Dining with Mister Dressup

Air Fare: The Entertainers Entertain
Allan Gould
Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1984

Okay, so I never dined with Mr Dressup, but I did once break bread with Knowlton Nash. Both idols of sorts, they're just two of the forty-one CBC names found in this artifact of better times. Imagine, our public broadcaster once published books. Air Fare is not its greatest achievement – Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination was a CBC publication – but it is good fun.

The concept here is simple: Allan Gould profiles some of the Mother Corp's better-known employees, who in turn share their favourite recipes.

I purchased my copy last December in preparation for a resolution that would've had me cooking up a storm in the New Year. What dinner guest wouldn't be impressed by Lister Sinclair's Lamb Chops Champvallon or Gerard Parkes' Funghi Alla Panna?

Ten weeks into 2013, I've tackled just five. Thus far, the only disappointment has come in the form of Martha Gibson's hand-moulded Tuna Cutlets: pasty post-war comfort food.

The best comes from Mr Dressup, Ernie Coombs, himself:

Pasta with Clam Sauce

Ingredients
¼ cup olive oil
1 medium cheese clove, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
½ green pepper, chopped
2 5 oz. cans baby clams, minced
Parsley, chopped
Optional wine, grated Romano cheese
Pasta

Instructions
Sauté garlic in olive oil until dark brown, then discard. Add green pepper and onion to oil, and sauté until soft. Toss in a splash or two of white wine, then add the clams and their broth. When the sauce is thoroughly heated, scatter the chopped parsley onto it, and serve over your favourite pasta. Grated cheese may be added at this point.
Serves 4

Wine
Make sure the children are in bed, then open a bottle of Soave or dry Orvieto.

Tony Aspler provided the wine tip, but I'm left wondering about the parenting advice. After all, Mr D didn't appear to have any qualms about having son Chris around during the cooking.

Pasta with Clam Sauce is delicious, but what I like most about Air Fare are the 110 photographs of these CBC employees at work and home. Take Marketplace co-hosts Bill Paul and Christine Johnson. Bill was the first to get a computer, but Christine still had the better phone.

Though I'd seen corners of Clyde Gilmour's record collection before, this further glimpse was appreciated.

Who wouldn't want to scan Knowlton Nash's bookcase? Look, he has a copy of John Ralston Saul's Baraka! Just like me!

Meanwhile, Pierre Berton gives yet another lesson in self-promotion.

The profiles – "served up with the delicious humour of Allan Gould", says one ad – are for the most part  forgettable: "Let's get something straight, right off the top: Dennis Trudeau is not related to Him." CBC types already knew – and who but CBC types were going to be buying this thing?

Donning my publishing hat, I'd say my greatest problem with this book lies in the title: Air Fare is all too easily misread as Air Farce – a problem made worse by putting Luba Goy on the cover. As a reader and longtime CBC type myself, I take issue with the subtitle: The Entertainers Entertain. I've never thought of Knowlton Nash, Bill Paul, Christine Johnson or Dennis Trudeau as entertainers – and certainly not Mr Dressup. Today's CBC on the other hand...

Object: An 8½"x10" paperback, 16o pages in length. Though it enjoyed only one printing, that run numbered 20,000 copies. As I say, an artifact from better times.

John Murtagh's cover design owes more than a nod to that 'eighties staple The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Access: WorldCat records just seven copies in Canadian libraries, the beleaguered Library and Archives Canada included. Decent used copies are out there and can be purchased online for as little as $5.45.

A Timely Editorial Cartoon from 1875

L'Opinion publique, August 1875

The biggest thing that Elections Canada can wield in a case where a politician overspends is a thousand dollar fine. Now, theoretically you can also send somebody to jail for up to three months, but everyone knows that's not going to happen.

— Terry Milewski on Power & Politics, 17 October 2012

Minister Peter Penashue and Prime Minister Stephen Harper
24 January 2012

Celebrating the Northrop Frye Centenary

Herman Northrop Frye

(14 July 1912 - 23 January 1991)

The great man in conversation with historian Ramsay Cook, broadcast 3 September 1973.

The Pan Jalna (and the Careening Jalnawagon)

The Whiteoak books represent the idealized portrait of Canada, which all English people have. Life is hardly ever painful at Jalna. It's comfortable, it's exciting, there are domestic dramas going on. I think that Englishmen like to believe that anywhere abroad life goes on as it used to go on in England. We always like to think that life for our parents must have been wonderful and life for us is horrid. Englishmen reading about the Whiteoaks think that life is lived that way now, and we know that life is not lived that way in England – or in Canada.

– Lovat Dickson

In the final pages of his 1966 biography, Mazo de la Roche of Jalna, Ronald Hambleton remarks on the very different reception the author has been accorded by her "three most important audiences". American acclaim, brought when Jalna took the 1927 Atlantic Monthly Award for "novel of the year", faded as the series progressed. Canadians cooled as that it became apparent that de la Roche's focus was on a country that had long passed. Hambleton concludes, "in Britain her reception continued and continues to be warm."

By the mid-sixties, Pan, de la Roche's British paperback publisher since 1948, had sold more than two million copies of the series' titles. Things were still balmy on 20 May 1971, when The Whiteoaks of Jalna began filming. In The Secret of Jalna, the enthusiastic Ronald Hambleton writes of "the careening Jalnawagon, whose pace as a literary phenomenon has showed no signs of slackening since Mazo de la Roche pencilled the first lines in late 1925."

In 1972, Pan issued tie-in editions that featured stills from the series and did one more revamp. Now, the Jalnawagon runs no more... at least not for Pan. Toronto's Dundurn Press publishes the sixteen books of the Whiteoak Chronicles with a cover image of "Benares", the Mississauga home upon with Jalna was modelled. They're attractive enough, but I much prefer the Pan editions of the 'fifties and 'sixties. A visual feast:

Jalna panned:

The Globe & Mail, 7 January 1972

Related posts:

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret Exposed! (Part I)

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret Exposed! (Part II)

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret Exposed! (Part II)

This second part of my review of Ronald Hamilton's The Secret of Jalna now appears, revised and rewritten, in:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Globe & Mail, 3 March 1972

Related posts:

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret Exposed! (Part I)

The Pan Jalna (and the Careering Jalnawagon)

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret Exposed! (Part I)

The Secret of Jalna

Ronald Hambleton

Toronto: PaperJacks, 1972

175 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related posts:

Jalna's Dirty LIttle Secret Exposed! (Part II)

The Pan Jalna (and the Careering Jalnawagon)

Serving Up Louis Riel

A few final words on Swan Publishing. The company put out only four books by Canadian authors, but this wasn't one of them. A shame we can't claim it; Fanny aside, Strange Empire was the best book on their list. Author Joseph Kinsey Howard was a Montanan, a local historian whose interests clearly recognized no borders. The biography a very strong work and a good read, though it suffers greatly from a lack of references. Strange Empire was first published by Morrow in 1952, a year after Howard's death of a heart attack. He was 45 years old.

Swan's cover image comes from Riel, a 1961 CBC drama that featured Bruno Gerussi as the Métis leader. Forgotten today, it was a big deal at the time. One reviewer described the actor's performance as career defining, likening it to countryman Raymond Massey's portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. In other words, we should be remembering Gerussi as Louis Riel, not log scavenger Nick Adonidas. Still, is the image not an odd choice? The programme aired four years before the book appeared, so it could hardly be considered a tie-in. What's more, the future Beachcombers star looked nothing at all like Riel. Swan seem to have figured all this out when reprinting the book in 1970, replacing Gerussi's photo with text, text and more text – even the title is longer. As far as I've been able to determine, the reprint marked the end of Swan as a publisher.

Digestif: Writing this I was reminded of Celebrity Cooks, the show Gerussi hosted at the height of his fame. I never watched the thing – as a kid I had no idea who these people were. Mary Travers? Wilf Carter? Judy La Marsh? The only name that meant anything to me was Margaret Trudeau. Eartha Kitt one week, Peter C. Newman the next, it was such a mixed bag. That said, the years have passed – older, taller and wiser, I long to see these episodes. YouTube only whets the appetite, offering nothing more than opening credits and eight minutes and eleven seconds of champagne-swilling celebrity cook Toller Cranston.

Interesting to see that the figure skater dressed the same whether on or off the ice. Then again, it was the 'seventies; Gerussi's ensemble is all that different.

The show spawned Celebrity Cooks, Recipe Book I (Vancouver: Initiative, 1975), Celebrity Cooks, Recipe Book II (Vancouver: Initiative, 1977) and The New Celebrity Cooks Cookbook (Agincourt, ON: Methuen, 1979). I'll be on the lookout for these. What better way to wow dinner guests than to serve them Toller Cranston's cheese cake. He calls it "Tolly's Folly".

Later that same day: YouTube has removed Toller Cranston's Celebrity Cooks appearance, thus depriving my daughter of the joy of watching the catsuited figure skater down glass after glass of bubbly. A coincidence? I like to think so – though it was on the site for nearly three years. Dare I try a second clip? Yes, I dare.

Related posts:

Anything for a Buck (or Thereabouts)

Gay Swans

One Book Wonder?

I've been reading Kicking Tomorrow, Daniel Richler's literary debut, published nearly two decades ago by McClelland and Stewart. Like many a first novel, it's a coming of age story... and, the author being several years older than myself, provides glimpses of a heady, trippy Anglo-Montreal scene that I just missed. I like Kicking Tomorrow, find much to admire in Richler's writing, and I want more. So, a question nags: Where is Richer's second novel? Don't get me wrong, hardly anyone has one novel in them, never mind two, it's just that the author's bio tells us to expect another.

The last I saw of "Daniel Richler, novelist" was in a 1996 episode of The Newsroom. Five years after Kicking Tomorrow was published, and it seems Richler is still obliged to do publicity. Here he has to put up with a brain-numbing interview with anchor Jim Walcott (Peter Keleghan), which in turn leads to this rant leveled at executive producer George Findlay (Ken Finkleman):

RICHLER: First, I said I would come on this show on the condition that my father is not mentioned. Not only does he mention my father, but he obsesses over this Morde-kai, Morde-hai shit. I mean, he's a fucking idiot.

FINDLAY: I know he's an idiot, but you were great. You were great.

RICHLER: The only thing he knows about my novel are the number of pages that are in it. Did he count that himself, or did somebody do that for him? Then he goes on about I took a shot at fiction. I did not take a fucking shot at fiction. I wrote a fucking novel for which I received a substantial fucking advance.

Will someone not give this man another substantial fucking advance?

Trivia: During the interview, Walcott holds up the shorter American edition, but gives the Canadian page count: "... and has taken a shot at fiction himself with a new book, which I haven't read yet, but I hear is terrific. Uh, what is it? 370... 376 pages. Almost 400 pages."

Related post:

One Band Wonder?