The Great War and Its Discontents

The Magpie
Douglas Durkin
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974
351 pages

Craig Forrester has received a telephone call from Mrs Gilbert Nason, wife of one of the wealthiest men in Winnipeg, inviting him to a dinner party at the family home: "no dinner party was complete nowadays without its war hero — she would promise that he would not be asked one question during the evening, about his experiences at the front — and Marion would be there to tease him — and, well, would he come?"

Craig accepts the invitation. Marion, the Nasons' daughter, does indeed tease, as when she ushers him toward another woman, whispering:

“She’s a war widow, but she’s young and — come on, you’ll see for yourself.” She took him by the hand and pulled him after her across the hall and through an open doorway into a small reception-room. Mrs. Nason got up from where she had been sitting and came forward to meet him. “So here you are!” she greeted him, extending her hand. “My, but you’re looking well! Here’s our hero, Jeannette."

The scene takes place in July 1919, eight months after the Armistice, and one month after the violent end of Winnipeg General Strike.

The promise of the post-war future is very much a topic of dinner conversation. Methodist minister Reverend George Bentley, who joins Craig and Jeanette at the Nason family table, has strong opinions about the demands of the working man:

“Unless we restore our institutions to their status of the days before the war,” Bentley declared, “there is no hope for civilization.”
   Jeannette Bawden broke through at last with a word of protest. “Why take the trouble to save it, Mr. Bentley?” she asked in her softest voice.
   Marion chuckled in spite of herself — or because she had been awaiting just such an opportunity — and was reprimanded by a look from her father.
   “Why take the trouble to save our Christian heritage?” the good gentleman asked, surprised.
   “I wasn’t aware that it was Christian,” Jeannette retorted.
   Craig caught a glance from Marion and the two exchanged furtive winks. He was beginning to like Jeannette Bawden and was pleased, for some reason or other, to find that Marion shared her views.

   “Jeannette, you heretic,” Mrs. Nason interrupted, “I’m not going to permit you to badger Mr. Bentley. Craig, can’t you talk her off the subject.”
   “On the contrary,” objected Bentley, recovering himself, “I think I rather enjoy being badgered by a woman when she is as charming as—”

Craig makes no attempt to take Jeannette Bawden off the subject, he'd much rather hear what she has to say. Craig is the Magpie of the title, so named by a colleague who'd noted his habit of listening to conversation without contributing. Invariably, another would make a point he was contemplating:

“Craigie has a nimble wit but a heavy tongue,” his father had said of him in the old days.

Craig's father died on the family farm while he was off fighting overseas. He blames himself for not having been present. The two had always been very close, and were no doubt brought closer by the early death of Craig's mother.

At twenty, Craig was sent off to university. At twenty-four, his father bought him a seat on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as a graduation gift.

The Winnipeg Grain Exchange as it was c.1920.
Craig's office is described as being on the seventh floor.

While tense moments in the pit follow, I admit my eyes began to glaze over. Debate over barley futures wasn't for me. I was more interested in the promises that had been made working men who had brought victory. More than anything, what grabbed my interest was the reception of the returning soldier and the portrayal of women.

Mrs Nason's assurance that Craig would not be asked about his experiences at the front proved true. However, the very next month, during a second dinner, this one at the Nason summer home, he finds himself seated beside coquettish Vicky Howard:

“Don’t you think you can persuade Captain Forrester to tell us some of the heroic things he did when he was in France, Marion?” Miss Howard cooed, with her cheek touching Craig’s left shoulder.

   “I should think you could get him to do that, Vicky,” Marion suggested. “I’ve never known how to get a returned man to tell of his experiences.”

   “I’ve heard some — some perfectly wonderful stories from men who have come back — one boy in the bank —”

Vicky Howard is one of several female characters of Craig's generation in the story. Each interesting in her own way, together they reflect a jarring shift in societal expectations and social norms. The Magpie spans 1919 and 1920, a touch early for bound breasts and flapperism to have reached the Canadian prairie, though it should be noted that one of the characters has bobbed her hair. 

Marion Nason delights in her friend Jeannette's needling Reverend Bentley, whose ministry has been supported by her father and other wealthy businessmen. This, combined with her beauty, leads Craig to make her his wife. However, once she has left her father's house she becomes a different person, one who is more concerned with maintaining the lifestyle into which she was born rather than the plight of others less fortunate.

Jeannette Bawden's life has been very much changed by the war. It killed her husband. Jeanette's desire for social upheaval is fuelled in part by revenge. Jeanette will end up living in sin with an outspoken veteran who shares her newfound politics.

Vicky Howard flirts openly with Craig during that second Nason dinner and in the evening that follows. When he does not respond, she opts for a one-nighter with Claude Charnley, Craig's rival for Marion's affection. The following summer, by which time Craig has married Marion, Vicky makes an overt pass: "People don’t wonder about such things nowadays. They used to.... before the war.... but not now. They take some things for granted.....” 

Then there's Martha Lane, Craig's friend since childhood. The girl from the neighbouring farm, they'd lost touch when she went off to study sculpture in Europe. Martha's father doesn't understand her art, but takes pride in her achievement. Once she and Craig reconnect, they spend hours alone together working on an exhibition of her works. 

These young women  are so unlike those depicted in pre-Great War Canadian novels and live in a much different world. To have a man, in this case Craig Forrester, spend time alone with, say, Jeannette Bawden or Martha Lane, would've destroyed reputations.

Hodder & Stoughton ad in The Victoria Daily Times, 15 December 1923

For other characters, the post-war world is all too familiar. Craig is driving late one afternoon when he encounters Jimmy Dyer as he walks home from work. They''d served alongside each in Europe and are now, to paraphrase Neil Young, back in their Canadian prairie homes. Jimmy's is the same little green and white shack he left to fight, leaving behind his wife and children. He's a cheerful sort, until talk turns to the war: 

"They’re all doing their damnedest to forget about it. They’re sticking a few hundred of the broken ones in hospitals here and there and they’re putting in a cenotaph and a bronze tablet here and there for the fellows who won’t be back. For the rest of us they’re putting green seats in the parks where we can sit down and go over our troubles if we want to without being asked to move on. In a year’s time they’ll send us a medal with a couple of inches of coloured ribbon and a form letter and the thing will be all over. Instead of shouting ‘On to Berlin’ they’ll change it to ‘Back to Normalcy’. We’ve spent four years of the best part of our lives fighting for the big fellows, and we’ll spend the rest of our days working for them just the same as we did before the war. The only real difference is that we had a band or two and a banner or two and a chaplain or two to remind us that we were fighting for the glory of God and the brotherhood of mankind, and now we have the squalls of hungry kids and the insults of a few God damned slackers to cheer us on our way. That sums it up for me, just about.”

Contemporary reviewers really struggled with this one. Some papers merely acknowledged the novel without reviewing it. In this case, the political elements are downplayed: 

The Border Cities Star, 22 March 1924

The Magpie was first published in 1923 by Hodder & Stoughton Canada. My 1974 edition was published as number 23 in the University of Toronto Press's Social History of Canada. It was given to me by a generous reader of this blog.

I'd assumed that the novel had been in and out of print over those five decades, but I was wrong. The Magpie had been out-of-print. What's more, after the University of Toronto Press reissue, The Magpie again slipped out of print for decades, until brought back in 2018 by Invisible Press.

It can be purchased through this link.

I'd been meaning to read the novel since my days as a Canadian Studies student in the 'eighties. Its depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike made it important, or so I thought. In fact, there are no depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike in The Magpie, just as there are no depictions of the Great War. The novel is a reaction to both events. It is a novel about the aftermath of conflict, as experienced by those who were harmed and those who benefited. 

The once-silent Magpie begins to speak out.

Favourite pasage (w/ spoiler): After his chance encounter with Craig, we never see Jimmy Dyer again. Craig keeps meaning to call, but many months pass before he returns to the Dyer family's extremely modest home. On a whim, he's decided to bring along Gilbert Nason, his liberal-minded businessman father-in-law. Over tea, they learn that Jimmy is dead; he never quite recovered from his encounter with mustard gas. Gilbert Nason reacts by offering help, but is soundly rejected:

"There’s a lot of women left alone in the world — lots of them right here in this city — and some of them might take help if you offered it to them. Some of them can’t help themselves. But I can. Jimmy Dyer never took charity from anyone and he wouldn’t want his wife to take it from anyone, either. No, Mr. Nason, there are some of us who are strong enough in body to go out and work for our children and strong enough in mind, too, to do a little thinking for ourselves. Somewhere I read of what one woman made her mind up to do when she got word that her husband had been killed. She was going out to take the life of some warmaker — take it with her own hands. And that’s what the men who make war are driving us to do. They will force the women to make war on those who made war for us. We’ll go out and find the men who sit in upholstered chairs and play the game of politics and business and move the Jimmy Dyers of the world about on the checker board like so many bits of wood. We’ll find them. They killed our men. We’ll kill them. What else have we to do? We’ll dog their steps. We’ll make them afraid to go out unattended. They’ll be afraid to touch food or water for fear of being poisoned. There’ll be ways, and ways—and ways! But we’ll stop it — we’ll stop it! We’ll bring no more sons into the world for them to feed to cannons. We’ll send no more husbands out behind brass bands to spill their blood in the field. We kept the homes — the gardens — the flowers.... the poppy beds....” 

Trivia (w/ spoiler): In the final pages, Craig is forced to come to terms with the fact that from the early days of his marriage Marion has been having an affair with Claude Charnley. The last page suggests a future with Martha Lane.

Canadian Singers and Their Songs
Edward S. Caswell, ed.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1919

In his own life, Durkin was the unfaithful spouse. His lover was also named Martha – Martha Ostenso – with whom he collaborated on over a dozen novels, including her 1925 bestselling debut Wild Geese. Their affair lasted over two decades, ending in marriage only after the death of his wife. 

Object and Access: My U of T Press edition is bound in black boards. The jacket design is not credited. 

Used copies of the first edition aren't nearly as dear as one might expect. Very Good and better copies of the first edition (all sans jacket) begin at $36.00. The copy to have is an inscribed and signed, offered by a Gatineau bookseller for $155.00.

The novel is available here – gratis – thanks to the faded page.

Related posts:

Dead Man Sitting
Wild, Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part 3): After the Harvest

The third of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

The only film adaptation of Wild Geese released during my lifetime, yet I missed its airing on 4 March 2001.

I was the father of a toddler at time.

After the Harvest was a made-for-TV movie. A part of Baton Broadcasting's Canadian Literature Initiative, a very slim, very small bone thrown so as to get the okay for its takeover of CTV. The corporation promised all of one million dollars spread over two years to encourage independent productions. What followed were adaptations of Anna Porter's The Bookfair Murders, the Gail Bowen mysteries Deadly Appearances and Murder at the Mendel, and Murder Most Likely, which was based on the Michael Harris book The Judas Kiss.

The Porter and Bowen books were murder mysteries, Harris's was an investigation into a corrupt RCMP officer who in 1983 tossed his wife off the 17th-storey balcony of their Toronto condo. All four were published in the 'nineties.

Wild Geese, which features no murder, was a seven-decade-old novel. When first published it sat on store shelves alongside Bliss Carman and E. Barrington, not John Grisham and Daniel Steele. 

Detail of a Henry Morgan & Co ad, Montreal Gazette, 19 November 1925.

After the Harvest was by far the best received of the Canadian Literature Initiative films. Watching it today, it is easy to see why.

The first thing that strikes is the look, which captures the beauty of the Canadian West, using natural lighting to full effect. There are shots that look  like paintings come to life. Cinematographer Gregory Middleton would go on to Passchendaele, The Watchmen, and Game of Thrones.

Care was taken in costuming, sets, and pretty much everything else, farm machinery included. 

Added to these are extraordinary performances. One expects as much from Sam Shepard, who is perfectly cast as tyrannical, yet dispassionate Caleb Gare.  That stare! He commands nearly every scene, as the story demands. Liane Balaband, who plays Lind Archer, is another standout. Her role as "the Teacher" is somewhat greater than in the novel, though I do think CTV's promo reel exaggerates the character's influence:

Finally, there's the script. I've left this for the end because, by necessity, spoilers will follow. Anyone coming fresh to Wild Geese may wish to skip to the After the Harvest YouTube link below.

Read the book, see the movie, and remember they do not tell the exact same story.

According to a Sandra Martin piece in the 3 March 2001 edition of the Globe & Mail, screenwriter Suzette Couture first read Ostenso's novel after having been given a copy by Maggie Siggins when working on the film adaptation of A Canadian Tragedy: JoAnne and Colin Thatcher. Like me, she was hooked.

Couture makes changes in bringing Wild Geese to the screen, but in ways that will, with few exceptions, pass unnoticed by all but the most recent or most familiar reader.

The first words are uttered by Judith Gare, played by Nadia Litz, as she lies seemingly naked in a wheat field:

"I've heard it said that there is one moment in life when we're happy and the rest is spent remembering."

In the second scene, Lind Archer stands alone by the side of a dirt road trying to hail a ride. John Tobacco, who is passing on a horse-drawn wagon, stops:

LIND: I was just dropped here, they wouldn't take me any further. I'm expected...

John says nothing.

LIND: ... at Caleb Gare's?

JOHN: No one goes up that road.

LIND: Then why do you?

JOHN: I go everywhere. I deliver the mail.

So much of the novel is contained in this exchange, so much of the mood is set, and yet like Judith Gare's opening monologue it doesn't feature in the novel.

There's the cinematography, the attention to detail, and the acting, but what impresses most is Couture's script. Her dialogue does much to rein in the novel's length, as in this exchange between Lind and Judith:

JUDITH: Caleb's father farmed this land. We're born to it, to live here and die here. It's just the way it is.

LIND: And your mother? She never takes your side with him?

JUDITH: She doesn't care. Not for any of us.

LIND: You really believe that?

JUDITH: What's it to you anyway?

LIND: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.

JUDITH: Tell me then.

LIND: The man who was supposed to marry me left.

JUDITH: I've heard worse.

LIND: My father's dead.

JUDITH: I call that lucky.

This is another scene that does not appear in the novel, but it is easy to be fooled in that it fits so perfectly.

Couture provides Lind with a backstory. That she's Catholic explains why she does not join Caleb in services at Yellow Post's church.

Very clever.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm all in on After the Harvest. 

As in Ruf der Wildgänse, the 1961 Austrian-German adaptation, Amelia tells Mark Jordan (inexplicably renamed Jordan Sinclair), that she is his mother. This never happens in the novel. I see no reason to do so aside from the resulting drama. It is indeed tear inducing.

The much criticized ending of Wild Geese is just as contentious in this adaptation. Here Caleb survives the fire to be met with his wife in the final scene. I don't know that it is the perfect ending, but it is superior. Because I think the scene worth watching, I won't quote the dialogue. It begins at the ninety minute mark, pretty much right down to the second, and is just about the best thing I've ever seen from a Canadian television production. 

The film can be seen in it's entirety on on Youtube (for now, at least):

Watch it while you can.

I recommend it highly.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part I): Wild Geese
Wild Geese on Film (Part 2): Ruf der Wildgänse

Wild Geese on Film (Part 1): Wild Geese

The first of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

Released in the autumn of 1927, Wild Geese is a lost silent film, though you wouldn't know it looking at the IMDb entry:

My thinking is that the star ratings concern the novel; it's either that or they were left a couple of decades back by computer savvy centenarians who remembered the film from when they were young. 

Montreal Gazette, 21 May 1928

I doubt the latter is true, but let's pretend.

What would they have seen?

I've had to rely on ninety-eight-year-old reviews, none of which are terribly long or contain much detail. The one published in the 7 December 1927 edition of Variety is the most interesting:

The reference to a "Minnesota household" intrigues. The novel is set in the fictional farming community of Oeland, which is generally accepted to be in the very real province of Manitoba. 

Judging from surviving stills, "poor wig outfitting" seems fair.

Eve Southern played Judith Gare. That's Anita Stewart as Lind Archer on the right. Of the cast, Russell Simpson, who portrayed Caleb Gare, is hands down the best remembered today. He was cast as Pa Joad in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath.

Russell Simpson as Caleb Gare and Belle Bennett as wife Amelia in Wild Geese.  

The reviewer makes no mention of the film's ending, but others do. Apparently, it isn't nearly so positive as Ostenso's.

Returning to those IMDb ratings, I note that no one left an actual review. My thinking is that the one star ratings were left by frustrated high school students looking for a shortcut. This and other Goodreads reviews suggest as much.

And so, this anecdote:

In 1985, I work part-time in a Montreal video store. For context, this was the year in which Betamax was suffering death throes. Come autumn, kids who'd previously rented Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Risky Business abruptly shifted focus to The Natural, the 1984 Barry Levinson film about a middle aged has been who becomes a baseball legend. Set in the early twentieth century, 48-year-old Robert Redford played the lead.

The sudden demand caught the store's owners off-guard. We had eight copies of The Breakfast Club and nearly as many of Police Academy but just one of The Natural. As it turned out, students in nearby Bialik High School had been assigned the Bernard Malamud novel upon which the film is based. 

A young man not much older than the kids I was serving, I'd seen The Natural. Much as I like Levinson and Redford, I did not like their collaboration. My issue was wasn't so much with the body rather the ending, which is diametrically opposed to Malamud's perfect, perfectly depressing conclusion. 

It's also very over the top.

Let this be a lesson, kids.

Read the book.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese

Don't Kill the Dog

The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Charles G.D. Roberts
New York: Wessels, 1906
276 pages

A bestseller in its day, a college text in mine, I read The Heart of the Ancient Wood for my very first CanLit course.

Last week I read it again.

Because I remembered liking the novel, I was really taken aback. The lengthy, gentle, gassy scenic opening is just the sort of thing that sets this sexagenarian's surprisingly healthy teeth on edge.

Your tastes may differ, but I think we can agree that "Not indolently soft, like that which sifts in green shadow through the leafage of a summer garden, but tense, alertly and mysteriously expectant, was the silence of the forest," is not a captivating first sentence.

The Heart of the Ancient Wood unfolds so very, very slowly with descriptions of the wood, its creatures, their sounds, their scents, their habits, their habitats, the trees, the sky, and the air until a "grey man figure" appears. The cock-partridge, the nuthatch, the bear, the wild-cat, and the weasel all react differently. The wood-mice quiver with fear, while the hare looks on with "aversion, not unmixed with scorn" while noting the man's lumbering gait:

“Never,” thought the hare, disdainfully, "would he be able to escape from his enemies!”

Eventually, the man figure reaches a clearing, pushes through blackberry and raspberry canes, then picks his way between the burned stumps of a desolate pasture, before at long last reaching "the loneliest cabin he had ever chanced to see."

The man figure's name is David "Old Dave" Titus. He has come to prepare the cabin. But for what purpose?

The answer comes in the third chapter, "The Exiles from the Settlement," with the arrival of Kirstie Craig (née MacAlister) and her young daughter Miranda, as announced by "the dull tanky tank, a-tonk, tank of cowbells." The pace picks up with Kirstie's backstory. A "tall, erect, strong-stepping, long-limbed woman," she'd lived her entire life in a place identified only as "the Settlement." Some seven years earlier Kirstie had chanced to be in a store when in walked a man unlike any other she had ever seen. This was Frank Craig, dilettante, musician, poet, and artist ("when the mood seized him strongly enough"). A prime specimen of a fish out of water, Frank had been advised to forgo city life for the restorative nature of country air. 

Before he had breathed it a month he had won Kirstie MacAlister, to whom he seemed little less than a god. To him, on her part, she was a splendid mystery. Even her peculiarities of grammar and accent did no more than lend a piquancy to her strangeness. They appealed as a rough, fresh flavour to his wearied senses.

They soon married. Kirstie gave birth to a daughter, Miranda, within the year.

Theirs seemed an ideal marriage, and maybe it was, but there came a time when Frank became restless. He talked about business in "the city" (also unidentified) that needed attending to. Kirstie saw her husband off on a rattling mail-wagon. The next paragraph is my favourite in the entire novel:

But – he never came back. The months rolled by, and no word came of him; and Kirstie gnawed her heart out in proud anguish. Inquiry throughout the cities of the coast brought no hint of him. Then, as the months climbed into years, that tender humanity which resents misfortune as a crime started a rumour that Kirstie had been fooled. Perhaps there had been no marriage, went the whisper at first. “Served her right, with her airs, thinkin’ she could ketch a gentleman!” – was the next development of it. Kirstie, with her superior air, had never been popular at best; and after her marriage the sufficiency and exclusiveness of her joy, coupled with the comparative fineness of speech which she adopted, made her the object of jealous criticism through all the country-side. When the temple of her soaring happiness came down about her ears, then was the time for her chastening, and the gossips of the Settlement took a hand in it with right good-will. Nothing else worth talking about happened in that neighbourhood during the next few years, so the little rumour was cherished and nourished. Presently it grew to a great scandal, and the gossips came to persuade themselves that things had not been as they should be. Kirstie, they said, was being very properly punished by Providence, and it was well to show that they, chaste souls, stood on the side of Providence. If Providence threw a stone, it was surely their place to throw three.  

This, I thought, was the reason my younger self liked the novel. Stories of gossip, jealousy, and their consequences appealed to me back then, just as they do today. Here's another favourite passage:

Some one else had heard from some one else of some one having seen Frank Craig in the city. There was at first a difference of opinion as to what city; but that little discrepancy was soon smoothed out. Then a woman was suggested, and forthwith it appeared that he had been seen driving with a handsome woman, behind a spanking pair, with liveried coachman and footman on the box.

Sadly, these elements and all their intrigue vanish completely, leaving the reader with more purple prose and a near absence of plot.

So as to escape bitter tongues, Kirstie makes a home for herself and little Miranda in the cabin. It's a rather idyllic if modest existence with remarkably few challenges. Good ol' Old Dave, Kirstie's only friend, drops by on occasion; otherwise the only human contact mother and daughter have is with each other. Miranda becomes an object of curiosity to the woodland creatures and is curious in return. The girl's main focus is a female bear, "far the most human of all the furry woodfolk," that her young mind identifies as a "nice, big dog." There is a chance encounter early in the novel, after which Kirstie insists the girl stay within sight of the cabin.

I remember The Heart of the Ancient Wood being included in the syllabus as an introduction to the "realistic animal story." We students were told the genre was originated in Canada by Roberts and his rival Ernest Thompson Seton... or some such thing. As a proud Canadian, this too may have appealed. As a city boy, its likely that I found the depictions of the furry woodfolk interesting, even as I recognized the anthropomorphism. And so, I suppose my memory could be right about liking the novel at the time.

Now, I very much dislike it.

A brief summary of the major plot points, right to the end, follows. 

Kirstie and Miranda survive their first winter at the cabin without difficulty, aided in part by an early spring. The bear emerges from hibernation and a few days later gives birth to a male cub. He's so very weak, but under his mother's care the cub becomes the most playful, curious, and cute of little guys before being crushed by a hunter's trap. That same awful day, the grieving she-bear comes upon Miranda as the girl is about to be set upon by a panther. The bear saves the girl and escorts her back to the cabin. Kirstie is rightfully wary, yet comes recognize the bear, Kroof, as a protector and companion. As Miranda grows into adulthood, she becomes at one with the creatures of the ancient wood, and they in turn grow to both trust her and accept her as their superior. This includes the panther.

One afternoon, Miranda comes upon a young man sleeping beneath a tree. In an echo of the scene years earlier involving Kroof, a panther is about to spring. As a student of Kroof, Miranda manages to order it away. The young man turns out to be Young Dave, son of Old Dave. The two haven't seen each other since the day Craig mother and daughter left the Settlement. Young Dave is immediately taken with the mature Miranda and soon becomes a frequent visitor. Kirstie likes Young Dave, but her daughter runs lukewarm and cold. Her reaction has something to do with the fact that the young man is a hunter, where she and her mother are vegetarians. I'd suggest it also has something to do with Miranda being unaccustomed to people, never mind a man who is more or less her own age. 

Young Dave pitches woo, but to no avail. He goes so far as to take Miranda on an excursion away from the cabin, deftly navigating dangerous rapids in order to deliver much needed medicine to a young mother and her ailing son. If anything, the visit pushes Miranda farther away, though this has to do with the older woman's assumption that the girl is Dave's fiancée.

A fair percentage of the closing chapters involves play between the two with Young Dave doing his best to ingratiate himself and making a bit of progress only to be pushed away.

Will they or won't they?

As with sitcoms, the question is increasingly tiring with each passing year. The resolution was not one I saw coming. You'd think I would've remembered. 

What happens is that Young Dave is walking through the ancient wood one day on yet another visit to the cabin when he chances upon a small male bear cub. He kills the cub with a shot to the head, skins it, cuts out the choicest portions, and continues on his merry way.

The reader already knows that the cub was Kroof's. Did Dave?

To this point, Young Dave has been portrayed as quick and intelligent. He's met Kroof many a time with Miranda over the years, is aware of the unusual relationship they share, and knows there are no other bears in the area. And yet, and yet, and yet, he kills without so much as a thought that the cub just might be the Kroof's.

Kroof finds what's left of her son, a red carcass "hideously affronting the sunlight, "walks around it twice, and then sets off on Dave's trail:

She was not blinded by her fury. Rather was she coolly and deliberately set upon a sufficing vengeance. She moderated her pace, and went softly; and soon she caught sight of her quarry some way ahead, striding swiftly down the brown-shadowed vistas. There was no other bear in all the forests so shrewd as Kroof.

She catches up with Dave as he's washing in a small steam so as to make himself presentable to Kirstie and Miranda. The hunter makes for a beech tree and begins climbing with the bear following. Miranda arrives on the scene and tries to call Kroof off. In desperation, she picks up Dave's rifle and fires:

The bear’s body heaved convulsively for a moment, then seemed to fall together on the branch, clutching at it. A second later and it rolled off, with a leisurely motion, and came plunging downward, soft, massive, enormous. It struck the ground with a sobbing thud. Miranda gave a low cry at the sound, turned away, and leaned against the trunk of the hemlock. Her face was toward the tree, and hidden in the bend of her arm.

Have we had enough?

The very next sentence is the worst:

Dave knew now that all he had hoped for was his.

I will not be reading this novel a third time.

Personal note: In the midst of reading The Heart of the Ancient Wood, I stumbled upon this beautiful poster. 

Good thing I put off the purchase for a couple of days. Knowing her fate, how could I put that image of Kroof on my wall.

Object and Access: A later edition, my copy was purchased for $2.50 sometime in the early 'eighties at Montreal's Russell Books. It's title page makes a big deal of it being illustrated, but the only illustration appears on the frontispiece. The first edition, published in 1900 by Silver, Burdett & Co, features a total of six, including the one found in my Wessels edition. All are by English-born James Weston (1841-1922), a man remembered more for his landscapes than his book illustrations. Looking at those he provided for this novel, I can see why, though I am partial to this:

The Heart of the Ancient Wood first appeared – in its entirety – in the April 1900 issue of Lippincott's Magazine. The novel has enjoyed numerous editions through the decades and as number 110 was once a New Canadian Library staple. It's currently available only as part of the Formac Fiction Treasures series.  

The novel has enjoyed a Polish translation (Vsrdci pralesa, 1925).

Black panthers are not native to Canada.

As always, print on demand vultures are to be avoided. That said, I was tempted to purchase this, if only because the cover features a detail Gustav Kimt's 'Church in Unterach on Lake Attersee.'

Related posts:

Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition
Portrait of a Former Mistress

Magic Mushrooms and Bad, Bad Boys

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

Towards a Canada of Light

Looking Forward: The Strange Experience of the Rev.

   Fergus McCheyne

Rev. Hugh Pedley, B.A., D.D.
Toronto: Briggs, 1913
294 pages

The cover has it that Looking Forward is "A NOVEL FOR THE TIMES," which it most certainly was, but only to those of certain Canadian Christian denominations. The proposed union of the country's Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, then a matter of considerable debate, is its impetus. Discussions of sacerdotalism and the episcopate do feature.

Before the eyes glaze over, I rush to add that Looking Forward is also a work of science fiction, imaging a Canada in which hydroplane racing is a popular sport and airships like the Winnipeg Express whisk passengers from Montreal to the Manitoba capitol in under thirty-six hours.

The Winnipeg Express as I imagine it.
Apologies to Seth.

As the subtitle suggests, the novel's hero is Fergus McCheyne. The only son of Presbyterian pastor Rev Robert McCheyne, the young man was born and raised in Cairntable, his father's rural parish, located somewhere in easternmost Ontario (read: Glengarry County). There he was molded by his parents' faith and condemnation of everything not Presbyterian.

Old McGill, 1900

Just a small town boy, his own faith is shaken when, during his studies at McGill, he encounters students of other denominations and finds they aren't such bad fellows after all. He is shaken further when invited to attend the closing exercises of "a well-known Ladies' School" – I'm guessing Trafalgar School for Girls – where he is "confronted by the unforgettable face of Florence Atherton,"  daughter of the Methodist minister whose parish overlaps that of his father.

Fergus does his best to hide his interest in Florence, but a mother knows:

“The Methodist minister’s daughter! Oh, Fergie, what would you be doing with the likes of her? You know how your father feels, and how I feel, about these Methodists. What have we in common with them? They are all wrong in their doctrines, and what little religion they have is all sentiment and shouting.”

Frustrated, our hero finds release in attempting to solve the mystery of hibernation, a subject that has long fascinated. Evenings in which he might been courting Florence are instead spent in the spare room of his rented flat, leading to this rather chilling passage:

For his experiments he managed to smuggle in mice, kittens, and little dogs. He found it much easier to smuggle them out.

Fergus McCheyne is not the villain of this novel. Indeed, there is no villain, though things do get dark.

After many a dead dog, the experiments result in a breakthrough. Not only does Fergus find a way to induce hibernation, he creates a serum to revive the pups. It follows that the amateur scientist's next trial subject be human, but who? No monster, the young man chooses to experiment on himself. Fergus is well-aware that no one in their right mind would willingly take part and so devises a machine with battery and "automatic syringe" to inject the reviving fluid. All is to take place in a remote cavern of considerable size that our hero, a keen canoeist, had discovered on a solo expedition.

The experiment begins in late May 1902. It is meant to last no more than a week. Lest anything go amiss, Fergus has taken the precaution of leaving a letter with firm friend, Anglican clergyman Basil Manthorpe. Tragedy strikes when a squirrel disrupts Fergus's automatic syringe. An even greater tragedy has yet to occur. Rev Manthorpe is killed when the automobile in which he is riding suffers brake failure and is struck by an eastbound train in Montreal West.

The Gazette, 31 May 1913

Two old books by Montreal authors, 31 May 2025.

Fergus's letter remains unopened, hidden away in a secret compartment in Manthorpe's desk until discovered a quarter-century later by a young woman named who – wait for it – just happens to be the daughter of Florence Atherton! Now "a very sweet-faced matronly woman," Florence is married to Hugh Falconer, whom Fergus had mentored whilst the former was a senior student at McGill's Presbyterian College.   

Being a gentleman of propriety, Falconer hands the letter to Rev Manthorpe's surviving brother, who in turn shares its incredible contents. The very next morning, the two men set off for the cavern in the company of Mackenzie, a medical doctor who had been another of Fergus's friends. They expect the worst, of course, but are not so fatalistic that they don't carry a capsule containing the restorative mixture.

Frontispiece

The trio follow the letter's directions to the cavern and the hibernating man. “This is very strange,” says Dr Mackenzie, “ there are no signs of life, no pulsation, no respiration; and yet there is no sign of death. There is not the slightest evidence of decomposition. There is no odour of death. There is no shrinkage of the tissues. The skin has all the firmness and smoothness of health. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Out of caution, Fergus is brought back to the Falconer home before the restorative serum is administered. He opens his eyes to Florence's daughter, also named Florence, who has an equally unforgettable face.

In his preface, Rev Pedley acknowledges his indebtedness to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward:

Whatever opinion may be held of Bellamy’s views, no one can doubt the efficacy of his method in bringing these views to the notice of the world. To be sure, my dream is on a much narrower scale, and with a far less ambitious reach than his. That took in the entire sphere of human life; mine has to do with but a segment of that sphere. That contemplated a perfect social order; mine is content with an improved ecclesiastical situation. That beheld a new heaven and a new earth; mine looks for a Canada made better because a little more of heaven has entered into its life.

The 1927 Canada encountered by Fergus is indeed better. Poverty has been eradicated and the roads are paved with pavement:

• By this time they had turned out of the main traffic thoroughfare into a smooth-paved and absolutely dustless road... (p 124)
• With amazement he looked upon miles of paved street... (p 126)
• The locality was not unknown to McCheyne, and he remembered what it used to be – the ill-paved streets... (p 138)
• On the outskirts of Montreal, but closely knitted to it by well-paved roads... (p 154)
• Park, and drive, and terrace, well-paved streets lined with trees... (p 156)
• And it looks as if there are well-paved streets. (p 190)

There are marvels of technology and engineering like the Winnipeg Express and the much-studied, never realized, Georgian Bay Ship Canal.

A steel structure somewhat resembling the Eiffel tower sits atop Mount Royal, while Winnipeg has a mountain of its own, built and paid for by an Irish-Canadian eccentric. Two hundred feet higher that Montreal's, its summit can be reached by something called the Spirodrome. 

These advances were brought on by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists coming together in a United Church of Canada. They even get Anglicans and Baptists to pitch in. With the squabbling amongst Protestants over, all are now able to focus on the betterment of men, women, and children. Catholics serve a useful purpose in providing friendly competition.

Looking Forward is indeed less ambitious than Looking Backward. Rev Pedley's imagination, despite its focus, is not nearly so rich and his prose makes for painful reading. This passage takes place not on the Winnipeg Express but in the engine room of the Saskatchewan, another airship, where Fergus encounters a man named Dennis Mulcavey:

“I knew a man of that name. He was foreman for the Sands Company.”

   “Sure, sorr, it’s a foine mimory ye hev. That was my father, and he’s been did these twinty years.”

   “Yes,” said McCheyne, somewhat idiotically, "have a fine memory, for I do remember your father.”

   “It’s wonderful,” said the other, “but they tell me he was a foine man, and a smarrt wan, too.”

   “Yes, a very smart one.”

   The talk then turned upon the airship, the working of the engines, the liability to accident, and the time they were making on their trip, in all of which topics McCheyne took a deep interest, and won the respect of the men by the intelligent way in which he received their information.

I'm tempted to provide further examples, but won't. What I will provide is the ultimate spoiler in revealing that the novel ends with a declaration of love, followed by a marriage. The bride is Florence Falconer – not the Florence Falconer (née Atherton) who was the love of Fergus's life, rather her daughter, who we are told looks just like her matronly mother when a young woman:

“But I have heard that twenty-five years ago you felt like this towards my mother.”

   “Yes, exactly like this.”

   “So it is because you see my mother in me that you say you love me?”

   "Yes,” was the direct, honest reply.

   “Then,” said she, all lightness thrown aside and speaking in tones that trembled with emotion, “I am honoured beyond measure by such a love.”

The mother of the woman who accepts his marriage proposal will later be referred to as "the Florence of an earlier time."

I found this disturbing.

My wife is more dismissive: "It's written by a man."  

The McCheyne/Falconer wedding is well-attended. Saskatchewan engine man Dennis Mulcavey is in attendance, as is the local Catholic priest:

McCheyne stretches out his hand, which is at once enclosed in a firm and friendly clasp. Then the eyes of the two men meet... and Fergus is conscious of the only pang that has marred this crowning day. As he looks into the young priest’s eyes he feels as if gazing one moment upon a parterre of flowers, there has the next moment been the sudden opening of a cleft, and he is looking down into a profound abyss where ice and fire are strangely intermingled; and he knows that he has had a momentary glimpse of the age-long mystery of the ecclesiastically ordained celibate life.

A strange thing to include in an otherwise joyous and happy final scene, though it did serve to remind that Fergus's experiments and long hibernation would never have taken place had only his parents been willing to accept a Methodist as a daughter-in-law.

More on Looking Forward a week this Tuesday, the one hundredth anniversary of the United Church of Canada.

Trivia: Looking Forward follows The Street Called Straight as the second consecutive novel I've read to end in with a wedding. If You Want to See Your Wife Again..., the novel I tackled before these two, ends with a marriage proposal. 

Object and Access: An attractive hardcover with olive boards and full-colour frontispiece by G. Horne Russell, my copy was purchased online or US$15.00 this past February from a Manitoba bookseller. It once belonged to Lady Inez Peterson sponsor of the Lady Inez Peterson Trophy.

 

The Sherbrooke Daily Record, 4 September 1953

As far as I can tell, the novel enjoyed one printing, but with boards of different colours (green, red, and brown). As write this, four are listed for sale online, the least expensive being US$15.75.

Move quickly! The three others range in price between US$79.95 and US$150.00.

Related posts:

Looking Back on Looking Forward

The Strange Satanic Canada of a Future Past
The Long and Winding Street

"A good kidnapping story always has wide appeal."