My Fourth and Fifth Canadian Book of Lists Lists: It's a Man's World... an English Man's World

Being the fifth post on

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists. 

Susanna Moodie surrounded by men seems an appropriate image. The Canadian Book of Lists begins with 10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS. She is the first woman quoted, though her words are attributed to "Susanna Moddie":

That Mrs Moodie is one of two women on this list is a bit unusual; she's usually her own. In David Crombie's 10 CANADIANS TO INVITE TO DINNER TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF CANADA AND ITS ROOTS the poor woman is made to share a table with Gabriel Dumont, John A. Macdonald, J.S. Woodsworth, Gilles Vigneault, William Van Horne, Stephen Leacock, John Diefenbaker, Ralph Allen, and André Lauredeau.

She is the only woman to appear on this list of my own making:

THE 10 MOST QUOTED CANADIANS IN
THE CANADIAN BOOK OF LISTS

1.   ROBERTSON DAVIES
2.   PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU
3.   JOHN DIEFENBAKER
4.   WILFRID LAURIER
5.   RENÉ LÉVESQUE

6.   JOHN A. MACDONALD
7.   STEPHEN LEACOCK
8.   HUGH MACLENNAN
9.   THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON
10. SUSANNA MOODIE

It's skewed in that Trudeau, Diefenbaker, Laurier, and Macdonald were each accorded 10 GREATEST QUOTES lists. The Quebec premier has a similar list, but it is theme-driven: " THE 10 BEST QUOTES ON SEPARATISM BY RENE LÉVÉSQUE [sic]."

As noted yesterday, nineteen women rank amongst the 115 Canadian Book of Lists contributors. They far outnumber the three francophones:

• André Bardet of Montreal's Chez Bardet contributes his recipe for Chicken Supreme (though I have my doubts that that is what he called it). I wonder whether the chef knew it would end up in fourth place, after Joe Batt's Arm Fish Casserole, in an unattributed list titled THE 10 BEST CANADIAN RECIPES.

• As "Mme. Jehane Benoit," Jehane Benoît's contribution Grace de rôti, a recipe lifted from her 1970 The Canadiana Cookbook. Like the Canadian Book of Lists,  it is a Pagurian Press publication. both were published in paperback by Signet.   

• The third and last francophone contributor is the great Mark Lalonde. Every one of his contributions is pulled from A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1974), which was published when he was Minister of Health and Welfare.

 

I wonder whether any of the three were actually asked to contribute to this project?

In a 18 November 1978 piece for the Star-Phoenix by Nancy Russell, author Jerry Brown defends his work from those who label it "the Toronto book of lists": 

And so, today this Quebecer presents a second list:

TEN LISTS THAT FEATURE NO FRANCOPHONES

1.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON FRENCH CANADA

          AND FRENCH  CANADIANS

2.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADA
3.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS
4.    THE 5 GREATEST CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON

          NATIONALISM AND NATIONALITY

5.    10 GREAT CANADIAN SPORTS ACHIEVERS
6.    THE 10 MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN CANADA
7.    THE 10 BEST CANADIAN BOOKS
8.    THE TEN BEST CANADIAN CHILDREN'S BOOKS
9.    THE 10 BEST CANADIAN ROCK GROUPS

10.  10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON LOVE

Related posts:

My Canadian Book of Lists Lists: An Introduction

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

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

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

Resuming Richard Rohmer: A Plea for Help

Four years ago this month, I set out to read every book ever written by Richard Rohmer.

It wasn't my idea.

My old pal Chris Kelly came up with the challenge, mutual old pal Stanley Whyte joined in, and we were off. Not only were we going to read Rohmer's entire bibliography, we were going to do it within the year!

We're still at it.

Our mistake was that we remembered Rohmer's years as a bestselling author, but ignored the decades in which he was not. We'd assumed his books would be plentiful, accessible, and cheap. Why, mere days before we began, I picked up his 1989 thriller Red Arctic for a buck in a Perth, Ontario bookstore.

What I failed to recognize is that it was the first copy I'd ever seen. I haven't come across another since. I didn't know that Red Arctic had come and gone in only one printing, and had never made it to paperback. As a kid, Rohmer mass markets were everywhere. I bought mine at the second closest drug store to my home, but I could've just as easily bought them at the closest. It has been over three decades since Rohmer was last published in mass market.

Rohmer's Ultimatum was the bestselling Canadian novel of 1973, but my local library doesn't have a copy; in fact, the St Marys Public Library doesn't have anything by Richard Rohmer. Its helpful staff did all they could in providing inter-library loans.

Stanley had access to slim holdings offered by McGill and Concordia, but these only went so far. He resorted to ordering one book directly from the publisher. It took several months to arrive.

Chris, who lives in California, had the hardest time of it.

Despite the challenges, we tackled sixteen titles in our first year, and wrote about each in a blog: Reading Richard Rohmer. Visitors will see that we slowed to eight in the second year. In year three, we tackled two: Raleigh on the Rocks and Ultimatum 2. Last year, our reading was Rohmerless.

I began 2018 determined to finish reading Richard Rohmer. We're four books shy:

• Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board (1965)
• The Royal Commission on Book Publishing (1972)
• The Building of the CN Tower (2011)
• The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre [sic] (2012)

The first two are held at the University of Western Ontario's D.B. Weldon Library. As reference material, they're not to be checked out, but I'm willing to suffer as many hours as it takes in that butt-ugly, brutalist building.

Such is my willpower and dedication that I plan to read all four, despite reservations concerning Rohmer's authorship of Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board and The Royal Commission on Book Publishing. Sure, they appear in his bibliographies, but like Rohmer's claims about taking Rommel out of the Second World War, I have doubts that he played so great a role.

I look forward to being proven wrong.

Remarkably, the most recent titles are more difficult to find than half-century-old government reports. After many, many months, I've finally managed to get my hands on The Building of the CN Tower, but The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre is proving even more elusive. And so, I ask anyone with a copy to contact me.

Please.

Four years is an awfully long time.

Related posts:

Resolved to Reading Richard Rohmer

Still Reading Richard Rohmer. Is Alice Munro?
Recycling Richard Rohmer

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Of Thucydides, Themistocles and Richard Rohmer

Chasing Down a Thriller Writer's Hidden Verse
Pornography Dressed Up as a Cautionary Tale
Learn to Write the Richard Rohmer Way
The Brexit Fix-It

When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

For my poet friends, these observations from Canada 1962:

A striking feature of Canadian letters in recent years has been the consistently high level of Canadian poetry. Although the poet's audience was often not large, he was at least assured of publication in one of the many literary magazines of the country where his work would receive discriminating critical attention. Too often, however, such limited circulation was the most that could be expected. More recently a growing interest among a wider reading public has made possible the publication of a number of volumes of poetry, some of which have achieved minor commercial successes.

A comprehensive picture of Canadian poetry was made available to readers during 1961 by the appearance of the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Several other important collections also appeared during the year, including Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth, River Among Rocks by Ralph Gustafson, The Devil's Picture Book by Daryl Hine and Irving Layton's collection of stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh. The Governor General's Award for poetry in English for 1960 went to Margaret Avison for Winter Sun and Other Poems, her first published collection. Poetry in French Canada is no less important and vital as was amply illustrated in the Oxford Book. Among the most widely known of the younger poets are Alan Grandbois, Rina Lasnier and Anne Hébert. The latter received the Governor General's Award for French Poetry for her book Poèmes. 

Canadian fiction is perhaps somewhat less vigorous.

The Greater Canada of 1962

Canada 1962: The Official Handbook of Present Conditions
   and Recent Progress
Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1962

I missed the better part of 1962; by the time I showed up at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Marilyn Monroe and William Faulkner were gone and E.E. Cummings looked in rough shape. I wasn't a reader then, of course, but had I been this handbook would've provided a good introduction to the land of my birth. This is Canada as it was just before I came to know it, a country in which bookmobiles rode the rails,

a personable young woman might find employment as a bus hostess,

and mothers and daughters bought groceries from vending machines.

The Grocerette never caught on, but I don't imagine that it's failure was recorded in subsequent handbooks – challenging enough just keeping up with the successes. In 1962, Canada was undergoing great change, as reflected in the caption accompanying this photograph of my hometown.  

Our cities were changing so quickly that it seemed pointless to include new buildings; better to feature models of those under construction. Here's Place des Arts, which would be built to a similar, yet superior design:

And here are the new offices of the Toronto Telegram and Sudbury Star:

While the Telegram is long gone, the Star hangs on. A year ago, the Star building "that once bustled with a library and an archiving service, a press and a pre-press operation, a distribution centre and warehouse, the largest newsroom in Northern Ontario and a full complement of sales agents, circulators and office support staff" was put up for sale. There have been no takers.

Stray tears drawn through nostalgia can blind. In the Canada of 1962, homosexual acts were criminal, employers could pay a woman less than a man for equal work, and Native Canadians had only just won the right to vote in federal elections. Yet that Canada was moving forward; building more than just skyscrapers, concert halls and newspaper offices, it was investing in institutions, education and services. All comes into focus with this photograph:

The uniformed man pictured is a food inspector. While the country's population has almost doubled since 1962, fewer people hold his position today. This year alone, our Minister of Agriculture, comedian Gerry Ritz, a man who finds humour in death from listeriosis, will be overseeing the dismissal of 308 people from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Ours is a contracting Canada. The self-described "Harper Government" would have us believe that we can no longer afford the services and protections offered under the record surpluses of previous governments not ten years past. As these Conservatives run up record deficits, the advantages they themselves enjoyed, the programs from which they themselves benefitted, are being stripped from my generation and denied the next.

We are a smaller country now.

Object: A very well-constructed, remarkably heavy trade-size paperback printed on glossy paper with tipped in fold-out map of the dominion. The cover was a commissioned piece by Kiakshuk.

Access: It  should come as no surprise that Canada 1962, a five-decade-old reference book, has disappeared from our public libraries. Those looking to add it to their own collection should be happy to learn that Very Good copies of the paperback begin at seven dollars. The uncommon, bland hardcover edition is yours for forty bucks.

The True North...

From Canada 1962, a proud publication of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics' Information Services Division, further evidence that we were once a stronger, gentler people.

A Tory Bodice-ripper?

Strange days, indeed. This past Wednesday, Remembrance Day, Linden MacIntyre received a well-deserved Giller Prize for The Bishop's Man. A day later, the novel's position as the country's most discussed book was lost to a 62-page government publication intended for prospective immigrants. The reviews of Discover Canada have been glowing:

"... a reasonable, balanced assessment of the national past."

– Adam Chapnick, The Ottawa Citizen

"...a solid step toward a healthy, self-respecting Canadian nationalism we can all share."

– The Gazette

"...a comparative bodice-ripper when stacked against its bland predecessor..."

– John Ivison, The National Post

I don't think Ivison really means Discover Canada is cheap or disposable or sexually-charged – and read nothing into his use of "stacked" with "bodice-ripper" – but he is very, very excited.

A newly minted Canadian himself, the National Post columnist cheers on Discover Canada as "yet another incremental step in the re-branding of Canada into a conservative country, full of people more inclined to vote Conservative." So, pay no attention to the participation of non-partisan bodies, ignore advisors like Andrew Cohen and John Ralston Saul, Discover Canada is the "Tory guide to a blue Canada". Why? Because it promotes "patriotism, pride in the armed forces and support for the rule of law" (in much the same way Ivison promotes American punctuation). These aren't Canadian values, the columnist tells us, they're Conservative values. Oh, and that maple leaf on the cover? That's not a Canadian symbol, but one that became Tory after a successful "hijacking".

And then, predictably, Ivison's off on another rant about the gun registry.

I can understand why the columnist so wants to claim Discover Canada for his team; it may not be a bodice-ripper, but it's most certainly an improvement. Yes, Bloc MPs hate the thing, but that's just a job requirement; all the other parties are pretty well on board. The greatest criticism thus far comes from New Democrat Olivia Chow, who laments that the new guide doesn't recognize our UNESCO World Heritage sites.

This is not to say that there aren't greater flaws. Christopher Moore notes that there's no mention of First Nations rights and treaties, while Daniel Francis rightly claims that BC receives short shrift (and points out that not one of the 26 advisors comes from the province).

Much more modest, my own complaint deals with the "Arts and Culture in Canada" section. It consumes little more than a page and, curiously, is dominated by sports, science and technology. Oh, there's paragraph on the visual arts, which mentions the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, les Automatistes, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Kenojuak Ashevak. Another paragraph on film and television boils everything down to Denys Arcand, Norman Jewison and Atom Egoyan. But what does Discover Canada have to tell prospective immigrants about our literary heritage?

The answer, in its entirety:

So there you have it: Canadian literature in fifteen or so words. I could make more of this, I suppose, but these guys and their fellow singers and songwriters didn't even get a sentence to call their own.