biography

Q&A with Ray Argyle, author of The Boy in the Picture

Tell us about your book.
The Boy in the Picture, my third book, is the one with which I have the strongest personal connection. It tells the story of young Edward Mallandaine, the boy in the iconic photo of the driving of the Last Spike in the Canadian Pacific Railway. That momentous occasion back in 1885 (125 years ago this year) resonates with me because I knew Edward – when I was a small boy and he was an old man! The book recounts his leaving home to volunteer for the North-West Rebellion, only to find the uprising quelled and Louis Riel captured before Edward can reach the prairies. His real adventure begins when he catches on as a dispatch rider carrying mail and supplies by horseback across the unfinished gap of the railway in British Columbia’s Monashee mountains. That puts him in the right time and place to be part of the driving of the Last Spike.

Did you have a specific readership in mind when you wrote your book?
I see teen-agers, anywhere from 12-year-olds to mid-teens or later, as the primary readers for this book. I have meshed story telling with the historical record and I hope I have treated Edward’s adventures with the same enthusiasm that young people bring to their view of the world. Of course, I won’t mind railway fans of all ages reading The Boy in the Picture!

How did you research your book?
My research for the book came in two phases: My personal recollections of the stories Edward Mallandaine told me when he was an old man, and archival research into papers and documents about Edward and his family. I found these primarily in the Royal British Columbia Archives in Victoria, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. I also dug up a lot of contemporary newspaper accounts, some of them written by Edward.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a writer?
The best advice I’ve ever received as a writer comes from Guy Vanderhaeghe, the stellar Canadian novelist of western themes: “Write the book you want to write and hope someone will want to read it.” What he means, I think, is that you have to believe in your own work if you expect anyone else to believe in it.

What are you reading right now?
Right now, I am reading an anthology of Agatha Christie short stories, Masterpieces of Mystery and the Unknown, a Franklin D. Roosevelt biography by H.W. Brandes, Traitor to His Class and Marci McDonald’s new book on the Christian right in Canada, The Armageddon Factor.

Ray Argyle has written for publications such as The Beaver and the National Post and is the author of several books, including Turning Points: The Campaigns That Changed Canada and Scott Joplin and the Age of Ragtime. He lives in Toronto.

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