The Vanishing Point

W.O. Mitchell worked for many years on this book, polishing what was to be his big, serious, and very controversial novel about white-native relations. The book is set in the Paradise Reserve in the Alberta foothills – but the Reserve is far from perfect. Carlyle Sinclair, a widower who comes to teach in the one-room schoolhouse, is full of optimism, but he is frustrated in and out of the classroom by the passivity of the people he is determined to help. When Victoria, his prize pupil, goes missing in the backstreets of the city, he goes in search of her, and of the truth about his own life.

W.O. Mitchell, the only Canadian author recognizable by initials alone, was born in Weyburn, Saskatchewan in 1914. Educated at the University of Manitoba, he lived most of his life in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Alberta, where for many years he was the most renowned resident in High River. He and his wife, Merna, subsequently moved to Calgary.

During a very varied career Bill Mitchell travelled widely and was everything from a Depression hobo to the fiction editor of Maclean’s. A gifted teacher, he was visiting professor at the University of Windsor for several years, and a creative writing instructor at the Banff Centre for many summers.

His best-loved book is Who Has Seen the Wind. Since its publication in 1947 it has sold over half a million copies in Canada alone, and is hailed as the greatest Canadian book on boyhood. The classic edition, illustrated by William Kurelek, became a bestseller in 1991. Complementing that book is his 1981 best-seller How I Spent My Summer Holidays, hailed by some critics as his finest novel, although Since Daisy Creek (1984) and Ladybug, Ladybug…(1988), Roses Are Difficult Here (1990), For Art's Sake (1992) and The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon (1993), illustrated by Wesley W. Bates, were also well-received best-sellers. Besides The Kite (1962) and The Vanishing Point (1973), he was also noted for his two collections of short stories, Jake and the Kid (1962) and According to Jake and the Kid (1989). Based on the legendary CBC radio Series, both classic story collections won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

His last book, An Evening with W.O. Mitchell, contains his most popular performance pieces, and concludes with “The Poetry of Life”, the lecture that he delivered from a wheelchair to The Writers’ Union Conference in Winnipeg in 1996.

A noted performer of his own work, W.O. Mitchell recorded cassette versions of both Who Has Seen the Wind and According to Jake and the Kid, while a selection of pieces from An Evening with W.O. Mitchell, performed by W.O., is also available on cassette.

Our novelist and script-writer was also a successful playwright whose five plays are included in the collection entitled Dramatic W.O. Mitchell. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973, and was an honorary member of the Privy Council. He was the subject of a National Film Board documentary, and in 1994 he was awarded the Writers Guild of Alberta Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1996 the City of Calgary named its book prize in his honour. He was, in Pierre Berton’s words, “an original.”

W.O. Mitchell died in February 1998 at his home in Calgary.