Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Botany, History, and Zoology. She obtained first-class marks in all these papers save German authors and German composition, in which she obtained seconds. “I really wasn’t up on it enough to get a first,” Munro recalls, but writing the German exams saved her from mathematics. Along with ten other students who had “obtained standing in eight or more subjects,” Munro earned “the Honor Graduation Diploma”; as the highest-scoring student, she was named valedictorian of her class. 37
    Even so, after she took these tests Munro was worried about the outcome. For purposes of scholarships at the University of Western Ontario, a student had to specify the papers she wished to be judged on. Munro had indicated English, French, Latin, and History. She knew she had missed a question on the French literature paper, and she felt certain that this lapse would keep her from obtaining the needed scholarship. She was so concerned, in fact, that she “started reading the
Globe and Mail
for ads for teachers.… At the time, teachers were scarce enough that the little far-off country schools and even schools [in Huron County] would accept a Grade 13 graduate without any training to be a teacher at all. They specified Catholic or Protestant, and that was that. Being a Protestant with Grade 13, I got a school in Oxdrift, Ontario” – in the northwest part of the province near Dryden, a very long way away. She was to be paid $1,100, much of it held back until the year was completed. “I had the contract on the dining room table ready to sign when I heard from Western that I had the scholarship.”
    The
Advance-Times
detailed the awards Munro received, as well as her exam results, and it did so with some evident civic pride:
    Congratulations to Miss Alice Laidlaw, who has been awarded a University of Western Ontario Scholarship for the highest standing in six Grade XIII papers including English, History, French and one other paper. This scholarship has a value of $50 cash with tuition of $125 a year for two years ora total value of $300. She also qualified for the school scholarship of tuition up to $125 a year for two years ($250 value) for obtaining an average of 75% on eight Grade XIII papers. Alice ranked first in English of all students applying for the University of Western Ontario. She has been awarded a Dominion-Provincial Bursary with a value of $400 per year. In eleven papers of Grade XIII Alice obtained nine firsts and two seconds. We wish her every success in the course in Journalism at the University of Western Ontario.
    Accepting all this – and while they amounted to an impressive net amount, these awards ensured only two years’ study for a hardscrabble scholarship student – Alice Ann Laidlaw went off to university in London. In December, during the first Christmas holiday, she and her classmates who had also gone off – Mary Ross, for instance, was attending the University of Toronto – returned home for their high school commencement. As valedictorian, Alice Laidlaw gave another speech, this one a fit conclusion to her academic successes in Wingham, though beyond its delivery the
Advance-Times
reports nothing of what she said. Munro recalls that she wore a dark blue taffeta dress that she had bought by selling her blood, and that she said “the usual things,” though she also said that “high school wasn’t the greatest time in your life.” She was not nervous since she had been to university in London – she was already out of Wingham, and its standards didn’t matter so much any more. The commencement was a two-evening affair in the town hall; in addition to the handing out of diplomas and the acknowledgement of scholarships and awards, it included a student production of
Pride and Prejudice
, the play Munro later used in “An Ounce of Cure.” Listing Alice Laidlaw’s scholarships takes up most of the scholarship report in the paper, and she is followed by the person who won the Laidlaw Fur Farm Scholarship for the highest score on the Entrance examination. 38
    Years later when Munro had returned home to Huron County to live, she drew on memories of returning to Wingham from university in London in the draft fictional version of “Working for Living.” In thiscase, Jubilee had become Dalgleish, and Munro’s protagonist Janet thinks of the town she has just returned to – “where she was known” – as it contrasts with the university city and the life of a college student she has