it, we can call a fluke, disguised as kismet.”

The wry humour and the cheerful self-deprecation that frame the self-inflicted misadventure are absolutely fundamental to the DNA of this entire, wickedly unconventional memoir.

The outlines of the “memoir” covered—the years from Gurr’s boyhood in England to his late adolescence in Canada—are simple enough.  Born in 1936 in London, Gurr first comes into focus in documenting episodes during the war years in Dorset. At war’s end, when the family of four abandons England, they fetch up first in Duncan on Vancouver Island. Soon, however, they settle—and for the rest of the memoir— in a summer cabin (yes, summer cabin).  In the parlance of the time and hence the title of the book this…odd…house is in “Unorganized Territory,” near a tree-clad lake on the northern outskirts of Victoria.

Normally, a novel is held together by its storyline, a memoir by chronology—but for Gurr, not quite.  Yes, chronology provides the basic framework of the book, but the author makes no attempt to structure his book on the procession of years or to summarize and analyze a whole period of time.   Instead, for him, the primary unit is the anecdote, though loosely tethered to chronology, location, and key players.  His use of subheadings every few pages reveals much about this method. Consider “Gold Panning in Suicide Canyon”or “Here comes the Blackball Ferry.” Both headings are gloriously misleading: the suicidal element in the one is the unintentional result of geographically misjudged enthusiasm in the pursuit of gold.  The “blackball” element in the other is the very intentional result of a rowdy attack from a gang of boys brandishing shoe polish intended to blacken the hapless victim’s testicles.

Like the story of Grizzle, these are not adventures.  Wonderfully, they are misadventures.  One of the first in the book stars a 4½-year-old Gurr engineering a long distance flight from his home in Devon: “how we thought we could make it to London, and who caught us, and why they thought it was a good moment to take an adorable snap for the family albums remain riddles of war.” One of the last incidents results in the 18-year-old, with two others, attempting to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca in a tiny boat, and nearly drowning in the storm-wracked attempt. This time there was no adorable snap.  In between? Fourteen years provides many, many opportunities for mishap.

The misadventures come in some distinct flavours.  Animals—like Grizzle—loom large. As if gluttons for punishments, Gurr’s family courted chaos with one animal acquisition after another, ending up with “two English golden cocker spaniels, two horses, three goats, two cats, one rabbit, multiple chickens and bantams, and a new bull calf.”  And this list ignores dogs long lost to childhood, a neighbour’s marauding bantams—and Henry the turkey. Amongst others. Probably the most painful for the pubescent Gurr involved a trip to the veterinarian with a hyperactive and sexually enthusiastic Boxer. It also involved a Chihuahua perched on a woman’s lap in the waiting room. The boy’s Boxer…reacted. “The result became at the same time pornographically hilarious and one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.”

Weather—in a rural area—can be, and was, equally the source of one crisis after another. In the summer a shallow well can, and did, run dry. Gurr’s subsequent struggles with buckets of water and toilet tanks provided little joy. A snowstorm and stuck car make his words—“There’s always a funny side”—ring hollow.

Besides weather and animals, other themes provide unity to the montage.  One of these is the dizzying number of changes in school. At age 7, for example, he recalls, “I was tossed into the Pilgrim’s Dungeon of Giant Despair, otherwise known as boarding school.” And his last school? “The five army huts called Belmont High School.”

The father’s plans to change jobs chime just as regularly and are all the more narratively effective, not just as a linking element, but also because they misfire as often as Gurr’s own schemes.

The result of these misfired jobs, unsurprisingly, underlies another theme. The failure “to keep the financial wolf… away” is perhaps most vividly present in the form of a hopeless little truck and the tiny summer cabin in the titular “Disorganized Territory.” The fumbling attempts to cobble together, for example, sleeping or eating space are as persistent as the shallow well’s summer lack of water.

Beyond the confines of the family, Gurr further links incidents by steadying his eye on fixtures of time and place. In broadest terms, such events as the bombing of London, the invasion of Normandy, and the Korean War toll in the background. Especially interesting, perhaps, is his recollection of “the largest headline ever seen in Victoria: EVEREST CONQUERED.”

In more confined terms, Gurr’s young eyes train on details of local historical interest. As a boy newly arrived from England, he is fascinated by “[n]ew food miracles like Rice Krispies and Grapenuts cereals…delivered courtesy of the Overwaitea grocery store.” The surprises of Canadian language, food, and behaviour for the young eye-witness permeate the memoir.

In terms of regional history, current locals will be charmed, for example, to learn that the current city of Colwood was the name of a farm owned by a certain Dr. John Langford, who lent his name to an adjacent city. They will be less charmed by other, disturbing memories—especially those involving racism.  Recording neutrally, the young David observed, for instance, “Indians” in the movie theatre in Duncan being segregated into the balcony seats. Even his own father, as a real estate agent, was, he recalls, expected not to sell houses in prime areas to those “who looked like Hindus [sic] or had names like Lim Bang.”

The real centre of interest of the book, though, has to be the cast list. No doubt many of the minor roles in the author’s life were filled by colourless characters—not, however, the ones who people the pages of his memoir. Take, for example, Paddy New. In order to “peddle” expensive foreign cars, Paddy “wore dapper tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, sported a dapper pencil moustache like David Niven’s, and smoked cigarettes in an ebony holder.  He also spoke rather like David Niven in clipped English sentences.” Even such an absurdly self-studied caricature is nothing compared to “a little man called Glenn.” At one of his mother’s lake-side summer parties this “little man called Glenn ran around showing off his red pubic hair.” Not surprisingly, perhaps, as Gurr adds with studied calm,“[h]is wife, Marjorie, later left him, and her house and children, for Bhagwan Shree Fajneesh at his commune in Oregon.”

Shrewd readers will observe that, even though experience furnished Gurr with plenty of fodder, it is his selection of detail and handling of language that elevate the possibly odd to the certainly absurd. It would be a mistake, however, to think that our author is out merely to deride, however cheerfully. On the contrary, he frankly admires some of the most colourful characters in his memoir—in spite of and because of their quirks. Amongst these looms one “Colonel Maxwell Dopping-Hepenstal,” “a very small man” with a badly burnt face from war, able to speak Hindi and Ghurkhali fluently, supplied with “an excellent library of fascinating books,” and, unless photos lie, equipped with the martial arts skills necessary to leave him “standing upright next to a toppled Sumo colossus.” Memory provides the grist; Gurr, in retelling, supplies the mill.

And then there is the author’s family. While his younger (half) sister, Angela figures only in minor ways, much larger loom a Great Aunt Kythe, the father figure “Jim,” and his mother.  The first of these plays an almost Dickensian role as a relentlessly judgmental caregiver, harping incessantly, amongst other things, on Jim’s shortcomings and her own proud Scottish heritage. As for Jim, when he was at war, the very young boy was delighted to have his mother all to himself. When, however, Jim came home, the growing Gurr was, and remained, unhappy. 

It would take an entirely different kind of book to expand on the relevance of the word that Gurr uses only at the very end: “dysfunctional.” It may be helpful to contrast his memoir with two of the best-known books of the twentieth century—both, similarly, fictionalized accounts of the authors’ boyhoods within dysfunctional families. Those familiar with DH Lawrence’s broodingly intense Sons and Lovers or James Joyce’s bitterly ironic A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will see with particular clarity how, in contrast, Gurr’s approach is surprisingly breezy and balanced. As it is, the hostility he felt towards Jim’s constant, demeaning slights does stain his boyhood but, remains largely compartmentalized—until the end of the book. His speculations, in retrospect, on the man’s “shattered ego” lead to an observation lightyears away in nature from anything in Lawrence or Joyce: “Now I can give a bit more credit to Jim, and the brave face he showed the rest of the world.”

In deep-rooted contrast, the boy loved his mother. He does not, however (except when playfully nodding to the Oedipus legend), dwell on her. Instead, in a masterstroke, he lets his mother speak for herself. He uses her long and eloquent letter to conclude the memoir, in the process casting a startling light on herself (“what a wild one I was”) and the entire family. It is her revelation (perhaps anticipated by the wily reader) that gives shape to the whole diverse book. This section, called, simply Jane’s Letter is followed by a very few, movingly insightful words, headed, appropriately Lifting the Fog.

After all, within the “fog”—aka his boyhood—Gurr himself has been the centre of character interest. First off, everything we experience, we do through his memory. It is hard to believe that, as he claims in Acknowledgements, it is help from others that “allowed this book to emerge from the thickets of overgrown memory in my antique head.” Instead, most readers surely will fully accept observations as, “[s]even decades later I can still see….” Even more to the point, far from imbuing his memories with veils of remoteness and even nostalgia, the author writes with wonderful freshness and sharpness.

Similarly humble is the way he often presents himself as just a typical boy: “How children make do,” he muses at one point, at another observes, “[p]rocrastination is the gift of summer” and yet another, “[i]nertia is a powerful drug.” While it is true that he captures the child-mind—where the tiniest detail can be a source of fascination or even quivering emotional value—the way he records his own reactions makes them razor sharp.

Further, while some of the boy’s misadventures came in spite of rather than because of his own character, incident after incident mirrors the alarming case of Grizzle-the-galloping horse: this is a boy with extraordinary…well…chutzpah. No other word will do. It might emerge as a mad scheme—like his plan as a young boy in Devon to reenact in darkened woods the surrender of Boadecia to the Romans—blue painted face and all. However, it can take many forms: the same traits that drove the young child, drove the young man, many years later, angered by the decision to merge the various branches of the military, to take on the entire Canadian government.

Few readers are likely to leave the memoir without feeling engagement and even admiration. Gurr may laugh at himself by insisting at one point that “[w]eaker souls with even a neuron of common sense would have given up,” or by referring to a photo of himself and his fellow students as a “trio of idiots.” However, no “idiot,” least of all a poor kid from a tiny rural school, is likely—as he offhandedly lets slip—to have achieved the highest exam marks in English in the province.

Perhaps most engaging of all is the young Gurr’s capacity for joy. His response to joys of nature, whether in going on horse riding trips with his mother to Triangle Mountain, being captivated by wild birds, or ice skating on Glen Lake, culminates in one of the most haunting moments in the memoir— a “magic sonic moment,” “metaphysically Canadian” with the “twinned sound of the train’s whistle and the loon’s cry.”

This is the stuff, many readers must feel, of which the most enduring memories—and memoirs—are made. 

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Theo Dombrowski grew up in Port Alberni and studied at UVic and later in Nova Scotia and London, England. With a doctorate in English literature, he returned to teach at Royal Roads, UVic, and finally Lester Pearson College in Metchosin. He also studied painting and drawing at Banff School of Fine Arts and UVic. He lives at Nanoose Bay. You can visit his website here. [Editor’s note: Theo Dombrowski has reviewed books by Carla-Jean Stokes, Gail Sidone Šobat, Alan Twigg, Ian Williams, Jason A.N. Taylor, and Tim Bowling for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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