William Kurelek found life growing up in central Alberta and southern Manitoba difficult. He struggled with the physical strength and mechanical acuity required for life on a farm. Though he excelled at school and art, his father was critical of his apparent stupidity and lack of skill required for surviving in the harsh prairie environment. Despite this, prairie paintings comprised most of Kurelek’s early works. Hard physical farm labour was a central theme of Kurelek’s work, as we see in his depiction of the dangers of farm life in Prairie Winter Mishap. A juvenile figure tumbles from the back of the enormous pile of hay being transported by horse-drawn hayrack as the adult figure braces against the wind atop the hay bale. Though Kurelek was already living in Toronto by the time this picture was created in 1970, the artist’s imaginative home was always the flat landscape of the prairies, which he described as “so flat it is like being on an ocean” (Kurelek’s Canada, p. 91). The year 1970 proved fruitful for Kurelek. It was a year that he completed major projects, travelled to Soviet Ukraine to meet his relatives, and published his first book, A Prairie Boy’s Winter, which documented Kurelek’s childhood and featured charming illustrations of the artist assisting his father with hauling hay. William Kurelek’s work was highly autobiographical and centred around childhood memories, his Ukrainian heritage, and the morality of contemporary life.