Thank You for Being a Friend

Between Friends/Entre amis
[Lorraine Monk, ed.]
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976

276 pages

Somewhat worse for wear, my copy of Between Friends/Entre Amis was purchased a month ago today at a thrift store in Brockville, Ontario. The United States was very much on my mind. When I walked in, Donald Trump was threatening crippling tariffs on Canadian goods. By the time I walked out, he’d granted a thirty-day reprieve. A week later, he went back on his word, slapping tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Today, he's looking at Canadian lumber.

Who knows what tomorrow might bring.

A “gift from all Canadians to their American neighbours on the occasion of their Bicentennial,” Between Friends/Entre Amis is a relic of a friendlier time. As much a part of my adolescence as electric carving knives and ovens of harvest gold, it seemed a fixture of every other suburban Montreal coffee table. That it did not sit on ours has everything to do with family history.

Don't ask.

Until last month I'd never so much as held Between Friends/Entre Amis. Having now done so, I can report that it is extremely heavy – seven pounds – making it by far the weightiest tome in my collection. Interestingly, it is both the most expensive and one of the cheapest. The pre-publication price was $29.50, which the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator informs is roughly equivalent to $149.00 today.

The second printing was $42.40 (over $214.00 today).

There were three printings in total.

On May 22, 1976, two days before publication, forty-three days before the Fourth of July, Simpson’s placed full-page ads in The Canadian, a weekend magazine included in most major English-language dailies:

Now you can own a cherished First Edition of the gift book our Prime Minister [sic] will present to the President of the United States next month.
   And it is no secret that first edition copies of BETWEEN FRIENDS/ENTRE AMIS should increase in value as the years go by, not only as a magnificent memento of the peaceable border but also as a real collector’s heirloom.
   First edition copies of “Canada: Year of the Land” produced for the 1967 Centennial by the same dedicated team at the National Film Board have already increased in value from $25 to as much as $600!

The text-heavy hard sell concludes:

Order a copy for yourself. Order one for each of your children, for friends and relatives in the United States or back home. Order copies for customers and business associates.

A few words of caution for those seeking investment opportunities: Between Friends/Entre Amis can be purchased online today for less than four dollars. Canada: Year of the Land can be had for even less.

Like Canada: Year of the Land, Between Friends/Entre Amis was a project of the National Film Board. It received $1.1 million in funding. The concept was quite simple: dispatch photographers across the country to capture images of the border, border towns, border crossings, and the people who lived in the vicinity. More than sixty thousand photos were taken, of which 221 made it into the book. There are landscapes and images livestock, general stores, bars, churches, farmers, boy scouts, and police officers, along with the obligatory shot of the CN Tower. Every few pages, there is a photo of the border itself. These make for the most striking images, particularly along the 49th parallel, often captured as a thin scar running across an otherwise untouched wilderness.

Freeman Patterson took that shot. Michel Campeau, John De Visser, Nina Raginsky, and Michel Lambeth are also amongst the twenty-seven photographers whose work is also represented. My favourite images are provided by Peter Christopher, in part because one gets the sense he was playing around. Consider page 185, which features his photograph of four men and three women in formal dress posing around a grand piano in an ornate sitting room.

Just who are these people?

The accompanying note somehow manages to be both boring and laugh-inducing:

Mr. Charles R. Diebold (left); Mrs. Charles R. Diebold (seated, left); Mrs. Charles Diebold III, Mr. Charles Diebold III, Mr. Peter DeW. Diebold, Mr. David K. Diebold (standing left to right); Mrs. David K. Diebold (seated, right). The senior Mr. Diebold is President and Chief Executive Officer of the first Empire State Corporation. Mr. Charles Diebold III is President of the Western Savings Bank in Buffalo.

Turning the page, we find two more photographs by Christopher. The first, also taken in Buffalo, is a blurred image of a stripper in mid-performance. Its note reads:

Buffalo has more than 100 nightclubs. It also has its own symphony orchestra, a well-known art gallery, several fine restaurants (one on the site of the house in which Mark Twain, the United States writer, lived in 1870, when he was newly married and part owner of the Buffalo Express), and a zoo.

Yep, even a zoo.

The second, also blurred, appears to depict a sex worker outside a bar in Detroit. This time, the note has absolutely no connection with the image, instead providing a three-sentence history of the city. Did you know that in 1975 the population of Detroit was 1.5 million?

Well, it was.

That photo is as gritty as it gets. There are images of great wealth, but none of extreme poverty. There are photographs of order and authority but not protest. It is a polite collection from a polite people.

The Rotarian, April 1977

The Government of Canada distributed twenty thousand copies of Between Friends/Entre Amis to libraries and “prominent persons” on both sides of the divide, like Rotarian International president Bob Manchester who received one from W.J. Collet, Consul General of Canada in Chicago.

President Gerald Ford was presented a copy by Pierre Trudeau on June 16, 1976, during a meeting that took place in the White House. In his remarks, Trudeau refers to the book as a “little gift,” and borrows something from “Mending Wall”:

One of your famous poets, Robert Frost, talked about good fences making good neighbours. Well, in this case, it is the good neighbours that make good boundaries.

President Ford thanks the prime minister for “this beautiful Bicentennial gift between friends,” talks at length about the pride Americans have in the boundary as one of peace, and concludes:

It is a boundary that will be crossed this summer by many people from Canada coming to the United States for our Bicentennial, and it is a boundary that will be crossed by many Americans going to the Montreal Olympics. And I think both occasions are great occasions for the Canadians as well as for the Americans.

The two leaders next went to the Rose Garden, where editor Lorraine Monk provided an overview.

 

The copies of Between Friends/Entre Amis that flooded libraries and homes of higher up Rotarians did so at a time of great uncertainty and turmoil. A president had been forced to reign, his successor had made the mistake of issuing a pardon, and yet none of this had much effect on we Canadians. In the decades that followed, we friends became more entwined, and more reliant on one another through the 1988 Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, and the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Consider the dates. Where changes in the relationship with our American cousins were once slow moving, consequential change now occurs in the time it takes to heft a seven-pound book to a cash register.

Between Friends/Entre Amis was on our coffee table for as long as it took to write this piece. It now sits in a box in our unheated garage. A first printing, it set me back 65 cents. The thrift store in which it was purchased is one of several in Brockville. Itself a border community, it was named after Sir Isaac Brock, one of the great heroes of the War of 1812, a conflict that the book takes care to avoid. Brockville is worth a visit. When I have time, I like to go down to St Lawrence Park and look out over the water. The American shore is less than two kilometres away. The border runs down the centre of the river. You can’t see it, but it is reassuring to know that it is there.

Update: 

Object and Access: A heavy 36cm x 26cm x 4cm hardcover with red boards. The colour printing is far superior to the offerings of most publishers of the day. 

Used copes are plentiful. Online offerings range in price from $3.99 to $886.57.

Condition is not a factor.

The Case of the Queer Antiques Dealer

The Mystery of Cabin Island
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop [c. 1960]
214 pages

If you ever happen to visit Bayport, home of internationally famous detective Fenton Hardy and his sons Frank and Joe, I recommend you stay away from the water. The Missing Chums, which I read last year, begins with the near collision of a motorboat with two sailboats. The early pages of The Mystery of Cabin Island features the near collision of two ice boats. In both cases, tragedy is averted only due to Frank's quick thinking and piloting skills.

Iceboats date back to 18th-century Holland, but I had no idea that they were so common in 1920s America. Frank and Joe built one themselves. Their chum Biff receives an ice boat from his dad as a Christmas present. Bad Tad Carson and Ike Nash, who are most certainly not chums, have the biggest one by far.

London: Harold Hill & Son, 1953

Is this an American thing? I ask because I don't believe I've ever met anyone who owns an ice boat.

The eighth book in the series, The Mystery of Cabin Island is my third Hardy Boys read. As I'm discovering, backstories often reference the boys' previous adventures. In this case, that previous adventure is book number six, The Shore Road Mystery (1928), which saw the brothers working to expose a gang of car thieves.

One of the cars retrieved was a Pierce-Arrow, belonging to a "queer" antiques dealer named Elroy Jefferson. He was away in Europe at the time and so never had a chance to thank Frank and Joe. Now that Jefferson has returned to Bayport, he rewards them with two crisp hundred dollar bills (roughly $3700 today):

The boys protested, but Elroy Jefferson insisted, and finally they were forced to accept the reward.
   “Now,” said Mr. Jefferson, “if there is anything else I can do for you at any time, don’t hesitate to ask me."

But Frank does hesitate... then asks permission to camp on nearby Cabin Island, which happens to be owned by the antiques dealer. In fact, it was Jefferson who constructed the cabin after which the island is named. Just the previous day, Frank, Joe, Biff, and their chum Chet had landed on Cabin Island in their ice boats, only to be ordered off by a mysterious man named Hanleigh. As it turns out, he's been pressuring Jefferson to sell him the island, but the "queer old chap" won't budge:

I won’t sell him the island at any price, and I told him so. You see, when my wife and son were alive they loved to go there in winter and summer, so Cabin Island has certain associations for me that cannot be estimated in terms of money. They are dead now, and I cannot bear to part with the place.

Jefferson is happy to grant the Hardy boys and their chums Biff and Chet permission to camp on the island, though I must say this doesn't involve camping as I understand it. No tents are involved, rather the four boys settle into the cabin, complete with large living area, kitchen, and bedrooms. Upon arrival, they spy Hanleigh inspecting the cabin's imposing chimney and jotting down figures on the back of an envelope.

What exactly is Hanleigh up to?

The Hardy boys are nowhere near so curious as this reader. After ordering Hanleigh off Cabin Island, the four boys while away the hours skating, skiing, and ice boating. I began to wonder whether Frank and Joe's disinterest in Hanleigh's jottings might best be explained by issues with short-term memory.

Hear me out.

Frank, Joe, Biff, and Chet, spend the following day exploring Barmet Bay on ice boat. Upon returning to the cabin they find that their "grub" has been stolen. The following morning, the Hardy boys set off for in their iceboat for supplies at a general store run by chatty old-timer Amos Grice. Upon learning that the boys are staying on Cabin Island, the storekeep relates a fascinating story about an extremely valuable stamp collection that had been stolen from Elroy Jefferson by his man servant John Sparewell some fifteen or so years earlier.

Back on Cabin Island, Joe comes across a notebook belonging to John Sparewell:

"Sparewell," mused Frank. "Where have I heard that name before?"

It takes a while before Frank and Joe remember the name from the story they'd heard just hours earlier.

There's little in the way of sleuthing here. The mystery of The Mystery of Cabin Island is revealed when the chimney comes down in a winter storm, exposing the missing collection.

The boys are again rewarded, this time to the tune of $200 apiece. Jefferson gives lesser players Biff and Chet $100 each.

My attention had long since been absorbed by Elroy Jefferson as a character, largely because of the repeated use of "queer" in describing the antiques dealer. Now, I do realize that The Mystery of Cabin Island was written at a time when "queer" was commonly used – but not always used – as a synonym for strange or unusual. Still, reading it here did raise a nod, wink, and smile. I could not help but think that Leslie McFarlane was having a bit of fun within the constraints imposed by Hardy Boys creator Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Leaving aside stereotypes associated with Jefferson's occupation, and that he spends most of the year  in Europe rather than provincial Bayport, I might've thought I was reaching had it not been for Grice's reaction upon learning that the antiques dealer had allowed the boys to camp on his island:

“Yes, that’s just like Mr. Jefferson. Got a heart of gold, specially where boys is concerned. But queer — mighty queer in some ways,” said Amos Grice, again wagging his head. "Do you know" — and he leaned forward very confidentially — "I really think he married Mary Bender because of her postage stamp collection.”
   This amazing announcement left the Hardy boys rather at a loss for words. “He married his wife because of her postage stamp collection!” exclaimed Joe.
   “That’s what I said. You’ve heard of the Bender stamp collection, haven’t you?” he demanded.
   The boys shook their heads.

   “Well, I ain’t a stamp collector and I’ve heard of it. The Bender collection is supposed to be one of the greatest collections of postage stamps in the world. Why, I’ve heard tell that it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
   “And Mrs. Jefferson owned it?”
   “Yep. Her name was Mary Bender then, and she inherited it from her father. I got parts of the story from people who knew Mr. Jefferson well. It seems he has always been a collector of antiques and old coins and stamps and things, but one thing he had set his heart on was the Bender stamp collection. But he couldn’t buy it. Either Mr. Bender wouldn’t sell or Elroy Jefferson couldn’t raise the money — but somehow he could never buy them."

"Queerest story I ever did hear," says Amos Grice in concluding his account of the theft, adding:

"Mary Bender died just a short time after. And ever since the stamps were lost, Elroy Jefferson ain’t been the same. [...] It seemed to break Elroy Jefferson all up, because that collection was the pride of his heart, and when it disappeared so strangely, he just didn’t seem to take any more interest in anything."

I may be reading too much into this. 

Now, if McFarlane had written "so queerly" instead of "so strangely" I might be more certain.

Caution: Of the four ice boats that feature in the novel, two are destroyed in accidents. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

London: Armada, 1982

That said, it does seem a dangerous mode of transportation.

Object: This one was purchased eight years ago for one dollar. It once belonged to a girl named Pamela who lived on Blasdell Avenue in Ottawa. That she wrote her name and address in the book using a fountain pen gives some indication as to its age. A further clue is found in the book's list of previous Hardy Boys Mysteries, the most recent being The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1960).

Sadly, my copy lacks the dust jacket. It would've featured this illustration:

The cabin is roughly a sixth the size that described in the text. The chimney is far too short and should be wide enough to easily accommodate a sixteen-year-old boy. The depiction in the original 1929 edition is more accurate, though the cabin is far too close to the water:

Access: The Mystery of Cabin Island was first published in 1929 by Grosset & Dunlop. As I write, two first editions with dust jackets are listed for sale online. The cheaper is going for US$700.

The novel was rewritten in 1966 by Anne Shultes, Andrew E. Svenson, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. This is the version in print today.

I'm not familiar with the revision, though as I understand it involves a missing grandchild, medals, and a smattering of racism. How much of Leslie McFarlane's original remains I cannot say, but I'm guessing it isn't much. 

As far as I can tell, there had been three translations – French (Le mystère de l'Île de la Cabane), Swedish (Mysteriet i jakstugan), and Norwegian (Hardy-guttene og den stjålne frimerkesamlingen) – though I expect all are of the revision.

Related posts:

Here's to Missing Chums

Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)

Elinor Glyn Saturday Movie Matinee

An addendum to last week's post on Beyond the Rocks by Elinor Glyn.

A lost film found!

I first read about Beyond the Rocks in university, well before I'd heard of Elinor Glyn or her Guelph, Ontario, girlhood. Back then, by which I mean my early twenties, Beyond the Rocks was one of the most sought after lost silents, mainly because its frustrated lovers, Theodora Brown and Hector Bracondale, were played by Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino.

In 2004, by which time I was a deceptively young looking dad, nearly complete nitrate reels were discovered amongst recent donations to Amsterdam's EYE Filmmuseum. The restoration, nothing less than remarkable, is the subject of this short documentary:

All to say, that I've now seen this once lost film in something approaching its entirety.

You can, too:

As is typically the case, the differences between novel and film are numerous. Here they are particularly interesting in that Mrs Glyn not only co-wrote the screenplay but "supervised."

She rearranged sets, brought in flowers, had costumes altered, and on one occasion picked up a brush and applied dark paint to an extra's hair in order to better match the character she'd envisioned. Remarkably, there's no evidence that any of this behavior brought frustration, tension, resentment or a slap across the face. Indeed, photographic evidence suggests quite the opposite. Here she is goofing around on set with Swanson, Valentino, and director Sam Woods:

What fun!

Mrs Glyn's first change of note is locale. The opening scene is set in a village on the Dorset Coast, most certainly not Bruges, where Captain Dominic Fitzgerald "lives on the meagre pension of a broken and retired guardsman." For context, I present this image of the Fitzgeralds' modest seaside home (it's the one on the right):

I know, I know... different times.

Where in the novel Bracondale does not appear until the second chapter, here he features in the second minute.

You don't make people wait for Valentino.

In the scene, Hector rescues Theodora, who has somehow fallen out of her rowboat within sight of his yacht.

Apparently, Swanson performed the stunt herself, resulting in this saucy shot:

The adventure, which is not in the novel, takes place before her marriage to Josiah Brown. In the book, Hector first meets Theodora one year into the union.

In another scene not found in the book, Hector saves Theodora's life a second time during her honeymoon in the Swiss Alps.

It almost seems unfair to point out departures from the source material; the similarities are far more numerous. Glyn's accomplishment - and here I give credit also to co-writer Jack Cunningham, along with Swanson, Valentino, and Woods - is that Beyond the Rocks on film and paper share the same romantic atmosphere. If the book is better... well, isn't that almost always the case.

I admire Elinor Glyn's talent. She displays such great ability to condense, often adding scenes that aid in shortening the story. They fit so perfectly that, had I not recently read Beyond the Rocks, I might've thought they were in the novel.

To think she accomplished this when screenwriting was in its infancy. She has much to teach, and does in the four-volume Elinor Glyn System of Writing (1922).

I once passed on a copy being sold for a dollar.

Will I never learn? 

Related posts:

No Holiday Amusement

Freedom to Read Week: Embracing Elinor Glyn
Freedom to Read Week: The Police Raid Britnell's
Guelph: City of Galt, Gay, Glyn, Graves, and Girdles
Three Weeks a Lady

Three Weeks in Thirteen Images
Elinor Glyn's Chrustmas Ghost Story (and others)
Gloria Gets Groped

Gloria Swanson's Subway Scene

No Holiday Amusement

Beyond the Rocks: A Love Story
Elinor Glyn
New York: Macaulay, [1922]
327 pages

In the afterglow of Valentine's Day comes a tale of forbidden love between a nineteen-year-old newlywed and a somewhat older extremely handsome lord who is not her husband. Its heroine, Theodora Brown, is the daughter of Captain Dominic Fitzgerald, who is himself extremely handsome. Twice a groom, twice a widower, the captain has fathered three daughters, Theodora being the youngest and fairest of them all. Such is Theodora's devotion to dear papa that she agrees to be the first to wed, the groom being Josiah Brown, a fifty-two-year-old English grocer who has amassed a great fortune through a chance investment in an Australian mine.

Not to disparage Captain Fitzgerald, but the union benefitted him financially. He's a bit of a rogue, and has never been much good with money, which explains why his daughters were raised in Bruges and not Mayfair.

The Browns' honeymoon on the Continent was not a success. Josiah took ill, though he did manage to consummate the marriage. Mercifully, the author provides no details, though she does make it known that Theodora found it "a nightmare, now happily a thing of the past."

The deed was done, but as backstory ends and action commences the Browns have yet to make for home; Josiah has been advised by physicians to make a gradual reentry to England. As young Theodora whiles away the hours, days, and months her limited orbit brings her within the sights of  Hector Bracondale, the aforementioned extremely handsome lord.

As portrayed by Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 film adaptation, he really is extremely handsome. Gloria Swanson, who played Theodora, is extremely beautiful.

Ten years Theodora's senior, Lord Bracondale seems the sort of fellow you'd keep away from your sister, his engagements with the opposite sex being nowhere near as innocent as hers:

Usually when he had been greatly attracted by a married woman before, he had unconsciously thought of her as having the qualities which would make her an adorable mistress, a delicious friend, or a holiday amusement, There had never been any reverence mixed up with the affair, which usually had the zest of forbidden fruit, and was hurried along by passion.

Will Hector not settle down? His mother, Lady Bracondale has been pressuring her son to marry dull and heavy heiress Morella Winmarleigh. This campaign has been going on for so long that London society sees the two, who are anything but a couple, as more or less engaged. Hector himself had been or less resigned to marrying Morella at some point in the distant future... but then came Theodora.

Beyond the Rocks is to be enjoyed more for the writing than the plot. There are many slow patches, though it picks up from time to time. Nearly every character, members of the English upper class and aristocracy, is portrayed as dull and uninteresting. This middle class Canadian found it intriguing that pretty much every one of their number was having it on with someone else's spouse. The lone interesting figure of their set is Colonel Lowerby. Commonly called "the Crow," he is a man of strong opinion, as exemplified in this exchange with Anne, Hector Bracendale's sister:

“It is too bad, Crow," said Anne. “You take it for granted that Hector has the most dishonorable intentions towards Mrs. Brown. He may worship her quite in the abstract.”
   “Fiddle-dee-dee, my child!" said Colonel Lowerby. “Look at him! You don’t understand the fundamental principles of human nature if you say that. When a man is madly in love with a woman, nature says, ‘This is your mate,’ not a saint of alabaster on a church altar. There are numbers of animals about who find a ‘mate’ in every woman they come across. But Hector is not that sort. Look at his face —look at him now they are passing us, and tell me if you see any abstract about it?”

Lowerby is the most forthright character in the novel.

The most generous and kind are Theodora and Josiah Brown.

It culminates in tragedy, though I very much doubt that the author saw it as anything other than a happy ending.

Fun fact: Gloria Swanson, whom I'd assumed to be too old to play nineteen-year-old Theodora, was all of twenty-one when the film was shot.  Coincidentally, it was her twenty-first feature.

Object: A bulky hardcover in crimson boards with black type containing three "illustrations From [sic] the Paramount Photo-Play." A fourth illustration, not from the Photo-Play, appears as the frontispiece:

The jacket features an ad directed at Valentino fans.

Access: Long out of print, the cheapest copy of Beyond the Rocks listed online is what I assume to be the photoplay edition, sans jacket, at US$5.00. Copies of the Duckworth first UK edition begin at US$18.00. Copies of the Harper first American start at US$27.60.

My photoplay copy, with jacket, was purchased last year from a Minnesota bookseller. Price: US$35.00. I paid nearly the same amount in shipping.

It was worth every American penny.

Don't have the time to read 327 pages? Not to worry, the August 1906 edition of The Novel Magazine whittles it down to a couple.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

As far as I know, there has been just one translation, Za úskalím, first published in 1912 in the Czechoslovak Republic, and then again in 1914. 

Remarkably, it was republished a third time eighty years later. The cover is, um, not as good.

Related posts:

Freedom to Read Week: Embracing Elinor Glyn
Freedom to Read Week: The Police Raid Britnell's
Guelph: City of Galt, Gay, Glyn, Graves, and Girdles
Three Weeks a Lady

Three Weeks in Thirteen Images
Elinor Glyn's Chrustmas Ghost Story (and others)

Harlequin Valentine Woman Hunt?

Be Still My Love
June Truesdell
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1950

"The drama of exciting woman hunt."

I don't understand.

Shouldn't it it be a drama of an exciting woman hunt?

What is a woman hunt, anyway?

A Bonus:

Be Still My Love
June Truesdell
London: Boardman, 1948

Related posts:

Harlequin: Before the Romance

Another Harlequin Valentine

This Year's Harlequin Valentine

A Harlequin Valentine from Day Keene
Romance… Harlequin Romance
A Harlequin Valentine from Syd Dyke
A Harlequin Valentine Just for You
C'mon, It's Harlequin Valentine Time

This Year's Climacteric Harlequin Valentine

A Weird and Tense Harlequin Valentine

Harlequin & the Eternal Valentine's Day Question

Nothing Says Romance Like a Harlequin Romance

A Harlequin Harlot Romance for Valentine's Day
The Worst Harlequin Valentine
A Ruthless Harlequin Valentine

You're on Your Own This Harlequin Valentine's

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome
Harlequin Librarians: So Many Secrets
Harlequin's Filthiest Title

Pardonable Levels of Violence

Tolerable Levels of Violence
Robert G. Collins
Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983
241 pages

Four years ago, while driving home from a grocery run in Kemptville, Ontario, I happened to tune into North Country Public Radio, Canton, New York... then pulled onto the shoulder of County Road 43 and phoned my wife.

The station was broadcasting a live report of a violent assault on the American Capitol.

Two weeks ago, the man behind that failed insurrection was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. On the very same day that felon, who treats his oaths of office as he has his marriage vows, pardoned men and women who had assaulted police officers. The Capitol Police stood by their oaths; had they turned away, it is entirely possible that Members of Congress, Senators, and the Vice-President would have been killed that day.

Senator Josh Hawley, who'd urged on the insurrectionists, ran for his life like a little boy as Officer Daniel Hodges served to protect him.

Of all I saw on 6 January, 2021, this is the footage that most haunts:

Paul Williams lookalike Patrick McCaughey III is one of the insurrectionists who very nearly killed Officer Hodges.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, found McCaughey guilty of:

• three counts of aiding or abetting or assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, including one involving a dangerous weapon;
• one count of obstruction of an official proceeding;
• one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder;
• one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; 
• one count of engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
• disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building;
• committing an act of violence in the Capitol Building or grounds.

On April 14, 2023, McCaughey received a seven year and six month sentence. The felon apologized to the police officers, adding that he was unworthy of the rights he'd once enjoyed. 

On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump restored those rights by pardoning McCaughey and more than 1500 other tried and convicted insurrectionists.

Tolerable Levels of Violence takes place over a period of several days in the summer of 1999. The setting is not far from where I live in the Ottawa Valley. John Cobbett, professor of English at National University ("what had been known as the University of Ottawa"), is burying the body of a man who'd managed to elude his family's security system. The intruder's head was blown off by Anne, John's pregnant wife, who'd walked in on the attempted rape of her nine-year-old son. Care is taken in disposing of the body; the dead man's friends will soon come looking. 

John and Anne's mornings begin with CBC reports of violence forecasts:

It will be another day at least before public transportation begins again and schools and theatres reopen. The National Capital Region computer forecast for today remains at Unacceptable Levels of Violence. But we're only one point below that red line, and I think we can promise our audience a socially active day tomorrow... and probably for a few days after that, with Tolerable Levels of Violence for the rest of the week.

This optimism counters the trend. Economic crisis and declining living stands have spurred violence and lawlessness, bringing an end to parliamentary democracy. Canada and the United States have been in decline for well over a decade. Their combined populations – no one pays much attention to the border anymore – is officially 120 million, with a further 35 million roaming the continent grabbing what they can and doing what they want.

When conditions are deemed tolerable, John commutes to Ottawa as the as part of an armed convoy. He's as dedicated to his profession as he is to securing the family home. When possible, he works on his latest essay: "Moral Illusions in Renaissance Literature." Anne what she can to contribute to the household income by writing optimistic children's books featuring young brothers named Tony and Toby.

The Cobbett family lives in Braeside, an unfortified hamlet roughly fifty-six kilometres west of what was once Parliament Hill. The church is a ruin, as is its gas station; most neighboring homes are burnt out shells.

In his 10 December 1983 Globe & Mail review, published three weeks to the day before 1984, William French writes:

The chilling message of this futuristic novel is that Orwell and the other doomsayers were wrong in predictions of man's fate. It's not the tyranny of totalitarian governments we have to fear, or the prospect of nuclear wasteland, but merely the escalation of the kind of random violence and terrorism that are already established throughout the world. 

I was a young pup at the time, steeped in the music of Bertolt Brecht, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Gang of Four, the Mekons, and Heaven 17.

I'd read George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, John Stewart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and watched SCTV religiously. Even then I knew that William French, for whom I have great respect, was all wrong; totalitarianism, random violence. and terrorism are an unholy trinity, as evidenced by Trump's release of Enrique Tarrio, Stewart Rhodes, and even so insignificant a figure as Patrick McCaughey III. 

This past Sunday, after another grocery run, this time to Brockville, Ontario, I looked across the St Lawrence to Morristown, New York. You could see its scattered houses quite clearly, not two kilometres across the water. Morristown was so close that I could make out the green letters on the water tower.

I hope to visit the United States again in 2029.

I have no idea what to expect.

About the author: The jacket provides scant detail – "Robert G. Collins is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. This is his first novel." – but there is a photo.

Robert George Collins (1926-2010) was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He served in the US Navy and was a veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War. After service, he emigrated to Canada where he taught at the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa. Tolerable Levels of Violence was his only novel. This obituary has more.

Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover bound in off-white boards, anyone familiar with much-missed publisher Lester & Orpen Dennys and its much-missed International Fiction List will remember the format. Tolerable Levels of Violence was #16 in the series, sandwiched between D.M. Thomas's Ararat and Childhood by Jona Oberski.

Though there was no second printing of the Lester & Orpen Dennys edition, the novel enjoyed a second life in 1985 as a Totem paperback.

I rolled my eyes at the cover, but I now see that it is faithful to the novel. The Cobbetts do indeed live in something that looks like a Confederate plantation house. I don't know whether it is based on an actual residence, but do recognize that Braeside has some unusual dwellings, the old Usborne residence being a prime example. My only complaint is that the motorcycle should be purple.

Totem copies are the least expensive with online prices beginning at US$8.99. The Lester & Orpen Dennys begins at US$15.00. Nothing appears to be in particularly good condition. My copy was purchased last autumn at London's Attic Books. Price: $7.50.

To those who live in Braeside today, I'm sad to report the your local public library does not hold a copy, even though the old library building features in the novel.

The Boy Who Cried Truth

The Calgary Herald, 26 October 1963

The Weird World of Wes Beattie
John Norman Harris
New York: Harper & Row, 1963
216 pages

Wes Beattie was born with a Woolworths spoon in his mouth; father Rupert's came from Birks. The vast difference in fortune is best explained by youthful folly and libido. Rupert had been the favourite son of Toronto's wealthy Beattie family until he had the misfortune of attending a stag party during his sophomore year at Trinity College. There he met a sixteen-year-old tap dancing accordion player named Doreen. She was so unlike the Rosedale girls he'd grown up with that he couldn't help but be captivated. Within nine months, Mr Maggs, Doreen's dad, came calling at the opulent Beattie home demanding money. Ever the romantic, Rupert thwarted the wishes of both sets of parents by marrying Doreen. She gave birth to a baby girl, and Rupert went from golden child to black sheep. Disowned, he became a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman and Doreen turned to drink. When war was declared in 1939, he was only too happy to enlist and be shipped overseas. Son Wes may have been the result of a fond farewell.

Wes Beattie never met his father, though he'd come to know all sorts of very nice servicemen who visited his mother. After Rupert was killed in Italy, his remorseful mother gave Doreen a nice payout and brought the her grandchildren into her home. Jane, the baby girl whose existence had caused the rift, rebelled, while younger brother Wes just wanted his mummy.

Backstory, all of the above is relayed in much more detail – and much more entertainingly – in the seventh of this novel's eighteen chapters. That it comes roughly half-way through the novel, speaks to its complexity.

Wes Beattie himself is a complex character. Though just twenty-three, recent adventures have made his life such a tangled mess that he has drawn the attention of psychiatrist Milton Heber, who lays all out in a seminar attended by doctors, lawyers and social workers. Heber's assertion is that Wes lives in a "weird world" of his own making; he is a fabulist unable to differentiate fantasy from reality. Wes has been charged with two crimes, the first involving a purse he took from a car parked outside the Midtown Motel. He served two months for that offence. The second, much more serious, is the charge that he murdered his beloved Uncle Edgar for fear of being cut out of his will. Lawyer Sidney "Gargoyle" Grant, one of the attendees, is so bothered by a seemingly insignificant detail in Heber's talk that he begins his own investigation.

Grant's efforts bring such small rewards that it would be easy to write at length about The Weird World of Wes Beattie without revealing much. To detail how it all fits together would take thousands of words. Your time is better spent reading the novel.

The Weird World of Wes Beattie is not "The First truly CANADIAN Mystery" as current publisher claims, but it is one of the very best.

What's more, it will make you laugh.

About the author: The life of John Norman Harris (1915-64) is worthy of a biography; consider the introduction to the John Norman Harris fonds housed at the University of Toronto. Is the "Wooden Horse" escape from Stallaf Ludt III not enough?

The author died alone on 28 July 1964, not one year after The Weird World of Wes Beattie was published, suffering a heart attack during an early morning walk in rural Vermont. This brief bio, attached to the 13 October 1963 Star Weekly bowdlerization of The Weird World of Wes Beattie hints at what we missed.

Trivia I: Though the novel makes much about Wes Beattie facing the gallows, the last execution in Canada took place on December 11, 1962. Capital punishment was abolished for murder in 1976. In 1999, it was abolished for all other crimes. 

Trivia II:

The Globe & Mail, 14 March 1964

Trivia III: Announced by Warner Brothers in 1965 as a forthcoming Merwin Gerard production.

And still we wait.
 
Trivia IV: John Norman Harris's last address was 45 Nanton Avenue in Toronto's Rosedale, the very same neighborhood in which Wes Beattie is raised.

The house, described in the 17 September 2004 Globe & Mail 'Home of the Week' real estate column as a being of a "rambling English-cottage-style," has had several notable inhabitants. Its first owner, lawyer Edward Brown, was the son of John Brown, who became editor of the Globe after his brother George (Edward's uncle) was shot by a disgruntled former employee.

Future Pearson Minister of Finance Walter L. Gordon lived in the house during the Great Depression, only to leave after a ten percent increase in the rent. 

It was at 45 Nanton that Harris wrote The Weird World of Wes Beattie, though you wouldn't know that from the Globe piece:

In 1959, it was owned by John Norman Harris, a writer who was also a public relations officer for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, which was poised to merge with the Imperial Bank to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. 

Mr. Harris offered the home as a venue for the secret negotiations, and the deal was signed in a large second-floor bedroom in 1961.

Bankers in bedrooms! Meeting secretly! Do tell!

The address's connection to things literary doesn't end with Harris. Apparently, playwright Tom Hendry rented a third floor room in the 'seventies. The only reason for the Globe piece is that the house had been put up for sale by children's author Kati Rekai.

This is the house as it was ten years ago.

Note the Heritage Toronto plaque on the fence. It has nothing to do with Harris, Hendry or Reikai, rather J.J.R. MacLeod. Because it's hard to read, I share this template from the Heritage Toronto site.

A man worthy of more than this honour alone.

Object: A solidly constructed hardcover with burgundy cloth and pale orange boards. The endpapers remind that this is a HARPER NOVEL OF SUSPENSE, which explains why the back jacket features no author photo, rather promos for other novels in the series:

Love in Amsterdam - Nicholas Freeling

The Fifth Passenger - Edward Young

A Dragon for Christmas - Gavin Black

It's Different Abroad - Henry Calvin

Access: First published in Canada by Macmillan, in the United States by Harper & Row, and in the United Kingdom by Faber & Faber. I see no evidence of second printings for any of of these editions, though as noted in the previous post the novel has reappeared a few times through the years, French and Spanish translations included.

The book isn't easily found in Canadian bookstores; online booksellers are your best bet. At £2, the cheapest edition is the 1966 Corgi, listed by a bookseller in Boat of Garten, Scotland who dares charge the equivalent of $35 to ship a mass market paperback to Canada.

The cheapest Faber & Faber edition – "Condition: Good" – is offered at €14.90 by a Dublin bookshop. It will ship to Canada for roughly $24.50.

The Harper & Row, with jacket, can be purchased for US$40 from a New Jersey bookseller.  

If I were a rich man, or reasonably comfortable, I'd buy the signed copy of the Macmillan offered at US$150 by a Stoney Creek, Ontario bookseller. There can't be many signed copies out there.

Underpriced, if not sold by this time tomorrow I will be greatly disappointed.

Related post:

The Weird Covers of Wes Beattie

The Murder of George Brown: He Died with Grit