Author Sharon Butala

Alexandra Wiwcharuk was a small-town girl of Ukrainian heritage, who disappeared from Saskatoon in the spring of 1961 after finishing nursing school. Nearly two weeks later, her body was discovered in a shallow grave on the shores of the Saskatchewan River. She had been raped, beaten and buried alive. The crime, still unsolved, sent shock waves through the city, and the memory of it lingers to this day. Sharon Butala, best known for The Perfection of the Morning, an award-winning book about life in rural Saskatchewan, went to high school with Wiwcharuk. Her multifaceted new book, The Girl in Saskatoon (HarperCollins, 262 pp.), is an account of the murder and subsequent police investigation, as well as a biography of Wiwcharuk and a portrait of Saskatoon in the 1950s and ’60s.

Fast Forward: This book is a departure from your other works, combining true crime, memoir, biography, history and sociology. Was this intentional?

Sharon Butala: It was intentional, although I didn’t intend to write a book that wasn’t classifiable, which is what happened. Most bookstores put it in true crime, which is not where I believe it belongs.

Dreams have figured in your past books, most notably Coyote Morning Cry and The Perfection of the Morning. In The Girl in Saskatoon, you write about a dream you had about your journal being on display in a Ukrainian church hall, signifying your involvement with Alex’s story. How important are dreams to you in connection with your writing?

Dreams don’t usually play a part [in writing the book]. But before I get to the point where I am ready to write, I’ll be having dreams about all sorts of things that in some way relate to the book. The dream I had [about Alex] happened in June 1986, and I had no idea at that point that I’d be writing a book about her.

There are a number of places in the book where you seem angry by Alex’s terrible death. There are also instances where you seem upset by other things, such as the role of young women in society at the time: “We were kept children for too long in those days, girls especially. I think that was the source of our boredom, and a simmering but buried rage at the absurdity of our position.” Did writing this book also bring out any feelings of frustration or anger for what you and many other girls experienced growing up in the ’50s?

I would say it did, and it wasn’t a bad thing. It’s a way of looking at your own past, your personal past, not just the past of the society and seeing how some of the things you thought you were responsible for you really weren’t. It was cultural forces that put you in the position. There was nothing you could do about it. I was part of that second wave of feminism in the ’70s, and I guess I wasn’t entirely surprised [at the anger]. But that was the first time it was ever really clear in my mind about what had happened to us.

Another recurring theme is that “in the constant unending battle of good and evil, evil wins far more often, maybe more than good does.” Was the writing of this book what brought this realization to you?

Yes, but it wasn’t just the writing of the book. Lots of things happened that we would never classify as evil at the time. There are a lot of things I mention in the book, stories that we all heard about illegal activities in Saskatoon that we all just shrugged our shoulders at and thought were mildly amusing. But people’s lives were being ruined, especially those of women.

How do you personally think the city of Saskatoon was changed by Alex’s murder?

A lot of women told me that it changed their lives, and that it changed the way they viewed the world. One woman told me how when her mother wasn’t home, she would stay alone in the house without fear as a teenage girl. But after Alex’s death, they locked their doors all the time and they were afraid. It made everyone aware of the presence and the randomness of evil.

The Wiwcharuk family was supportive of your efforts to tell Alex’s story. Do you know if the writing of this book has provided any comfort for them?

The family members who wanted to deal with it certainly were. Many suffered so much at the time that they can’t bear to deal with it. I’ve only spoken with two members of the family since the book has been published. One is a niece, and the other is Alex’s oldest sister [Marie], who was very supportive until she found a paragraph [in the book] about what the police had thought [about the case] and was very offended. A young girl who is very beautiful and who is raped and murdered the way Alex was — immediately the police think that maybe she might have done something to bring this on herself, especially in 1962. There were rumours about her purity, her chastity. Today they would be a little more cautious.

Not that they ever said that, to my knowledge, but one day I just suddenly realized that’s what they meant. The really important thing here is that it makes absolutely no difference. Nobody deserves to have happen what happened to her. It wouldn’t have mattered how she lived her life, although I believed she lived as a normal, decent young woman.

You write, “Up to the moment I decided I wanted to write a book about Alex’s life and death… I had led the safest, most secure and ordinary life possible. Suddenly I was something beyond surprised and just a little frightened.” What was the most frightening part of this whole process for you?

I had someone say to my face that the person who had killed Alex is still alive and that he would kill me. My phone was tapped. I got a couple of calls at 2 a.m. from an ex-city policeman who was somewhat in disgrace and was probably drunk, and he said a lot of things that really frightened me. During this time, there was also an ex-con living in Eastend [Butala’s home]. He phoned me, and said he wanted me to write a book about his life — he had done 14 years hard time and had escaped from jail at one point. The big question was how he had ever heard about me. These were the kinds of things that brought in The Fifth Estate.

What was it like working on Alex’s story with The Fifth Estate (a CBC documentary program), and how did you feel when the story aired?

I was pleased, and I thought they did a good job. It was clear to me that they had thought about things I hadn’t. It was not a co-operative venture — I knew nothing about how it was going to go. When I saw the show it was as new to me as it was to any viewer.

Do you have your own ideas about who might have committed the murder?

The police have a DNA profile from when they exhumed Alex’s remains in 2004. There were 13 or 14 names in the file, and they narrowed it down to eight or nine by the time my book was published in March. They’ll take their time and go through it name by name.

Do you ever think about what Alex might have done with her life if she hadn’t been killed?

I suspect that she dreamt of being an actor. She had the beauty, and she had the talent. But how do you get there from Saskatoon? At that time in our lives, most of us thought that a man would have to get us there one way or another. I believe that she indicated in the two letters she wrote the night she was killed that she was thinking about leaving Saskatoon.

Is it possible to set Alex’s case aside, now that the book has been written?

It’s incredibly hard to leave it behind. It’s not over.

What are you writing next?

I’m pretty sure that I’ll stick with the West — especially the West as women know it. That’s my territory.