The Last Crossing

The Last Crossing is a 2002 novel by Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe, published by McClelland and Stewart. The second book in the nineteenth-century Prairie-lands Trilogy, it offers a new take on the western genre. The Last Crossing is a tale of interwoven lives and stories taking place in the last half of the nineteenth century, traveling from England to the United States and the Canadian west. The novel won the 2004 Canada Reads book award and was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award that same year.

The story begins in 1896 with protagonist Charles Gaunt, a painter from the English countryside who maintains an air of detachedness in an attempt at self-preservation, disguising his compassionate nature and genuine artistic sensibility. Charles reflects upon events that occurred in 1871, when his twin brother, Simon, a religious idealist, journeyed to the American West with the Reverend Obadiah Witherspoon, with the goal of converting Indians to Christianity. When Simon drops off the radar, their father sends Charles and his older brother, Addington, to locate his whereabouts. While Charles hopes to find and become reconciled with his beloved twin, Addington is spurred on by the adventure of the trip. The brothers are accompanied by Caleb Ayto, an American journalist who chronicles Addington's exploits.

The trio travels to the area of Fort Benton on the Missouri River in the Montana Territory. There they meet Custis Straw, a Civil War veteran who owns a ranch near the fort. Straw is in love with Lucy Stoveall, who works with her younger sister, Madge, as a laundress after being abandoned by her husband. Charles finds that he is also drawn to Lucy. When Madge is raped and murdered, Lucy joins the Gaunt expedition north into Canada to try to find her sister's killers, whom she believes to be Titus and Joel Kelso, hooligans related to Straw.



Addington proves to be arrogant and self-promoting, a source of tension within the group. In addition to this, Lucy rejects Straw’s advances, paying more attention to Charles, which angers Straw. Desperate to find his brother, Charles is terrified of returning to his father empty-handed.

Potts is the true hero of the novel, as he guides the group on their journey. A legendary Canadian historical figure, Potts was a scout for the North West Mounted Police during their 1874 campaign against American whiskey peddlers and is credited by many for helping settle the Canadian West. The plot of the novel focuses on the conflicting personalities of the characters and their escalating tensions as they pursue their mission and the various obstacles that they encounter along the way.

Potts is troubled by the arrogance of the whites, and their insistence upon renaming Indians, such as calling the Kanai the Bloods and the Nitsi-tapi the Blackfoot, insisting that doing so only serves to widen the gap between whites and Indian populations, breeding animosity. Through this narrative, Vanderhaeghe succeeds in presenting the conflicts and misunderstandings between the Old World and the New without easy ironies. Charles thinks that his smug countrymen back home fail to see that the Indians, which they often refer to as barbarians or savages, have actually had a monumental influence on the way the whites live their lives, more so than the whites have been able to impose on the Indians in spite of their best efforts to do so.



Each character is on his or her own journey. While Addington and Charles seek to locate their brother, Simon, Straw is on his own mission in quiet pursuit of Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy is preoccupied with her own traumatic loss, desperately hoping to locate her sister’s killers. She married her husband, Stoveall, for financial security for herself and Madge, only for him to abandon her and her sister to be murdered. Accompanying the Gaunt brothers on their search for Simon, she walks rather than rides in the supply wagon and tasks herself with a long list of chores, aiming to tire herself out so that she can sleep at night. Charles remarks upon Lucy’s tenacity and mental fortitude, which he greatly admires. He begins to realize that not only does she possess physical strength, but she has succeeded in impressing him with her mental faculties as well, as he notes her astute remarks that have left him speechless on more than one occasion.

Vanderhaeghe subtly and without sentimentality shows that the strength and vitality of the American and Canadian characters stem less from their European roots than from the willingness of individuals to give themselves over to new influences. Near the end of The Last Crossing, Vanderhaeghe feels compelled to spell out his anticolonialism theme, but the point has already been made quite effectively through the actions of his compelling characters.