Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction nominee Like most women born before the turn of the century, Maime Elizabeth lived, by the standard of her day, an ordinary existence. She lived with her family near Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan, and like many they were wiped out by the Great Depression. As Mamie often said, life was going to the dogs. Yet day by day this determined woman cobbled together a rich, full existence that was played out against the astonishing history, climate and landscape of the Canadian West.