by Tom Radford
NEWEST PRESS
2024/$20.95/304 pp.
The most successful biographies are driven by a story, transforming a collection of historical facts into a compelling and coherent journey. The problem with Tom Radford’s biography of his grandparents, the journalists Peggy and Balmer Watt, is that it lacks a clear narrative thread. The consequence is that Peggy & Balmer: Two Journalists at the Edge of History lacks focus, feeling like a meandering patchwork of chronological sketches.
Such a result is surprising given the author’s achievements. Radford is an accomplished filmmaker, with over 50 films and documentaries to his credit. In 2020 he was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada and has won several awards for his work. The Edmonton-based writer and director knows how to tell a story.
Knowing this about Radford makes reading Peggy & Balmer all the more frustrating. The potential for a great narrative is there: a young married couple, both journalists, arrive in Edmonton just as Alberta is declared a province. It’s a time of great hope and ambition along with difficult living conditions and political friction—culminating in the election of William Aberhart’s Social Credit government in 1935 and the media’s subsequent battle against the Press Act, for which the Edmonton Journal, where Balmer was then editor-in-chief, won a Pulitzer Prize. At the centre of this backdrop are two people who are in love despite being so different. Peggy is strong-willed, outgoing and skeptical of entrenched power structures, while Balmer is responsible, reserved and pragmatic.
Radford has attempted to focus this biography with a clearly stated theme, that the book is about “a love affair with the Alberta frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, a passion for place that consumed the lives of two extraordinary journalists.” His intention, however, is just not reflected in the execution. Much of the content of the book is derived from Radford’s own personal experiences and political opinions. In the first chapter, for instance, readers are thrown into the midst of the devastating wildfires that consumed much of northern Alberta in 2016 as Radford himself films the destruction from a helicopter. What follows is a withering criticism of resource extraction in the province. The author tries to justify including these passages by rooting them in the history of oil and gas development in the province. But such digressions are highly distracting from Peggy and Balmer’s journey.
Another persistent problem in the book is that, despite having access to personal diaries and newspaper clippings, Radford includes very few passages from these primary sources. He frequently tells the reader about Peggy’s internal thoughts and feelings, but rarely includes excerpts from her diaries to reflect these things in her own words. Likewise, Radford describes some of Balmer’s work as a journalist but includes few quotes from his many columns. These are missed opportunities to give Peggy and Balmer a voice.
Radford also misses several opportunities to explore Peggy and Balmer’s role as journalists during a tumultuous period in Alberta history. For example, in a pair of chapters devoted to the First World War, Radford never examines the role of Balmer’s newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, during the war, so we never learn whether the paper supported or opposed Canada’s role in the conflict or remained neutral. Not a single passage from Balmer’s columns during this period is included in the book. Nor is there an examination of Peggy’s or Balmer’s experiences as journalists reporting on the war. Indeed, Peggy and Balmer are often absent or at best passive witnesses as history unfolds around them.
The book is not without notable strengths. Radford provides a good summary of Alberta’s history, a primer for anyone with limited knowledge of the early 20th century. And the epilogue relives an excursion the young Radford experienced with his grandparents that is both insightful and moving. But these merits are eclipsed by the book’s omissions and poor focus.
Andrew Torry is a playwright and curriculum designer with the City of Calgary.
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