In Canada's Green and Pleasant Land

As a Watered Garden
Marian Keith [Mary Esther Miller MacGregor]
Toronto; McClelland & Stewart, 1946
297 pages

My Marian Keith collection began with The Bells of St Stephens, purchased seventeen years ago in London, Ontario, not long after our move to nearby St Marys. I ask you, what self-respecting bibliophile could pass up a jacket like this?

I'd barely heard of Marian Keith and had no idea how popular she'd once been in that area of the country. Eight more Marian Keith titles were added during our decade in St Marys. They were thick on the ground. The Bells of St Stephen's set me back four dollars, twice as much as any other. A few were rescued after having failed to sell at library book sales. Before last week, I'd never read one.

I've now read one.

Academics position Duncan Polite as Keith at her best, but as I'd never come across a copy my foray into the author's work ended up being the late career As a Watered Garden. Why this novel? Well, I'd read that the plot involved a great mystery.

The first chapter is the best. Thirty-five-year-old Islay Drummond is taking stock of the large family farmhouse off Georgian Bay, recently inherited from Great-Aunt Christena. No one knows just what to make of the bequeathal, least of all sisters Kate and Jeanette:

"More sensible if she left it to me." Jeannette had been wanting to see this since the will was read. "What a wonderful place to leave the children summers!"

Kate replies:

"Wonder she didn't saddle us with it, she knew how I hated the old farm. She was quite capable of it!" 

The answer seems to be that Islay happened by not long before the old woman died. It was the first visit in a very long time. Islay had meant to drop by again, but you know how busy things can get.

Islay plans on spending the summer at the old farmhouse, having been granted a four month leave from her employer, "the irritable and exacting Mr. Francis," but neither sister believes she'll last. Both point to the mod cons of Islay's life in the city. "She has an electric range in her apartment!" Kate exclaims. "And frigidaire," adds Jeanette.

These exchanges take place shortly before Kate and Jeanette gather their respective broods and drive away. Stoic elder brother Robert follows. He'd arrived without wife Mary and their children. Pete, who is closest to Islay in both age and affection, is the baby of the family. He lives the life playboy and so speeds off in a small little coupe, honking all the way.

If, like me, you enjoy novels dealing with family dynamics, As a Watered Garden may not be for you. Islay's siblings never return. That said, distant relatives abound. The closest is cousin Steve Laird whose farm borders hers. He's planted a vegetable garden for Islay, but doesn't appear to be interested in doing much more.

This poses a bit of a problem as Islay is intent on dedicating her four months away from Mr Francis to writing a novel:

It was her secret. Even Pete didn't know it. That winter when she broke her ankle... she'd been laid up for weeks. And somehow she'd started scribbling – little sketches of the office staff  – 'profiles' the editor called them, whisking through them competently. Ought to be a story, must have a plot. Make a real yarn of it. That's what people asked for... Well, this summer she was going to see what she could do.

What Islay wants more than anything is silence and solitude.

She won't get it. 

We know from the first that there is an ex-fiancé around and about – he threw her over years ago for a New York City party girl – but the first intrusion comes in the form of anemic waif Artie. 

How could Islay turn the boy away? Artie's memories are dominated by a draught that caused the loss of his family's farm and contributed to the deaths of his two siblings. The surviving family is newly arrived in the area, having driven over three thousand kilometers from dusty Saskatchewan.

Young Artie first appears during a downpour. As a Watered Garden being the title, I'm certain this is intentional. Later on, the house in which the boy and his parents live will be flooded during a summer storm.

There's irony for you.

Things happen, not nearly so dire, and are interesting if inconsequential. Other characters intrude on Islay's solitude and her literary effort stalls. The mystery, such as it is, concerns Great-Uncle Peter's daughter Bessie:

Great-Aunt Christena had burned Bessie’s picture up. You never talked about Bessie. Never even said her name. Even when you were very small you knew not to do that.

But why?

The answer has nothing to do with murder, adultery or anything even remotely unpleasant. Quite the opposite. It's really of a type that is common in family histories; Bessie married a man Christena disapproved of. 

The Windsor Star, 30 November 1946

Though published post-war, As a Watered Garden is set in the final summer before the conflict. I was struck that the Drummond siblings are entirely untouched the Great Depression. Every one of them is thriving. The automobiles used in their departure are spiffy. Though Islay is a secretary, hers is every bit as new and stylish. Even amongst the well-to-do, she really cuts a figure with her stylish outfits. Artie's family aside, not one character struggles with economic circumstance.

As a Watered Garden has been described as the first book in Keith's Georgian Bay Trilogy. Yonder Shining Light and Lilacs in the Dooryard followed, which take the reader through the Second World War into the post-war, though I don't expect I'll be bothering with either.

As a Watered Garden was a perfectly pleasant read, if you like that sort of thing.

The critics rave: 

The men and women with whom she peoples her books are sympathetically real and easily recognizable as those one meets in everyday life. And she herself obviously believes that everything always comes out right in the end. While her books may never make any shattering imprint upon the larger stream of literature they leave a very peasant ripple in our Canadian brook.

– Eileen Kerr, The Gazette, 7 December 1946

Object and Access: Lacking the dust jacket, bound in blue boards, my copy once belonged to E.L. MacDougall of 189 Blythwood Road, Toronto.

As I write, two copies are listed for sale online, both offered by London, Ontario booksellers. At US$20.00, the cheaper of the two has retained its dust jacket.  

Related post:

The Dustiest Bookcase: K is for Keith

The 1925 Globe 110: Less Motoring, More Reading

Much to my dismay, this year's Globe 100 was published late last month. I thought I'd made it clear last year that November is too early. This annual round-up of the year's best books should never appear before December. How is it that a conservative newspaper is so willing to flout tradition?

Four books from the Globe's 1925 and 2025 lists.

Published on the second Wednesday in December, the 1925 list is introduced by Arts editor M.O. Hammond, who shares his concerns regarding motoring, dancing and radio, while repositioning books as something other than diversions:  

"It is a good year for books," writes Hammond, and yet at 110 titles the 1925 Globe list is far shorter than any previous year. For goodness sake, the 1920 list numbered 264!

I suspect the Globe advertising department was somewhat to blame. The list runs just three pages, and in terms of column inches the feature attracted less than a third of the last year's advertising. Of the companies that did place ads, Eaton's wins for including this:

How I'd love to see a photo the Book Advisor's "special nook."

(Apologies, I didn't mean that to sound filthy.)

The 1925 Globe 110, consists of nine categories:

Travel

Juvenile

Economics & Sociology

Poetry & Drama

Fiction by Canadian Writers

British & Foreign Fiction [sic]

History & Biography

Religion & Theology

Essays

Canadians are represented in every one save 'British & Foreign Fiction' (naturally) and 'Economics & Sociology' (make of that what you will). More than ever, Canadians dominate 'Poetry & Drama' taking nine of the ten titles:

Far Horizons - Bliss Carman

Canadian Singers and their Songs - Edward S. Carswell

Pillar of Smoke - John Crichton [Norman Gregor Guthrie]

Songs of a Bluenose - H.A. Cody

Low Life: A Comedy in Three Acts - Mazo de la Roche

British Drama - Allardyce Nicoll

Little Songs - Majorie L.C. Pickthall

Wayside Gleams - Laura G. Salverson

The Sea Wall - Lyon Sharmon

Locker Room Ballads - W. Hastings Webling

To my surprise, three of the ten feature in my collection:

The introduction to the two fiction categories comes courtesy of C.C. Jenkins. He begins: "Glancing over the past year's lists of fiction, one is moved to the comment that, though there are a few outstanding works, [there are] none that give promise of greatness." 

Here are eight 1925 novels that did not make the Globe's 1925 list:

Dark Laughter - Sherwood Anderson

Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

No More Parades - Ford Maddox Ford

Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Anita Loos

Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf 

Where Hammond was concerned of strain, stress, and restlessness in post-war society, Jenkins writes of nervousness and hysterical predilections of its fiction, all the while gently assuring the reader that these conditions are abating:

Fiction is slipping back into its old groove – that of merely telling a story and telling it as well as possible  – which groove, after all, may be followed with permanent success. That is what the reader has demanded in the past and what he will continue to demand in the future. 'Jazzed ' literature is but a passing phase, which has just about seen its day.

He's partial to old standbys like James Oliver Curwood, Jeffery Farnol. Ellen Glasgow, A.S.M. Hutchinson, William J. Locke, George Barr McCutcheon, and Stewart Edward White, all of whom are included in this list.

For the second year running, Canadian fiction writers score eighteen titles:

Glorious Apollo - E. Barrington

Treading the Wine Press - Ralph Connor

The Scarlet Sash - John M. Elson

The Golden Galleon of Caribee - Gordon Hill Grahame

The Living Forest - Arthur Heming

Day Before Yesterday -Fred Jacob

The High Forfeit - Basil King

Brains, Limited - Archie P. McKishnie

Painted Fires - Nellie McClung

Emily Climbs - L.M. Montgomery

Wild Geese - Martha Ostenso

Broken Waters -  Frank L. Packard

The Power and the Glory - Gilbert Parker

The Crimson West - Alex Philip

When Sparrows Fall - Laura Goodman Salverson

The Laughing Birds - Archibald Sullivan

The Chopping Bell and Other Laurentian Stories - M. Vitorin

Captain Salvation - Frederick William Wallace

I own four, yet have read only Wild Geese... and that just this October!

The well-loved olive green book is a first edition of Emily Climbs.

Though Wild Geese leads the 'Fiction by Canadian Writers' list, it's clear Jenkins does not share my enthusiasm:

I know it's been just just two months, but the impression Wild Geese left in this reader's mind is still quite deep. Jenkins isn't terribly keen on Canadian novelists and short story writers. "Fiction writers of Canada have made a formidable contribution to the world's lighter reading" isn't much of compliment. Ralph Connor's Treading the Wine Press is described as a "story with strong characters but somewhat weak in continuity and plot interest." Characters in Frank L. Packard's Broken Waters are "mere automatic, made to fit the story's needs." Alex Philip receives faint praise for The Crimson West:"a powerful bit of work, not outstanding in a literary way, but very creditably done."

Jenkins is much more complimentary of The High Forfeit by long-time Dusty Bookcase favourite Basil King:

This is one of the first books I ever bought by Rev King. How is it I still haven't read it?

Nineteen-twenty-five is the pinnacle of twentieth-century English-language literature, yet as far as the Canadian is concerned, it's little more than a dead zone. The most notable novel that did not make the Globe's list is R.T.M. Scott's The Black Magician.

It is right that it didn't make the cut.

The Canadian non-fiction titles, typically travel books, collections of sermons, and dry political biographies penned by allies, surprises with the inclusion of Marjorie Pickthall: A Book of Remembrance. A favourite volume in my library, it's a beautifully produced, loving tribute to a once-celebrated, now forgotten writer, put together by those who clearly shared great affection for their departed friend.

Marjorie Pickthall's posthumous Little Songs is listed amongst the years's best poetry collections. Like the others, it is long out of print. The good news is that two of the forty Canadian titles on the 1925 Globe 110 are in print today: Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese, Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery, and Painted Fires by Nellie McClung.*

Three is thrice the average for these century-old lists!

I like to think the Canadian books on the 2025 Globe list will fare even better. I also like to think that in one hundred years book publishing will still exist.

* When first posted, I'd written that only two titles, Wild Geese and Emily Climbs, were in print today. A reader's comment reminded me that Painted Fires was revived in 2014 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Thank you, Melwyk!

Related posts:

The Globe 100 133 of 1924: Hammond's Organ

The Globe's Best Books of 1923:

'Canadian Authors Can Be Read With Pleasure, Profit and Pride'

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

Wild Wild Geese

That Old Black Magician

A Fair Thriller

A Fair Affair
Paul Champagne
Winnipeg: Greywood, 1967
190 pages

The Canadian Government has reason to believe there is a vast conspiracy working to sabotage Expo 67. This being the summer '66 and James Bond being all the rage, stylish Serville Gart is brought in expose and defeat the villains. After all, why send in a team when, as Hollywood has shown, the right man can readily handle the job himself. As newly-minted Secret Service Agent 18 dash 67 (irritatingly, never simply "18-67"), Gart receives his assignment in a Privy Council Chamber meeting attended by various government ministers, Quebec government officials, the Mayor of Montreal, and Expo's Commissioner General.

Why Serville Gart?

Well, to begin with the man served in the Canadian Army Special Services and earned a Victoria Cross during the Korean War in rescuing fallen comrades and "single-handedly grenading a North Korean pillbox." A university swimming and wrestling champ, he was scouted by both CFL and NHL teams and once declined a hockey scholarship offered by an American college. Lest you dismiss Gart as all braun and no brain, he is also a chess master and accomplished pianist with two scholarly books to his name. 

From the start, it's clear that Gart has the goods. During the Privy Council Chamber meeting he notes something suspicious about an attache case carried by a man named Conrad, aide to the Minster of Finance. Minutes later, Conrad, who has proven himself a baddie, is lying dead with a broken neck in his Centre Block office. Conrad's innocent teenage secretary suffered a bullet to the shoulder, and is whisked off the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Our hero follows:

Gart's TR4 sped off Parliament Hill to Wellington Street. He was not sure which route would be quickest to the Civic Hospital. Some roads had been torn up by construction while others had been patched so often that they resembled backwoods hunting trails. He wondered if the Nation's Capital would ever do anything about them.
   He decided to take Wellington, then south on Bronson. He would turn left on to six-lane Carling Avenue and continue straight out to the hospital.
   At the hospital he parked his car on the emergency parking area in front of the old red building. While approaching the main entrance, he admired the colourful 12x35 feet mosaic tile mural beside it. Gart recalled that the abstract work is meant to depict the various systems of the human body and was donated by the Ottawa Civic Hospital Architectural Association. It was created by an Italian craftsman who placed the two million cut stones by hand.
   He pushed open the glass doors and strode to the reception desk. After he identified himself, the nurse buzzed a young intern, who led Gart to the elevator. They both got on.
Gart could not help noticing the pretty but efficient-looking nurse who shared the elevator with them. He mused that patients – men anyway – would probably heal much more quickly if nurses like her would wear uniforms which were not quite so, well, starchingly official.

   The elevator doors hummed open at the third floor and they all got off. The nurse turned to the right. Gart and the intern to the left; the intern kept looking right.
   They reached the appropriate room and the intern said, "Well, here we are Mr. Gart, Room 365-F," and walked briskly away.
   Gart walked into the room. The doctor was sitting alongside the girl's table. When he saw Gart, he got up and greeted him.

A first time novelist, Champagne has real problems with pacing and needless digression, the former being particularly lethal in the thriller genre.

About those digressions – here I myself digress – one gets the sense that the author is keen on including his own observations. This too features driving:

Gart drove on Carling Avenue until he spotted a "Queensway East" exit, then sped around the turn exceeding the 30 m.p.h. ramp speed by 15 m.p.h. He slowed down to let a car pass on the outside lane. He held the little sports car at seventy-five. He could see a black and white Ottawa Police car approaching on the other side of the boulevard. He recalled that for a while the City officials had thought of painting them a bright orange – an experiment. Gart thought they probably did not adopt the suggestion because a policeman from Ontario would not let a French-Canadian ride in an orange squad-car.

Given Champagne's political background (see below), the most interesting of these are five-pages of memorable campaign quips made by John Diefenbaker the "Opposition Leader" in a past election as recalled by Gart.

To be clear, that's five pages devoted to entirely irrelevant statements made by a politician during an irrelevant election campaign that occurred years previous. The Opposition Leader never appears in the novel.

Returning to the plot, microfilm of the Canadian Pavilion's blueprints are found in the Conrad's trouser cuff. Gart's investigation leads to international steel corporation Uni-Dom, which is supplying much of the material used at Expo. Uni-Dom is headed by a man known only as "Center," who is also the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Recalling the dead man's pants, my first thought was that the plan had something to do with the supports of the pavilion. Imagine one failing! This old postcard will give some idea of the disaster that might befall:

But no, the sabotage in play is far more complex and expansive. Uni-Dom is just one component of something called the Association of Insular Degaussity. The name of this highly secretive organization –unknown to all secret service agencies – comes courtesy of Endico Novak, an operative who has worked her way into the Expo offices. A Hungarian whose family fled after the 1956 revolution, she has mixed feelings about AID and mixed emotions about Gart. The two take to bed, but what he really wants is for Endico to reveal less of her body and more about the conspiracy.

And so, two days into their relationship, he slaps her around.

Endico tells him what he wants to know, sharing information about a hidden submarine base off the Gulf of St Lawrence and a secret three-acre compound beneath the Expo site housing hundreds of trained martial artists and millions of lethal shadflies.

With the aid of scuba gear, Gart infiltrates the hidden base, commandeers a sub, and enters the secret three-acre compound, only to be caught and brought to Center.     

In true Bond villain fashion, Center provides a lengthy, detailed explantation of the conspiracy and its purpose.

Here we get the first of two elements that render this otherwise botched thriller noteworthy. 

Center tells Gart that AID is funded by Europeans who are concerned that Canada is flexing its muscle as a soft power. Blame Lester B. Pearson, I suppose. Their concern is that Canada has broken from the Old Country and is setting off on an independent course that will leave it vulnerable to American influence and annexation, thus creating political imbalance. The thinking goes that the humiliation of so grand a project as Expo would put an end to Canada's aspirations.*

The second, which is far more interesting, concerns Endico Novak. She clearly has feelings for Gart, and seemed on the verge of sharing everything she knew about AID when he hit her. In the end, she betrays him for that very reason. He hit her. 

Center sends Gart off to a death that involves those lethal shadflies. He's taken to a sealed room where every two minutes increasing numbers are released. To give him a sporting chance, Gart is provided a newspaper to swat them. I like to think it's the Montreal Star; it usually had more pages than the Gazette. 

Agent 18 dash 67 manages to escape, of course.

The final pages are the best because they feature the most action. The last sees Gart leaving bickering politicos in Privy Council Chambers "with a warm understanding and smile which said that while there are many frailties in this system of government, it is still the best." 

Mine was the smile of a man who was happy to be done with this thing, yet also happy that he'd read it.

* Two observations: 

1) Canada's stance during the Vietnam War and Pearson's 2 April 1965 address at Temple University don't lend credence to AID's concerns, but then Champagne was a Tory who supported maintaining the Union Jack on our flag.  

2) That Center is not "Centre" suggests a further layer to the conspiracy, one I don't believe the author intended.

Worst passage: Longtime readers know how much I enjoy good dialogue. In this A Fair Affair fails – not so much as He Shall Return, but it is very bad. The worst comes from Expo's Commissioner General, a man who comes off like Lorenzo St. DuBois in The Producers. Here he responds to a comment made by the Minister of Finance before before assembled federal ministers and provincial office holders:

"Minny, Minny. Like, honey-baby, we're all hip to your cool efficiency. We love your pads, we love your pencils; we love your pitcher and glasses; as a matter of fact, we even love that vase of Saskatchewan lillies [sic] over there – that was expansive man expansive..."

It goes on, but I feel I've tortured enough with those detailed descriptions of Gart driving through the streets of Ottawa.

For the record, the Commissioner General of Expo was career diplomat Paul Dupuy (1896-1969). Here he is at the fair with Grace Kelly and her daughter Caroline. 

Trivia: Born and raised on the Island of Montreal, I never once heard mention of shadflies and am not sure that I've ever seen one. That said, research informs that they were a concern of Expo organizers. The shadfly, which in truth is harmless, looks nothing like the cover depiction provided by Jack Jenson and Mark Shop. 

More trivia: Thus far, the only novel I've found that references the Brothers-In-Law (mentioned here previously). This comes in the form of a complaint made by a RCMP colonel about this song:

After the Mountain City Four, the Brothers-In-Law are my very favourite Canadian folk quartet.

Even more trivia: Expo is written "EXPO" throughout the novel. I can't begin to tell you how irritating this becomes.

The critics rave?: The closest thing I've found to a review of A Fair Affair was published in the 23 September 1967 edition of the Globe & Mail, in which William French remarks on the launch of Greywood Publishing:

The first two titles are A Fair Affair by Paul Champagne, and Canada in Caricature by George Shane. Champagne's book is an Ottawa-based secret-agent send-up about a sinister organization that wants to sabotage Expo. It's really quite bad.

The back cover features what appear to be excerpts of reviews by gentlemen then writing for Time, the Globe & Mail, and the New York Times, but I have yet to find evidence that the words quoted ever appeared in those publications.

About the author: Born in 1936, Champagne was was raised in Melville, Saskatchewan. He attended the Syracuse University. Up to the time of the novel's publication, his working life involved the federal Progressive Conservative Party, much of it as a member of John Diefenbaker's staff. He served as the leader's press secretary during the ill-fated 1965 federal campaign. Here he is with Dief in the pages of the Edmonton Journal (11 September 1964).

Or maybe not. The man identified doesn't resemble one on the back cover of A Fair Affair,  nor does he look twenty-eight (as Champagne was at the time).

In September 1967, the month after the novel was published, Champagne worked against his old boss in an effort to elect Davie Fulton as Progressive Conservative Leader. Following Fulton's defeat, he soon found himself working for successful candidate Robert Stanfield. For how long, I wonder? After 1968, when he would've been in his early thirties, the trail grows very cold.

I'm sure there is more to discover.

Object and Access: A mass market paperback, typical of its time, my copy was purchased last summer from a Manitoba bookseller. At $5.00, it was a real steal. Printed only once, in August 1967, as I write no copies are listed for sale online.

The last page features two ads for "Other Greywood Paperback Originals," Winnipeg editorial cartoonist George Shane's Canada in Caricature being the first. 

The second is My Most Unforgettable Convicts by Dr Leo L. Stanley, who despite having no surgical experience served forty-eight years as Chief Surgeon at California's San Quentin State Prison. How it ended up with a start-up paperback publisher in Winnipeg is anyone's guess. Mine is that no other publisher would touch it.

A dangerous kook, Stanley believed that crime caused disease. He transplanted testicles from executed prisoners and other mammals to living inmates in the belief that they would not only reverse the aging process but cure acne, asthma, and pedophilia. Stanley performed over 10,000 testicular implants on prisoners and injected ground-up testicles into the abdomens of others. He forcibly sterilized homosexual inmates. Stanley was a staunch believer in racial segregation and eugenics, writing: "The right to bear children will in time be reserved to the fit,"

Leo L. Stanley died in 1976 at the age of ninety. He was, of course, childless.

Evil, but nowhere near so evil as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Related posts:

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery

Summer of a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

A McGill Student's Mild Summer of Love

The Little People of Expo 67
Worst. Dialogue. Ever.
P is for Plus ça change...

Tumbling Towards Mystery

The Stone Cottage Mystery
Joyce Boyle
Toronto: Macmillan, 1961
151 pages

A big city girl made unhappy by her family's move to a small town, sixteen-year-old Isobel Anderson will be a familiar figure to readers of children's fiction. In her case, the big city is Toronto; the small town is Farston, to which Isabel's father (occupation unknown) has been transferred.

Coinciding with Farston High School's Christmas break, the Andersons' arrival is soon followed by a different sort of break. One particularly blowy, snowy day, Isobel is out on a solitary a walk when she falls and does something to her foot. Isobel tries to make for home, but the pain is too great. It's all she can do to reach the nearest dwelling, an old stone cottage that sits high on the hill at the end of her road. No one responds to her knocking, but she finds the door unlocked. And that is where she is found sometime later by young Eleanor Morgan. The girl lights a fire, makes sure Isobel is comfortable, and then sets off to get help. This arrives in in the form of a sleigh driven by Doctor Gordon Brown – "I'm Doctor Gordon Brown" – who then whisks her off to hospital where "several small foot bones" are found to be broken.

Forget the foot, this mystery concerns a stone cottage. Built by Eleanor's great-great-great grandfather, the building is now owned by the town, which has handed it over as the meeting place of the Farnston High School Historical Club.

Two observations:

• at my high school, clubs met in the school itself;
• there was always a teacher present, which is never the case here.

Before you get all hot and bothered about underage drinking, drugs, and sex, let me assure you that the students of Farston High are all good kids. They welcome Isobel with great warmth, going so far as to enlisting the help of  Norwegian immigrant Nels Olsen in building an elaborate sled so that she can participate in the school's Valentine skating party.

Isobel's date, Eleanor's brother John, proves a true gentleman:

"Good time?" he asked.
   "Never better," was Isobel's answer. "Oh, John, it was a perfect evening! And all I can say is 'Thank you'!"
   "That's all you need to say," was John's reply. "Thats all you need to say when you use that tone of voice."

And off he goes home.

The Edmonton Journal,
10 September 1958

The students of Farston High School are an extremely wholesome and cheery  lot, which is not to say that there isn't tension within their midst. Understanding the source is dependent one's knowledge of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Eleanor's great-great-grandfather, Alan Donaldson, a supporter of reform, was falsely accused of being a rebel. Facing arrest, he fled to the United States and was never seen again. A box of money and papers entrusted to his care disappeared at the same time. Eleanor's great-great-grandmother was certain that her husband had hidden the box, but the Farr family is convinced that he stole it.

As expected, Isobel, Eleanor, and their schoolmates solve the mystery of the missing money and papers. That they do this with the assistance of Miss Malcolm (Isobel's Toronto history teacher), Miss Norman (Isobel's Farston history teacher), and Miss Fleming (the town librarian), raised a smile because Joyce Boyle herself was a teacher and librarian.

She never married.

I know more about her than I do my great-great-great-grandparents or even my great-great-grandparents.

Object and Access:  First published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada. Unlike Joyce Boyle's previous novel, Muskoka Holiday (1953), it was not published in the United Kingdom or the United States; something to do with the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, I expect. My copy, a second printing in olive green hardcover with mustard printing, was purchased last year at my favourite local charity shop. Sadly, it lacks the dust jacket, but what do you want for 65 cents. 

As I write, just two copies of The Stone Cottage Mystery are being sold online, both published in 1969 by Macmillan. At US$13.00, the more attractive is a hardcover with dust jacket. The other bookseller offers a paperback copy for US$68.00: 

I recommend the hardcover.

Related post:

Joyce Boyle: Early Research

Pardonable Levels of Violence

Tolerable Levels of Violence
Robert G. Collins
Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983
241 pages

Four years ago, while driving home from a grocery run in Kemptville, Ontario, I happened to tune into North Country Public Radio, Canton, New York... then pulled onto the shoulder of County Road 43 and phoned my wife.

The station was broadcasting a live report of a violent assault on the American Capitol.

Two weeks ago, the man behind that failed insurrection was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. On the very same day that felon, who treats his oaths of office as he has his marriage vows, pardoned men and women who had assaulted police officers. The Capitol Police stood by their oaths; had they turned away, it is entirely possible that Members of Congress, Senators, and the Vice-President would have been killed that day.

Senator Josh Hawley, who'd urged on the insurrectionists, ran for his life like a little boy as Officer Daniel Hodges served to protect him.

Of all I saw on 6 January, 2021, this is the footage that most haunts:

Paul Williams lookalike Patrick McCaughey III is one of the insurrectionists who very nearly killed Officer Hodges.

Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, found McCaughey guilty of:

• three counts of aiding or abetting or assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, including one involving a dangerous weapon;
• one count of obstruction of an official proceeding;
• one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder;
• one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; 
• one count of engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
• disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building;
• committing an act of violence in the Capitol Building or grounds.

On April 14, 2023, McCaughey received a seven year and six month sentence. The felon apologized to the police officers, adding that he was unworthy of the rights he'd once enjoyed. 

On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump restored those rights by pardoning McCaughey and more than 1500 other tried and convicted insurrectionists.

Tolerable Levels of Violence takes place over a period of several days in the summer of 1999. The setting is not far from where I live in the Ottawa Valley. John Cobbett, professor of English at National University ("what had been known as the University of Ottawa"), is burying the body of a man who'd managed to elude his family's security system. The intruder's head was blown off by Anne, John's pregnant wife, who'd walked in on the attempted rape of her nine-year-old son. Care is taken in disposing of the body; the dead man's friends will soon come looking. 

John and Anne's mornings begin with CBC reports of violence forecasts:

It will be another day at least before public transportation begins again and schools and theatres reopen. The National Capital Region computer forecast for today remains at Unacceptable Levels of Violence. But we're only one point below that red line, and I think we can promise our audience a socially active day tomorrow... and probably for a few days after that, with Tolerable Levels of Violence for the rest of the week.

This optimism counters the trend. Economic crisis and declining living stands have spurred violence and lawlessness, bringing an end to parliamentary democracy. Canada and the United States have been in decline for well over a decade. Their combined populations – no one pays much attention to the border anymore – is officially 120 million, with a further 35 million roaming the continent grabbing what they can and doing what they want.

When conditions are deemed tolerable, John commutes to Ottawa as the as part of an armed convoy. He's as dedicated to his profession as he is to securing the family home. When possible, he works on his latest essay: "Moral Illusions in Renaissance Literature." Anne what she can to contribute to the household income by writing optimistic children's books featuring young brothers named Tony and Toby.

The Cobbett family lives in Braeside, an unfortified hamlet roughly fifty-six kilometres west of what was once Parliament Hill. The church is a ruin, as is its gas station; most neighboring homes are burnt out shells.

In his 10 December 1983 Globe & Mail review, published three weeks to the day before 1984, William French writes:

The chilling message of this futuristic novel is that Orwell and the other doomsayers were wrong in predictions of man's fate. It's not the tyranny of totalitarian governments we have to fear, or the prospect of nuclear wasteland, but merely the escalation of the kind of random violence and terrorism that are already established throughout the world. 

I was a young pup at the time, steeped in the music of Bertolt Brecht, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Gang of Four, the Mekons, and Heaven 17.

I'd read George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, John Stewart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and watched SCTV religiously. Even then I knew that William French, for whom I have great respect, was all wrong; totalitarianism, random violence. and terrorism are an unholy trinity, as evidenced by Trump's release of Enrique Tarrio, Stewart Rhodes, and even so insignificant a figure as Patrick McCaughey III. 

This past Sunday, after another grocery run, this time to Brockville, Ontario, I looked across the St Lawrence to Morristown, New York. You could see its scattered houses quite clearly, not two kilometres across the water. Morristown was so close that I could make out the green letters on the water tower.

I hope to visit the United States again in 2029.

I have no idea what to expect.

About the author: The jacket provides scant detail – "Robert G. Collins is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. This is his first novel." – but there is a photo.

Robert George Collins (1926-2010) was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He served in the US Navy and was a veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War. After service, he emigrated to Canada where he taught at the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa. Tolerable Levels of Violence was his only novel. This obituary has more.

Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover bound in off-white boards, anyone familiar with much-missed publisher Lester & Orpen Dennys and its much-missed International Fiction List will remember the format. Tolerable Levels of Violence was #16 in the series, sandwiched between D.M. Thomas's Ararat and Childhood by Jona Oberski.

Though there was no second printing of the Lester & Orpen Dennys edition, the novel enjoyed a second life in 1985 as a Totem paperback.

I rolled my eyes at the cover, but I now see that it is faithful to the novel. The Cobbetts do indeed live in something that looks like a Confederate plantation house. I don't know whether it is based on an actual residence, but do recognize that Braeside has some unusual dwellings, the old Usborne residence being a prime example. My only complaint is that the motorcycle should be purple.

Totem copies are the least expensive with online prices beginning at US$8.99. The Lester & Orpen Dennys begins at US$15.00. Nothing appears to be in particularly good condition. My copy was purchased last autumn at London's Attic Books. Price: $7.50.

To those who live in Braeside today, I'm sad to report the your local public library does not hold a copy, even though the old library building features in the novel.

As He Lay Dying

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1956
240 pages

King Jameson is dying and his daughters have gathered for the occasion. Isobel has flown in from New York, where she lives with third husband Eric. Mildred too lives in New York, but with her first husband. She arrived by train.

Isobel and Mildred don't talk.

Fanny, the eldest sister, didn't have travel at all; she lives at the family home with Lily, the fourth and youngest Jameson girl. Meanwhile, King lies semi-coherent in an upstairs bedroom facing framed photographs of his two dead wives.

Hawkrest is a grand house located on a wooded crag overlooking the Niagara River. King bought it not long after the Great War, then moved his family from New York. Before the war, the Jamesons had lived in Chicago, in which King's British immigrant parents had settled.

Hawkrest was ideal for King's burgeoning business as a rumrunner. As the years passed, he began pretending that the house had been in the family for generations. King would point to its antique furnishings, collected by the former owner, describing them as objects ancestral.

The true Jameson family history is slowly revealed. The most solacious details belong to King and his second wife, though Isabel and her many marriages provide competition. In stark contrast, Fanny, the eldest Jameson girl, settled into contented spinsterhood as a child. Mildred, the third Jameson girl, obsesses over marital fidelity, while Lily...

Well, what of Lily? The baby of the family, she's the daughter of King's sexy second wife Hazel, who died behind the wheel. Lily was in the passenger seat. She barely survived and hasn't been "right" since.

The Jameson Girls is backward looking, with the real drama existing only in memory. The reader has arrived too late, and so relies on fleeting references to past events. The present, lighter and more comical, takes place under a gathering cloud. It has two stars, the most recent being American Theodore Fairfield, who is summering in the mansion-cum-B&B across the road. A bigamist gold digger who presents himself as a son of Boston's well-to-do, he sets his sites first on Fanny, then quickly shifts to Lily. She's so pretty, so doll like, so innocent, so malleable, he's afraid he's falling in love.

The second star is  Mrs Pringle, who has taken offense in being referenced as "the maid" by King Jameson's night nurse. She is not "the maid," rather "a family friend" who just happens to have taken care of the house daily, for pay, these past thirty or so years. Fanny is so fearful the insulted, indignant Mrs Pringle will leave that she has taken over most housekeeping duties.

It's not all light, of course. Let's remember there is a man dying upstairs. Of this, Mrs Pringle is well aware:

In a burst of optimism on Saturday she had bought a black hat for the funeral: I hope I haven’t gone and wasted my good money, she thought as she ran water into the sink.

Like most Kirkus reviews, its take on The Jameson Girls (1 September 1956) is very short, yet somehow manages to give away too much. I'll share only the final sentence: "For women only, a more credible than charitable chronicle - and this prying, gossipping [sic], niggling world has its authenticity as well as human curiosity."

My interest in this quote relates to an ongoing discussion with friends regarding the "target audience," and how zeroing in on a specific reader, invariably the one most likely to purchase, can alienate others.

Canadian Forum, December 1956

Nelson, Foster and Scott's promotion was gender neutral. Would the Kirkus "For women only" have brought more sales?

Who knows?

What I can say for certain is that this man is all in on a prying, gossiping, niggling world that has authenticity and human curiosity.

You will be, too.

Not quite a bloomer: This passage, in which Fanny reacts to the revelation that sister Isobel, twice divorced, is having an affair, gives some idea of Jan Hilliard's talent:

The critics rave: For all my searching, I've yet to find an unfavourable review of any Jan Hilliard novel. Vancouver Sun critic Elmore Philpott champions The Jameson Girls in his 4 January 1954 review: "It is a witty, genial, sparking satire about the three daughters of the ex-king of the Niagara river rum runners [emphasis mine]."

Did he read it?

Object and Access: One of just two Nelson, Foster & Scott titles in my collection, the other being Jan Hilliard's A View of the Town (1954), The Jameson Girls is a solid hardcover with brown boards and uncredited jacket illustration. All evidence suggests that it was a split-run with Abelard-Schulman, printed and bound in England. Neither edition was reprinted.

There has never been another.

As I write, one copy of the Nelson, Foster & Scott edition is listed online at US$19.00.

In very good condition with dust jacket, it's a steal at twice the price.

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Growing Up With Mother
Susanna Moodie's Bloomers