Turns out Leonard Cohen was wrong...

... or maybe not

My Sixth and Final Canadian Book of Lists List: The Top 10 Things I Learned Through Reading and Researching the Canadian Book of Lists

Being the sixth post on

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists. 

THE TOP TEN THINGS I LEARNED THROUGH READING AND RESEARCHING THE CANADIAN BOOK OF LISTS

1. At time of composition, David Ondaatje was a student at Lakefield College School, an institution that  features in CANADA'S 10 BEST INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS FOR BOYS*. Whether its position,  #6,  is a reflection of Messer Ondaatje's feelings toward his school is unknown.

Like David Ondaatje, I was at the time a teenage schoolboy, albeit in the plebeian public system. I remember much being made about Prince Andrew attending Lakefield. Low and behold, the book includes this uncredited, poorly reproduced photo.

2. David Ondaatje is the son of Sir Christopher Ondaatje.

3. Sir Christopher Ondaatje was the president of Pagurian Press, publisher of the book.

4. In 1979, the year after Pagurian published The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists, Sir Christopher teamed up with son David's writing partner Jeremy Brown to cobble together Pagurian's The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Sex and Adventure.

5. "K-K-K-Katy" was written by Geoffrey O'Hara who, like Arthur Stringer, was a Chatham boy. 

Reading up on the song's history, I learned that in the 'twenties it had been appropriated by the Women of the Ku Klux with "K-K-K-Klanswomen."

My introduction to the song came through the folk group the Brother-in-Law.

My parents had all their albums, including The Brother-in-Law Strike Again! (1966), which features "K-K-K-Klansmen":

The Women of the Ku Klux Klan would not have been pleased.

6. In 1978 Rush was the best Canadian rock group.

Who knew!

The Band having disbanded the previous year, I would've thought it was either Teenage Head or Pointed Sticks, but THE 10 BEST CANADIAN ROCK GROUPS set me right. The list comes from Ron Scribner, President of Music Shoppe Agency. He places Heart, a group consisting entirely of Americans, at #2. Scribner's list of the THE 10 BEST MALE AND FEMALE CANADIAN VOCALISTS has Dan Hill in top spot and misspells Murray McLauchlan's name.

7. Leonard Cohen was a non-entity. He doesn't appear once in the book's 391 pages, nor does Tommy Douglas. Michael Ondaatje, David Ondaatje's uncle, is also absent.

8. Mary Anne Shadd does not feature, nor does Josiah Henson. Black Canadian history is ignored completely, and is similarly ignored in every review.

9. Kateri Tekawitha, Joseph Brant, Pauline Johnson, Francis Pegahmagabow, and Chief Dan George do not feature.

10. Before reading the Canadian Book of Lists, this Montrealer was forever pushing back against the claim that Toronto thinks itself "the centre of the universe." Now, I'm now not so sure.

* "Member schools of the Canadian Headmaster's Association only."

Related posts:

My Canadian Book of Lists Lists: An Introduction

My First Canadian Book of Lists List:
Ten Lists That Have Aged Poorly (Featuring Barbara Amiel!)

My Second Canadian Book of Lists List:
The 10 Most egregious Errors (with Timothy Findley!)

My Third Canadian Book of Lists List:
The 10 Biggest Contributors (Featuring Claire Wallace!)

My Fourth and Fifth Canadian Book of Lists Lists:

It's a Man's World... an English Man's World

CNQ: Spring? Spring Ish

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

The same might be said of a magazine's Spring Issue landing in July. Something is seriously wrong, though I dare say we're getting used to it. Yesterday, I donned a mask, looked about, and felt good that others waiting to buy beer had done the same.

What a long, strange year this has been... and it's barely half-way done. I like to think the arrival of this new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries signals a return to better times. There's a whole lot to look at, like this issue's What's Old, which features:

Here I remind readers that my birthday is next month.

The Dusty Bookcase column in this issue concerns Robert W. Service's thriller The Master of the Microbe. Published in 1926, its hero, an American expat living in Montparnasse, stumbles over a plot to unleash a deadly virus that attacks the respiratory system. Its earliest pages are as interesting and entertaining as anything I've read this year.

You'll also find Bruce Whiteman on George Fetherling, whose The Writing Life (Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 2013) I edited:

I'm all in with Nigel Beale, who sounds off on the disregard this country demonstrates toward its literary heritage:

David Mason is spot on: There's no such thing as book hoarding.

The embarrassment of riches continues with Colette Maitland's contribution:

And then there's Cynthia Holz's memoir, 'Out of the Bronx':

Other contributors include:

Jeff Bursey

Page Cooper

Elaine Dewar

Meags Fitzgerald

Stephen Fowler

Ulrikka S. Gernes

Basia Gilas

Douglas Glover

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Alex Pugsley

Seth

Kelly S. Thompson

Shelley Wood

and

editor Emily Donaldson

An unexpected treat, the copy I received included this insert:

Again, my birthday is next month.

Canada Reads: No Country for Old Books

For those who just can't wait, the essay on Canada Reads I wrote for next month's Canadian Notes & Queries has just been posted on the magazine's website. You can read it here:

No Country for Old Books

Canada Reads itself begins airing today. You can listen to it here:

Canada Reads

What fun!

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)

CBC's Awful List, Radio-Canada's Disheartening List,
and Perhaps the Best Book List I've Ever Seen

On the Disgrace That Is CBC Books' 100 Young Adult Books

That Make You Proud to Be Canadian

CBC Books' French Problem

Leonard Cohen Spoils Christmas

Related posts:

Amazon Customer:

'I couldn't throw it away or burn it as I would have liked to do'

Amazon Customers:

Mavis Gallant Was a Stuck Up Intellectual

Who Wouldn't Deliver Her Books

An Amazon Customer is Confused;

Timothy Findley Pays the Price

Much Ado About Anne

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

The Return of the Amazon Customer Review

The Dustiest Bookcase: D is for Daniells

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

They're in storage as we build our new home.

Patience, please.

Deeper Into the Forest

Roy Daniells

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1948
72 pages

A thing of beauty, and so a joy forever, I bought my pristine copy of Deeper Into the Forest three years ago for fifteen dollars. That price – less than a can of President's Choice coffee – speaks ill of this country's recognition of its literature.

But who am I to judge? I still haven't read Daniells' collection.

Deeper Into the Forest holds the distinction of being the very first Indian File Book, a series that would include three Governor General's Award-winners: James Reaney's The Red Heart (1949), James Wreford Watson's Of Time and the Lover (1950), and P.K. Page's The Metal and the Flower (1956). The ninth and last last Indian File Book, John Glassco's The Deficit Made Flesh (1958), is the one I know the best. For a time, Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth was under consideration as the tenth title.

Indian File Books had uniform dust jackets; the series name had to do with the boards hidden underneath each. All nine were adaptations of designs by "West Coast and Plains Indians" by WASP Torontonian Paul Arthur.

Deeper Into the Forest
Roy Daniells

Of Time and the Lover
James Wreford Watson

The Deficit Made Flesh
John Glassco

Cultural appropriation, of course.

Did anyone notice?

Indian File Books had print runs of 400 copies.

The bulk of Glassco's were remaindered for 29¢.

Hardly anyone pays them notice now.

Related post:

Frank Newfeld's Masterpiece (and Leonard Cohen's Unseen Face for Tits)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year

An annus horribulus, the death of David Bowie ten days in cast a pall that just wouldn't lift. These have been days of loss and unwelcome surprises, and November 8 killed all hopes for a better New Year.

The evening before the American election, the great Leonard Cohen died. I'd found his Flowers for Hitler a week earlier, squeezed between neglected books in a sidewalk dollar cart. Storm clouds were just about to burst. It's a first edition, but the condition is not the best; booksellers would describe it as a "reading copy." I'm all for reading copies. Books are meant to be read, as this one clearly has. My favourite purchase of 2016, this is how I choose to remember the year... rescuing a book from the rain.

This was the year my collection of Canadian literature took over the ninth of our nine bookcases.

You always knew there was more than one dusty bookcase, right?

Foreign authors have been relegated to the attic, though some sit in the basement of the St Marys Public Library awaiting the semi-annual Book Sale. Anyone looking for a century-old set of Conrad will find themselves in luck this spring.

.

Yes, this proved a particularly good year for buying books, despite an increasingly tightening budget. Case in point: the first American edition of Hilda Wade: A Woman of Tenacity of Purpose pictured above. Typically priced comfortably in the three digits, I paid US$6.00 after winning it in an online auction. With ninety-eight illustrations by Gordon Browne, I don't exaggerate in describing it as one of the most beautiful in my collection.

What follows are the eight other favourite acquisitions. You'll note that some weren't book buys but gifts. Given my name, you'll understand that I'm drawn to alliteration.

Linnet: A Romance
Grant Allen
New York: New Amsterdam, 1900

"Allen's last substantial novel," writes biographer Peter Morton. I first learned of this work while researching my first book, Character Parts, and have been hoping to score a copy ever since. Another online auction victory, I won this first American edition for US$16.00.

Black Feather
Benge Atlee
New York: Scribners, 1939

Atlee served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War. In civilian life, he served as Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Dalhousie. His only novel, this was a gift from James Calhoun, my collaborator on the reissue of Peregrine Acland's All Else Is Folly.

Josie of Montreal
Florian Delorme
Montreal: Bodero, 1967

Despite the (implied) success of Aprés-Ski, I had no idea this fine example of "ADULT READING" existed until it was given me by author Fraser Sutherland.

Note: A volume in the Aphrodite Collection.

The Midnight Queen
Mrs May Agnes Fleming
New York: Hurst, [n.d.]

One of the three books I'm urging publishers consider returning to print, The Midnight Queen is the one of the most entertaining novels I've read since beginning this exploration. It's no small wonder that Mrs Fleming (1840-1880) was our first bestselling author. You can read my review here.

Edith Percival; Or, Her Heart or Her Hand?
May Agnes Fleming
New York: Street and Smith, [n.d.]

A later edition – perhaps the last – of Mrs Fleming's 1893 bestseller... But wait, didn't she die in 1880? Is it really hers?  This is one of five Street & Smith Flemings won for US$1.99 each on eBay. Mine were the only bids.

Legends of My People the Great Ojibway
Norval Morrisseau
Toronto: Ryerson, 1965

Bought for a dollar earlier this month at the Stratford Salvation Army Thrift Store. Signed by the artist.

A book I'll be handing down to my daughter.

Dust and Ashes
A.C. Stewart
n.p.: Published by the Author, 1910

A curious collection of verse. Regular readers will remember Stewart's "On the Drowning of a French-Canadian Laborer", which I shared this past Labour Day.

A gift from booksellers Vanessa Brown and Jason Dickson of Brown & Dickson in London, Ontario.

The Silver Poppy
Arthur Stringer
New York: Appleton, 1903

I thought I was pretty much done with collecting Stringer, but then spotted this first edition of his debut at London's Attic Books. Price: $10.

The scan doesn't do it justice.

Those poppies really shine.



Let us all work to make 2017 a better year.

I myself resolve to kick harder against the pricks.

Related posts:

Ten of the Best: Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books

The Most Daring New Novelist on the Scene Today!

There Are No Rules for Leonard Cohen!

Leonard Cohen Erotica… and John Glassco Porn

Five glimpses of Leonard Cohen's short story "Barbers and Lovers", from the Spring 1971 issue of Ingluvin.

The artwork is by Susan Hales.

Five pages later, John Glassco offers "Saisons de l'avenir" and "The Marital Sex Education Film":

All three published once… and never again.

Brian Moore's Canada for Americans – and isn't that Leonard Cohen?

Canada
Brian Moore and the Editors of LIFE
New York: Time, 1963

The LIFE World Library was once found in every third suburban rec room and on one of ten coffee tables. That's what I remember, anyway. Now you can't give them away.

There were thirty-two volumes in all, but Canada is the only one I own. I paid $1.50 – entirely too much – at a Toronto Goodwill fourteen years ago, and have been moving it about the country ever since. Until yesterday, it was one of only two Brian Moore titles I hadn't read; today Murder in Majorca stands alone.

Canada is an odd duck. It's Moore's only non-fiction book and his only collaboration. Just who are those "Editors of LIFE"? One was Oliver E. Allen, who would one day garner praise for New York, New York: A History of the World's Most Exhilarating City and The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall.

Knowing that the Library was sold throughout the anglosphere, and was translated into French, German, Dutch and Spanish, I was surprised to see the extent to which Canada is tailored toward American readers. The Introduction is written by Livingston T. Merchant, former U.S. Ambassador to Canada (1956-58). "For most of us in the United States, Canada is not really a foreign country", writes the diplomat. "And failure to grasp the simple fact accounts for much of the difficulty which growingly attends our relationship." So it is that in Ambassador Merchant's opinion, the book provides a "needed service".

This all sounds dry, but isn't because Moore is a real pro. For evidence, look no further than his chapter on Canadian history: Lief Erikson to Lester Pearson in under 4500 words and he still finds space for the Fenian Raids.

Each volume in the series had a history chapter; it's in the others that Moore really shines. His writing on Quebec, not yet three years into the Quiet Revolution, is as much about how the province is (or was) as how it will be (or is). A chapter on post-war immigration draws on his own experiences and includes this horribly accurate description: "The cities split at their extremities, disgorging long, untidy entrails of new concrete factories, shopping centers and suburban office blocks."

(cliquez pour agrandir)

No chapter is more surprising than "Clubmen and the Other Club", which begins:

There is no such person as Stewart Henderson McMaster, yet he is easily invented. Almost certainly his name will have a Scottish ring. He is English on his mother's side, and his wife, the granddaughter of an Anglican bishop, is also of English descent. He is director of two or more of Canada's dominant business corporations, a university governor, an executive member of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He sits on the board of more than a dozen charitable institutions.

Moore's "Other Club", composed of members of the intellectual class, is personified by clergyman's son "Gordon Bruce Howard",  a Rhodes scholar who sipped sherry at Oxford with "the brightest minds from all over the British Commonwealth". Although Moore doesn't say, Gordie Howard is just the sort of who would have visited Montreal's Hostellerie, where drink flowed freely and sweaters were bulky.

Canada includes three images of the café. This shot appears to capture a twenty-something Leonard Cohen.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

That's him on the far right, right?

Being a LIFE book, there are photos aplenty. My favourite is this oddly unsettling image of Mme Edmond-Louis Simard and family of Bagotville.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

More than a half-century later, this photograph of hydro workers in Kitimat looks like something from the future.

I'd never seen this photograph of Hugh MacLennan, whom Moore describes as "the only serious novelist of the 1940s".

And here's Morley Callaghan, "for many years a neglected oddity in his native city."

Meanwhile, Harold Town and Tom Onley adopt the painter's pose.

A chicken in every pot and a Moore in every home. Not quite, but it is nice to think that they were once so common. I wonder how many were read. Or did people just look at the pictures?

Did they even do that?

Trivia: Moore wasn't the only name recruited by LIFE. Hammond Innes provided a volume on Scandinavia. Elizabeth Bishop got paid US$10,000 (over US$75,000 today) for her volume on Brazil.

Object: A 160-page hardcover, featuring 104 photographs, six paintings, four illustrations and three maps (four with the endpapers). Loads of copies are available online; pay no more than one dollar. Goodhearted souls who volunteer at library book sales may snag a copy en route to being pulped.

Easily found in academic libraries; less so in public libraries.