Showing posts with label Imrie and Graham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imrie and Graham. Show all posts

27 June 2023

Canada's First Telefome Pome?


These past few weeks have been remarkably busy, which explains how it is that I've read and reviewed just one old, forgotten book this month. Sadly, that volume is John Wesley White's The Man From Krypton.

Heaven help me.

And yet somehow, despite it all, I found time yesterday to thumb through Sacred Songs, Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems, an 1886 collection by John Imrie (1836-1903).

I wonder what the poet, a staunch Presbyterian, might've made of White's interpretation and misrepresentation of the Holy Bible and Superman: The Movie. I expect he would have been mystified. Imrie died in Toronto three years before the first motion picture was screened in that city, thirty-eight years before Action Comics #1, and long before televangelists took to the air.

John Imrie was obviously of a very different time, as reflected in his Sacred Songs, etc. Amongst the 210 pages – referencing orphan boys, newspaper boys, Sunday school teachers, and the Knights of Labour – is this unusual and unexpected verse. It's not brilliant, but it is delightful. To think that when 'A Kiss Through the Telephone' was published, Bell's invention had been available commercially just six years.

Enjoy!

A Bonus (for the musically inclined):

Related post:

01 December 2019

'The Drunkard's Fate' by Teetotal John Imrie



In this month of December, with its festivities and excesses, let us pause to consider this verse from Sacred Songs, Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems by John Imrie (1846-1902). A subscription salesman for the Canadian Presbyterian turned printer, the poet published the work in 1886 through his firm Imrie & Graham. 28 Colbourne Street, Toronto.
THE DRUNKARD'S FATE 
      For the drunkard there's no such place as "home,"
      Though over the face of the earth he roam,
      Till Death shall unfetter the drink-bound slave,
      And he findeth "rest" in the silent grave;
      His untimely death — "the wages of sin," —
      Satan's reward for the worship of Gin!
      He gave up his wife and his children dear
      For the drink which he thought his heart could cheer;
      But the more he drank the lower he sank,
      From the highest grade to the lowest rank.
      Till for shame, his name a bye-word became,
      And he lost for ever his once fair name: —
      For the pleasure of drink, which he loved so well,
      He barter'd his soul to the lowest hell!

Related posts:

26 January 2014

'Oatmeal' for Robert Burns Day


The Burns Monument
Fredericton, New  Brunswick
'Oatmeal' by Mr John Steele of St John, New Brunswick
from Selections from Scottish Canadian Poets; Being a Collection of the Best Poetry Written by Scotsmen and Their Descendants in the Dominion of Canada
Toronto: Caledonian Society of Toronto, 1900
Related posts:

25 January 2013

'Robert Burns' by Mr. John Steele of St. John, N.B.


Robert Burns Statue
Victoria Park, Halifax
Photograph by David Murray

Verse by John Steele found in Selections from Scottish Canadian Poets; Being a Collection of the Best Poetry Written by Scotsmen and Their Descendants in the Dominion of Canada, published in 1900 under the auspices of the Caledonian Society of Toronto, printed by Imrie, Graham & Co.

Nearly everything known about the poet is contained in the accompanying photograph and biography:


I'm willing to bet a bottle of Lagavulin that the versifying John Steele is very same John Steele, laborer, who is recorded here in the 1851 Census of New Brunswick:

(cliquez pour agrandir)
At the time, a 40-year-old John Steele was living in Chatham Parish, Northumberland County, New Brunswick, with exhausted wife Grizzla (34) and their seven children: Elizabeth (18), Marion (16), Joseph (14), John (9), Ann (7), Mary (5) and Richard (1 month).

For the day, one more from the fecund Mr Steele: