The Dusty Bookcase: Of Poets, Poetry, Politicians, and Parliament Hill

23 September 2024

Of Poets, Poetry, Politicians, and Parliament Hill

Yet another gloriously sunny September weekend, I spent most of it stacking firewood in preparation for winter. The high point came early Saturday morning when I found myself in Ottawa's ByWard Market with an hour to kill. It was so early, that Patrick McGahern Books hadn't yet opened, and so I made for Parliament Hill to see how the restoration of the Centre Block is progressing.

Quite well, it seems.

Despite the early hour, there were swarms of tourists from the United Kingdom and China... but then it was noon in London and early evening in Shanghai.

It had been nearly twenty-four years since I'd walked around the building. The last time was on Sunday, October 1, 2000, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau's body lay in state in the Centre Block's Hall of Honour. I was there with my birth parents, both staunch Liberals. Here I am waiting in the eight-hour line with my birth mother; I have no idea as to the identity of the man in the turquoise cap:

The pins we are wearing were distributed on the evening PET made his farewell speech. I'm no Grit, but the conclusion of that speech has always inspired.

Enough nostalgia.

What I most wanted to see was the Library of Parliament. Its restoration took four years, beginning in 2002. From the outside, the library looks better than I remember. Money well spent, I say!

Several statues have had to be relocated during the restoration, but not the one honouring D'Arcy McGee. His still stands in place, though you really have to look.

See it?

It's not a good photo, but I remind that Saturday was gloriously sunny. I took a better snap of this plaque, which I'd never seen before:

cliquez pour agandir

As you can see, it lies just outside the construction zone. I really like the design and text. Sadly, "the female figure, representing Memory" is currently hidden by the fence. McGee, something of a hero to me, made his greatest impact as a politician and journalist, of course, but I like that his work as a poet and historian is also recognized. The reference to McGee's verse sent me off walking toward what I think is the most interesting statue on Parliament Hill.

I knew just where to find it.

'A Canadian Galahad' memorializes the heroism of Henry Albert Harper, who on 6 December 1901 died attempting to save Bessie Blair, a young woman who had fallen though the ice while skating on the Ottawa River. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography features a brief entry on Harper by H. Blair Neatby. William Lyon Mackenzie King provides a more thorough biography in The Secret of Heroism: A Memoir of Henry Albert Harper (New York: Revell, 1906). The future prime minister's book, his first, was published the year after 'A Canadian Galahad' was unveiled by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. Three thousand people were in attendance.

The deaths of Henry Harper and Bessie Blair shook the national's capital, in part because the young lady's father, Andrew George Blair, was the Minister of Railways and Canals. The statue was funded by public donations. Inspiration was drawn from a reproduction of George Frederic Watts' 'Sir Galahad,' which Harper had placed above his desk.

To this Canadian, 'A Canadian Galahad,' a statue inspired by a painting, is forever linked with verse. Within days of the tragedy, William Wilfred Campbell, who had a mutual friend in King, wrote a tribute to the doomed hero. This version comes from The Collected Poems of Wilfred Campbell (Toronto: Briggs, 1905):

HENRY A. HARPER
(Drowned in the Ottawa River while trying to save Miss Blair)

We crown the splendours of immortal peace,
And laud the heroes of ensanguined war.
Rearing in granite memory of men
Who build the future, recreate the past.
Or animate the present dull world's pulse
With loftier riches of the human mind.

But his was greatness not of common mould,
And yet so human in its simple worth,
That any spirit plodding its slow round
Of social commonplace and daily moil.
Might blunder on such greatness, did he hold
In him the kernel sap from which it sprung.

Men in rare hours great actions may perform,
Heroic, lofty, whereof earth will ring,
A world onlooking, and the spirit strung
To high achievement, at the cannon's mouth.
Or where fierce ranks of maddened men go down.

But this was godlier. In the common round
Of life's slow action, stumbling on the brink
Of sudden opportunity, he chose
The only noble, godlike, splendid way.
And made his exit, as earth's great have gone,
By that vast doorway looking out on death.

No poet this of winged, immortal pen;
No hero of an hundred victories;
Nor iron moulder of unwieldy states.
Grave counsellor of parliaments, gold-tongued.
Standing in shadow of a centuried fame.
Drinking the splendid plaudits of a world.

But simple, unrecorded in his days,
Unostentatious, like the average man
Of average duty, walked the common earth.
And when fate flung her challenge in his face.
Took all his spirit in his blinded eyes.
And showed in action why God made the world.

He passes as all pass, both small and great,
Oblivion-clouded, to the common goal; —
And all unmindful moves the dull world round.
With baser dreams of this material day.
And all that makes man petty, the slow pace
Of small accomplishment that mocks the soul.

But he hath taught us by this splendid deed,
That under all the brutish mask of life
And dulled intention of ignoble ends,
Man's soul is not all sordid; that behind
This tragedy of ills and hates that seem,
There lurks a godlike impulse in the world,
And men are greater than they idly dream.