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The Western Magazine Awards Foundation The Magazine School 2010 Bringing outstanding writing, design and photography to the classroom

Western Magazine Awards Foundation An annual awards program recognizing excellence in Western Canadian editorial work, and design. westernmagazineawards. ca TMS The Magazine School is a project of the Western Magazine Awards Foundation. It provides classroom material to writing and design instructors and professors.

The 2010 Western Magazine Awards Gold Award, Best Article Gold Award – Alberta/Northwest Territories Mr. Tree, Jeremy Klaszus Alberta. Views

Finalists: Gold Award – Best Article Alberta/N. W. T. î Chris Turner, Prodigal Band, Alberta. Views î Jeremy Klaszus, Mr. Tree, Alberta. Views î Andrew Nikiforuk, Out of Sight, Avenue î Chris Koentges and George Webber, The Archeology of Calgary, Swerve î Karen Hines, My Little House of Horrors, Swerve

And the winner is… Jeremy Klaszus “Mr. Tree” Alberta. Views

Alberta. Views ● Alberta. Views explores the policies, decisions and issues as well as the cultural and historical forces that shape life in Alberta ● Publisher and founding editor: Jackie Flanagan ● Based in Calgary ● Circulation: 20, 000 ● Launched in 1997 and published 10 times a year ● albertaviews. ab. ca

“Mr. Tree” author: Jeremy Klaszus ● Calgary freelance writer and stay-at-home father ● Journalism graduate, Mount Royal University ● Interned at Alberta. Views, and worked for Fast Forward covering urban affairs ● In 2010, ghost wrote Ian Tyson’s memoir, The Long Trail ● jeremyklaszus. com

Story evolution ● For as long as Klaszus can remember, his Opapa (grandfather in German) has been telling stories. ● In 2008, Klaszus began recording them. ● “Opapa” Ernst Klaszus was part of Hitler Youth at age 10. Membership was compelled by law. î “It’s my Opapa’s story but it’s also my story in a way. It’s very personal in a way that none of the stuff I had done before was. ”

Questions left unanswered “In my family, questions are seldom asked directly and these questions are difficult to ask, partly because they are loaded with accusation against a kid who was only four years old when the Nazis took power. ” – Jeremy Klaszus

Learning the why of the war “Opapa has spoken often of ‘the war’ throughout my life, but I never really knew what that meant. I knew he was on the German side and joined the Hitler Youth. I knew he fled his home, travelling from house to house across Germany with his mother and sisters, all of them starving, but I never understood why. ”

The war and sternness “What I did know, or thought I knew, was that the war had somehow made Opapa a very stern and serious person. How else to explain his countless lectures? Opapa was always scolding us grandchildren about something, whether it was our ‘horseplay’ or our feeble knowledge of chemistry. ‘You don’t know the chemical elements? That is very basic knowledge. ’” “I tolerate absolutely no horseplay in my home, especially on Sundays. ”

How much did his grandfather know? The author composes a paragraph of questions: î “Did you know of Kristallnacht, when the synagogues in Germany were burned to the ground? ” î “What about the concentration camps? ” î “How much of the Nazis’ anti-Semitism did you swallow? ” î “And did you feel any sense of guilt or shame when you learned of the Holocaust after the war? ”

Asking the hard question It was Colleen, the author’s wife, who asked the hard question to Opapa, now 80 and living in Edmonton: “How much did you know? ”

The story was honed at The Banff Centre ● Author Jeremy Klaszus was accepted into the The Banff Centre summer literary journalism program. ● He arrived in Banff with a draft article and research materials. î “I brought a laundry basket full of books. ” ● www. banffcentre. ca/programs/program. aspx? id =1086

Vetting “Mr. Tree” Moira Farr was his faculty vetter, and other participants also commented on the draft. They asked Jeremy to put himself in the story. î What was the impact of his grandfather’s Hitler youth past and stories on him?

The author responds to peer criticism The author rewrites to include: î Interviewing Opapa at his acreage; î The section about driving home from Edmonton with his wife Colleen; î Driving Opapa around in Edmonton; î The camping part at the end. “I was not very present in the first draft. ”

Finding a home for the article Jeremy Klaszus pitched several national publications, without success, before realizing the article was best published at home. î “It’s an Albertan story. My Opapa has been in Alberta since the fifties and I knew they would give the care and the space to the story, which they did. ”

Alberta. Views and “Mr. Tree” “When I first heard of the story, it had been written, it had been edited and of course the research was all done. So what I saw for the first time was essentially a finished product. ” – Evan Osenton, Alberta. Views associate editor

Unusual piece for Alberta. Views “It’s a bit of an unusual piece in that it’s not an obvious fit with Alberta. Views. . . Generally it doesn’t really fit with our mandate, it doesn’t have much to do with the public good versus the private good or to do with any of themes that we publish. ” – Evan Osenton

Too long for magazine publication? “Mr. Tree” was around 12, 000 words. Features in Alberta. Views usually run 3, 000 to 3, 500 words. î “Where it appealed to us was not thematically, it was just in that the writing was really quite compelling. ” – Evan Osenton

The story lead “We spend a lot of time together lately, Opapa and me, mostly on his treed acreage southeast of Edmonton where he lives with my Omi. Cloistered by the aspens and poplars surrounding the blue two-storey house, we visit another distant forest together, looking down from outer space on a sandy patch of land 40 kilometres east of the icy Baltic Sea. ”

The reason behind the title “To many, Opapa is known simply as Mr. Tree. He earned his arboreal nickname partly because of his famed love for and knowledge of trees – he’s volunteered with Alberta Junior Forest Wardens, a forestry youth group, for as long as I can remember – and probably because he looks a little treeish himself. ”

Physical description of “Opapa” Ernst Klaszus “Beneath his snowy beard and bushy white eyebrows, aged skin hangs off his gnarled limbs. Long grey and white hairs cover his knobby hands like mossy bark. He even acts treeish at times, like one of Tolkien’s ents, giant treeshepherds that never bother to say anything in their own tree-language unless it’s worth taking a long time to say. ”

Theme statement “As a writer, I pride myself on telling untold stories, but I had never learned this part of my own story. Now I was being given a second chance in my mid-20 s, an age by which many people have already lost their grandparents, and with them, all their grandparents’ stories. ” – Jeremy Klaszus “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. ” – Thomas Merton

Author’s effective use of imagery “Beneath his snowy beard and bushy white eyebrows, aged skin hangs off gnarled limbs. Long grey and white hairs cover his knobby hands like mossy bark. ” “A minute later, white flares illuminated the city, drifting from the sky slowly as fuzzy aspen seeds. ” “East Prussian refugees were spread across western Germany like seeds scattered by the wind. ”

Effective use of language Effective language driven by careful attention to detail: î “A German boy of 14 bounded out the front door of his brick house. A lock of blond hair across the boy’s bony forehead danced with each step. ” î “The young tree-hugger clutched the trunk even tighter, his pockets bulging with bits of golden amber he’d collected along the beach in Danzig. ”

Ernst’s storytelling and the family dynamic ● “In my family, questions are seldom asked directly and these questions are particularly difficult to ask. ” ● “On our way out, Colleen kisses Opapa’s lined forehead and says words I’ve never spoken to him. ‘I love you, Opapa. ’” ● “After I hang up, Colleen tells me she’s never seen me talk with my father so much. ‘It’s good to see. ’” “You live the life of your parents all over again, to some extent. The problem then is that one learns too late. ” – Ernst Klaszus

The author wrestles with memory and truth “. . . this story is based largely on my Opapa’s memory but I checked the historical record and sometimes the two were at odds, but I did my best to the tell the truest version of the story based on the information I had. “Opapa acknowledges the shortcomings of memory and often quotes a line from Farley Mowat: ‘Old men remember the past the way it should have been. ’” – Jeremy Klaszus

How much did he know? “We were aware that we were not given all the facts. Similar to today. When I look at CNN news, in the back of my head I always say to myself, ‘Okay, I really don’t know what the true story is. ’” – Ernst Klaszus, answering the key question

Ending: Full circle to the forest Mr. Tree begins in a forest on Ernst Klaszus’s acreage and ends in a forest in the Kananaskis. î “Mr. Tree is looking treeish again, here in the forest he loves. ” î “Opapa is ready to leave and together we walk back to the campsite. ”

Credits The Magazine School is a project of the Western Magazine Awards Foundation, which acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage for this project. The Magazine School content was prepared with the skilful assistance of Janice Paskey and students Doug Horner and Terence Yung of Mount Royal University, and with the generous co-operation of the winners of the 2010 Western Magazine Awards.