Showing posts with label Globe and Mail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Globe and Mail. Show all posts

08 December 2025

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
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!

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02 December 2025

The Best Canadian Books in English (as of 1925)



One hundred years ago today, the Toronto Globe published a short article about a YMCA book contest. The Association had asked participants to provide a list of "the twelve books in English, which together give the best picture of life and development in Canada." Just how many participated is a mystery. What we do know that these lists of twelve included a total of 108 books by 85 different authors.


The three most common titles were:

The Golden Dog - William Kirby
Maria Chapdelaine - Louis Hémon [trans W.H. Blake]
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town - Stephen Leacock

All three are in print, though I dare say only the Leacock would be recognized by any measurable percentage of YMCA members today.

Seven titles are tied for the fourth position, which suggests limited participation. What follows are the fourth place titles and authors aspresented in the Globe article:

Sam Slick - Judge Haliburton 
Lords of the North - Agnes Laut
Roughing It in the Bush - Susanne Moodie 
Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
Seats of the Mighty - Sir Gilbert Parker
Chez Nous - Revard

Three observations:

  • Judge Haliburton (Thomas Chandler Haliburton) never published a book titled Sam Slick;
  • "Susanne Moodie" is actually Susanna Moodie;
  • the surname of the man who write Chez Nous is Rivard not "Revard." I have no idea why his first name is absent. 

Chez Nous
Adjutor Rivard [trans W.H. Blake]
Toronto: McClellend & Stewart, 1924
The Globe story does not provide the title of the book that placed eleventh. Given the seven-way tie for fourth place, I suggests there were many.

Judges Dr George H. Locke and Vernon Mackenzie awarded first place to May Knowlton of Montreal for her list of twelve:
The Foreigner - Ralph Connor
The Habitant - Dr Drummond
Flint and Feather - Pauline Johnson
The Golden Dog - William Kirby
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town - Stephen Leacock
Romance of Western Canada - R.G. Macbeth
Montcalm and Wolfe - Francis Parkman
Pioneer of France in the New World - Francis Parkman
Trail of '98 - Robert W. Service
The Prairie Wife - Arthur Stringer
The Life of Sir William Van Horne - Walter Vaughan
No prize is mentioned.

I wonder what the judges would've thought of mine:

There's a good chance that Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Anne of Green Gables and  Sara Jeanette Duncan's The Imperialist would bump off three, but it's been forty years since I've read any of them.

You don't want to trust that kid's opinions.

Related posts:

Canada's 100 Best Books? 102? 111?



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08 November 2025

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:

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15 September 2025

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.
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18 August 2025

A Pulp Writer's Challenge to Canadians



Original Detective Stories
Volume 1, Number 1
April 1948

Can a magazine written entirely by one person be considered a book? Of course not, but it does come close. Original Detective Stories was published Voyageur Press, which was owned and operated by author Horace Brown. As far as I've been able to determine, he was the only staff member and only writer. The debut issue features two works of fiction – both by Brown, of course – the first being 'Murder à la Carte.' A "BOOK LENGTH NOVEL – NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED," I first wrote about 'Murder à la Carte' fourteen years ago, wondering whether it may have found a second life as the 1950 News Stand Library novel The Penthouse Killings.

After finally managing to find a copy of the magazine, I can now report that 'Murder à la Carte' and The Penthouse Killings are in fact one and the same.

It wasn't so wild a guess; the covers suggested as much.


I have no idea who provided the cover illustration for The Penthouse Killings, though the style reminds me of several other News Stand Library titles. The Original Detective Stories cover is credited to Jackson Heise, a man who began his career as a child. The 1931 census finds him living at 281 Milverton Boulevard in Toronto with his mother and father. Seventeen at the time, Heise had already left school and seems to have been making decent money through his art, earning $520 in the previous twelve months:*


Original Detective Stories features four more illustrations, masthead included.


The contents page is interesting in that it ignores 'On the Blotter,' the very first piece in this very first issue. A four-paragraph, half-page editorial credited to "The Sergeant," whom I have every reason to believe is Brown himself, it begins:
The bane of a policeman's unhappy lot is the one world "Unsolved."
   The aftermath of War, the spiritual and moral letdown that follows brutal conflict has unleashed murder throughout Canada. Many of these cases are sex crimes of the most atrocious sort. 
In fact, the homicide rate decreased in the years immediately following the Second World War.


'On the Blotter' calls for more police funding and "a tightening of the Law in the matter of of detaining known perverts until cure."

Lest you think you have Brown pegged, as a Toronto alderman he became a staunch defender of hippies and a promoter of tenants rights. We have Brown to thank for helping raise money for the Henry Moore sculpture in Nathan Philips Square after the city council had voted it down.


Horace Brown also founded of the Canadian March of Dimes (now March of Dimes Canada). He himself was stricken with polio at the age of eight months and walked with the aid of crutches. The disease influences 'The Scarf' the second of the magazine's two stories, written under the nom de plume "Leslie Allen."** 


The issue has no ads. Its back cover is taken up with a challenge and appeal: 


Canadian readers and advertisers did not respond. Were the magazines themselves to blame or the distributors and retailers? Frankly, I think the fault lies with Brown himself. The venture was unstable from the start. Original Detective Stories' second issue was the last. It appeared in July 1948, three months after the first. 


Brown's magazine empire had one other title in its fold. Like Original Detective Stories, All Star Western Stories debuted in April 1948, published a second issue in July 1948, and then disappeared.
   

Brown believed that Canadians would rally to the support of Canadian publications and publishing.

He wasn't wrong.

We saw this through much of the second half of the last century and into the early years of this one. I worked for a library wholesaler and major chain for the last fifteen of those years and remember well the number of Canadian titles on the weekly Globe & Mail bestseller lists. 

The newspaper's most recent hardcover fiction list features not one Canadian title. The non-fiction hardcover list has just one, Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Not one title is published by a Canadian publisher.

A question for Canadians: We're boycotting American produce, booze, and travel, so why are we not boycotting American cultural product? 
* Sadly, Jackson's father, a piano salesman, was not working. All evidence suggests that the boy was the family's sole breadwinner. According to the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator, $520 in 1931 is roughly the equivalent of $10,425 today, which may explain why the Heise family was sharing the small duplex with young marrieds Timothy and Elma Breuls and the bride's mother. 
** Brown had previously used "Leslie Allen" for his 1946 golfing mystery Murder in the Rough.  
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24 July 2025

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!


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