Sunshine Scandals of a Little Town

A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1954
269 pages

There is no town of Inverness on Nova Scotia's mainland. That I wasn't sure says as much of my shaky knowledge of the Maritimes as it does the author's talent. Her Inverness seems real. At first, I thought it might have been inspired by an actual town – as Southport in Hilliard's Miranda (1960) is modeled on Yarmouth – but I've since come to realize that it is based on no one town, rather seventy or eighty of them.

The history of Inverness is important to the plot. It was on 15 May 1781 that Captain Joshua Ward of Virginia landed on Nova Scotia's western shore, taking possession of five hundred acres of virgin soil he'd been awarded for his loyalty to the Crown. Two months later, the immigrant ship Holly arrived from Scotland bearing the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds. The leader of the expedition, Fergus Mackay, who'd spent much of the voyage below deck "guarding" the scotch, emerged in time to yell "I name thee Inverness!"

A View of the Town is not a historical novel, it takes place in 1930 as the sesquicentenary of Inverness approaches. Simon Ward is troubled. Pioneer Day, which celebrates the arrive of great-great-grandfather Joshua, has long been in the shadow of the Holly Day celebration of the Highlanders' arrival. This is easily understandable, after all, the Scottish ship brought the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds, whereas Joshua Ward brought only his family, crew, and a dozen slaves:

"The Wards, who had a weakness for begetting females, were outnumbered in no time."

Simon himself has two offspring, both female. Primrose, named for her late mother, is the eldest. An unmarried innocent of twenty-six, she

spends her days indoors caring for her skin and reading Ruth Fielding novels. Helen, Prim's younger sister, is the more grounded of the two, though recent history suggests otherwise. Wed at nineteen to Denis Cameron, son of the wealthy foundry-owning Camerons, she was abandoned a year later. Her estranged husband is thought to be in California trying to paint. 

Simon is trying to write. He has spent the past two decades working on a history of Inverness in a small octagonal room perched atop the otherwise three-storey Ward family home. The only intrusion he allows comes in late afternoon when the women of the house bring tea. Prim and Helen take their turns, as do Simon's sister-in-law Marlow, and housekeeper Katharine Macdonald (known to all as Katie Wee Duncan):

Nobody had ever caught him actually seated at his desk writing. He might be found taking a nap or reading a book, looking at something in the town, or simply waiting.

Simon means to set things right. Great-great-grandfather Joshua is the true founder of Inverness. It was the Ward family that built the foundation of this proud Nova Scotia town. Neighbour Mary Mackay, president of the Inverness Argus Society, wouldn't dare challenge Simon on this view – she's far too savvy. The play between the two in the months leading to the Pioneer and Holly Day sesquicentennial celebrations is something to see, but there's so much more.

There's Helen's failed marriage, of course. But what of spinster aunt Marlow, who lives in the Ward home next door to the fiancé who threw her over? That old beau went on to father Ian Cameron, Helen's missing husband. Unmarried Katie Wee Duncan, the Ward's housekeeper and cook, is the mother of Rose, who is Mary Mackay's unacknowledged granddaughter. Newly arrived lawyer Percy Mattheson divides his attention between Mary's daughter Florence and Prim Ward until the former runs off with her sister's husband. 

Capping it all off is a climactic scene clearly inspired by "The Sinking of the Mariposa Belle" (aka "The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias"). Harmless fun, A View of the Town is the most gentle of Hilliard's five novels in that no one dies and there are several happy endings. The black humour, very much present in the others, is here pale grey. This 23 October 1954 Globe & Mail ad is the very example of truth in advertizing:

Trivia I: Inverness, Nova Scotia is located on the western shore of Cape Breton. The Inverness of A View of the Town is described as being on the mainland, some one hundred miles north of Halifax. 

Trivia II: Prim's Ruth Fielding novels are just the beginning! Early in the novel, much to her horror, Marlow discovers a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover hidden under the mattress of Helen's bed. Confronting her niece, Marlow threatens to burn it, but puts the marches away when Helen tells her that it belongs to Mary Mackay's daughter Florence.

About the author:

Sadly, the author would never write or illustrate a travel book.

Object and Access: A green/grey hardcover, split-run with American publishing house Abelard-Schulman (for whom the author worked as a fiction editor). The jacket illustration is credited to George Thompson about whom I know nothing. I bought my copy in early 2024 from a southern Ontario bookseller. Price: $15. I purchased a signed Abelard-Schulman edition early this year. Price: US$30. It is guaranteed to place on my 2025 list of best book buys.

You too can own a signed copy! As of this writing a Calgary bookseller is offering not one but two at $40 apiece!

Get 'em while you can!

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Growing Up With Mother
As He Lay Dying

All His Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Murder Began Yesterday
Lee Johnson [Lilian Beatrice Johnson]
191 pages

London: Gifford, 1966

We begin with what is perhaps the worst first sentence of any Canadian novel:

The windshield wipers were having a hard time battling the weight of wet snow driving against the glass; shh-klip ... sh-sh-klip ... shh-hh-kl-ip ... sh-shh-kl-i-p ... k ...kli ... i ...p ...

No complaints about the second sentence ("The snow won."), though the third is nearly as bad:

With a disheartened sh-shh they both stopped, making protesting klips at intervals like maiden aunts with the hiccups, then sliding to rest with a despondent sigh.

And so, the reader is left with an obvious choice: soldier on or get out with little investment.

This reader chose to soldier on, but only because I find great enjoyment in truly awful writing.

I was disappointed.

Murder Began Yesterday is not a bad book or an awful book, rather a perfectly satisfactory mystery novel with an unusual setting and several instances of interesting social commentary. 

The narrator is Scott Royale, a medical doctor who has been handed a second chance. The poor man is clearly emerging from a rough patch and is understandably reluctant to provide backstory. What little can be pieced together runs like this: Scott was married to a woman who left him for another man, sought solace in drink, then struggled with the bottle until he was pulled away from the fight by close friends.

Today, we would refer to this as an intervention.

Scott has family in the form of his sweet supportive sister Penny, who has encouraged him to resettle in Shelton, a northern town in which she clerks for the local police detachment. 

It makes for a nice fit. Shelton is in need of a new doctor, having just lost the last in what appears to have been a freak automobile accident. What was Dr Bruton doing on the Vaughnan road anyway?

Penny installs Scott in the dead doctor's house, which I'm guessing is owned by the town, and sets to work on redecorating. Meanwhile, her brother sets out on his rounds.

This is not medical drama, though the brief glimpses of Scott's profession will be of interest to anyone studying changes brought by the 1966 Medical Care Act.

As suggested by the title, cover illustration, and front flap, the novel is a murder mystery, It is also one of those murder mysteries in which a character (in this case, Scott) tells another (Penny) that they are not in a mystery novel. And so, as other chharacters follow Bruton in dying suddenly and unexpectedly, it takes the new doctor a good while to suspect that anything at all is amiss.

Some readers may be frustrated. How can Scott be so blind?

As one of those readers, I remind that we know Scott is the protagonist in a mystery novel, but he does not.

In the meantime, Scott has begun work on a novel, which he describes as:

Nice light detective fiction. Hero only normally immoral; a sultry blonde swaying through his office offering whatever he wants plus a few thousands to prove that she's been bilked out of her lawful rights; a couple of gory corpses; an unintelligent police officer and so forth and so on...

Author Lee Johnson deserves some credit here in having Scott reimagine the recent deaths as murders for his novel. In doing so, he realizes that they were in fact homicides.

The last scene is short, unexpected, and very good.

That last sentence is perfect. 

Trivia (not really): If I haven't already, I spoil things somewhat in revealing that the spark for the spate of murders involves a woman who, suffering from hay fever, confuses two similarly named women. As if to bolster the idea that such a thing is possible, the novel features a nurse surnamed Pennington-Jones, who prefers to be addressed as "Matron" and a character whose surname is Marton. The pages in which the too interact demand careful reading. Manton is a neighbouring community.

It appears that even the publisher became confused, twice referring to the town of Shelton as "Sheldon" on the front flap.

About the author: There's not much to share. Lee Johnson (née Lilian Beatrice Johnson) is yet another mid-twentieth-century Canadian author who was published in the UK, but not in her own country. I've yet to find any recognition of the author in a Canadian newspaper or magazine.

The 1931 census records twenty-seven Lilian Johnsons, ranging in age from eight months to fifty-seven years. Was one of them the author?

She is credited with four titles:

Medallion (London: Gifford, 1962)
Keep It Simple (London: Gifford, 1963)
Heads for Death (London: Gifford, 1966)
Murder Began Yesterday (London: Gifford, 1966)

Four novels in five years... and then nothing?

A subject for further research.

Object and Access: A hardcover in yellow boards, I don't see that there was a second printing. The jacket artist is uncredited. Interestingly, the man depicted is not Scott, rather a secondary character. I believe that is meant to be Scott on the spine.

Four copies, all with dust jacket, are currently listed for sale online. Boy, are they cheap! Expect to pay between $9.94 and $15.15.

My copy was purchased online this past spring from a UK bookseller. Price: £7.00.

'How we joyously welcome this travail-less birth'

Verse for the day, written for the country's very first day, by champion of Confederation Peter Steven Hamilton under his poetry nom de plume Pierce Steven Hamilton. This version closes the second sedition of his collection The Feast of St. Anne and Other Poems (Montreal: Lovell, 1890).

CANADA

Sound the note of rejoicing from trumpet and horn;

For this day to the family of nations is born

Our Canada!

Let the thunders awaken to tell the old earth

How we joyously welcome this travail-less birth

Of Canada.

Let the bonfires blaze from the hill’s highest crag,

And unfurl to the breeze the yet spotless young flag

Of Canada;

While the people, exulting with shout and with cheer,

Proclaim to the listening nations how dear

Is Canada!

Blessed child of a glorious parentage,

Born into the world in its brightest age,

No deluge of blood does thy young life immerse;

Nor stamped on thy brow is a mother’s curse:

All untrammeled thy limbs by the cankering chains,

The harrowing toils and the numbing pains, 

Which systems at war, in the gloom of the past,

Have over thy suffering sisterhood cast:

Thou art free as the wind o’er thy prairies that blows,

And strong in the vigor that hourly grows;

No burden impedes thy triumphant career;—

All, all of thy Mother’s that thou mayest share,

Is the glory that brightens her history’s page.

Say: what wilt thou do with this heritage,

Oh, Canada?

Reposing there on thy Northern throne,

   With thy free-born air, so proud and grand,
Thy bosom begirt with a golden zone,

   And an ocean kissing thy either hand:

Is thy crown not already irradiated

By the beams from the sun of futurity shed!

May never that lofty and stainless brow

With the blush of shame in confusion bow,

Nor the voice of the future recall with scorn

The promise of this thy natal morn,

Fair Canada!

Wilt thou blazon forth on the scroll of time

A proud record of thoughts and of deeds sublime?

Be warned by—-but not to imitate—

The errors and crimes of a world effete

Shall the rule universal that governs thy land

Be, not the contrivance by impotence planned,—

A chaos of fiction, of error, deceit,

Where Anarchy’s smile is Society’s cheat;—

But the law, e’er evolving to infinite years,

And which lives in the music of numberless spheres,

Developing ever what best is in man,

And ignoring the creed of Humanity’s ban;

Whilst. ever in Civilization’s advance,

In the vanguard shall quicken thy brightening glance,

Till the sorrowing nations their tumult shall cease

To partake of thy glories of dignified peace,

Brave Canada?

Or foredoomed is that beauteous form to be

Of most loathsome of human things the prey,

Who, sneering at patriotism’s filial ties

And all things regarding with bestial eyes,

Would abase thee to grade of the prostitute,

And thy name, and thy fame, and thy honor pollute?

Shall the reckless empiric and impudent fool

Presume o’er thy splendid Dominion to rule,

And punily wise whilst viciously daft,

Go aping old wiles of exploded state-craft,

In an endless procession, forever the same,

With “reform” but the change of a factionist name?

Shall a verminly host of corruptionists crawl

O’er the face of thy loveliness, fouling it all,

Till their carcases, gorged with the tide of thy life,

Make the stench of pollution where sweetness was rife;

Whilst their poison, cast back in thy nurturing pores,

Marks their trail centipedal with festering sores,

The spume of a leprosy raging beneath,

And making thy life one long, lingering death?

Shall the knave sanctimonious and smooth hypocrite,

All the while, on thy breast, like an incubus sit,

To mock thee with tales of the Heavenly Will,

And tell thee thy woes are inevitable;

Till the wise of thy children—most loved of thy heart,—

Away from the sight of thy wretchedness start,

In despair at thy ruin, and blushing with shame

At the blight ignominious that clings to thy name,

Poor Canada?

Let our songs of rejoicing be toned with the prayer,

That thy future may brighten a record more fair;—

For that prayer will re-act on the uttering Will,—

To uplift, to expand, and intensify still.

May thy sons, with due mete of their dignity rise,

To wrestle, like men, with their destinies;

Put away childish things; self-reliant and bold,

Drawing lessons of truth from the lore of the old,

Yet seeking forever intensified light,

Rear thy empire proudly in wisdom and right;

And ever their glories ancestral advance,

With more than the splendors of England and France;

Till thy banner of peace and of progress unfurled,

Shall blaze in the van of a happier world;

Whilst thy generate millions, through ages unborn,

Shall honor with pride thy Nativity Morn,

Dear Canada!

   July 1st, 1967

 
Happy Canada Day!

Related posts:

'We first saw light in Canada...'

'God Guide Thee Canada'

Laura Salverson's 'For Canada' for Canada Day

'Canada to England, July 1st 1917' by Horace Bray

'O Canada! beloved native land...'
'O Canada! our native land thou art!'
Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams
A 123-Year-Old Poem for Canada Day

Two Hurrahs for the New Dominion

Charles G.D. Roberts' Dominion Day Collect
Marjorie Pickthall's Canadian Hymn

Verse From the First of Dominion Poetesses
Fair Canada: 'Here many nations dwell...'

On Abebooks' '20 must-read Canadian authors'

If memory serves, my first Abebooks transaction took place in 1997, roughly two years after the site launched. I purchased a copy of Mordecai Richler's Stick Your Neck Out, Simon & Schuster's first American edition of the novel we Canadians know as The Incomparable Atuk.

Whatever you think of the two titles, there's no denying that the Canadian cover, credited to Len Deighton – yes, Len Deighton – is superior.

My second find was a very nice first edition of George Gissing's Eve's Ransom. If memory serves, it set me back all of eight quid.

There were very real bargains to be had in Abebooks' early days, and it pleased me to think that the company was Canadian.

Abebooks is no longer Canadian. In 2008, it was sold to Amazon. I still use it, though less with each passing year. Bargains are now few and far between. The company does its best to encourage, emailing daily lists like '30 essential mystery authors,' 50 essential non-fiction books,' and 'World's most valuable children's books,' which presents '10 books that commend high prices.'

Last week, I received this:

The graphic caught my eye because all of the authors are still very much with us. The titles featured were published within the last thirty years.

The text struck the usual notes: "range of voices," "unique history," "multicultural identity," "indigenous storytelling," and "narratives of everyday life," reaching a crescendo with: "Canadian literature is as diverse as the people who call it home."

"From the North to the lively cities" was something original, and the reference to "bilingual works" was intriguing. The handful of bilingual works in my collection are results of academic collaborations between French and English-language scholars. 

Abebooks' list is presented in four rows, each consisting of five books.

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We begin with Margaret Atwood's big book. And why not? Forty years after initial publication, The Handmaid's Tale is more timely than ever. The first season of the Hulu adaptation is recommended.

The late Alice Munro stands with Mavis Gallant as the younger of Canada's two greatest short story writers. Both deserved the Nobel Prize. It's odd that her final book, Dear Life, is shown – and with its American paperback cover – when it is her weakest collection. It's odder still that the author is written about in the present tense.

"Joseph Boyden is known for his novels that explore Indigenous identity in Canada," begins the short entry.
 
I sense no irony.

Next comes Robert Munch, the only children's author on the list. To date, I've read only three books by the man: The Paperbag Princess, which I liked;  Jonathan Cleaned Up – Then He Heard a Sound, which I really liked; and Love You Forever, which is one of the worst books I've ever read.

I've not read anything by Suzette Mayr. This has more to say about me than her. Published not three years ago, The Sleeping Car Porter is the most recent book amongst the five.

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Because this is the year I stopped paying attention to Canada Reads, I was unaware of Mai Nguyen's Sunshine Nails. Women Talking, on the other hand, is a novel I know well, as are Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals, L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

Montgomery has not been posthumously recognized by the Canadian Literary Walk of Fame, as is claimed, for the simple reason that there is no Canadian Literary Walk of Fame.

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Rohinton Mistry's 1991 novel Such a Long Journey was not awarded the Giller Prize. The Giller was established in 1995.

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King is a work of non-fiction, not a novel.  

Is that cover of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town not strange? Turns out it's a print on demand edition that comes courtesy of Britons dedicated to furthering "The Hippy Dream." The image used is a portion of a digitally produced work of a city hellscape that is in the public domain.

That ain't Mariposa. That ain't no little town.

Eden Robinson's novel Son of a Trickster has indeed received critical acclaim, however it did not win the Giller, (though it was a finalist). Given that Robinson is a BC writer, it will come as no surprise that Son of a Trickster did not receive the Writers Guild of Alberta's Howard O'Hagan Award (which, I note, is given for "outstanding single short story").

As a great admirer, I was pleased to see Anne Hébert recognized, but at the same time wondered why the paperback cover of The Silent Rooms, the 1974 Kathy Mezei translation of Les chambres du bois (1958), was chosen as the image. Sadly, the text provides no clue. While it is true that Hébert was awarded France's Prix de librairies and Prix Femina, it is also true that she received Canada's Governor General's Award no less that three times. One would think those accomplishments would deserve mention.

Carolyn Arnold was not known to me, which could be explained by my focus on the past. According to her website she has self-published forty-six novels in the past fourteen years.

I do know the work of Susan Joly, and not because Alice, I Think has been adapted by the Comedy Network.

One can't avoid Malcolm Gladwell in this country. These days, I encounter him most often in his role as co-founder of Pushkin Industries and through his podcast Revisionist History. If you aren't aware of the latter, do check out the the the episode on Randy Newman's Good Old Boys.

As with Alice Munro, the Marie-Claire Blais entry is written as though the writer is still with us. Sadly, she died in 2021. In the years that followed the death of Brian Moore, she was my favourite living Canadian author. Not only did she win the Governor General's Award, she did so four times, which is more than any other author. The bland grey, red, and black print on demand edition shown is an insult.

Roch Carrier is another favourite. Montcalm and Wolfe, a work of non-fiction written by a novelist, is an odd choice. Not to suggest that the book doesn't deserve attention, but I would've chosen to highlight La Guerre, yes sir! or De l'amour dans la ferraille. It's amusing to see the Governor General's Award for the first and only time referred to as the Prix du Gouverneur général. Roch Carrier has never once received the Prix du Gouverneur général... or Governor General's Award, if you prefer. 

Abebooks' Amazon's list reminded me of nothing so much as CBC Books' ridiculous '100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian,' though there are significant differences. For one, there seems to have been no attempt at gender parity; where the CBC Books list was an even 50/50, the Abebooks list is 12/8 favouring female authors. If anything, this imbalance is more reflective of reality. 

What brought the CBC Books list to mind was the stark contrast between past and present. Sixteen of the twenty must-read Canadian authors are still with us. Our literary history stretches back to the eighteenth century, yet the earliest titles presented date from the twentieth century. The vast majority – thirteen of twenty – were published in the last twenty-five years.   

The selection of the 20 must-reads is presented as the result of a team effort. How big was the team? Who were its members?

My queries to Abebooks have gone unanswered. 

Related posts:

Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad about the 100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian List

(and why the CBC should)

On the Disgrace That Is CBC Books' 100 Young Adult Books That Make You Proud to Be Canadian

Celebrating la Fête nationale in 1911

Of the many souvenir albums I've seen over the years, that issued by the 1911 Comité de la St Jean-Baptiste is my favourite by far. The title, Album-Souvenir de la Fete [sic] Nationale des Canadiens-Français Célébrée à Hull les 24-25-26 Juin 1911, suggests a detailed account of the year's festivities.

It is!

The earliest of the  138 pages focus on the organizing committee and fundraising, but the photographs and descriptions of the three days of celebration in Hull 114 years ago are invaluable. 

In 1911, the twenty-fourth of June having been a Saturday, the "grande célebrations" began at 9:30 the following morning with a mass.

What I'm drawn to most are references to Quebec's history.

Given the sabre-rattling these days from across the St. Lawrence, this page seems timely,

And then there are the ladies!

Pay no attention to these men.

All good things must come to an end.

Bonne fête!

Related posts:

Fifteen Favourite Quebec Novels pour la Fête

'Juin' par William Chapman
'La Fête nationale' par Léon Lorrain

Debout, Canadiens-français!

Acerbic Sait-Jean-Baptiste Verse
'Hommage' pour la Fête

Root Beer for a Sober Fête de la St-Jean Baptiste

A Highly Inappropriate St-Jean-Baptiste Advert

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal
Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste
Celebrating la Fête in 19th-Century Massachusetts
La Fête: Il y'a 100 ans

Canadian Womanhood on Parade!

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

A Song for la Fête de la St-Jean 

Encore!

Dusty CanLit Spring Reviews

Here comes summer. School is out. Oh, happy day.

So, here we are with the spring blog reviews of old CanLit. As expected, most came from Canadian bloggers, but the Brits are well represented. Americans, où es-tu?

Looking over the list, I'm left wondering whether we are on the cusp of a Ross Macdonald revival. The winter harvest included Blue City, The Goodbye Look, and Sleeping Beauty. Spring brought reviews of The Ivory Grin, The Underground Man, and The Goodbye Look.

Please do let me me know if I've missed anything or anyone.

The Mountain and the Valley - Ernest Buckler

The Ivory Grin - John Ross Macdonald [Kenneth Millar]

Le grand Khan - Jean Basile

Les voyages d’Irkoutsk - Jean Basile

Lan ga ge - Michel Garneau

Langage 1 - Michel Garneau

Langage 2 - Michel Garneau

Langage 3 - Michel Garneau

Langage 4 - Michel Garneau

Langage 5 - Michel Garneau

Moments - Michel Garneau

La plus belle île - Michel Garneau

Les petits chevals amoureux - Michel Garneau

Élégie au génocide des nasopodes - Michel Garneau 

Eukuan nin matshimanitu Innu-iskueu - An Antane Kapesh

La rivière sans repos - Gabrielle Roy

Bear - Marian Engel

The Goodbye Look - Ross Macdonald [Kennneth Millar]

'Fang Law' - Harold F. Cruickshank

The Equations of Love - Ethel Wilson

The Underground Man - Ross Macdonald [Kenneth Millar]

I read and reviewed seven old CanLit titles this past season: 

The Stone House Mystery - Joyce Boyle

The Eyes of the Gypsy - John Murray Gibbon

Sword of Desire - Robert W. Tracy [Alvin Schwartz]

If You Want to See Your Wife Again... - John Craig

The Street Called Straight - Basil King

Looking Forward - Hugh Pedney

The Homesteaders - Robert J.S. Stead

Of these, Rev King's The Street Called Straight was the best, though Montrealers and readers of science fiction may find Looking Forward to be of more interest. The Homesteaders is recommended for readers in Manitoba and Alberta,

I'm beginning to think that 2025 will be another year in which male authors dominate my reading.

Let's see what the summer brings! Enjoy the sun!

Related post:

Dusty CanLit Winter Reviews

A Man Reaps What He Sows

The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West
Robert J.C. Stead
Toronto: Musson , 1916
347 pages

The first edition is bound in boards reading The Homesteader when it should be The Homesteaders. The distinction is important, particularly in the early chapters, though it becomes less so as the novel progresses.

The Homesteaders opens in Quebec's Eastern Townships as one-room schoolteacher John Harris watches students scatter at the end of the day. He's soon joined by his fiancée Mary. 

This being 1881, John is expected to support his betrothed, and so has made the decision to give up his paltry teacher's salary and try his hand at farming in Manitoba. The plan, which John has taken care to hide, involves traveling west the next spring, locating a homestead, constructing some sort of shelter, and breaking ground. If all goes well, he'll return for Mary. If not, well, there's aways the year after that.

There's something about Mary in these early pages. Lithe and beautiful, she is not "a daughter of the sturdy backwoods pioneers, bred to hard work in field and barnyard," rather "she was sprung from gentler stock." Mary is also the only character in this novel to demonstrate a sense of humour, as when she ribs John:

“Always at your studies,” she cried, as he sprang eagerly to his feet. “You must be seeking a professorship. But I suppose you have to be always brushing up,” she continued, banteringly. “Your oldest pupil must be—let me see—not less than eight?”

Clever and quick, Mary was onto her fiancé from the start. “I declare, if it isn’t Manitoba!" she says, snatching a map from his hands. "What next? Siberia or Patagonia? I thought you were still in the Eastern Townships.”

Mary insists on accompanying John west, moving up their wedding day in the process. What follows is not an account of their honeymoon, rather descriptions of lengthy train travel to Emerson and an oh-so-slow trek northward to tracts of land Ottawa is offering gratis to men who prove themselves able to establish working farms. The couple's first marital home is a windowless sod shack with a heavy blanket for a door.

These are the novel's most interesting pages, no doubt drawn from Stead's childhood memories and experiences. Born in Ontario's Lanark Highlands, as a toddler Robert, his father (Robert, Sr). and mother (tellingly, Mary) established a Manitoba homestead in the very same year as John and Mary Harris.

Robert J.C. Stead
Bookseller & Stationer, October 1916

The fictional couple's success in meeting the government's terms has to do with hard work, but not necessarily self-sufficiency. Friendships were formed as those cramped railcars made their way across Ontario. Though the homesteaders settle miles away from one another, their struggle is common. The men work together, loaning each other mowers, plows, and hayracks. As for the women:

Mrs. Grant was the proud possessor of a very modern labour- saver in the shape of a clothes-wringer, as a consequence of which wash-day was rotated throughout the community, and it was well known that Mrs. Riles and Mrs. Harris had to do their churning alternately.

Stead takes great care here. This is not drudgery, rather progress, with each couple striving for a better life. The most dramatic pages are set after the first harvest, reaching a climax in the fifth chapter when, during a winter storm, John abducts a drunken doctor to aid with the delivery of Allan, his first child.

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Moving between chapters five and six can be jarring. Twenty-five years have passed. The sod shack has been replaced by a brick house. Family and farm have expanded with the addition of a second child, Beulah, and many more acres of land. But all this is no way satisfies John:

He saw the light ahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, “When I am worth ten thousand I will have reached it”; when he was worth ten thousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-five thousand. He said, “When I am worth twenty-five thousand I will have reached it”; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glow still ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred to him to slacken his pace—to allow his mind a rest from its concentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet, have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck of his ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, and John Harris held nothing in heaven or earth so great as its attainment.

The John of the early chapters has become crude; even his whole manner of speech has changed. Mary too is transformed, but only physically. The years have taken a toll, "the shoulders, in mute testimony to much hard labour of the hands, had drooped forward over the deepening chest; the hair was thinner, and farther back above the forehead, and streaked with grey at the temples; the mouth lacked the rosy sensuousness of youth, and sat now in a mould, half of resolution, half submission."

The community formed a quarter-century earlier in those railcars is already a thing of the past. Though one of the most prosperous homesteaders, John cannot help but compare himself to others. Wanting more, he teams up with neighbouring homesteader Hirim Riles. They plan to go out to Alberta, the new frontier, and procure four or five tracts of free land. John will set up a homestead on the first and Riles will establish another on the second. The third, four and possibly fifth would be worked by men who will be provided grub and a small wage during the three years required to secure titles which would subsequently be be transferred to Harris and Riles:

This was strictly against the law, but the two pioneers felt no sense of crime or shame for their plans, but rather congratulated themselves upon their cunning though by no means original scheme to evade the regulations.

Indeed, by no means an original scheme. There is no way the two men would've succeeded, though the scheme does serve to bring further notice to John's descent from the decent, dedicated Eastern Townships schoolteacher with whom Marys fell in love.

The last fifteen chapters are far less interesting than the first five, in part because there isn't nearly so much about the pioneer experience, and in part because too many of its pages focus on a crime that takes too long to unfold. I suppose there is a lesson to be learned about working with another when committing a crime, but only if one has never heard of the time-worn observation on honour amongst thieves.

What I liked most was Mary leaving John.

Beulah running away was second.

She is in every way her mother's daughter.

Censorship?: Riles reaches Alberta before partner-in-crime Harris. Though a miser, he enters a bar in order to get the lay of the land (no pun intended). What follows is a scene somewhat reminiscent of this 2016 Heritage Minute:

The American in Stead's novel threatens a lumberjack – yes, a lumberjack – for what he perceives as a personal slight.

By far the most superfluous scene in the novel, it is nevertheless interesting for these two instances of... what exactly? Is it censorship? An author well aware of the impermissible?  Or just Stead having some fun?

I leave it for you to judge.

Object: My first edition is printed on paper so acidic that it's a wonder I didn't burn my fingers. It was acquired in 2018 as part of a lot. A few years earlier, I'd purchased a copy of the 1973 University of Toronto Press reissue with introduction by Susan Wood Glicksohn.

Access: A Canadian bestseller, The Homesteaders went through five printings. It was also published in the UK by Unwin (1916) and Hodder & Stoughton (1923). Used copies aren't at all difficult to find online. 

 

The Dodo Press print on demand edition uses a detail of Abraham Louis Buvelot's 1873 painting Tubbutt Homestead in the Bombala district, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. Two different countries, two different continents, the distance between the Tubbutt and Harris homesteads amounts to roughly 15,000 kilometres. 

The novel is available online here thanks to the Internet Archive.

Related post:

A Man of Peculiar Notions