Chris Meigh- Andrews has more than one good story to tell. The English citizen, who is wrapping up a one month stay in the Wallace Stegner house as a writer in residence, is in the middle of finishing off his first novel. Meigh- Andrew's visit to this corner of the province also serves as an opportunity to investigate his grandfather's experience in the area a century ago. His grandfather, Alexander William John Andrews, came to the southwest from England in the early 1920s, following service in the army during the First World War. He left a wife and young son back in England and headed directly for East End, intent on becoming a farmer. 

Meigh-Andrews has very little factual evidence of what his grandfather- who went by the name of Jack, did during his time in Saskatchewan. He does, however, have a copy of the immigration forms his grandfather completed on arrival in Canada in September of 1922. in which he identified Eastend as the destination, including the name of the person he had arranged to meet. Meigh-Andrews plans to use details from his research for a novel. “It's partly detective project and partly a writing project”, smiled Meigh-Andrews. “I don't really know him, because I left England myself, age 4, to live in Montreal. My family emigrated to Canada”, he added. “My grandfather died in 1971, so there was a family story that he had gone to Canada in the 1920s, stayed around for about five years and came home again. And that's about it. That's all I know”. 

Meigh-Andrews later returned to England from Montreal himself in his early 20s, where he continued his education and career in video art, art history, and academia. After his father died, Meigh-Andrews came across a Polaroid of himself with his grandfather. He was 14 years old at the time, and Jack was 70 and it turned out to be the only time they ever met. After seeing the photograph, Meigh- Andrews was determined to learn more about his grandfather, although it would be a challenging endeavour. “I started by doing some digging, and I discovered the ship that took him to Canada, and I found a copy of the form he had filled out when he had landed in Quebec”, said Meigh- Andrews. “On this form, it said he was coming to Canada to make a new life, that he was going to be farming in Saskatchewan. His destination was East End, and that he was coming to meet a person named W. Hyam. I just thought, I need to find out more”, he continued. “Why did he go to East End? He came from Colchester in England, 6000 miles by boat and train, and everything else that would have been involved in a journey like that”. 

Through his research, Meigh-Andrews found a postcard that Jack had sent from Moose Jaw, saying he was leaving for East End the next day. The postcard was dated September 29, 1922. “I started writing, trying to see what I could write based on the few things that I knew, and wondering if there was anything else I could find out, he explained. I'm a historian, an art historian really, and I've never written any fiction. But as a young man, I always wanted to write a novel, and I thought maybe this was my chance to do something like that”. On searching details about his grandfather's life Meigh-Andrews also learned about the writer in residence programme at the Wallace Stegner house. It seemed like a perfect fit on many levels, including the parallels to the story of the Stegner family. “I just thought that there were too many coincidences, and I like coincidences”, chuckled Meigh- Andrews, who applied and was accepted to the Stegner programme. Meigh-Andrews has also learned that his grandfather worked for the CP Railroad, and eventually moved to Northern Ontario, where he worked at a logging camp. He ultimately returned back to England to rejoin his family. 

“I've got the letter of reference that they gave him when he buggered off and went back to England”, said Meigh- Andrews, “but I don't know why he went back, and I don't know what happened”. While working on his novel, Meigh- Andrews had an opportunity to explore the southwest, and see the landscape his grandfather would have encountered 100 years ago. He has also been able to meet with the descendants of W. Hyam, although those encounters, while enjoyable, haven't necessarily led to any renewed discoveries about Jack's experience in the region. He does know that his grandfather did have some expertise in dealing with horses, and that might have been one of the reasons for his move to Saskatchewan. 

What exactly happened or didn't happen in regards to his farming career as anyone's guess. But there is another character in Meigh-Andrew's novel. That being the grandson who travels to Eastend to learn more about the grandfather. And so, really, the novel is about two men who met only once, and knew almost nothing about each other, but share an extraordinary bond and experience. Meigh-Andrews presented excerpts from his novel, and provided some background about his project during a special reading at the Eastend Library on August 22nd.