As a child, whether I was reading Joyce Stranger’s novels about animals getting too close to humans or James Herriot’s autobiographies about humans getting too close to animals, the only demand I made was that animals and humans had equal status as characters. Dorris Heffron’s City Wolves has taken me back to that joyful time of childhood bed, beach and bath reading and my untested faith that of course everyone loves animals as much as I do and if there is anyone out there who doesn’t they will get found out.
Heffron’s novel is classed as adult fiction but it isn’t surprising to learn that the author made her name as a writer of stories for young adults. Confirming that the two genres are a continuum, City Wolves tells the story of Meg, a woman growing up in the last part of the nineteenth century, who is determined to become a veterinarian, despite parental expectations that she will be a farmer’s wife like her mother and despite there being no other female vets in Canada. More specifically, Meg’s ambition is to become a dog doctor and canids are indeed the catalysts of the story, from the wolf mother and pups Meg saves as a child to the wolves captured by the Inuit couple aiming to be among the first ever to breed dogs.
Just as people do today, Meg sees the North as the land of opportunity, particularly for a forward thinking woman. Meg, after all, is thoroughly modern. The offspring of geographical pioneers, she is a cultural pioneer. Her first husband is a cross-dresser and she has sex with another man after she has pledged her heart to someone else, although the narrator is careful to give us reason not to judge her too harshly.
It could even be argued that Meg is too modern; sometimes she may be a little too ahead of her time in terms of her views and the expressions she uses. However, all this helps us to engage with Meg and feel the frustration of being a Victorian woman with ideas of your own.
City Wolves also helps us feel what it was like to be part of the Klondike Gold Rush, for this is what draws Meg North. We even get to meet some of history’s real-life characters. For example, the discoverers of the gold that launched the rush, officially attributed to George Carmack, although in true Heffron style, it is Carmack’s wife, Kate, who made the discovery but as a woman could have no claim to the riches.
Heffron, however, did not make up Kate’s part in the gold rush; nobody can be sure who in Carmack’s gang actually made the discovery. City Wolves is thoroughly researched. But, just as it should be, it is the story that matters. And while there’s no doubt that Meg is the main character, the status of animals as characters too is what makes City Wolves such a memorable tale.
