fonds F0015 - Rudy Wiebe fonds.

Original Objet numérique not accessible

Zone d'identification

Cote

CA ACU SPC F0015

Titre

Rudy Wiebe fonds.

Date(s)

  • 1953-2008 (Production)

Niveau de description

fonds

Étendue matérielle et support

34.07 m of textual records and other material

Zone du contexte

Nom du producteur

(1934-)

Notice biographique

Rudy Henry Wiebe OC (born 4 October 1934) is a Canadian author and professor emeritus in the department of English at the University of Alberta since 1992. Rudy Wiebe was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in the year 2000.

Wiebe was born at Speedwell, near Fairholme, Saskatchewan, in what would later become his family's chicken barn. For thirteen years he lived in an isolated community of about 250 people, as part of the last generation of homesteaders to settle the Canadian west. He did not speak English until age six since Mennonites at that time customarily spoke Low German at home and standard German in church. He attended the small school three miles from his farm and the Speedwell Mennonite Brethren Church. In 1947, he moved with his family to Coaldale, Alberta.

He received his B.A. in 1956 from the University of Alberta and then studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tübingen in West Germany, near Stuttgart. In Germany, he studied literature and theology and travelled to England, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In 1962, he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg, now Canadian Mennonite University.

While in Winnipeg, he worked as the editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position he was asked to leave after the publication of his controversial debut novel Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962), the book that heralded a wave of Mennonite literature in the decades that followed.

Wiebe taught at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana from 1963 to 1967, and taught at the University of Alberta in Edmonton for many decades after that.

In addition to Peace Shall Destroy Many, Wiebe's novels include First and Vital Candle (1966), The Blue Mountains of China (1970), The Temptations of Big Bear (1973), The Scorched-wood People (1977), The Mad Trapper (1980), My Lovely Enemy (1983), A Discovery of Strangers (1994), Sweeter Than All the World (2001), and Come Back (2014). He has also published collections of short stories, essays, and children's books. In 2006 he published a volume of memoirs about his childhood, entitled Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest. His work has explored the traditions and struggles of people in the Prairie provinces, both settlers, often Mennonite, and First Nations people.

Wiebe won the Governor General's Award for Fiction twice, for The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and A Discovery of Strangers (1994). Thomas King says of The Temptations of Big Bear that "Wiebe captures the pathos and the emotion of Native people at a certain point in their history and he does it well ... Wiebe points out to us that Canada has not come to terms with Native peoples, that there is unfinished business to attend to." Wiebe was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1986. In 2000 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2003 Wiebe was a member of the jury for the Giller Prize.

Histoire archivistique

Acquired between 1976 and 2012. Accession 563/95.1, consisting of a videocassette recording of Maxine Hancock interviewing R. Wiebe at Strawberry Creek, Alberta, for the television series Stories of Our Becoming, donated by Winterborne Productions in 1994.

Source immédiate d'acquisition ou de transfert

Zone du contenu et de la structure

Portée et contenu

Fonds consists of correspondence; research material; notes; manuscripts of novels, short stories, children's literature, television plays and screenplays; speeches; lectures; works on R. Wiebe; and material relating to R. Wiebe's editing of short story anthologies. Includes material relating to R. Wiebe's teaching creative writing courses at the University of Alberta and to his involvement with the Writers' Union of Canada and Canada Council, as well as conferences, writers' festivals, committees, workshops, juries and readings. Accession 349/84.16, consisting of Glenbow Foundation manuscript Frank Collicutt and his Willow Springs Herefords, 1957 (photocopy), Accession 350/84.17 consisting of Glenbow Foundation manuscript Claude Gallinger and his Killearn Shorthorns, 1957 (photocopy), and Accession 386/86.08, consisting of Foothills, v. 1, no. 1, April 2, 1985 with article Wiebe: Riel is a legitimate, authentic, mythic hero by Kelly Pitman and 2 audiocassettes with a Riel workshop and a reading by R. Wiebe, filed with Accession 329/83.26 (box 44).

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Zone des conditions d'accès et d'utilisation

Conditions d’accès

Some items restricted.

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

    Script of material

      Language and script notes

      Caractéristiques matérielle et contraintes techniques

      Finding aids

      Zone des sources complémentaires

      Existence and location of originals

      Existence and location of copies

      Related units of description

      Related fonds is the Aritha van Herk fonds, Accession 857/09.1 consisting of 1.32 m of textual records donated by A. van Herk and R. Wiebe which is restricted during their lifetimes.

      Zone des notes

      Note

      Title based on contents of fonds.

      Note

      Further accruals expected.

      Note

      Includes 20 photographs, 13 diskettes, 3 videocassettes and 2 audiocassettes.

      Identifiant(s) alternatif(s)

      ckey

      1548444

      Mots-clés

      Mots-clés - Lieux

      Mots-clés - Noms

      Mots-clés - Genre

      Zone du contrôle de la description

      Identifiant de la description

      Identifiant du service d'archives

      Rules and/or conventions used

      Statut

      Niveau de détail

      Dates of creation revision deletion

      Langue(s)

        Écriture(s)

          Sources

          Archivist's note

          Accession 349/84.16, consisting of Glenbow Foundation manuscript Frank Collicutt and his Willow Springs Herefords, 1957 (photocopy), Accession 350/84.17 consisting of Glenbow Foundation manuscript Claude Gallinger and his Killearn Shorthorns, 1957 (photocopy), and Accession 386/86.08, consisting of Foothills, v. 1, no. 1, April 2, 1985 with article Wiebe: Riel is a legitimate, authentic, mythic hero by Kelly Pitman and 2 audiocassettes with a Riel workshop and a reading by R. Wiebe, filed with Accession 329/83.26 (box 44).

          Archivist's note

          March 2023 - New AtoM descriptions provided under combined XL spreadsheet. (CLC)

          Objet numérique (Matrice) zone des droits

          Objet numérique (Référence) zone des droits

          Objet numérique (Imagette) zone des droits

          Accession area