Canadian Notes & Queries at 114, Véhicule Press at 50, and a Few Favourite Forthcoming Things

A few days into the year and already a new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. This one – number 114! – features writing by:

Noelle Allen

Tamara Faith Berger

Brian Bethune

Mark Bourrie

Randy Boyagoda

Kate Cayley

Steacy Easton

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Canista Lubrin

Ian McGillis

Emily Mernin

John Metcalf

Vanessa Stauffer

As always, the cover is by Seth.

I contribute 'Véhicule Press at Fifty,' an interview with publishers Simon Dardick and Nancy Marrelli. Together we discuss the history and future of the press through ten key titles, beginning with the very first: Bob McGee's Three Sonnets & Fast Drawings. 

Subscribers also receive the latest issue – number 5! –of The Bibliophile. Just look at the goodness it offers:

So, why not subscribe!

Here's the link.

The CNQ Dusty Bookcase (2010 - 2023)

The most recent issue of Canadian Notes & Queries landed late last week. Since then, Canadians have been sending notes and queries regarding the future of the Dusty Bookcase.

It will continue, but not on paper.

It was in 2010, when I was focussed on completing my biography of John Glassco, that editor Alex Good invited me to contribute the Dusty Bookcase as a regular column. Naturally, I chose Glassco's grand hoax The Temple of Pederasty as my subject. My review, of sorts, appeared in CNQ 80.

The next thirteen years saw twenty-five more: 

The Miracle Man - Frank L. Packard (CNQ 81)

The Errand Runner - Leah Rosenberg (CNQ 82)

Love is a Long Shot - Alice K. Doherty [Ted Allan] (CNQ 83)

The Abolishing of Death - Basil King (CNQ 84)

John Glassco: A Personal and Working Library (CNQ 86)

Tan Ming - Lan Stormont [Morse Robb] (CNQ 87)

The Bumper Book and Carry on Bumping - John Metcalf (CNQ 88)

St. Cuthbert's of the West - Robert E. Knowles (CNQ 90)

The Land of Afternoon - Gilbert Knox [Madge Macbeth] (CNQ 92)

The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer (CNQ 93)

There Are Victories - Charles Yale Harrison (CNQ 94)

Don't You Know Anybody Else? - Ted Allan (CNQ 97)

The Treehouse - Helen Duncan (CNQ 98)

Lust Planet - Olin Ross [W.E.D. Ross] (CNQ 101)

The Shapes That Creep - Marjorie Bonner (CNQ 102)

A Lover More Condoling - Adrian Clarkson (CNQ 103)

The Arch-Satirist - Frances de Wolfe Fenwick (CNQ 104)

Christie Redfern's Troubles - [Margaret Murray Robertson] (CNQ 105)

Hotter Than Hell - Mark Tushingham (CNQ 106)

The Master of the Microbe - Robert W. Service (CNQ 107)

The Terror of the Tar Sands - Edmund C. Cosgrove (CNQ 108)

An African Millionaire - Grant Allan (CNQ 109)

East of Temple Bar - Joan Suter [Joan Walker] (CNQ 111)

Behold the Hour - Jeann Beattie (CNQ 112)

Added to these were reviews written for the CNQ website. They're online still:

Cry Hallelujah! - Kenneth Orvis

Where Is Jenny Now? - Frances Shelley Wees 

Comeback - Dan Hill

Black Feather - Benge Atlee

The Heiress of Castle Cliffe - May Agnes Fleming

The Land of Frozen Suns - Bertrand W. Sinclair

Backstage Nurse - Jane Rossiter [W.E.D. Ross]

Strange Desires - Alan Malston 

The Girl at Bullet Lake - H.A. Cody

Murder's No Picnic - E.L. Cushing

Their Man in the White House - Tom Ardies

Not every Dusty Bookcase took the form of a review. There were columns devoted to correspondence between of Norman Levine and Jack McClelland (CNQ 85), Montreal's post-war pulp novels (CNQ 89), the career of Ronald J. Cooke (CNQ 91), Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton's Tour de Force board game (CNQ 95), an interview with Formac Fiction Treasures series editor Gwendolyn Davies (CNQ 96), Brian Moore's Intent to Kill on film (CNQ 99), my hunt for Kenneth Ovis (CNQ 100), and the career of Garnet Weston (CNQ 110).

A selection of books featured over the years.
Cliquez pour agrandir.

The early columns benefited from Alex's red pen, the latter were made whole under his successor Emily Donaldson. I had such fun working with Emily, which made last issue's column, a review of Jeann Beattie's entirely forgotten novel Behold the Hour, something of a challenge. We all knew CNQ 112 was to be her last as editor, despite our pleading.

Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered...

Well, not really. 

I will continue in the role of Contributing Editor, which means that I'll still be contributing, but not as a columnist. Emily joins me at the large oak editorial boardroom table as a fellow Contributing Editor. Alex is by her side. 

My thanks to Alex for inviting me into the room, to Emily for not showing me the door, and to publisher Dan Wells who has gone so far as to host me at his home. Drinks were served. CNQ continues because of their dedication to a book and literary culture that is more than ever preyed upon by foreign vultures. 

As everyone surely knows, vultures have bad breath.

The latest issue of CNQ can be purchased through this link.

Television Man is Crazy

The one hundred and twelfth issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in our rural mailbox yesterday afternoon. A beautiful thing, wrapped in a cover by Seth, I've been dipping in and out. I read Michael Holmes' remembrance of Steven Heighton first.

It was followed by Ken Norris's interview with Bruce Whiteman.

This evening, I'll be reading 'My Year of Mycorrhizal Thinking' by Ariel Gordon, whose daughter shares something with my own as a fan of Hannibal. Ariel, her daughter, and mine, will appreciate this photo taken in our kitchen not eight days ago.

This issue's Dusty Bookcase column focuses on Jeann Beattie's Behold the Hour (1959), which in my opinion ranks with Ralph Allen's The Chartered Libertine (1954) as one of the two best novels set early days of Canadian television.  

I'm not aware of a third.

Northrop Frye praised Allen's novel. Do I praise Beattie's?

Read and find out! Subscriptions can be purchased through this link.

Other contributors to this issue include:

Carolyn Bennett

James Cairns

Andreae Callana

Preeti Kaur Dhaliwai

Stephen Fowler

Susan Glickman

Alex Good

Brett Josef Griubisic

Graeme Hunter

Kate Kennedy

Rohan Maitzen

Darcy Mason

David Mason

Roderock Moody-Corbett

Shani Mootoo

Ian Clay Sewall

Rudrapiya Rathmore

Richard Sanger

Natalie Southworth

Kevin Sprout

Did I mention subscriptions can be purchased through this link?

Related post:

Baseball in Panties, of Course
An Old Novel of Misspent Youth

A Forgotten Novelist's Hidden Debut

Joan Suter was thirty-seven when her first novel, East of Temple Bar, was published. She'd begun her working life as a fashion illustrator, then headed for Fleet Street, east of Temple Bar, where she found employment as an editor for Amalgamated Press and the George Newes Firm. Suter also wrote short stories under the name "Leonie Mason," which led to some confusion when the London Daily Herald (18 August 1938) reported on the marriage of "Miss Leonie Mason who writes fiction under the name of Joan Suter" to journalist Ogilvie "Punch" MacKenzie Kerr.

London Daily Herald, 18 August 1938

According to the Daily Herald, the wedding followed "a romance of 14 days, which began when they met in a darts match."

Sadly, by the time East of Temple Bar was published, Joan and Punch were no more. She had yet to divorce, but had already met second husband James Walker, a major in the 12th Canadian Tank Regiment. They married in Toronto on 20 September 1946. From that point onwards she wrote as "Joan Walker," and erased East of Temple Bar and her Leonie Mason fiction from her bibliography.

I was on a bit of a Walker tear earlier this year, reading and reviewing her novels Murder by Accident (1947) and Repent at Leisure (1957). In April, I spoke about the author with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle on his Canus Humorus podcast.

I review East of Temple Bar in the new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. The exercise brought to mind my work on A Gentleman of Pleasure, a biography of self-described "great practitioner of deceit" John Glassco.  

Speaking of Glassco, Carmine Starnino's The Essential John Glassco (Porcupine's Quill) is one of the three reissues I chose for the What's Old feature; No Crystal Stair by Mairuth Sarsfield (Linda Leith Publishing) and The Tangled Miracle by Bertram Brooker (Invisible Publishing) are the two others.

All three belong on your bookshelves.

Invisible, let me know what you're up to!

As always, Seth provides the cover. The Landscape, his regular feature, concerns the long-dead Montreal Standard's magazine supplement.

Margaret Atwood looks at the the short stories of Clark Blaise.

Other contributors include:

Marc Allen

Barry Baldwin

Elaine Coburn

Robert Colman

Jeffery Donaldson

sophie anne edwards

Sadie Graham

Brett Josef Grunisic

Tom Halford

Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin

Kate Kennedy

Marius Kociejowski

Kim Johntone

Robin Mackay

David Mason

Dominik Parisien

and 

Alice Petersen

Jean Marc Ah-sen interviews Dimitri Nasrallah.

Megan Durnford interviews Céline Huyghbaert.

Sindu Sivayogan adapts Shyam Saladurai's Cinnamon Gardens.

As always, the last page belongs to Stephen Fowler, who serves up Melva E Adams' Marshmallow Magic. Self-published in 1978, it belongs in every Canadian kitchen.

Subscribers receive John Metcalf's The Worst Truth: Regarding A History of Canadian Fiction by David Staines.

Sixty-one pages in length, I read it in one sitting.

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased through this link.

My review of Prof Staines' history was written for another magazine.

It's coming.

Related posts:

Accidents Never Happen in a Perfect World

On the High Heels of Pleasure
Talking Joan Walker with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle
Joan Suter, Angus Hall, and the Collector in Me

Just in Time for Christmas!

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrives at a busy time of year, which suits me just fine. I usually race through each issue, reading it from cover to cover, but am now forced to slow the pace and savour.

And so, all I've read thus far is Seth's regular column 'The Landscape.' The beginning raised a smile of self-recognition:

There are still a few places in Ontario where one can find shelves (or piles) of old second hand books for sale that have not been curated. Randomly acquired, roughly heaped into sections, and priced not by author and title but by paperback or hardcover status alone. These places are dwindling fast but I still know a few prime spots. Don't expect me to name them or tell you where they're located though. s if. I don't want you going there. These are my secret places. My old books! Keep out.

Seth's focus this time is The Canada Permanent Story, 1855-1955. "These corporate books weren't really meant to be perused," he writes, yet Seth has done just that, sharing this endpaper illustration:

My own contribution concerns Garnett Weston, whose books and film work consumed much of my summer. They also consumed a fair amount of my income. I've yet to find a Weston in any of my secret places.

Garnett Weston
1890 - 1980
RIP

It's not entirely true that I've only read Seth's column. Among the other contributions is 'Telling the Story,' in which Susan Mayse remembers her father Arthur Mayse's writing career. I commissioned the  piece as the forward to the forthcoming Ricochet Books reissue of Arthur Mayse's 1949 novel Perilous Passage.

There's so much more to look forward to, including writing by:

Stephanie Bolster

Alex Boyd

Kornella Drianovaki

Megan Durnford

Stacey Easton

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Ronald L Grimes

Brett Joseph Grubisic

Luke Hathaway

David Huebert

Mark Anthony Jarman

Kate Kennedy

Aris Keshav

M Travis Lane

Rohen Maitzen

Dancy Mason

David Mason

Jeff Miller

Nofel

J R Patterson

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Patricia Robertson

Naben Ruthnum

Cal Sepulia

Drew Tapley

Rob Taylor

Carl Watts

Bruce Whitman

Given that it's the season... Anyone looking for a last minute Christmas gift can't do much better than a subscription to Canadian Notes & Queries. I bought a couple. You can, too!

The link is here.

Related posts:

The Dead of a Dead End Street
Legacy of Fear

Just Kids

Criminal Notes & Queries

The most recent number of Canadian Notes & Queries – The Crime Issue – arrived last week in our Upper Canada rural mailbox. I was honoured to serve as Guest Editor. It was a pleasure putting it together, though I must admit that the heavy lifting was done by regular editor Emily Donaldson.

As always, Seth's provides the front and back covers. Tell the truth, do you not see yourself in one of his mugshots?

In The Landscape, Seth shares an undated, uncredited insert from The Weekend Magazine – which, as he notes, was itself an insert.

"What’s Old," our regular salute to reissues, coupled with offerings from the country’s antiquarian booksellers features Austin Clarke's When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (Anansi, 2021),  Carmine Starnino's Dirty Words: Selected Poems, 1997-2016 (Gaspereau, 2021), a new translation of Markoosie Patsauq's Hunter with Harpoon (MQUP, 2021). Windsor's Juniper Books offers The Executioners (Harlequin, 1951) and French for Murder (Fawcett, 1954), two old Brian Moore pulps that the late author's estate has kept out of print.

The Guest Editor’s Note, in which I recall childhood trauma brought on by a speeding ticket, is followed by the issue's Dusty Bookcase. This one is unusual in that the volume covered, Grant Allen's fin de siècle novel An African Millionaire, is not only in print, but is a certified Penguin Classic. We all remember studying it in high school, right?

Adam Sol and Manahil Bandukwala provide verse.

The issue's features begin with "Sin City," Will Straw's look at Police Journal, the post-war Montreal crime tabloid that anticipated Allô Police.

In "A Requiem for Skid Row," Amy Lavender Harris writes about a Toronto that has fallen to condos, but lives on in the works of Juan Butler, Austin Clarke, and Hugh Garner.

Novelist Trevor Ferguson (aka John Farrow) writes of his encounters with the criminal element in  "Fringe Elements."

Dedicated readers will remember my interest in the mysterious Kenneth Orvis (aka Kenneth Lemieux), author of Hickory House, The Damned and Destroyed,  Cry, Hallelujah!, and four other novels. You may even remember my 2016 plea for information about the man. Imagine my surprise in discovering that former 39 Steps frontman Chris Barry – whom I've seen onstage in Montreal and onscreen in Hannah and Her Sisters – is the mystery man's nephew.  Chris' "Uncle Ken, We Hardly Knew Ye: Kenneth Orvis’ Nephew Surveys the Writer’s Life, Hustles, and Mysterious Disappearance" helps fill in the gaps.

In "Vale of Fears," Monika Bartyzel looks at the influence of a 1935 murder on the fiction of Phyllis Brett Young, our most unjustly neglected novelist.

Jennifer Hambleton disturbs with "Shut Out: How University Libraries are Increasingly Limiting Public Access.

David Frank writes on the relationship between Jack London and all but forgotten Canadian socialist Wilfrid Gribble.

Chris Kelly looks at Blue City, the 1986 adaptation of the 1947 Ross Macdonald novel of the same name. You remember it, right? Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy starred.

No?

This GIF may refresh you memory.

I intrude again with an interview with Danny McAuley of Brome Lake Books in Knowlton, Quebec.

David Mason's Used and Rare column concerns book thieves and a revelation about a certain famous author.

In the North Wing - selections from the Lost Library of CanLit Graphic Novels -  Nathan Campagnaro adapts Thomas King’s DreadfulWater.

We've also got a new short story from Caroline Adderson, “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone.”

At a time when newspapers and magazines are slashing space devoted to book reviews, we buck the trend with:

Bruce Whiteman on Erin McLaren’s Little Resilience

Rohan Maitzen on Anna Porter’s The Appraisal and Deceptions

Laura Cameron on Amanda LeDuc’s The Centaur’s Wife 

Brett Josef Grubisic on Michael Melgaard’s Pallbearing 

Alex Good on Pasha Malla’s Kill the Mall 

Paige Cooper on Carrie Jenkins’ Victoria Sees It 

Dancy Mason on Patricia Robertson’s Hour of the Crab 

James Grainger on Andrée A Michaud’s Mirror Lake

Emily Donaldson on Sarah Berman’s Don’t Call it a Cult

The Shelf Talker belongs to The Bookshelf in Guelph. Catherine Bush's Blaze Island is one of their four titles.

As always, we finish off with Stephen Fowler's Exhumations. His pick this issue is Writing Thrillers for Profit: A Practical Guide by Basil Hogarth (London, Black, 1936), a volume that once belonged to "a recently deceased author of detective novels." Stephen suggests that it may have been a "joke gift." I'm betting he's right.

The CNQ Crime Issue can be purchased through this link.

It's a steal.

Erring on The Terror of the Tar Sands

A 1968 children's book, one of the most obscure novels I've read since beginning the Dusty Bookcase, The Terror of the Tar Sands came under fire at the 2012 International Symposium on the History of the Oil and Gas Industry.

I was not invited.

The criticism originated with oil historian Joyce Hunt, who took issue with the use of "tar sands" in its title:

Contemporary rhetoric creates fear in the minds of those unfamiliar with today’s vital energy industry as it puts on hold construction jobs and the economic hopes of thousands. The media and those opposing oil sands development constantly refer to Alberta’s oil sands as tar sands, a technically incorrect term.

Does that not seem a bit unfair? After all, "oil sands" is also technically incorrect. And let's not forget that "tar sands" was used for decades by the industry itself. Still is:

Hell, I grew up with ads for the tar sands, like his one, which featured in the 31 October 1977 issue of Maclean's:

cliquez pour agrandir

(Am I alone in thinking that a sitting MLA shouldn't be on Syncrude's payroll, never mind serve on its Management Committee?)

I'm not a fan of The Terror of the Tar Sands either, but my criticism has nothing to do with the title. You can read all about it in the new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. My copy arrived today. You're a subscriber, right? If not, here's some of what you're missing, beginning with this cover by Seth:

Dan Wells' Publisher's Note introduces a new series, Shelf Talkers, bringing together recommendations from independent booksellers (among them, my old friend Ben McNally).

Rod Moody-Corbett writes on Percy Janes, whose House of Hate is both one of this country's most controversial and most neglected novels. Only in Canada is such a thing possible.

We have a fable from Pauline Holdstock and a short story by Shaena Lambert.

Bruce Whiteman contributes a memoir.

Other contributors include:

Ho Che Anderson

Michel Basilières

Steven W Beattie

Juliane Okot Bitek

Andreae Callanan

Laura Cameron

Sally Cooper

Steacy Easton

André Forget

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Tom Halford

Jeremy Luke Hill

Mikka Jacobsen

River Kozhar

Allison LaSorda

David Mason

John Metcalf

James Grainger Morgan

Nick Mount

Shane Neilson

Rudrapriya Rathore

Patricia Robertson

Mark Sampson

Richard Sanger

Souvankham Thammavongsa

Phoebe Wang 

It all ends on page 88 with Stephen Fowler's remarks on this book:

But wait, what's this?

The same envelope containing the latest CNQ brought the very first issue of Bibliophile, which features the latest news from CNQ mothership Biblioasis. 

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be got through this link.

One last thing: It was through reading The Terror of the Tar Sands that I first learned of Project Cauldron, a 1958 proposal which would have seen nuclear bombs used to separate bitumen from the sands. Why were we not taught this in school? After reading up on it all, this illustration from The Terror of the Tar Sands doesn't seem so insane.

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.

Let the Margaret Murray Robertson Revival Begin!

Christie Redfern’s Troubles

by the author of “Mark Wedgewood’s Wooing,” etc. [Margaret Murray Robertson]

London: The Religious Tract Society, [c. 1866]

384 pages

Christie Redfern’s troubles are so many that they spill over into her backstory. Poor girl, she began life as the fourth child of a Scottish businessman and his loving, fertile wife. Mrs Redfern died, but not before giving birth to four more children. The role of family matriarch was then taken up by Mr Redfern’s stern spinster sister Elsie, but the aunt’s firm, yet helpful hand was not enough to prevent the decline of Mr Redfern’s enterprise. What was that enterprise? Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it failed, causing Mr Redfern to move the family to the New World and a farm in Canada West’s Glengarry County. That Mr Redfern knew little about agriculture suggests something about his failure as a businessman. To make matters worse:

Soon after their arrival in their new home, Aunt Elsie was seized with an illness which lingered long, and left her a cripple when it went away; and her temper was not of the kind which suffering and helplessness are said sometimes to improve. It was a trying time to all.

No doubt.


So begins my latest Dusty Bookcase review for Canadian Notes & Queries. The issue in which it appears – number 105 – arrived in yesterday's post. I poured over it last night, between peeks at election coverage.

"Grand Theft Bibio," Michael Melgaard's excellent piece on book thieves, was the first to distract my troubled mind.

Ray Fawkes' adaptation of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson was a visual feast.

I couldn't have agreed more with Rod Moody-Corbett's essay on Saul Bellow.

All, as always, is wrapped in covers by Seth. Lord knows, this snap doesn't do it justice.

I ask you, how many magazines have French flaps?

Other contributors include:

Jeremiah Bartram
Jeff Bursey
Andreae Callanan
Paige Cooper
Candace de Taeye
Emily Donaldson
Deborah Dundas
Carey Fagan
Stephen Fowler
Alex Good
Brett Josef Grubisic
David Huebert
David Mason
Edward O'Connor
Rudrapriya Rathore
Yusuf Saadi
Nathan Whitlock
and
the late David Helwig

Christie Redfern's Troubles is just about the most depressing thing I've ever read.

Does that not make it a novel for our time?

Related post:

Margaret Murray Robertson Matrimonial Mystery

(& Canadian literature's most tear-stained novel)