Showing posts with label MacDonald (Elizabeth Roberts). Show all posts
Showing posts with label MacDonald (Elizabeth Roberts). Show all posts

02 November 2022

Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition


The latter half of October was spent on a long road trip through Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Anyès and I travelled over four thousand kilometres in all, and yet didn't come close to hitting Prince Edward Island or Cape Breton. My European cousins would laugh at the notion that the Maritime provinces are small.

A first leg of the drive, getting to New Brunswick from our eastern Upper Canadian home, involved a stopover at Quebec City. We spent the first night at le Monèstere des Augustines, in which we'd stayed two years earlier. This time, instead of a suite, we chose to sleep a nun's cell. As I discovered, I'm considerably taller than a seventeenth-century woman.


I won't dwell on our time in Quebec City, though I would like to share a plaque I'd somehow missed on our previous trip.


I'm pleased to report that plaques are every bit as common in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Fredricton, New Brunswick (pop. 58,200) may have more plaques per capita than any other Canadian city. Amongst the earliest is one affixed to the side of a house that once belonged to Loyalist poet Jonathan Odell.


The plaque honouring Odell can found across from Christ Church Fredericton's Anglican cathedral. Its former rectory once served as home to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.



Across the street, a few doors down, we found the home of sister Elizabeth. This discovery brought us to a very interesting news story:
In fact, the heritage plaque was not altered to identify her, as the headline suggests, rather it was replaced with another:


Can't help but feel the Fredericton Heritage Trust missed a teaching opportunity there.

Remarkably, there are no plaques dedicated exclusively to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, though I know of one in Westcock, New Brunswick. It would appear brother Theodore Goodrich Roberts has no plaques at all! The home in which cousin Bliss Carman was raised has two, the earliest of which was installed at his Shore Street home by the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire in New Brunswick.

The more recent is the doing of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.


Halifax was the easternmost point of our travels. We found blue plaques aplenty, including this one affixed to the house in which we stayed:


Sadly, the city's blue plaques aren't terribly informative.


I doubt Halliburton House has anything to do with Thomas Chandler Haliburton, but can't say for sure.

Curiously, given its rich literary history, Halifax has little in the way of plaques honouring writers. The only one I encountered was affixed to the mothballed Court House.

That's me taking a photo at the top of this post.

The discovery surprised in that it honoured Philippe-Ignace-François Aubert de Gaspé. The author of L'Influence d'un livre, Canada's first French-language novel, lived his final months in Halifax.


The last night of our trip was spent in Rivière-du-Loup. We had trouble sleeping, and so got up early. The place I'd most wanted to visit this trip was the reconstructed Aubert de Gaspé manor, but St-Jean-Port-Joli was pitch black when we passed.

Next year.

I'm a huge Aubert de Gaspé fan.

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22 September 2017

'Autumn, 1917' and 'Autumn, 1917'



For this first day of the season, two century-old poems of the Great War, both titled "Autumn, 1917," both written by women on the homefront. The first, by Helena Coleman, the pride of Newcastle, Ontario, is found in her chapbook Marching Men (Toronto: Dent, 1917):

AUTUMN, 1917
(A.L.T.)
               We know by many a tender token
                    When Indian-summer days have come,
               By rustling leaves in branches oaken
                    And by the cricket's sleepy hum. 
               By aspen leaves no longer shaken,
                    And by the river's silvered thread,
               The oriole's swinging cup forsaken,
                    Emptied of music overhead. 
               By long slant lines on field and fallow.
                    By mellowing portals of the wood,
               By silences that seem to hallow
                    Inviting us to solitude.... 
               Are there young hearts in France recalling
                    These dream-filled, blue Canadian days,
               When gold and scarlet flames are falling
                    From beech and maple set ablaze? 
              Pluck they again the pale, wild aster,
                   The bending plume of golden-rod?
              And do their exiled hearts beat faster
                   Roaming in thought their native sod? 
              Dream they of Canada crowned and golden,
                  Flushed with her Autumn diadem?
              In years to come when time is olden,
                  Canada's dream shall be of them — 
              Shall be of them who gave for others
                   The ardour of their radiant years; —
              Your name in Canada's heart, my brothers,
                   Shall be remembered long with tears! 
              We give you vision back for vision,
                  Forgetting not the price you paid,
              O bearers of the world's decision,
                  On whom the nations' debt was laid! 
              No heart can view these highways glowing
                  With gold transmuted from the clod,
              But crowns your glorious manhood, knowing
                  You gave us back our faith in God.
Miss Coleman's poem also features in John W. Garvin's Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1917), in which we find another "Autumn, 1917." This one comes from the pen of Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, sister to fellow poets Sir Charles God Damn, Theodore Goodrich, and William Carman Roberts.

AUTUMN, 1917 
                       The rain and the leaves together
                            Go drifting over the world;
                       Autumn has slipped his tether
                            And his flag of death unfurled. 
                       'Tomorrow — tomorrow — tomorrow — '
                            Hear how the grey wind cries!
                       Tomorrow the stark bare branches,
                            Tomorrow the steel-cold skies. 
                       The garnet leaves and the golden
                            Are tossed and trampled and thrown
                       As the hopes of man when the trumpets
                            Of crimson war are blown. 
                       Unleashed are the hounds of anguish
                            That hunt the heart of man
                       To tear its dream-bright garments,
                            To rend its valiant plan; 
                       Honour and valour, the priceless
                            Blood of our heroes slain, —
                       Shall their offering all be wasted,
                            Their sacrifice be vain? 
                       No; for the great ideal
                            For which our hearts have bled
                       Lives — by each field of honour,
                            Lives — by our countless dead; 
                       And a wind of Life is blowing,
                            A golden trumpet calls:—
                       'Rally — rally — rally, — 
                            Till the dark fortress falls!'

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25 December 2015

Timely Verse from Christmas a Century Past


The Globe, 25 December 1915

A CHRISTMAS STAR
                    Christmas chimes across the snow,
                         Can you ring the old refrain
                         When the world is seared with pain,
                    When the lights of joy burn low?
                    Lovely chimes across the snow,
                         Ring: May Peace be born again! 
                    Hearts that ache amidst the mirth,
                         Can we sing the songs of cheer?
                         Those who sang with us last year
                    Strive afar on alien earth.
                    All our songs are little worth,
                         Broken, faltering, thrilled with fear. 
                    Yet for thought space finds no bar;
                         Seas may part, but not divide;
                         Brothers, sons, our Country s pride,
                    Now we send our greeting far;
                    Lo, we set our love, a star
                         In your skies this Christmas-tide!

A Christmas poem by Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, sister of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, from Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John W. Garvin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).

A Merry Christmas to all!

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