Great War Christmas Verse from a Century Past

Lens, France
25 December 1917

A poem by Arthur Stringer from the December 1917 issue of Maclean's.

Christmas Bells in War Time 

                  From spire and tower, in silvery tune,
                       The chimes like birds take flight.
                  Where that golden boat, the moon,
                       Drifts slowly down the night.                     

                  Aloud, alert, alone they cease
                       And wake these midnight bells,
                  Proclaiming, through their calmer, Peace
                       Where Peace no longer dwells.                    

                  Yet chime by chime, like homing birds,
                       They float, soar up, recede,
                  A gust of old-time gladdening words
                       That back to Sorrow lead.                    

                  For as we listen, bell by bell,
                       They bring about us here
                  Our hotly dead who sleep so well
                       We dare not dream them near.                    

                  So be still blithe, O Bells, and gay.
                       Since through the old glad sound
                  Our dead come home this Christmas Day
                       From grave strewn Flanders' ground!

Related posts:

'Christmas 1916' by Robert Stanley Weir

A Century-Old Prayer for Christmas
Timely Verse from a Christmas a Century Past
Christmas Greetings from Gay Page

'Christmas in Heaven' by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Arthur Stringer Pines for Christmas
Miss Machar's 'The Call of Christmas - 1914'

Christmas Verse by the Master of All Poets

Sometimes When We Touch: Dan Hill Writes Six Sex Scenes (NSFW)

Things have been pretty quiet here, I know. Much of these past two weeks has been taken up by other writing and promotion of The Dusty Bookcase – the book. This is not to say I haven't found time to read. Just yesterday I finished Comeback, the 1983 novel by Dan Hill, brother of Lawrence. It's one of the most unusual books read in this journey through Canada's forgotten, neglected, and suppressed writing. For reasons outlined in my review, which should follow in a few days, it is also one of the most disturbing. A roman à clef infused with self-loathing and sex scenes, at time of publication Maclean's dismissed Comeback as "soft-porn."

Because used copies listed online begin at C$115 ("20 pages throughout the book have splatter stains" – coffee, I hope), I present these excerpts.

You may wish to close your eyes and hide.

1

She felt awkward – no man had undressed her before. Her legs were pressed so tightly together that he finally had to pull off her suit in hurried jerky motions. She felt his warm breath against the opening of her vagina. As his hands opened her legs she shuddered and whispered. "No – please – don't."
     "It's alright," he murmured, his breath pounding into her, "it's alright."

2

Her nipples felt as soft and pliant as the erasers at the tip of a pencil, but her breasts were hard and unyielding – like a pair of Prince Edward Island potatoes

3

She drew my mouth against hers, kissing me with unusual tenderness, but the moment I closed my eyes she slid her hand into the salad bowl, scooped up a handful of grapes, and dropping them down the front of my pants. I squawked indignantly, sliding down the refrigerator and toppling on the floor, pulling her down on top of me as I fell. The salad bowl hit the floor with a crack and I slid it out of our way, leaving Maria and me a good double bed's worth of space to flop around in.

4

"You can touch it if you like."
     I timidly obliged.
     "Now trace your way down...slowly...softly...until you reach the opening.... That's right...hmmmmm...hmmmm...that's right, you're catching on...just a little at a time.... Oooohhhh, that feels like...hmmmm...like you've got the knack of it...."

5

She started running her hand up and down my thigh, as if I were nothing more than an extension of the bedspread, something that needed to be unwrinkled, smoothed over.

6

I felt her hands pull down my pants, felt her mouth take me in – gradually, a little at a time. My body stiffened, coiling itself up for impending release. I tried to step away. But she clasped her hands around my buttocks and drew me closer, deeper, and I lost myself to the sensation sweeping through me like a waterfall. I started falling to the floor – I didn't care – and my hands grabbed hold of her shoulders, pulling her with me. Somehow her mouth stayed fastened to me – my body curled around either side of her face – her mouth still sucking long after the last drop had trailed down her throat.

Sadly, this has now lost its innocence:

Related post:
The Honesty's Too Much: Dan Hill's Comeback

Easter Verse by Ethel Ursula Foran

Mature juvenilia by Ethel Ursula Foran, from her first volume, Poems: A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1922):  

EASTER 

                     The holy Lenten season
                     At last has passed away.
                     And to-day we celebrate
                     Our glorions Easter Day.
                     "Reserrexit sicut dixit"
                     The Angels sweetly sing,
                     And in humble adoration
                     Pay homage to their King.
                     "He is risen," Yes, we knew it;
                     He had but the word to say
                     And His glorious, sacred Body
                     Rose from out the tomb that day.
                     Christ has risen," Alleluia,
                     Let us all our treasures bring
                     To the feet of our sweet Savior,
                     To our dear triumphant King.
                     Only one sweet tiny treasure
                     Jesus asks with love divine,
                     'Tis your heart — then won't you give it
                     To your risen Lord and mine?

Related posts:

'The Easter Parade, 1915' by Robert Stanley Weir

Uncollected Easter Verse by Arthur Stringer

'Communion Pascale' de Émile Nelligan
The Angels of Mons at 100

On Pearson's Pennant and Ezra Levant's Fiction

"…a distinctive flag which will say to the future: I Stand for
     Canada!"
L.B. Pearson
Ottawa: Liberal Federation of Canada, [1964]

I saw Lester Pearson once. This was in front of the Parliament Buildings on the sunny Saturday the country celebrated its centenary. Look carefully and you'll find me there in the crowd, along with my mum, my dad and Prince Philip. His wife has just taken a knife to that great big birthday cake. Balloons!

Pearson is the first prime minister I remember, though I don't remember much. The man stepped down when I was in kindergarten and died when I was eight. He wasn't prime minister for five years – and never enjoyed a majority government – yet managed to usher in the Canadian Pension Plan, universal health care and, of course, the flag. This address, delivered fifty years ago today, might be seen as the official beginning of the great debate surrounding that last struggle, but in truth the bickering stretched back into the nineteenth century. The great Sanford Fleming proposed this:

The Week, 31 May 1895

Pearson would've argued against Fleming's flag for the very same reason he argued against the string of red ensigns, affixed with various coats of arms and stylistic elements, that had at one time or another stood as an unofficial Canadian flag:

The red ensign has served Canada honourably and well since it was designated for such service by order in council; but those who are in favour of retaining it and making it permanent and official by parliamentary action must surely realize that basically – this is certainly no disrespect to the red ensign – it is the flag of the British merchant marine and it is similar, except for a different coat of arms, to the flags of certain British colonies.

Pearson went so far as to propose that his own preferred design be accepted by Parliament:

The speech is both cautious and calculated; history weighs heavily. Claude Ryan was sold, as was Charles Lynch. Scott Young – Neil's dad – predicted success in words reproduced at the back of this booklet:

Of course, John Diefenbaker would have none of it. Since 1926, he'd been railing against changing the ever-changing red ensign. In 1964, as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, he walked from farmhouse to outhouse, removed the stained wooden seat, and lowered himself into the pit with the insinuation that those who supported Pearson were being bought through bribery. That July, still waist-deep in excrement,  he soiled himself thoroughly by asking why the government insisted that Christian crosses be removed from the flag.

His followers' filibustered. So dull, dull, very dull were their words that in September 1964 Pearson agreed to convene a fourteen-member Flag Committee composed of members from all four parties in the House of Commons. The flag we know is their doing. Their work inspired this wonderful Rex Woods' cover for the 8 July 1964 edition of Maclean's:

Growing up I  never heard so much as a word against the flag. I took pride, cringing only once: in 1998, when Reform Party clowns hooted, hollered and honked about Parliament Hill for the right to display miniatures made in China on House of Commons desktops.

Today, members and defenders of the unholy party Reform spawned rank amongst the most vocal haters of that very same flag. 

Mark Steyn dismisses our flag as a propaganda tool. Kathy Shaidle looks at the centuries-old national symbol worn by my grandfather during the Great War and sees "a dead leaf – basically tree dandruff".

And then there's Ezra Levant, who is wont to go on about "the Liberal-red Pearson Pennant". Never one to be bound by fact, he refers to our flag as the "Pearson Pennant", the nickname of the rejected red, white and blue flag the prime minister proposed. Levant would also have you believe that it was "Lester Pearson's decision to change the Canadian flag to a pennant in Liberal colours".

 

Not so much a clown as the country's biggest boor, Levant long ago revealed himself as a man not to be taken seriously, but he does have his followers. Whether the topic is the restructuring of the armed forces or Thomas Mulcair's leadership of the NDP, Sun News junkies build on Levant's fantastical tale. Lester Pearson "decided to change our flag without even bothering to ask the nation's citizens", one sniffs in the comments section of a story about the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario.

Well, the 1963 Liberal platform did call for a new flag, as did those of the New Democrats and the Social Credit Party. Two-thirds of voters cast ballots in their favour. The flag flown today was supported by members of all four parties – Conservatives included – then sitting in the House of Commons.

Ah, but bastards will bastardize, trying to convince that the flag was forced upon the country. Whether it was rammed or shoved doesn't matter, the thing to take home is that it's in our throats and it's about time we cough it up. Visit the Sun News Network website – they'll appreciate the traffic – and descend into an alternate world every bit as imaginative as that of The Man in the High Castle. 

My favourite story is the one about a "flag that over 90% of Canadians wanted". Apparently, it was "designed by a young girl from Quebec – it had Three [sic] green maple leaves in the centre and sea blue borders."

Like most oft-told tales, it improves with each telling. My favourite version appeared on the site last December:

Ity [sic] was a school child [sic] a young girl from Quebec and her flag had three green real maple leaves and sea blue borders which was truly representative of our country and the most popular with the people. But the sneaky liberals [sic] under Pearson declared this was not a decision that required the full parliament [sic] and a few liberal [sic] MPs stayed behind on a Friday afternoon when parliament [sic] had supposed [sic] shut for Christmas and marked our country liberal [sic] red!"

Over to you, Ezra. You're sure to come up with something even more fanciful. 

Object and access: A twelve-page booklet with paper covers. My copy, salvaged sixteen years ago from the bin of a Toronto Goodwill, appears to have been distributed by Joseph Macaluso, Member of Parliament for Hamilton West (1963-68). A barrister, the late Mr Macaluso served as one of the fourteen members of the Flag Committee.

Just where this booklet might be found is difficult to determine; ephemera such as this isn't often recorded in library catalogues.Only two copies are listed on WorldCat, both at the University of Toronto. I can find no copies for sale online.

A Last-Minute Slogan, "Give Books"

Coaching courtesy of an old Eaton's ad published in the 23 December 1933 Globe & Mail. The venerable department store recommended forty-two books, though only five are Canadian: Cannibal Quest by Gordon Sinclair, My Vision for Canada by William Arthur Deacon, The Girl from Glengarry by Ralph Connor, The Master of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche, and for the kiddies, Picture History of Canada by Jessie McEwan and Kathleen Moore.

The young lady gracing the cover of that month's Maclean's appears unfazed by the slim pickings.

You just know that first gift is a book. I'm betting the second is an album of Duke Ellington 78s. The third is, of course, a box of Laura Secord chocolates.

Fast-forward eight decades to this, my annual year-end summary. There will be gift suggestions.

This got off to a good start in January with Philip Child's Mr. Ames Against Time, then hit its stride in the first two chapters of Ronald Cocking's Die with Me Lady, before stumbling badly in the third. "Never have I seen a book fall apart quite so dramatically and melodramatically", I wrote in reviewing Cocking's novel. There was no recovery, which is not to say that the marathon didn't have its moments.

I've fallen into the habit of the listing the three books that are most deserving of reissue. In 2012, Margaret Millar, the pride of Kitchener, swept all spots. I read only one of her novels in 2013, yet here she is again:

For Maimie's Sake – Grant Allen
Vanish in an Instant – Margaret Millar
A Stranger and Afraid – Marika Robert

Of the twenty-four titles reviewed here this past year, only one, Ross Macdonald's The Dark Tunnel (a/k/a I Die Slowly), is currently in print. I saw a copy in the London Indigo just last week. Imagine!

Mention must also be made of Toronto Doctor by Sol Allen, which vies with Neil Perrin's The Door Between as the strangest Canadian novel I've ever read. This brings me to the good people of the Editing Modernism in Canada Project and Ottawa University Press, who are the recipients of this year's praise.

For six years now, project and press have been bringing new and reissued works by our most significant modernist authors. They're attractive and inexpensive to boot!

If all goes well, next year will see a return to print of Sol Allen's 1928 debut novel They Have Bodies, edited by Brock University's Gregory Betts. For this gift-giving season, I ignore Sinclair, Deacon, Connor, de la Roche and McEwan in recommending the following:

Waste Heritage
Irene Baird

Edited by Colin Hill

The Wrong World
Bertram Brooker

Edited by Gregory Betts

Swinging the Maelstrom
Malcolm Lowry

Edited by Vik Doyen
Introduction by Miguel Mota
Notes by Chris Ackerley

Eight Men Speak
Oscar Ryan et al.

Edited by Alan Filewood

Dry Water
Robert J.C. Stead

Edited by Neil Querengesser
     and Jean Horton





And, if I may, I'd like to suggest The Heart Accepts it All, the recently published collection of letters by John Glassco edited by yours truly.

Happy Holidays!

Did Arthur Stringer Incite the Bolshevists to Blow Up Wall Street? Maclean's Dares Ask the Question!

Myth: On 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush told Americans to go shopping.

Fact: He told them to go to Disney World.

Terrorism sells. Ten years ago, it was duct tape and plastic sheeting, eight decades before that it was issues of Maclean's:

The Regina Morning Leader, 15 November 1920
(ciquez pour agrandir)

"Did Arthur Stringer incite the Bolshevists to blow up Wall Street?' The question is absurd, is it not? How would the Reds have known of an unpublished novel that had been submitted to a Toronto general interest magazine? Besides, are we really to believe that no one had ever thought of blowing up New York's financial district?

My questions can't keep up with the fast and furious of the advert: "Who did it? Was it an accident? The bomb of a Bolshevik? Or merely ordinary insanity?"

Let's consider the Maclean's questions one at a time:

Who did it?

We don't know. What we do know is that at noon on Thursday, 16 September 1920, a horse-drawn wagon carrying roughly 100 pounds of dynamite was brought to a halt across the street from the offices of J.P. Morgan. A minute later, the horses and wagon were no more. Thirty-eight people were killed – most instantly – and who knows how many people were injured. The driver is thought to have fled the scene just before the explosion.

Was it an accident?

No, though a whole lot of people considered the possibility. Initial police investigations focussed on the sloppiness of businesses that sold and transported explosives. However, by the next day investigators had come to the conclusion that the carnage had been intentional. The give-away: an estimated 500 pounds of iron weights that had been mixed in with the explosives.

The bomb of a Bolshevik?

Doubtful. Early in the investigation police came upon a cache of flyers from the American Anarchist Fighters. "Remember, we will not tolerate any longer", read the text. "Free the political prisoners, or it will be sure death for all of you."

Or merely ordinary insanity?

Oh, there was insanity. Take New York Law School graduate and one-time tennis star Edwin P. Fischer. Mr Fischer had sent postcards to friends and relatives warning them of the devastation that would be brought upon Wall Street on 15 September, the day before the actual blast. He was picked up the next day in Hamilton, Ontario.

The New York Times,18 September 1920

Under questioning, Fischer at first appeared uncertain as to how he'd known about the coming carnage, telling Magistrate George F. Jelfs that a message had come "through the air". However, he soon became more certain:

I have lived a life of helpfulness and unselfishness. I have never held a grudge against anyone, and have always tried to do good to everybody. For this reason I think that God, perhaps, has given me a power that has not been given to those who lead selfish lives.

When the magistrate asked how he knew exactly where the explosion would take place, Fischer replied, "I knew because Wall Street is the centre of evil in the world."

Not so insane after all.

Fischer had not only entered Canada illegally but had threatened some of our finest millionaires in Toronto's Queen's Hotel, and so was deported. He returned to New York's Grand Central Station clothed in two suits over tennis whites,  at the ready for a chance match. The poor man would end up being institutionalized in the Amityville Insane Asylum.

Despite all the publicity, Stringer's The City of Peril did not appear in book form until 1923, when it was published by McClelland & Stewart and Alfred A. Knopf. I've yet to come across a copy myself, but Kathleen K. Bowker's Canadian Bookman review has me sold:

March 1923

Trivia: Edwin P. Fischer was 1895 Ontario Tennis Champion.

More trivia: The Wall Street bombing very nearly ruined Anti-Straw Hat Day:

The Globe & Mail, 16 September 1920

Related post:

The Sudden, Violent Death of Arthur Stringer and His Family (and Their Respective Resurrections)

Condensed CanLit

Why Shoot the Teacher
Max Braithwaite
Reader's Digest Condensed Books
Montreal: Reader's Digest, 1981

Our local public library book sale approaches, bringing a trickle of donated Readers's Digest Condensed Books. Like the leak in the 110-year-old building's limestone foundation, it seems we can't do a thing to stop it.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against condensed books. The problem I have, as someone doing his darndest to raise money for the library, is that no one will buy the things. I do mean no one. A veteran with seven book sales under his belt, I realized last year that we'd never sold so much as a single volume. And so, we decided to give them away.

I was the only taker.

This is it, a lone volume saved from the recycling bin for the simple reason that it features an abridged version of Max Braithwaite's Why Shoot the Teacher, with illustrations by Bruce Johnson. An artist deserving of more attention, I first learned of Johnson last year through Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration.

Numbering four in total, it appears that the illustrations have never been reprinted.

The last two are a touch too wacky for me, but they are in keeping with the novel. This Johnson illustration from a 'fifties Maclean's is more to my taste:

Not many Canadian authors have had bank accounts blessed by Reader's Digest Condensed Books – and the most blessed, semi-citizen Arthur Hailey, hardly needed the money. The decision to include Why Shoot the Teacher seems both obvious and surprising. On the one hand, Braithwaite's good-natured humour is well-suited to the series, on the other it comes so very late. Why Shoot the Teacher was first published in 1965, and was adapted to the screen in 1977, so what's it doing here?

At roughly 72,000 words, I imagine the novel was much easier to abridge than, say, Airport or Hotel. Less than half remains. Never having owned a condensed book before, I was curious to see how it was done. These pages I marked up from the first edition give some idea:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

Not to worry, it's a photocopy.

One trick is to combine chapters – "Tic Tac Toe, Hockey, and Sex" and "The Hot Dust of Spring" become "Tic Tac Toe, Hockey, and the Hot Dust of Spring". No sex, please, this is Reader's Digest. No frozen horse turds, either. "There were always plenty of the around," says narrator Max Brown. Like Canadians of old, he uses them in lieu of a puck. Hockey takes a good hit here with talk of the Olympic hockey team, international hockey tournaments, Gordie Howe, Max Bentley and Ted Lindsay cut.

But what's this?

Where in the original, Max Brown tells us Canada produces "the best hockey players in the world", the condensed version has him saying that we produce "many of the best hockey players in the world".

Isn't that longer?

One last thing, the condensed version replaces "colour" with "color". Shorter.

Trivia: Reader's Digest receives fleeting mention in both the original and condensed versions of the novel:

"Trouble is," Harris said, "we're stultityped in our thinking. All we can think of is growing wheat. Now I've been reading an article in the Reader's Digest that really has the idea."

More trivia: The keen-eyed will have noticed that the second paragraph of the page spread above features an errant line ("wind hit southwestern Saskatchewan and melted most of"), which usurps the rightful words ("hour and a half to two hours' free time each day").

Object: Boards covered in a brown plastic-like material, the book contains three additional condensed works: Banners of Silk by Rosalind Laker, A Ship Must Die by Douglas Reeman and Kalahari by Henry Kolarz.

Access: Not listed amongst the thousands of Reader's Digest Condensed Books currently listed online. You will not find it at your local library.

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market

Margaret Trudeau: The Prime Minister's Runaway Wife

Felicity Cochrane

Scarborough, ON: Signet, 1978

Anyone needing a reminder of the crap once thrown at Margaret Trudeau need only look to Kate McMillan and the comments made under cover of pseudonym at her Small Dead Animals blog. Revelations of Mrs Trudeau's decades-long struggles with bipolar disorder have brought neither compassion nor reconsideration – but did serve as more carrion to chew, digest and defecate.

Published after the stuff first hit the fan, Margaret Trudeau: The Prime Minister's Runaway Wife is a product of a more civil time. It presents itself as a sympathetic account, while promising to dish the dirt. In the end, however, this is a book that teases, but never delivers. "The full, completely uncensored story of Margaret Trudeau's relationship with the different members of the Rolling Stones," ends up being little more than an overview of the seating arrangements at the 1977 El Mocambo gigs. Felicity Cochrane wasn't there, yet she still manages to paint a memorable scene:

This was the Stones' first club appearance since 1964, and as in the past, Jagger eventually whipped up the crowd into a convulsing hysteria with jerks of his hips, thrusts of his pelvis, and grasshopper-like gyrations guaranteed to induce mass orgasm.

Sounds messy.

The author next provides details of the painstaking preparations made to fête Peter Rudge, "manager of the Stones" (touring manager, actually) on his birthday. Mrs Trudeau didn't attend the party, but never mind.

Want to know why Pierre Trudeau didn't marry until his 53rd year? The cover copy promises the answer. And here's what Ms Cochrane has to say: "It has always been a mystery why Pierre didn't marry. It will always be open to speculation."

Thin stuff for a thin book; there's nothing hadn't already been reported at the time of its August 1978 publication. And yet, the author tells us that she spent "almost a year in interviews and research". Cochrane can't tell us who she spoke to – "for obvious reasons" – but does express appreciation for the Greater Vancouver Convention and Visitors Bureau. I doubt this was reciprocated. Here's the author on Margaret Sinclair Trudeau's birthplace:

Vancouver, where the Sinclairs settled, is a port city in the southwest corner of British Columbia, on what is now called the Pacific Rim. It was discovered by a British naval officer, Captain George Vancouver, in 1792, became a British colony in 1859, and was admitted into confederation in 1871. The original name of the city was Granville, but this was changed to Vancouver in 1886.

I count five factual errors. How about you?

We're also told that Vancouver has a daily called the Providence, its West End is comprised of highways and modern shopping complexes, and that the "famous Lion's [sic] Gate Bridge links West Vancouver to the lower mainland."

Great swaths of this 174-page book are devoted to the Canadian parliamentary system, the office of prime minister, and the early history of Simon Fraser University (also located in the southwest corner of British Columbia, on what is now called the Pacific Rim). Cochrane quotes liberally – no pun intended – lifting passages from dozens of news stories, all the while criticizing journalists for not having been more dogged in their pursuit of scandale.

Strange this, because without the uncredited, unacknowledged work of the fourth estate Cochrane would have had no book. She brings nothing to the table, and yet she had once been a reporter for Newsday. A Progressive Conservative, in the 1965 federal election she challenged veteran Liberal Stanley Haidasz in Toronto-Parkdale. Cochrane placed a very distant second, but made the news anyway by breaking her leg in a fall down some slippery polling station steps on election day.

The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, 10 November 1965

Cochrane jetted around the globe promoting Canadian honey, cheese and maple syrup for the Federal Department of Trade and Commerce. She also served as chaperone for 1966 Canadian Dairy Princess Gaylene Miller, but I think that the most interesting point in her career began in 1970 with her role as "personal manager" for Dianna – Dianna Boileau – whom she billed as "Canada's first sex change". Two years later, Cochrane wrote Dianna's story, Behold, I Am a Woman. It was published by New York's Pyramid Books, whose copywriters penned this pitch: "The story you are about to read will quite possibly shock you in its brutal frankness and graphic descriptions. It will startle you as it reveals a way of life and a way of sexual being that seem beyond the range of the normal imagination. And it will move you to a new kind of realization of the torments a sexual deviant must suffer in our society – as well as the hope that new medical techniques offer a person like Dianna, to at last find fulfillment."

Margaret Trudeau was Cochrane's second and final book. Not a happy experience, it seems. Even as the paperback was hitting the stands, Ms Cochrane was complaining that Signet's lawyers had made her take out the juiciest bits. Could Margaret Trudeau have been a better book? Had Felicity Cochrane dug up anything new? Shall we give her the benefit of the doubt?

Nearly four decades later, we know that it wasn't Margaret and Mick, but Margaret and Ronnie – both have said as much in their respective autobiographies. Should we have read anything into this?

The following day, a small get-together was held in the Rolling Stones' suite at the Harbour Castle Hotel. Margaret joined the group, sitting on the edge of the bed, and proceeded to watch the hockey game on TV, at the same time playing with Ron Wood's seven-year-old son. One guest who was there recalls that the little boy gave the impression he already knew Margaret quite well.

Object and Access: An unattractive mass market paperback, Signet claimed that the book was reprinted three times, totalling 170,000 copies. I've yet to find a one that indicates it is anything but a first printing. Very few booksellers have listed the book online; it's hardly worth the trouble. They're dreaming of sales ranging from $2 to $6.50. Six copies are held in Canadian libraries, academic and otherwise, but that's it. A French-language edition was published the same year by Éditions de l'Homme.

Related post:

Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

James at 100 (Jasper at 62)

As a kid, Jasper was everywhere – the daily newspaper, Maclean's, postcards, T-shirts, buttons and ball caps – but now he's seen nowhere outside the national park that gave him his name. Out of sight, out of mind, I hadn't thought of the bear in years until stumbling over the fact that today marks the centenary of Jasper creator James Simpkins' birth.

A commercial artist, Winnipeg born and bred, Simpkins' talent extended much farther than Jasper. Here's one example, a 1956 postage stamp:

And then there were other cartoons, like Simpkins' Montreal:

The Gazette, 29 August 1962

But the bear was pervasive; a friend's parents had Jasper salt and pepper shakers, he had a copy of McClelland and Stewart's 1972 Jasper. Was it the same as Ryerson's similarly titled 1954 collection or the one published by Rinehart six years later? I have no idea. Jasper books are so very hard to come by these days, all the more reason why a revival – very much overdue – would be welcome. Drawn and Quarterly? Seth?

'Snainef spelled backwards is Fenians'

The Passionate Invaders

John Clare

New York: Doubleday, 1965

Had it not been for the nineteenth-century English poet John Clare, I doubt that I would've noticed this novel, found several weeks ago in a London thrift store. The Canadian John Clare meant nothing to me, though he did once serve as editor for a number of Toronto-based periodicals. Here he is in a 1948 advert for Maclean's:

The Ottawa Citizen, 18 February 1948

Just how well Clare practiced his precepts in the short story format I cannot say – there is no collection – but this, his first and only novel, is a great disappointment. Here I admit that I was hoping for another forgotten, entertaining satire like The Chartered Libertine by Ralph Allen (top row, first from the left). Instead, what I encountered was a slight, self-indulgent work. Oh, but the cover held such promise!

All centres on Magnus Dillon, a wise-cracking Toronto magazine editor who is assigned to track down "The Snainef", a group of Canadian terrorists intent on invading the United States. Truth be told, he barely tries. Despite great pressure from his boss, Dillon spends most of his time drinking and thinking about the past.

There's no suspense in this "SATIRIC, RICHLY COMIC SUSPENSE NOVEL"; the author doesn't want us on the edge of our seats, he'd rather we sit back as he recounts the boyish pranks Dillon pulled during his stint in the RCAF. (Clare served as a flight lieutenant during the Second World War.) There's also a lengthy history of our hero's favourite watering hole, an inconsequential four-page letter from a friend, and Dillon's rather dry attempts to explain Canada and Canadians to any and all Americans he encounters. The greater part of The Passionate Invaders passes before protagonist and reader so much as encounter the Snainef.

Throughout it all, the prose coughs, sputters and chokes. Witness the beginning of chapter two:

Gus had driven half the distance from his office to the Carfleet house (he was going to meet his wife at the party – she was diving out with a friend), when it occurred to him that Charlie Carfleet might well be a likely suspect after all.

The author told Scott Young (top row, second from the right) that Doubleday accepted his novel "on sight". Clare further claimed that the publisher asked for no changes: "They didn't lay a glove on it."

Shame, really.

An aside: I can't help but feel that the folks down in New York were hoping for a success along the lines of Leonard Wibberley's The Mouse that Roared and its many spinoffs.

Trivia: The Passionate Invaders cover art is by the late Eldon Dedini, best remembered for his New Yorker and Playboy cartoons.

Object and Access: Found in public libraries across the United States, though only that belonging to the City of Toronto serves north of the border. Rob Ford might just put an end to that. Those looking to purchase this, the first and only edition, will find that Very Good copies start at US$8. Two booksellers from an alternate universe are asking US$75 and US$99 respectively.