Joyce Boyle: Early Research

An addendum to Saturday's post on The Stone Cottage Mystery.

Emily Joyce Boyle was born on April 6, 1901, missing that year's census by a matter of days. The 1911 census finds Joyce as a ten-year-old living at 227 Westminster Avenue in Toronto with her mother Charlotte and three surviving siblings (Gertrude, John, and Beatrice). Her father, William, recorded in previous censuses as lumber merchant and a crockery merchant, died when she was a four-year-old.

At the time of the 1921 census, Joyce was still living on Westminster Avenue with her mother, Gertrude, and Beatrice. Interestingly, all four Boyle women are reported as having no occupation. They were  certainly not members of the leisure class, yet the family appears to have had the means to send Beatrice and Joyce off to the University of Toronto.

The photo of Joyce Boyle featured above, the only one I've found, comes from the 1924 edition of Torontonesis, the university's student annual. These are the words that appear below:

In the 1931 census, thirty-year-old Joyce and forty-six-year-old sister Gertrude are listed as living at 307 Castlefield Avenue in Toronto. Joyce's occupation is school teacher, while Gertrude's is school librarian.

307 Castlefield Avenue in June 2021

The previous year, Joyce had published Mary, John and Peter, which is most likely her first book.

Toronto: T. Eaton, 1930

Intriguingly, Joyce Boyle's entry in the Database of Canada's Early Women Writers notes that McMaster University's Macmillan Company of Canada Archives contains correspondence regarding an earlier work, Spring Blew Around the Corner, of which there is no known copy. Was it ever published? Thus far, I've found no reviews, adverts or even passing mentions in newspapers and magazines.

She's credited with eleven other titles, most of which – Mary, John and Peter being one – are schoolbooks meant for young children. Of those that aren't, the one that garnered the greatest attention was Muskoka Holiday, a 1953 girls' adventure novel published by Macmillan in Canada, England, and the United States.

Muskoka Holiday has my favourite cover by far, though Bobby's Neighbors has a certain lazy charm.

Nashville: Abingdon, 1959 

Once Upon a Time, a textbook edited in 1966 for Macmillan, appears to have been her last work. She would've been in her mid-sixties at the time.

Joyce Boyle died at the age of seventy-four on June 7, 1975, at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. She was predeceased by all of her siblings (including previously unmentioned Ernest, who died on the date of his birth, and Edith, who died at eleven). The University of Toronto's Joyce Boyle Scholarship is awarded to "a student with overall A standing who is enrolled in the Specialist or Major program in English, with preference to a student whose courses have included romantic poetry or prose." It was established by brother-in-law Stephen James Mathers (1896-1985), who was married to Joyce's sister Beatrice (1899-1969). Mathers also established a scholarship in honour of his late wife.

A good man.

From all I've been able to glean from newspaper articles, Joyce Boyle was a woman who dedicated her life to children's education. She was particularly focussed in fostering early interest in literature and the cause of world peace.

A good woman.

Related post:

TumblingTowards Mystery

Tumbling Towards Mystery

The Stone Cottage Mystery
Joyce Boyle
Toronto: Macmillan, 1961
151 pages

A big city girl made unhappy by her family's move to a small town, sixteen-year-old Isobel Anderson will be a familiar figure to readers of children's fiction. In her case, the big city is Toronto; the small town is Farston, to which Isabel's father (occupation unknown) has been transferred.

Coinciding with Farston High School's Christmas break, the Andersons' arrival is soon followed by a different sort of break. One particularly blowy, snowy day, Isobel is out on a solitary a walk when she falls and does something to her foot. Isobel tries to make for home, but the pain is too great. It's all she can do to reach the nearest dwelling, an old stone cottage that sits high on the hill at the end of her road. No one responds to her knocking, but she finds the door unlocked. And that is where she is found sometime later by young Eleanor Morgan. The girl lights a fire, makes sure Isobel is comfortable, and then sets off to get help. This arrives in in the form of a sleigh driven by Doctor Gordon Brown – "I'm Doctor Gordon Brown" – who then whisks her off to hospital where "several small foot bones" are found to be broken.

Forget the foot, this mystery concerns a stone cottage. Built by Eleanor's great-great-great grandfather, the building is now owned by the town, which has handed it over as the meeting place of the Farnston High School Historical Club.

Two observations:

• at my high school, clubs met in the school itself;
• there was always a teacher present, which is never the case here.

Before you get all hot and bothered about underage drinking, drugs, and sex, let me assure you that the students of Farston High are all good kids. They welcome Isobel with great warmth, going so far as to enlisting the help of  Norwegian immigrant Nels Olsen in building an elaborate sled so that she can participate in the school's Valentine skating party.

Isobel's date, Eleanor's brother John, proves a true gentleman:

"Good time?" he asked.
   "Never better," was Isobel's answer. "Oh, John, it was a perfect evening! And all I can say is 'Thank you'!"
   "That's all you need to say," was John's reply. "Thats all you need to say when you use that tone of voice."

And off he goes home.

The Edmonton Journal,
10 September 1958

The students of Farston High School are an extremely wholesome and cheery  lot, which is not to say that there isn't tension within their midst. Understanding the source is dependent one's knowledge of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Eleanor's great-great-grandfather, Alan Donaldson, a supporter of reform, was falsely accused of being a rebel. Facing arrest, he fled to the United States and was never seen again. A box of money and papers entrusted to his care disappeared at the same time. Eleanor's great-great-grandmother was certain that her husband had hidden the box, but the Farr family is convinced that he stole it.

As expected, Isobel, Eleanor, and their schoolmates solve the mystery of the missing money and papers. That they do this with the assistance of Miss Malcolm (Isobel's Toronto history teacher), Miss Norman (Isobel's Farston history teacher), and Miss Fleming (the town librarian), raised a smile because Joyce Boyle herself was a teacher and librarian.

She never married.

I know more about her than I do my great-great-great-grandparents or even my great-great-grandparents.

Object and Access:  First published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada. Unlike Joyce Boyle's previous novel, Muskoka Holiday (1953), it was not published in the United Kingdom or the United States; something to do with the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, I expect. My copy, a second printing in olive green hardcover with mustard printing, was purchased last year at my favourite local charity shop. Sadly, it lacks the dust jacket, but what do you want for 65 cents. 

As I write, just two copies of The Stone Cottage Mystery are being sold online, both published in 1969 by Macmillan. At US$13.00, the more attractive is a hardcover with dust jacket. The other bookseller offers a paperback copy for US$68.00: 

I recommend the hardcover.

Related post:

Joyce Boyle: Early Research

The Weird Covers of Wes Beattie

Two weeks into 2025 and I'm only now starting in on my first novel of the New Year... and so late in the day!

I've wanted to read The Weird World of Wes Beattie for some time, but forays through the used bookstores of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia brought frustration. Exhausted from the chase, I resorted to online booksellers, which explains how it is I ended up with a copy of the Harper & Row first American edition purchased from a bookseller in New South Wales.

It took longer than expected to arrive. 

I like to "follow the flag" – The Weird World of Wes Beattie was published in 1963 by Macmillan in Canada – but the expense could not be justified. A rare book, the Canadian first edition was a split run with the American Harper & Row. Publisher names aside, it is pretty much identical, the only other exception being the price. Harper & Row's front flap lists the price as US$3.95, while the Macmillan is not so base as to mention cost. For the record, the Canadian price was $4.95. 

From what I've read so far, it was a bargain either way.

Both the Macmillan and Harper & Row editions share the same James Kirby jacket illustration (above). Does it not suggest whimsy?

I ask because the Faber & Faber's first British edition strikes a very different tone:

The illustration used in the 13 October 1963 Star Weekly condensed version looks like something from a storyboard of Silence of the Lambs:

In 1966, Corgi published a mass market edition with prominent quote from the Scotsman review:

It's a challenge to make out, and so I quote:

A novel of suspense with all the ingredients of a Hitchcock thriller... A new talent in detective writing... if Harris can keep this up, Gardner has a formidable rival.

Sadly, tragically, in 1966 Harris was in no position to "keep this up;" he'd died in 1964, not twelve months after The Weird World of Wes Beattie arrived in bookstores.

The Corgi cover suggests something sophisticated along the lines of Ocean's Eleven. To this reader, it appears incongruous, but then I'm only a few chapters into the novel. The Canadian Popular Library edition, published the same year, is gritty as all get out:

Nothing whimsical here.

SOON BE A MAJOR MOVIE? 

How soon is now?

Two translations followed in the heels of the novel's first publication, the earliest being Un monde farfelu, which came out in 1964 from Gallimard as part of its Séries noire. 

This was followed by a Spanish translation titled El fantástico mundo de Wes (Barcelona: Malina, 1965). It's cover illustration with tortured soul is the bleakest by far.

 
The Weird World of Wes Beattie is in print today thanks to the good folks at New York publishers Felony and Mayhem. The covers they've used to date are more in line with  James Kirby's original, though I have a bone to pick with the claim that it is "The First Truly CANADIAN Mystery."

Is The Weird World of Wes Beattie whimsical, sinister, sophisticated... bleak?

I'll let you know next Monday.

Average Leacock for the Average Man

Winnowed Wisdom
Stephen Leacock
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1926
300 pages

The author's sixteenth book of humour in as many years, one wonders how he managed; it's not as if Professor Leacock had no day job.

Winnowed Wisdom came in mid-career with the best of his writing in the past. Look no further than the six-page italicized preface for evidence:

It is the especial aim of this book to make an appeal to the average man. To do this the better, I have made a study of the census of the United States and of the census of Canada, in order to find who and what the average man is.
     In point of residence, it seems only logical to suppose that the average man lives at the centre of population, in other words, in the United States he lives at Honkville, Indiana, and in Canada at Red Hat, Saskatchewan. 
     In the matter of height the average man is five feet eight inches, decimal four one seven, and in avoirdupois weight he represents 139 pounds, two ounces, and three pennyweights. Eight-tenths of his head is covered with hair, and his whiskers, if spread over his face...  

You get the idea. Still, this made me laugh:

The percentage of women in the population being much greater in the eastern part of the country, the average woman lives one hundred and five miles east of the average man. But she is getting nearer to him every day. Oh yes, she is after him, all right!

The thing with Leacock is that even his most middling work has something that catches the light and shines. The same might be said of the collections themselves; Winnowed Wisdom may be weak, but three of its essays – 'How We Kept Mother's Day,' 'The Laundry Problem,' and 'How My Wife and I Built Our Home for $4.90' – were included in Laugh With Leacock: An Anthology of the Best Work of Stephen Leacock (1930).

Deservedly so.

This early passage from 'The Laundry Problem' had me sold:

In the old days any woman deserted and abandoned in the world took in washing. When all else failed there was at least that. Any woman who wanted to show her independent spirit and force of character threatened to take in washing. It was the last resort of a noble mind. In many of the great works of fiction the heroine's mother almost took in washing.

This comes later:

In the old days if you had a complaint to make to the washerwoman you said it to her straight out. She was there. And she heard the complaint and sneaked away with tears in her eyes to her humble home where she read the Bible and drank gin.

J.B. Priestley looked at Winnowed Wisdom and selected 'Our Summer Convention' and 'At the Ladies Culture Club' for 1957's The Bodley Head Leacock (aka The Best of Leacock).

I wouldn't have chosen either. 

My Winnowed Wisdom favourites have never featured in a Leacock anthology, so I thought I'd share. Each is as relevant today as a century ago.

The first, 'The Outline of Evolution,' is the second of Prof Leacock's 'The Outlines of Everything' essays.

It begins:

It seems that recently there has been a lot of new trouble about the theory of evolution in the schools. Either the theory is being taught all wrong or else there is something the matter with it. For years it had seemed as if the doctrine of Evolution was so universally accepted as to lose all its charm. It was running as a close second to Spherical Trigonometry and Comparative Religion and there was no more excitement about it than there is over Anthropology.

     Then suddenly something seems to have happened. A boy in a Kansas public school threw down his book and said that the next time he was called a protozoon he’d quit the class. A parent in Ostaboola, Oklahoma, wrote to the local school board to say that for anyone to teach his children that they were descended from monkeys cast a doubt upon himself which he found intolerable.

I never experienced such a fuss, but then I attended school in Montreal.

Sounds smug, I know. Given what's going on in the republic to the south, I can't help it.

My second favourite essay is titled 'Are We Fascinated with Crime?'

I've never been much fascinated myself, though I once made a good living writing true crime books published under a nom de plume. This was a decade ago. The books were sold around the English-speaking world – French and Polish translations appeared in other spheres – and I got a fair cut.

There's been talk about the rising interest in true crime, but I don't buy it. The fascination pre-dates London's Police Gazette. Montreal had Police Journal, and, in my day, Photo Police and Allo Police. 

Allo Police, 16 September 1984

As a younger man, I watched 48 Hours, Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, and...

Mea culpa.

I was fascinated with crime. We are all fascinated with crime. In 1926, Leacock recognized as much, all the while questioning our interest: 

If a rich man is killed by his chauffeur in Tampa, Florida, and his body hidden in the gasoline tank, why should you and I worry? We don’t live in Tampa and we have no chauffeur and gasoline is too expensive for us to waste like that.

     Yet a whole continent will have to sit up and read a column of news about such a simple little event as that.

I read the professor's article as BBC and New York Times reports on the arrest of the Long Island Killer vied for my attention. 

The Montreal Gazette, 7 December 1957

Busby? Preistley? You tell me who chose better. Winnowed Wisdom can be read online here courtesy of the fine folks at the Faded Page.

Whatever you decide, I guarantee the average man will something that amuses, as will the average woman.

Object: One of the many Leacocks purchased up over the years at the McGill Book Fair. I'm fairly certain this one, a first American edition, was picked up in the early 'nineties. Price: $2.  

Access: First published by Macmillan (Canada), Dodd, Mead (United States) and John Lane (United Kingdom). The Macmillan and Lane editions feature the same dust jacket illustration by John Hassall.

The cover of the Dodd, Mead edition is by Jazz Age illustrator John Held, Jr.

In 1971, Winnowed Wisdom was added as #74 to the New Canadian Library. It holds the distinction of being the first NCL title without an introduction. It survived long enough to benefit from the third series design.

Related posts:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like
Professor Leacock Sets the Stage
Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?

L.R. Wright Before She Became L.R. Wright

Neighbours
Laurali Wright [L.R. Wright]
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1979
258 pages

There's so much wrong with this jacket illustration. Set aside the eyes for a moment and focus on the houses. They're nearly identical, right? The one on the left is a mirror image of the other two, yet the neighbours in Neighbours live in dwellings of differing designs separated by spacious lawns. The figure standing before the open garage in Clement Clarke Moore sleeping cap does not feature.

Returning to the eyes: I thought they belonged to a man, but Neighbours is a novel about three women. Betty Coutts is the first we meet. She lives with husband Jack and daughter Heather in a Calgary subdivision. As a travelling salesman, Jack is rarely present, which leaves young Heather in a precarious position. The extent to which Jack recognizes his daughter's peril – I do not exaggerate in using that word – is unclear. Could be he's in denial.

It's apparent from the start that Betty is suffering from a serious mental illness. She's unable to work and spends much of her day in bed eating candy. The house is a worsening filthy mess, which prompts Jack, who has returned home from yet another sales trip, to spray the kitchen with a garden hose. This early scene is uncharacteristic; Jack is otherwise sensitive and patient regarding his wife's mental health. It's due to his efforts that Betty has weekly meetings with a psychologist named Jessup.

For a time, it's suggested – by the doctor, at least – that Betty is making progress. At Jessup's urging, she makes an effort to make new friends, targeting two next-door neighbours. Elderly Poinsettia, lives in the house to the left. Betty insists on calling her Bertha, which Poinsettia quite likes. Sheila, to the right, lives in the house Betty considers the most beautiful on the block.

Both women have problems of their own. Bertha, who lives to garden, struggles with severe arthritis. She fights worsening pain and a son and daughter-in-law who want her to give up her home and come live in theirs. Sheila's problem is worse still. Minutes before Betty's intrusion in her life – it is very much an intrusion – husband Ed revealed that he'd been having an affair. Sheila's reaction to the infidelity amounts to the strongest writing of the novel. If you read nothing else from the novel, read this.

Neighbours was a Search-for-a-New-Alberta-Novelist winner. Pauline Gedge, Andre Tom MacGregor, Fred Stenson, Jan Truss, and Betty Wilson were fellow honourees. In reading reviews from the time, I came upon three in the Montreal Gazette, my hometown paper. Published on 1 June 1979, the first belongs to Zonia Keywan:

 

The second is by Walter J. Traprock, whose name I can find nowhere outside the newspaper's 3 November 1979 edition. He butts against Zonia Keywan, feeding Western alienation: 

Laurali (Bunny) Wright is the winner is of the fourth Search-For-A-New-Alberta-Novelist competition. Despite this dubious distinction, she writes well, and if her first novel, Neighbours, has problems, it also has considerable promise. 

I have no idea why the Gazette saw fit to review the Macmillan edition twice. Change in editors? Poor memory? Drunkenness? 

The third, published on 11 June 1980, was occasioned by the novel's paperback release. Written by the legendary Marion McCormick, it's the shortest and the most amusing:

All too often, young writers write the same heavily autobiographical story: the hero heroine – always the most sensitive kid on the school bus – suffers in a provincial hamlet populated by Yahoos until he she can break away and write a novel about it.
   Neighbours is something else; a well-plotted suspense story involving three families who live on a Calgary street. The author achieves a mixture of pathos and menace that sticks in the mind. 

I side with Marion McCormick.

Macmillan's dust jacket, flaps included, focus on Betty, selling the novel of one woman's hellish decent into madness. I see it as something much more. Neighbours is about neighbours. Betty brings Bertha and Sheila into the story. Again, it is a novel about three women; it is a "Chilling Story" only because the struggles each face are so consuming that they can do nothing to help one another. 

It sticks in the mind.

Object and Access: The jacket illustration is credited to Martin Springett. Richard Miller is credited with the design.

As "L.R. Wright," Laurali Wright – Rose was her middle name – went on to become the foremost Canadian mystery writer of her time. Wright's fourth book, The Suspect, was recognized in the United States with the 1986 Edgar for Best Novel. This being Canada, it is unsurprising that the Macmillan edition enjoyed nothing more than a single printing. In 1980, Signet published the novel in paperback. I've never seen a copy.

Neighbours is sadly typical of Macmillan's 'seventies output in that it is nearly impossible to read without cracking the spine. Collectors of Alice Munro and Robertson Davies know of what I speak. My copy was purchased two years ago in Montreal at S.W. Welch. Price: $5.00. The previous reader or readers broke its spine twice. I take pride in having been so careful as to not increase that number.

Mine is the only copy I've ever seen in person, but there are others – not many – being offered online. At US$13.95, a Nova Scotia bookseller has listed one as "very tight unread/unopened." Another bookseller shares this disturbing image:

At US$100, the standout is a Very Good copy signed by the author.

That is the one to buy. Careful with the spine!

Mavis Gallant: 100 Years

Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant (née Young) was born one hundred years ago today. Her image doesn't feature on the cover of Montreal Stories (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2004), but it's easy to imagine that it's her standing before the mirror. Mavis Gallant was extremely photogenic. In later life, her image graced many covers, my favourite being Los cuentos (Barcelona: Lumen, 2009), Sergio Lledó's Spanish translation of The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant.

The artist as a young woman.

Mavis Gallant is the greatest writer to emerge from Anglo-Montreal. She is our greatest short story writer.

In recognition of this day:

The Pegnitz Junction
Minneapolis: Graywolf, 1984

Home Truths
Toronto: Macmillan, 1985

In Transit
Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1989

Rencontres fortuites [A Fairly Good Time]
Montreal: Les Allusifs, 2009

Going Ashore
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009

The Collected Stories
New York: Everyman's Library, 2016

Related post:
The Mavis Gallant Memorial Plaque

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 5: 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' by James MacRae

For the month, the fifth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

To think I once worked to celebrate this horrible man.

I first learned of John J. MacDonald – "James MacRae" – a few months after moving to St Marys, the small Ontario town he adopted as his home. That introduction came through The Four James, William Arthur Deacon's 1927 study of MacRae and fellow poets James McIntyre, James Gay and James D. Gillis.

The four are forever united by that book. Indeed, their very legacies are crafted by that book and its subsequent reissues, the last of which was published forty-eight years ago by Macmillan.

"Canada's Four Worst- And Funniest-Poets."

They're not the four worst, nor are they the four funniest.

It's all too easy to see the Four Jameses as being similar (Paper Lace), when in fact they were actually very different from one another (The Beatles). McIntyre, the most prolific, was the most grounded. Like so much of his verse, 'Ode on the Mammoth Cheese,' his greatest hit, was intended to raise a smile at country fairs. Deacon encourages us to laugh at it, when we should be laughing with it. Gay, a loving and loveable loon who thought himself Tennyson's rival, is the most fun to read. Gillis wasn't so much a poet as a prose writer. He's included for no other reason than to make for a great title.

The differences between these four men is most evident in their respective reactions to the 1880 murder of politician and Globe publisher George Brown.

Unsurprisingly, the tragedy inspired no verse from prose-writer James Gillis. James McIntyre writes of his sorrow in a poem titled 'Departed Statesman.' James Gay expresses great affection for the fallen man with 'The Honourable G. Brown.' James MacRae's 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' is something else entirely.

A different kind of loon than Gay, much of MacRae's poetry is taken up by hate thrown on women, strangers, Protestants, and Liberals. 

'Sad End of a Noted Politician' comes from The Poems and Essays of John J. MacDonald, (Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou, 1928), the poet's third and final book.

MacDonald's nom de plume is misspelled on the cover.

SAD END OF A NOTED POLITICIAN

On a cold winter night, cruel death in its might,
Deprives Mr. Brown of his senses;

Now the joys that attend all his honours must end,

And his long night of sorrow commences.

As he hears the decree, he determines to flee

To the gate of the dwelling of glory,

But that gate he finds closed, and his entrance opposed,

Although sad to his party the story.

Thus insultingly used, thus disowned and refused,

He goes on in another direction;

At that medium place, where the Papists have grace,

He asks humbly for rest and protection.

But in vain as before for thgat rest to implore—

He must follow his downward gradation;

With the devil despite he soon meets at the gate,

And there follows this sort of conversation:—

 

     G.B.—Disappointed and grieved, of mu comforts bereaved,

                 And my relatives all at a distance,

                 I have come to request of you leave her to rest,

                 And to ask your paternal assistance.

     DEV.—Oh! my corpulent friend, I your case apprehend,

                 And will grant you coveted pittance;

                 If you tell me the claim that you have on the same

                 You will gain to my dwelling admittance.

     G.B.—It is little you know in these regions below;

                You must think I'm a Papist or Paddy;

                As a Child if you prize the retailer of lies,

                I can certainly claim you for daddy.

     DEV.—You must still keep aloof till you give me some proof

                 On your noble and worthy exertions;

                 For I oft shall mistake if I venture to take

                 Every wandering stranger's assertions.

     G.B.—In my nethermost robes I have brought you some globes,

                You will find them a recommendation;

                     They will prove beyond doubt that I laboured throughout

                 In extending your own dominion.

     DEV.—By the stories they tell now I know you too well,

                 And to have one more prudent would rather,

                 For, exposing my plan by the course which you ran,

                 You have brought disgrace on your father.

                 For to win the applause some men for my cause

                 Some discretion and caution are needed;

                 But, regardless of this, you have acted amiss,

                 And my wise inspirations unheeded.

                 But your failings I feel have resulted from zeal

                 To encourage your partners in evil;

                 So forgetting your sin, you may quietly come in

                 But you must be exceedingly civil.

Related posts:

The Murder of George Brown: He Died With Grit

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty
Poet Names Newspaper Editor as Lucifer's Heir

Mean Mister MacDonald Attacks a Prime Minister

Words of Hate for Maria Monk

A Prudish Poet's Struggle with Stays

The St Marys James

Local Poet!

A Local Poet is Recognized

Unpleasant Verse for New Year's Day

McIntyre's Mammoth Ode

'March Day: Windy' by Charles Bruce

Verse for the new month by Charles Bruce, the pride of Port Shoreham, Nova Scotia. 'March Day: Windy' is one of twenty-four poems collected in The Mulgrave Road (Toronto: Macmillan, 1951), winner of the 1951 Governor General's Award for Poetry.

MARCH DAY: WIND

         This day you wonder, finding nowhere quite

         What you expect to find. The strident air

         Surrounds you like a sea of sweeping light;

         The hills and fields return you stare for stare 

         Humpbacked and grim, the giant juniper

         Bows down to scowl; across the crawling grass

         Beyond, where the twin Balm o' Gileads were,

         Two strangers halt and stiffen as you pass. 

         Something is altered here. The difference

         Between you and the blowing world is thinned.

         You turn to face the house, and common sense,

         And see a woman shouldering the wind. 

         Turn to the barn, and see an old man leaning,

         Intent to hear those droning syllables—

         Those phrases harsh and high, and wild with meaning.

         Of shouted sound from granite-throated hills.

Related post:

'March, 1918' by H.C. Mason

Sometimes a Fantasy

The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie
Kent Thompson
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973
200 pages

Describing The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie as a good debut novel seems faint praise, but I'd have said the same had it been a second or third novel. The narrator is William A Boyd, a disgruntled American schoolteacher who, lured by the charms of New Brunswick, purchases a rundown Fredericton duplex. His idea is to retire, occupy one half, and live off the rent of the other.

It all seems a bit crazy. Boyd is well south of forty and has little in the way of savings (though he'd claim otherwise). Taking ownership means taking on a substantial mortgage. And then there's the furnace, which heats both sides of the duplex. Boyd, who takes pride in his new role as a landlord, was ignorant of this fact. And he's never experienced a Fredericton winter.

The first order of business is to raise the rent on the tenants he's inherited. After they move out, as he knew they would, Boyd places a classified ad in the Daily Gleaner. He considers just one response, from Harrison Tennyson ("Tennie") Cord, who has just taken a position as Associate Professor of English at the University of New Brunswick:

The letter was headed by the letterhead, which of course served as a return address: "River Idyll Motel: Cabins and Cottages – Reasonable Prices." Tennie had neatly inked in the date under the slogan. But it was a mistake to use that stationary provided by the hotel. I should never have done that myself, even if it meant buying more paper. The very address had a touch of panic to it. 

Boyd has his failings as a landlord – which become increasingly evident – but is astute when it comes to tenants, whether current or prospective. Corrie and Tennie move in, bringing with them their three young children. As a newly transplanted American, Boyd shares something with the Cord family. Early in the relationship, Corrie and Tennie invite him to their November Thanksgiving dinner. The experience of the American expat weighs heavily on our narrator:

An immigrant from the United States to Canada comes always under the shadow of history – or to be specific, the shadow of Benedict Arnold. Arnold, who was considered to be a traitor to both king and Congress (an American easily forgets the first treachery)...

These words come from The Alien's Guide to Survival. Boyd's philosophical work-in-progress, it deals also with democracy, human behaviour, economics, religion, consumerism, and aesthetics. This passage gave me pause:

By ugly, I mean that which is offensively temporary. it is perfectly illustrated by the K-Mart Shopping Plaza  (at the top of Smyth Street Hill in Fredericton, New Brunswick). It is self-evident that ugliness debases men. Unless he is made of very stern stuff indeed, a man will act under the influence of his surroundings. Put a man in prison - and he will act like a prisoner. Surround a man with the shoddy goods of contemporaneity, and he will act in proportion to their measure.

K-Mart Shopping Plaza, Frederiction, 1968

I last visited New Brunswick's capital in pre-adolescence, so can't pretend to know the city. That said, I do recommend The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie to Frederictonians. Boyd address, 696 Rodman Street, may not exist, but I'm betting it's recognizable. The landlord guides the reader through places that no longer exist. My favourite is Hurley's Music Store. It's there that Boyd – remember, he's a Yank – first hears Anne Murray:

I was eating a hot dog with relish and mustard when I heard this song which a youngster was playing – probably listening to the record on the pretence of buying it. Finishing my hot dog, and my coffee I inquired of a clerk about the song. That was a rather pleasant tune, I said. "Why," he said, as if surprised I didn't know, "that's Anne Murray."
   "Anne Murray?" I said.
   He had divined that I was something of a stranger, and explained yo me thatAnne Murray had gone to the University of New Brunswick, "up the hill" and that she had graduated in 1966.

Boyd is so struck by the sweet songbird of Springhill that he not only buys the album (What About Me), but lays out a further $66.95 (nearly $415 today) in the purchase of a stereophonic record player in order to play it.

Who can blame him? The title track is wonderful:

The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie is of a time when Canadian nationalism was at its most fervent. I was alive, but far too young to be a reliable witness. Still, remembering my own university years, when American professors were prevalent, I found this exchange between Tennie and Manners, a fellow UNB academic, interesting:

"You can't seriously mean you're going to deport all the Americans. Look you hired us to do a job. You can't turn us back when the job is finished!"
   "Why not?" repeated Manners. "That's what one does to itinerant labour."

This takes place at a party Tennie hosts when his wife and offspring are away (Corrie's mother has died). It was here that this reader began to suspect that Boyd – an unreliable narrator, at best – was becoming unhinged. He descends into madness, his focus being Corrie. I was probably a bit late in picking up on this. Looking back, I now doubt she really waved her bra at him on wash day, declaring it "whiter than white." 

I really should give it a careful second read.

It's just hard to find the time these days.

About the author: Kent Thompson taught literature and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick. Born American, Canada was his home. Kent Thompson died this past summer.

Kent Elgin Thompson
2 February 1936, Waukegan, Illinois -
13 August 2021, Annapolis Royal , Nova Scotia

Object and Access: A slim novel bound in brown boards. The jacket illustration is credited to Jock MacRae. The colour and font do disservice.

Though there was but one printing, used copies are inexpensive (if uncommon). 

Dustiest Bookcase: S is for Slater (not Mitchell)

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

The Water-Drinker

Patrick Slater [John Mitchell]
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1937
149 pages

I read Patrick Slater's The Yellow Briar a few months after moving to southern Ontario. Our new neighbours and friends had read it in school. Another friend, Michael Gnarowski, was preparing a new edition for Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series. Copies were plentiful in our newly adopted corner of the country. It took little effort, little time, and less than thirty dollars to amass a nice little collection of various editions. The new Dundurn edition set me back twice as much as the others combined. 

l-r: the 1933 Thomas Allen edition, the 1963 Macmillan edition, the 1966 Macmillan edition, the 1970 Macmillan edition, and the 2009 Dundurn edition.

My lazy pursuit was encouraged by clippings left by former owners. These were found between the pages of one of the two Thomas Allen copies I own:

I really liked The Yellow Briar, but can't quite remember why. Wish I'd posted a review on this blog. I didn't because these new neighbours and friends were so familiar with he book; it didn't seem neglected or forgotten. As years passed, I realized that the offspring of our new friends and neighbours – closer to me in age – knew nothing of Patrick Slater and The Yellow Briar. 

Slater wasn't really Patrick Slater but a lawyer John Mitchell. The Yellow Briar, sold by the author and his publisher as a memoir, was a hoax. As hinted in the headline of a clipping above – 'Author Who Jailed Self In Spite of Crown Dies' – Mitchell was a troubled soul. This photograph suggests as much:
 

The image comes from yet another clipping – this one from Saturday Night – which I found in the pages of my copy of The Water-Drinker.

Published four years after The Yellow Briar, The Water-Drinker is a collection of verse coming from a man who'd previously published only prose. It begins with a twenty-one-page introduction in which Slater/Mitchell offers a mea culpa, before expounding on literature, poetry, growing old, and purse picking. The thirteen poems that follow are interrupted by nine colour plates featuring paintings by F.H. Varley, Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Maurice Cullen, amongst others. A tenth illustration – uncredited – appears only in black and white:

Might it be by the poet himself?

My copy, purchased in 2010, once belonged to Louis Blake Duff (1 January 1878 - 29 August 1959). It appears to have been a birthday gift, presented on his sixtieth birthday:

Duff was the author of several books and chapbooks, most having to do with the history of southern Ontario. A respected local historian, his death was noted by William Arthur Deacon in the pages of the Globe & Mail:

Dr. Duff deplored what he called the booklessness of Canadians, their disinterest in literature. As a passionate bibliophile – his own library contained 10,000 volumes – he could not help but be depressed by this characteristic which he considered a national trait.

My copy of The Water-Drinker was one of Dr Duff's 10,000 volumes.

It set me back all of $2.50.