In search of normality

Why Are You So –  
by Cathy Burrell

Victoria: FriesenPress, 2024
$20.49 / 9781038321763

by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith

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There are different types of memoirs, aside from the one that readers are most familiar where a famous person recounts their fabulous life. For example, it can be about a person rising above their humble beginnings to become famous and/or wealthy, as in Bob MacDonald’s, Just Say Yes, where we get a glimpse into the lives of glamourous, adventurous, and influential people through Bob’s eyes.

Another popular type of memoir is about ordinary people who did extraordinary things, as in my nonfiction book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue, where volunteers of Search and Rescue describe sixty-nine of their most memorable and harrowing missions.

Also, a nonfiction book I read as a child, Soul Sister (1969), by Grace Halsell, was riveting. Inspired by John Howard Griffin’s book, Black Like Me (1961), she used vitiligo treatment pills to help darken her complexion in combination with dangerous tanning sessions. With her skin transformed, she traveled and worked in Harlem and Mississippi, passing as a black woman in hopes white people would understand what it’s like to be black.

Then there are memoirs written by people who are trying to make sense of their lives by writing about what happened to them in their early life, thereby helping the rest of us sort out the messy lives that we find ourselves in. Cathy Burrell’s memoir, Why Are You So – fits this category.

Growing up as the youngest child in a Ukrainian-Canadian, dysfunctional family in Calgary, who berated her for being overweight and forced her into being the caretaker of her mentally ill, neglectful mother, Burrell kept up a façade of being “normal” to her peers.

A mom and dad who had lived in separate parts of Canada but stayed married. An alcoholic mother and estranged, much older brothers. Dad’s three bankruptcies and the purchase of an old run-down hotel in a small town up north that had turned him into a millionaire in his late 50s.  A big extended family in Winnipeg that included a whole bunch of other alcoholics, and a Baba who barely spoke English. . .I didn’t think anything about my life up to that point could be considered normal at all.

Cathy spent summers with her grandparents in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Time with her Baba gave her respite from the chaos of family life with her much older brothers. She was close to her a baker father, but he was irresponsible with the family finances that forced them to move into ever more dire circumstances.

Finally, they were pushed all the way north to Yellowknife, where the most exciting and also perilous adventures in her childhood happened:

I loosened my grip on Doug and found myself found myself sliding right off the back seat, landing flat on my back onto the snow. I remember listening to the sound of the ski-doo as it got farther and farther away and feeling so comfortable lying there in the white stillness with snowflakes falling slowly onto my cheeks.

On the surface, it seemed that Cathy had the perfect dad, who baked sheet cakes for the kids in her class when they had birthdays and delivered them in the bakery truck. They lived above the bakery where her father worked, until her father bought a hotel. Anyone who’s worked in a family business will be able to relate to Cathy’s experiences a family employee.

The narrator’s love of ravens and cats is interwoven throughout her story and they become her family in lieu of constant friends and trustworthy family.

I love it when a memoir unlocks my own memories and How Are You So – did that many times. Having grown up not far from Calgary, we had many Ukrainian-Canadian neighbours and I loved their culture. Playing with the nested, wooden dolls together, watching them making elaborate Easter eggs, and seeing them dance in their traditional dresses with flower headdresses trailing colourful ribbons.

The scenes in Yellowknife where she went snowmobiling opened a rare memory of snowmobiling with my late Uncle René in northern Alberta. I was really young when our family went to visit him, my aunt and cousins, who were older than us. Uncle took us on snowmobile rides on Christmas morning.

I clung to his waist as we went up a steep mountain. I looked over the edge—big mistake as it was a long way down. The snowmobile shook and rattled under us threatening to fall apart, bearing no resemblance to today’s cushy rides. It was bracingly cold on my exposed cheeks, both exhilarating, and one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

In this memoir, we see how the narrator overcame her many survival challenges. I’d love to see a second book that carries on from where she left off at her Baba’s home at that delicate age of thirteen.

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Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith grew up in the Lethbridge and Cardston areas of Alberta and moved to Vancouver to complete a BFA in Creative Writing at UBC. She later taught English, Journalism, and other subjects at Vancouver high schools. She currently lives in Gibsons (and North Vancouver) where she founded the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, including the annual Art & Words Festival, the Book Awards for BC Authors, and a literary map. Her previous book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue (Caitlin Press), was a bestseller in BC. She has a new book, I’m Not A Mormon (Anymore), to be released in Winter 2026, available for preorder from Caitlin Press or Amazon.ca. [Editor’s Note: Cathalynn Labonté-Smith recently wrote an essay on the subject of book awards and reviewed books by Sheila Anne Wray, Susan Aglukark, PP Wong, Rob Fillo and PJ Reece, interviewed Bob McDonald, and profiled the Sunshine Coast Tale Trail 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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