My prediction: in the comic strip For Better or For Worse, Liz will fly to Mtigwaki with Warren, only to discover that her boyfriend Paul has fallen in love with the teacher who replaced Liz. Being honorable people, they were trying to figure out how to tell her, but since Warren will get her there a day earlier than expected, she’ll walk right into the middle of everything.
What I’d like to happen after that would be for Warren to console her and for her to end up with him in the Far North, but able to fly in and visit her family more regularly. What I think will probably happen will be that she’ll end up with her high-school boyfriend Anthony, living close to her parents. And I hate that.
It’s a classic “death of the magic” ending, only without the magic. Liz, unlike her brother, had a yen for adventure. She wanted to go off to a college far away, and after college she went and lived up in the Far North, teaching school in a Native community. Lynn Johnston seems to be foreshadowing an ending where Liz, having sown her wild oats in her youth, will settle back into the comfortable rut she grew up in. I hope I’m wrong about this. There’s nothing at all wrong with that rut, or with the other characters who chose it and live in it, but I hate the idea that for those who want new adventures, youth is the only time for them. And it doesn’t fit in the with longer view: Canada is a country full of people who chose (or whose ancestors chose) to move long distances away and try new things. According to the strip’s webpage and books, Liz’s own grandfather enlisted during WWII and then moved out to Vancouver after the war. Her mother Elly moved East for college, where she met and married John – who himself had chosen to leave the family farm for college and dentistry. It’s hard to believe their child would insist on returning permanently to the nest.
I had that same thought! I think you might be right; Johnston’s really been building up the romantic tension between Anthony and Liz lately — I never got that from any of the other romantic interests Liz has had. Isn’t it funny that we’re all het up over a comic strip? I love this one though — Johnston’s not afraid to deal with all kinds of issues. I’d like Liz to move back north too — or at least explore some more!
Heh, I saw the Paul thing coming too, but I’m rooting for Anthony. No law saying Liz can’t take Anthony and his daughter to the north country with her. IRL, Lynn and Rod did just that after they married. Rod was a flying dentist. Anthony isn’t owned by Gordon’s Garage. So why not Anthony being a SAHD/frontier accountant and Liz teaching in a one room school just as she did Mtgig? Adventure doesn’t have to stop just because you have a family. ~LA
As a matter of fact, I liked Warren best — even after Liz met Paul. Well, Anthony was married by that time and — we all thought — out of the picture. I suppose real adventure can be mental as easily as anything else, so it wouldn’t matter which life Liz chooses. (I would *never* tell myown kids who they should marry.) But I will miss that strip more than just about any other. I began reading when Liz was a toddler; it is so easy for mothers of small children to empathize.
I agree….
I agree completely! Anthony is totally wrong for her – I don’t know, he just gives me creepy vibes.
On the other hand, Lynn *is* wrapping up the series… Perhaps she’s trying alienate all her readers, so nobody will be upset with it ending 😉