13th Canadian Challenge - 2nd Review - To Me You Seem Giant

This book, To Me You Seem Giant by Greg Rhyno, should probably come with trigger warnings for anyone who was a high school teacher, particularly a largely ineffective/ineffectual high school teacher.  As will be explained in short order, you actually get it from both sides, since our narrator, Peter, is a fairly hapless high school senior, who then returns after 10 years to become a supply teacher (the Canadian term for substitute teacher) at his old high school!  While this may seem too spoilery, this fact is splashed on the back cover.  Also, the chapters alternate (A-sides and B-sides) between these two time frames, so it isn't long at all before the reader finds out what Peter is up to (and obviously he is not a rock star).  However, Rhyno does sort of take his time in revealing a few key events in Peter's life, such as why and how the band broke up, how he lost his first serious girlfriend and how a car accident impacted quite a few lives in Thunder Bay.

There are perhaps a few inconsistencies, though going into them will involve some minor SPOILERS...

Minor SPOILERS ahead

There is a point at which Peter and another supply teacher are up for permanent postings at William Lyon Mackenzie King High School (mascot the Lyons), but then an old-timer (who had a severe mental breakdown ten years ago) scoops up one of the coveted positions.  While I suppose this might happen (particularly given the interference teaching unions run against weeding out incompetent teachers), the vice principal and others on the hiring committee seem quite jazzed to get the vet back in the saddle.  It is a bit hard to believe that they don't think history will repeat itself.

Also, there is a high school thug who gives Peter a fairly severe beating, and yet no one does anything about it.  I could basically buy this in the 1970s or early 80s, but it's hard to believe this "Boys will be boys" stuff would still fly in the 90s, even in Thunder Bay.  (Particularly as Peter does live with his basically working class parents, who would be expected to pay some sort of attention.)  I guess the guy does play on the school hockey team, but even so.  Later in the book, the thug causes a car accident, and this time the book is thrown at him, so the hockey hero thing apparently no longer cuts any ice.  This doesn't fatally undercut the novel, but it did seem inconsistent.

While there are certainly a fair number of illegal substances consumed (and teenage sex comes up), the high school chapters definitely feel like a somewhat darker version of A Christmas Story, though young Peter mostly wants a recording contract and not a Red Ryder rifle.  It's a little hard to tell what the older Peter wants, though he seems to have his eyes on an attractive surplus teacher when he isn't making a pass at a video store clerk (who turns out to be an AWOL student from his civics class!) and avoiding getting entangled with a colleague who was once his French teacher.  I will say that this book does not do much for the image of Thunder Bay, given that the only things worth doing are going clubbing or to concerts or hooking up.  Indeed, there's a bit of a running joke that this guy from Sudbury is cool just because he's from the big city...

It's perhaps telling that while The Tragically Hip are name-checked (and they were pretty inescapable in the 90s in Canada), most of the groups that Peter interacts with and focuses on emulating are from smaller cities (Sloan, The Killjoys and Eric's Trip).  Truth be told, The Hip formed in Kingston, though most (all?) of the members eventually relocated to Toronto and they became a bit of a Toronto institution.  Interestingly, The Lowest of the Low (a quintessential Toronto band) are name-checked in a chapter title, but not mentioned in the text itself.  

A lot of the novel involves friendships and how these may change as people get older (and some people drop away while others come back).  Peter has a quite tight friendship with Deacon and his wife, Ruth, who was another musician in a competing band and is now a teacher at Mackenzie King.  Spending time with them seems to make his time in Thunder Bay more or less bearable.  Interestingly, you don't actually see Peter interacting all that much with his parents in the early or later chapters.  I think it's fair to say that most of the adult figures let young Peter down in one way or another, and a few continue to make trouble for him, even after his return as a supply teacher.  It's also fair to say that adults (and young adults) are clearly portrayed as having their own issues.  While they may be "authority figures," they are quite flawed.  (This certainly rings true to my own experience, where only a few teachers in the school where I worked were particularly helpful to the students and the administration was singularly terrible.)

I was debating putting a few of my stories from the teaching trenches into this post, but decided this wasn't really the time.  Nonetheless, I can definitely relate to having to chaperone a school dance in my day (just as Peter does), though I didn't have a drunk student vomit on me fortunately.  Peter just avoids getting entangled with a student through dumb luck, and that wasn't an issue for me (even though I was much closer to the students' ages -- 21 when I started compared to 28 for Peter).  One amusing fact is that we still ran off our pop quizzes on a mimeograph machine, long after these were supposed to be sidelined (due to the chemicals being carcinogenic), and I believe the young Peter gets mimeo'ed bulletins from his teachers, though these seem to have finally been taken out of service at Mackenzie King by the 2000s when Peter returned.

This novel will definitely appeal to readers who followed the Canadian indie music scene in the 90s and 2000s.  It might appeal to readers from smaller towns, though it might cut too close to the bone at times.  Finally, it may speak to people who chased a dream, gave it a shot but didn't make it, and then finally retreated to plan B, though it may simply say to them "Life is unfair" or "Make sure to pick a safety school"...