Looking Back on Looking Forward

The Daily Witness, 16 May 1913

An addendum to last week's post on Looking Forward by Hugh Pedley.

Looking Forward features cub reporter Billy Scooper. We also meet a disreputable promoter named Humphrey Hustleman. There aren't really any laughs, but there is fun to be had. 

A 1913 novel set in 1927, Looking Forward reminded me of nothing so much as Tim Ososko's 1979 book Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?

Oh, boy, was it!

I gobbled up every detail of Rev Pedley's future Canada no matter how small, as in this description of a Montreal streetcar:

This carriage of the common people was not without its touch of the beautiful. Instead of the long row of heterogeneous advertisements above the windows was a series of fine reproductions of great masters. The city authorities had evidently decided that a ride in a street-car might be a phase of the aesthetic education of the people. They had come to the conclusion that, the suggestion of beauty was better for the health of the people than the suggestion of disease as furnished by the advertisements of patent medicines.

Montreal plays a central role in Looking Forward. It is the city in which Fergus attends university, it is the city in which he befriends those of different faiths, it is the city in which he meets and falls in love with Florence Atherton, it is the city in which he solves the mysteries of hibernation, and it is the city in which he marries Florence Atherton's daughter.

Its best not to focus on that last bit.

Some of Rev Pedley's predictions, like the Mount Royal Tunnel, would've been safe bets. Work began in 1911, two years before Looking Forward was published.  

Construction of the Mount Royal Tunnel, c.1912.

He also anticipates the amalgamation Port Arthur and Fort William, a done deal by 1927, which in reality did not take place until 1970. Rev Pedley's unified city is called Portchester, not Thunder Bay.

Most remarkably, this 1913 novel describes "magnificent new government buildings, which a devastating fire had rendered necessary." It was not three years after publication that the seat of Canadian government went up in flames.

The Globe, 4 February 1916

Telephones, automobiles, paved streets, aeroplanes, and dirigibles, the author plays it safe with his predictions. The outlier is a mountain built in the heart of Winnipeg by wealthy bachelor Irish-Canadian Teddy Ryan. I get the feeling that its existence is meant to be a joke. 

Being a student of the Great War, and noting that this novel dates from 1913, I looked for recognition that  Armageddon might be in the offing. I found it when Billy Scooper tells Fergus that news of his quarter-century hibernation has broken in the eastern papers. “Is it likely to make a stir?” our hero asks:

“Stir! Stir!” said the man excitedly. “Stir! The biggest ship on the sea might go down with all on board, the navies of Britain and France might have a battle with those of the Triple Alliance, Teddy Ryan’s mountain might turn into a volcano, and there wouldn’t be a bigger stir than there’s going to be over this.”

Reference to the Triple Alliance sent a bit of a chill.

Looking Forward was published the year before the start of the Great War. On 30 May 1915, when the conflict was in full force, Rev Pedley preached a sermon titled 'War and the New Earth,' in which he said these words:

Forget not, O forget not, that which is perhaps the noblest sacrifice of all, the surrender by parents of their sons, by wives of their husbands, to the hardships and deadly perils of war by land and self.

Hugh Pedley and his wife Eliza (née Field) had three sons. The eldest, Norman Field Pedley (1884-1909), a civil engineer, died when he was struck by a train in Springfield, Illinois.

Old McGill, 1906

Once war was declared, youngest son, Frank Gordon Pedley (1892-1972), enlisted and served ten months before returning to McGill to continue his medical studies.

Old McGill, 1913

Born in 1888, middle brother Hugh Stowell Pedley, a lawyer, served twenty-nine months. He was killed on 31 January 1918. His body rests at Villers-au-Bois, Departement du Pas-de-Calais, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.

Old McGill, 1912

Both men Frank and Hugh were recipients of the Military Cross.

Their father died on 26 July 1923, not two years before the realization of the union of of Canada's Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches.

  

The Gazette, 27 July 1923 

The United Church of Canada celebrates its centenary today.

 

Would that Rev Pedley had lived to see it. Would that son Hugh had lived nearly so long.

Reprise: In the epilogue, the reader is presented with this passage which takes place in a future 1927 on the lookout of the steel structure lookout atop Mount Royal:

A couple of German merchants who are in Canada with a view to trade extension stop for a moment, and one says to the other: “Ach Gott! gegen diese zu fechten ware eine schande” (Good heavens! To fight with such as these would be a shame.)

Related post:

Towards a Canada of Light

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."