75th anniversary of W.O. Mitchell's classic novel celebrated with new edition, endowment fund

Maybe you went to the Calgary school named after him. Or maybe you read his book as a school assignment.

Or maybe you can relate to his character Brian O'Connal's desire for the perfect pair of skates as the holidays grow closer.

Canadian author W.O. Mitchell's most famous book, Who Has Seen The Wind, turns 75 this year. The well-known story focuses on a young boy's life on the Prairies and his struggle to understand the cycle of life and death.

Mitchell's son, Orm, joined literary enthusiasts and fans alike in Calgary this week to mark the milestone and celebrate his late father's legacy — including the announcement of the W.O. Mitchell Scholarship endowment fund, benefiting the Writers' Guild of Alberta.

All royalties from Mitchell's writing will go to the fund.

"[We] wanted to find a way to continue my father's legacy as a mentor and teacher of creative writing," Mitchell said in an interview on The Homestretch.

"He had a very important mentor in his writing career, F.M. Salter, at the University of Alberta … and so he figured that, you know, his second vocation, apart from being a freelance writer, was teaching writing."

The fund will eventually be used to support a novelist and a playwright in the guild's mentorship program, says Giorgia Severini, executive director of the Writers' Guild of Alberta. They're also hoping to raise donations to add to the fund.

"W.O. Mitchell has been very important in the development of Alberta literature," she said.

"We're very honoured that there's still this desire … with his descendants to continue his legacy to support Alberta writers."

LISTEN | W.O. Mitchell speaks about his life in High River, Alta., in this archived interview:

Mitchell spent time living in several places across the country, including many years in High River, Alta.

In an archived interview from This Country In The Morning, a national CBC radio program in the 1970s, W.O. Mitchell explained his love for the town and the "salty" individuals he found there, essential to his writing.

"This is one of those areas, then, and it isn't now, in which individuality counted, in which there was nonconformity, a uniqueness of a human being," he said decades ago.

"Our family grew up here, and the foothills, the Highwood, the little Bow, the … streets softened with trees, just simply became home. An extension of self."

'A great work of art'

Mitchell's family also launched a special edition of Who Has Seen The Wind — published by Alberta-based Freehand Books — to commemorate the anniversary, featuring illustrations and drawings by Canadian artist William Kurelek.

It's one of several editions to be published since the book's initial release in 1947.

Orm Mitchell says he still remembers the moment he knew his father had written a classic.

He was in his first year of school at the University of Alberta, looking for his texts in the campus bookstore. He overheard some other students picking through a pile of books.

"One of them was holding up a green book and saying, 'Hey, you ever heard of W.O. Mitchell?' And I kind of think, what? And the kid says, 'No. Why?' And he said, 'Well, this is his book on this course. It's called Who Passed Wind,'" he said.

The boys started to laugh.

Mitchell says he walked over and picked up the book.

He says he thought to himself: "'I sure as hell know who he is.'"

"And so that was my first awareness. Wow. My father wrote a book that is being taught in university courses."

LISTEN | Orm Mitchell explains why there was a 7,000-word difference between the U.S. and Canadian publications of the novel:

At one of this week's celebrations, Sharon Butala, a celebrated Canadian writer based in Calgary, spoke about Mitchell and the influence of Who Has Seen The Wind on her own career.

"It's the best book, I think, of all the ones that I've ever read, and it's so full of so many different approaches to describing this world," she said in an interview on the Calgary Eyeopener ahead of the event.

"Every time you read it, you find something new and you discover what a great work of art it actually is."

Since the book is written from a child's perspective, Butala says many people dismissed it as a children's novel when it first came out.

But in time, scholars began to notice its "profundity," she said, with the text inspiring many up-and-coming writers, including herself.

"I don't know anybody else who could do what he did in terms of the humour, and in the voice of the children. My goodness, he had an affinity for childhood," she said.

"Everything dies except wonder, and in his case, he uses the prairie and the prairie wind to symbolize this great mystery that is at the base of human life."

LISTEN | Sharon Butala describes her unique experience meeting W.O. Mitchell:

With files from Nathan Godfrey, Judy Aldous, Ellis Choe, Chris dela Torre