Life & Wisdom Quote by Al Purdy

Purdy’s line lands like a deadpan confession, the kind that refuses to prettify hardship into “resilience.” The bluntness is the point: “Things were so bad” is almost childishly plain, a setup that doesn’t beg for sympathy so much as dare you to look away. Then comes the kicker - not rabbits hunted, not rabbits raised, but rabbits “neighbours had run over,” salvaged from the road and passed along like a grim care package. Poverty here isn’t abstract; it’s protein scraped off the asphalt.

The syntax does a lot of cultural work. The “we” isn’t heroic or self-pitying; it’s communal, familial, ordinary. Purdy’s Canada is rural and cash-poor, where dignity isn’t maintained through independence but through a fragile economy of favors. Neighbours “gave to us because they knew we were broke” makes generosity sound practical, even transactional: people track each other’s status, not out of nosiness but necessity. The subtext is that everyone is close to the edge, and everyone knows it.

There’s also a quiet indictment of national mythology. If Canada sells itself as clean, spacious, and comfortable, Purdy counters with the underside: scarcity, embarrassment, and the kind of mutual aid that emerges when formal systems don’t show up. The image is grotesque, but the emotional tone stays controlled. That restraint is Purdy’s signature move - forcing the reader to supply the shock, and in doing so, to feel implicated in how easily deprivation becomes just another anecdote.