Last Words of a Raconteur

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]
Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierley]
Montreal: Véhicule, 1990

159 pages

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé follows Arthur Hailey, William C. Heine, Tom Alderman, Richard Rohmer, Bruce Powe, and Joy Carroll as the seventh Canadian novelist I ever read. Three things set him apart, the first being that he was Canadien, in the nineteenth-century definition of the word. The second is that he was from the nineteenth century. The third is that he is a different class of writer. The Last Canadian has nothing on Les Anciens Canadiens.

Set in and around the conquest of New France, Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) was a critical and commercial success in the years preceding Confederation. It is by turns a historical novel, a supernatural novel, a religious novel, a gothic novel, a horror novel, a war novel, a memoir, and a romance. It was also the first Canadien novel to be translated twice into English; by Georgians M. Pennée (1864) and Charles G.D. Roberts (1898). In 1996, it was translated a third time by Jane Brierley. Her Canadians of Old is the only complete translation.

Since my teenage years, when I first read the Roberts, I've been struck by the focus on Les Anciens Canadiens to the exclusion of Aubert de Gaspé's other writings. It wasn't until 1988, 122 years after the first French-language edition that there was an English translation of his Mémoires. That translation, A Man of Sentiment, was also by Jane Brierley.

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, was the second Brierley Aubert de Gaspé translation. In a sense, she was at the end, or rather after the end as the author died decades before Divers first appeared in bookstores. It presents four pieces composed late in life, discovered amongst family papers. Writes the 1893 editor in his avant-propos: "Je prie le lecteur bienveillant de prendre en considération que ce sont les derniers écrits d'un octogénaire, qui est décédé avant d'avoir eu l'avantage de pouvoir les repasser."

The note isn't entirely honest in that two of the four had appeared previously in 1866 numbers of Le Foyer Canadien. Brierley takes a small liberty in rearranging the order. And why not? It's not as if Aubert de Gaspé had a say in Divers, or whether it would be published in the first place.

So we begin with 'Yellow-Wolf, 'Le Loup-Jaune' in Divers. The longest of the four, it takes the form of a tale told the author as a very young man by a elderly Malecite chieftain. The supernatural figures, as does brutal reality in the form of torture he suffered in Iroquois captivity. In 'Woman of the Foxes' ('Femme de la tribu des Renards') the victim this time is a young Iroquois slave girl who is acquired by a forefather of the author's dear friend Antoine -Gaspard Couillard. 'Big Louis and the Legend of Indian Lorette' ('Le Village indien de la Jeune-Lorette'), the finest of all four, relates to an exchange between the author and Big Louis, a Huron known for his intelligence and repartee. The latter shares the story of the great serpent, which very nearly brought an end to his people, all the while recognizing that he is sharing the tale with a man whose own people, religion, and drink has brought even greater devastation.

The final piece, 'General Wolfe's Statue' ('La statue de général Wolfe') is something of a detective story in which the author shares his findings and theories as to the origin of a less-than-life-size wooden tribute that once stood at the corner of du Palais and Saint-Jean in Quebec City. Murder figures! The translator continues the research in her endnotes.

The statue in its current location at the Morrin Centre, Quebec City. 

Jane Brierley was awarded the 1990 Governor General's Award for English-language Translation for this book, but she brought so much more. She adds an  introduction and meticulous annotations. Each of the four pieces is preceded by a "translator's advice to the reader," providing context.

The tales themselves comprise just 84 pages, but Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is not a fast read. There is the richness of style, there is the weight of history and all that, and there is artifice to be recognized. Canadians of Old is most certainly the place to begin with Aubert de Gaspé... after that, A Man of Sentiment. But how wonderful that this exists! 

Object: A trade size paperback, Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is one of the the most attractive books in Véhicule's fifty-one year history. Credit goes to the translator who worked with J.W. Stewart on its design. The interior features thirteen illustrations, a map, and a photograph. The striking cover painting is a self-portrait by Huron chief Zacharie Vincent (1815-1886).

Access: Used copies listed online range between $9.76 and $131.12. I recommend the one going for $9.76. Better yet, pristine, unused copies can be purchased directly from the publisher at $14.95 through this link.

The original French, Divers, was first published in 1893 by Beauchemin. A Gatineau bookseller is offering a library discard of the first edition at $41.60. It has been rebound in just about the ugliest boards imaginable, but still seems a bargain.

Divers can be read online here courtesy of the University of Toronto and Internet Archive.

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

Remembering la Corriveau

Old Folks
Reluctantly Revisiting Canada's Great Virus Novel

Remembrance Day

A plaque dedicated to the congregants of St Matthew's Anglican Church who fell during the Great War. Henry Hutton Scott (second column, eighth down), was killed during the Battle of the Somme in the taking of Regina Trench. He was the second eldest son of Frederick George Scott, rector of St Matthew's. During the Great War, Rev Scott served as chaplain in the First Canadian Division. The clergyman wrote of the search for his son's body in his memoir The Great War as I Saw It (Toronto: Goodchild, 1922):

When I got into Regina Trench, I found that it was impossible to pass along it, as one sank down so deeply into the heavy mud. I had brought a little sketch with me of the trenches, which showed the shell hole where it was supposed that the body had been buried. The previous night a cross had been placed there by a corporal of the battalion before it left the front line. No one I spoke to, however, could tell me the exact map location of the place where it stood. I looked over the trenches, and on all sides spread a waste of brown mud, made more desolate by the morning mist which clung over everything. I was determined, however, not to be baffled in my search, and told the runner who was with me that, if I stayed there six months, I was not going to leave till I had found that grave. We walked back along the communication trench and turned into one on the right, peering over the top every now and then to see if we could recognize anything corresponding to the marks on our map. Suddenly the runner, who was looking over the top, pointed far away to a lonely white cross that stood at a point where the ground sloped down through the mist towards Regina Trench. At once we climbed out of the trench and made our way over the slippery ground and past the deep shell holes to where the white cross stood out in the solitude. We passed many bodies which were still unburied, and here and there were bits of accoutrement which had been lost during the advance. When we came up to the cross I read my son's name upon it, and knew that I had reached the object I had in view. As the corporal who had placed the cross there had not been quite sure that it was actually on the place of burial, I got the runner to dig the ground in front of it. He did so, but we discovered nothing but a large piece of a shell. Then I got him to try in another place, and still we could find nothing. I tried once again, and after he had dug a little while he came upon something white. It was my son's left hand, with his signet ring upon it. They had removed his identification disc, revolver and pocket-book, so the signet ring was the only thing which could have led to his identification. It was really quite miraculous that we should have made the discovery. The mist was lifting now, and the sun to the East was beginning to light up the ground. We heard the crack of bullets, for the Germans were sniping us. I made the runner go down into a shell hole, while I read the burial service, and then took off the ring.

Henry Hutton Scott
April 6, 1890, Drummond, Quebec, Canada -
October 21, 1916, Picardy, France

RIP

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Remembrance Day 2015

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Remembrance Day 2014

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Remembrance Day 2013

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Remembrance Day 2012

'A Kiss' - Bernard Freeman Trotter

Remembrance Day 2011

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Remembrance Day 2010

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Remembrance Day 2009

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Giving Madge Macbeth Her Due

The frontispiece to Madge Macbeth's Kleath (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co, 1917)
Artist: George William Gage

A brief follow-up to the previous post on Madge Macbeth's The Long Day.

Madge Macbeth never visited the Yukon, but that didn't prevent her from setting her 1917 novel Kleath in Dawson City. I don't own a copy, and haven't read it, though it is available online. 

This isn't about that book, rather the film it inspired.

Two years after publication, the motion picture rights to Kleath were sold to the Mayfair Photoplay Corporation by her American publisher Small, Maynard & Co. Macbeth received a 65% cut, amounting to $442. The resulting film, The Law of the Yukon (1920), takes its title from a Robert Service poem. The Bard of the Yukon was given sole credit.

Exhibitors Herald, 1 May 1920

I wonder how much Service was paid for lending his name.

Bet it was more than $442.

The film The Law of the Yukon has nothing to do with Service. It's not in any way based on his "verse Classic." If you don't believe me, I'm providing the Service poem in full. If you do believe me, feel free to skip.

THE LAW OF THE YUKON

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:

"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane— 

Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;

Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;

Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,

Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.

Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;

Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;

But the others—the misfits, the failures—I trample under my feet.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters—Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;

From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;

Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,

Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept—the scum.

The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,

One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was—Men.

One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;

One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.

Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,

Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;

Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,

Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,

Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;

Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,

Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;

Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,

Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;

Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,

Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;

Lost like a louse in the burning . . . or else in the tented town

Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;

Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,

Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;

In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,

Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;

Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,

In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.

Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,

Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame

Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;

Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,

Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;

Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,

Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;

Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.

Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,

Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;

Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,

Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.

Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,

And I wait for the men who will win me—and I will not be won in a day;

And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,

But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;

Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,

With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;

Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,

When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;

Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave—

Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.

Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,

Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,

Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,

As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;

That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

This is the Will of the Yukon,—Lo, how she makes it plain! 

Not much in the way of plot, is there.

In an interview published under the title 'Look to Poems for New Ideas' in the 24 April 1920 issue of trade journal Exhibitors Herald,  Isaac Wolper, the president of Mayfair, hints at the truth:

Because The Law of the Yukon is a lost film, I've relied on old reviews for what it's about. The most detailed I've found comes courtesy of the 11 November 1920 edition of the Daily Colonist:

Morgan Kleath comes to Gold City, a bustling mining camp in the Klondike country, in the film "the law of the Yukon," which was shown for for the first time at the Variety Theatre yesterday. Kleath makes his way to the "San Domingo," the principal gathering place and meets Tim Meadows, the proprietor, who had induced him to come to Gold City to establish and edit a daily paper.
     Tim introduces Kleath to his daughter Goldie, whom he worships and guards with jealous care. Kleath invites Goldie to dance. Joe Duke, who as been paying attention to Goldie, conceives a violent dislike for Kleath and with the aid of his friend Jake Nichols, is able to pick a quarrel with him.
     A fight follows, in which Duke receives a sound thrashing. Jake, seeing the turn of events and, striving to aid his fried, stabs Morgan Kleath in the arm.
Barney McCool, a good natured old Irishman, who is known as "the biggest liar in Gold City," takes a strong fancy to Kleath and becomes his good man, Friday. He takes the wounded man to his log cabin and Dr. Meredith, the only physician in the town, waits on him. Mrs. Meredith, hearing of the newcomer, calls on him. She at once becomes infatuated with Kleath. Goldie to is strongly drawn to him.

     Everybody is anxious to know Kleath's past. His silence furnishes food for speculation. On two different occasions – once when he had picked a lock with a rusty nail, and once when he opened Tim Meadow's safe after the combination had been lost, he played into the hands of his enemies. These enemies, seeking to discredit him, circulate a story that Morgan Kleath is a yeggman, a criminal fugitive from the States.

     Duke, harboring revenge, sees his way clear to rob Tim Meadow' safe and have suspicion point towards Kleath. Duke and his partner, Jake Nichols, are successful in luring Goldie and Morgan Kleath to a deserted cabin, where they are forced to remain all night. During the night Duke and Jake commit the robbery.

     Kleath's feat of opening the safe is remembered and he is arrested and charged with the grave crime. Before leaving the deserted cabin, Kleath extracts a promise from Goldie that she will not mention the fact that they spent the night there. This, of course, is done to protect her good name. Kleath's silence compels the court to declare him guilty. Goldie, unable to keep silent, lays bare the whole circumstance. A stranger, a woman, appears dramatically and reveals the history of Kleath's past life (an honorable history, by the way) and herself as the accomplice of Duke and Nichols. Duke, infuriated at the turn of events, shoots the woman. After a lapse of time Kleath and Goldie leave the Klondike for the "Outside" as man and wife, and this the story ends happily, as it should. 

Exhibitors Herald, 12 June 1920

Because I haven't read the novel, I can't speak to the accuracy of the plot synopsis found in the this review from the November 1917 issue of the Canadian Magazine:

"...the story, if set for moving pictures, undoubtably would be a success."

In her 1957 memoir, Boulevard Career, Madge Macbeth devotes all of five sentences to Kleath: 

It was published in Boston and for several weeks I was deliriously happy. Then I learned that it was being filmed without my knowledge or consent. The Author's League of America took the matter up but there was nothing to be done because in my ignorance I had turned all rights over to the publisher. The film appeared under Robert Service's title, The Law of the Yukon, and my name was not mentioned!

     I got enough money from the venture to buy a cheap fur coat.

The $442 she received in 1920 would amount to under six thousand today. So, yeah, a cheap fur coat.

All this leaves me with this question: We can't see the movie, but should we be reading the book? 

A Bonus: In the Exhibitors Herald article, I happened to catch Isaac Wolper referencing The Miracle Man, almost certainly the most important lost film based on a Canadian novel:

Ideas lift a picture far above the commonplace level. Analyze one of the greatest pictures ever produced, 'The Miracle Man.' What made it great? Why was the public response to it so eager and spontaneous? The crux of the reason is expressed in one word. 'Idea'! The picture conveyed a poetic idea beautifully expressed.

Related posts:

Madge Macbeth's Great Gold Rush Hoax

Images from a Lost Film of a Forgotten Novel

The Miracle Man on Paper and Nitrate Film

Remembrance Day

On November 11th at eleven in the morning the bells of London rang out their joyous peals, for the armistice had been signed and the war was over. There was wild rejoicing in the city and the crowds went crazy with delight. But it seemed to me that behind the ringing of those peals of joy there was the tolling of spectral bells for those who would return no more. The monstrous futility of war as a test of national greatness, the wound in the world's heart, the empty homes, those were the thoughts which in me over mastered all feelings of rejoicing.

— Canon Frederick George Scott, The Great War As I Saw It

The Great War was the war of my grandfathers. Edward Maurice Busby, my father's father, was a medical student at McGill when the fighting began. He left his studies, enlisted, was shipped overseas, and performed surgery before he'd earned his medical degree. My grandfather survived the war, returned to McGill, and lived what was by all accounts a happy life for a further forty-four years. He died within days of what would have been his seventy-first birthday. I'd been born over a month earlier, but we never met.

Edward Maurice Busby

I remember William Horace Humphreys, my mother's father, very well. He took me to Mary Poppins, my first experience as a movie-goer. After my father died, leaving my mother a widow at forty, he stepped in to care for me and my sister so that she could return to McGill, the university from which she'd graduated a quarter-century earlier.

William Horace Humphreys

Bill Humphreys was a wonderful man who had witnessed wondrous things. He'd been seen the early days of flight, and would six decades later jet across the Atlantic on BOAC. He owned the first colour television I'd ever seen. We sat together watching news coverage of the first steps on the moon.

My clearest memory of my grandfather has nothing to do with Julie Andrews or Neil Armstrong, but a die-cast Wild Wings Sopwith Camel model I'd received as a Christmas gift.

Mine was painted purple.

At six, I somehow knew the Sopwith Camel had flown in the war my grandfather had fought, and so was keen that he should see it.

"Tell me about the bad guys!"

"There were no bad guys," he replied.

My grandfather's response shook me then, as it does still. This gentle, smiling man, looked suddenly sad and troubled... and then he walked out of the room.

That response – of a man who had experienced real war, not the ones sold by toy makers and politicians – has stayed with me this last half-century. Years after his death, I learned that William Horace Humphreys had received a Distinguished Conduct Medal. He never told his wife and children how he'd earned the honour, and kept it hidden away – with the other medals – in his desk drawer.

Today, on the one hundredth anniversary of the end of The War to End All Wars, I think of my grandfathers. I think of my fellow Quebecer, Frederick George Scott, who dug through the bloodied mud of Courcellette until he'd found the body of his son, Henry Hutton Scott.

I think of my fellow Canadian George Lawrence Price, killed by a sniper two minutes before the Armistice.

Monstrous futility indeed.

Would that their families had been so fortunate as mine.

Related post:

Remembrance Day (F.G. Scott's "Armistice")

Betting the House

Hickory House

Kenneth Orvis [pseud. Kenneth Lemieux]

Toronto: Harlequin, 1956

Bookie Alfredo Rossi can see the writing on the wall. The Feds are cracking down, and it's only a matter of time before they move in on him and sidekick Benny Kramer. Fortunately, Al has been good with his savings; he dresses like a million dollars, but is otherwise quite frugal. Al's also a guy who keeps an ear to the ground. He's heard rumblings about a corrupt mayor in some city on Lake Michigan. He's also heard that this same mayor, Carson Peters, keeps paperwork pertaining to his various illegalities in his office safe.

Al knows just the guy, a safecracker named Lou Kovaks, who can get him those papers. The poor sap was once a steady client – "Lou doesn't pick stretch runners as well as he does the locks on safes" – before he took one too many chances on the job. He's been serving time in the prison at Dannemora, but is just about to be sprung. Al is there when it happens: "'What's the matter, Al... afraid I'd be late for the first race?'"

Instead of the track, Al drives Lou to that city on Lake Michigan. Along the way, he fills the safecracker in on the job, complete with photograph:

"It's an old Continental," he stated soberly, "I've blown a dozen them in my time. A good jamb shot and the door pops open like a cuckoo clock when the hands point up."

Piece of cake. After Lou is paid, he leaves town and the novel. Al sticks around and blackmails the mayor into allowing him to set up Hickory House, a swanky nightclub and illegal gambling den on the edge of town. All goes swimmingly until the joint attracts the attention of big-time mobster Budsey Everest.

Hickory House is a first novel. In his 1985 memoir, Over and Under the Table, author Kenneth Orvis tells us it was written over an intense seven-month period: "Total absorption in plotting writing, and editing erased every other want and need except eating, sleeping, bathing, and defacating [sic]." I found this surprising, not because Hickory House is a bad book (it's perfectly fine), but because it's so short and simple. There is no real depth to the characters: Benny is devoted, Peters is corrupt, his tramp of a daughter is a tramp, and Al really know how to dress. Everyone plays their part, and the plot unfolds pretty much as you might expect.

Seven months?

Who am I to say it wasn't worth it? Hickory House went in and out of print within a month, but Orvis maintains that it brought all sorts of attention:

My novel had opened many new doors. After several radio and TV interviews and short pieces in local newspapers, more copywriting accounts than there was time for were easily available.

One can't help but envy.

So, yes, a worthwhile debut... for Orvis, if not the reader.

Shame that Harlequin forgot to put his name on the cover.

Object and Access: A 157-page mass market paperback. This past summer I snatched up the lone copy being sold online from a bookseller in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Price: US$12.95.

Not on Worldcat.

Good luck.

Related post:

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Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Justin Trudeau's memoir was released this morning, two days after what would've been his father's 95th birthday, one year (less a day) before the next federal election. The former is a coincidence.

Reviews are already in. Hours before pub date, customer critic "Page" posted a one-star review under the title "Shows how arrogant JT really is" at chapters.indigo.ca. This, of course, begs a question: Just how arrogant do you have to be to dismiss a book you haven't read?

By comparison, the attack dogs at Sun News have been slow off the mark. Who can blame them? They're still gnawing on last week's Chatelaine profile of Trudeau and his young family. Why just hours ago, it posted as its "VIDEO OF THE DAY" a segment dealing with same from Michael Coren's Agenda.

"I'm not going to pretend that I read Chatelaine magazine; I'm not sure many people read Chatelaine at all," said Coren of Canada's highest circulation magazine. This country's most incompetent book reviewer went on to describe the article as "one of the most callow, fawning pieces I have ever seen". Paige MacPherson of Sun News joined in to form a most impassioned circle jerk. Said she of the article:

It talks about Justin in this glowing fawning sort of a way, as well as his wife and his children, and it's certainly I don't think befitting of the title of the article, which we showed there, 'Is Justin Trudeau the Candidate Women Have Been Waiting For?'. Well, as a woman, at the end of this article I have no idea if he's the candidate that I've been waiting for because it doesn't say anything about him as a politician or as a candidate for prime minister of our country.

As a man, I won't presume to weigh in on the issue, except to note that the title takes the form of a question. We agree on that right? Can we also agree that its author, Carol Toller, has a good deal to say about Trudeau as politician?

Michael Coren seizes bullshit by the horns in focusing on the above photo:

People don't usually, as an entire family, in their clothes, get into the swimming pool unless they're all mentally ill. They've obviously been told by the photographer, "Let's do this. It's warm enough. We'll take the photo." And we're meant to think this is normal Trudeau behaviour.

Two things about this statement:

• Michael Coren is either forgetting – or trying to remind, none too subtly – that Justin Trudeau's mother suffers from bipolar disorder. The affliction is thought to be hereditary, dontcha know.
• In the article, Ms Toller writes that "someone" suggested the family jump in the pool. Trudeau, we are told "laughs it off, then pauses as though he can see it – how it’ll play on the page, how it’ll showcase their sense of fun, project a 'Canadian political dynasties are just like you' insouciance."

How it'll play out on the page? How it'll "project a 'Canadian political dynasties are just like you' insouciance"? Really? In an article that "doesn't say anything about him as a politician"?

By this point, Sun was reporting – incorrectly – that Chatelaine had endorsed Justin Trudeau. Things moved from being underhanded, ignorant, clumsy and stupid to otherworldly when Coren pretended to be very familiar with Chatelaine – which, you'll remember, is a magazine he doesn't read. "They always profile political figures in an infantile way", said the host, comparing the family profile to an opinion piece the magazine had published eight years earlier. Ms MacPherson then ruined the narrative:

I have to say, in fairness, there was a lifestyle piece on Stephen Harper and his family as well, but it was nowhere the glowing, fawning piece this very long – basically – essay on how wonderful and carefree the Trudeaus are. It was nothing compared to that.

You see, the real problem with "Is Justin Trudeau the Candidate Women Have Been Waiting For?" isn't that it's a puff piece, but that it's puffier than the one written about the Harpers.

Just about the worst part to a fellow like Coren is this line: "Many voters aren’t sweating the details: They already like what they see in Trudeau – his storied lineage, his youthful energy, his awesome hair."

"How could any journalist sleep at night having written 'awesome hair' in a profile of a man who might well be the next prime minister?" the host asked.

I suggest Coren consult his colleagues at Sun News, who have described Mr Trudeau's hair as "great" (Brian Lilley), "great" (Lorne Gunther), "great" (John Robson), "luxurious" (Monte Solberg), "fantastic" (Simon Kent), "beautiful" (Ezra Levant) and "beautiful" (Ezra Levant, again). Christina Blizzard remarked that the Liberal leader has "nicer hair than Harper". Does it say something about Sun that so many of its men, and so few of its women, obsess over Justin Trudeau's hair?

Michael Coren himself has written about the man's "great hair". My favourite of his articles is the one in which he writes of Trudeau's "nice hair, good looking, cute smile, famous and clever dad, 'interesting' mum."

That's right, "'interesting' mum."

However does Michael Coren sleep at night?

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Eileen Fitzgerald
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1969

Eileen Fitzgerald's Expo Summer began forty-seven years ago – 28 April 1967 – with the opening of the World's Fair. Mine began the very same day. I was four years old, living with my parents and little sister in suburban Montreal; the author was a second-year McGill student who had just moved into a flat in the city's downtown. I'm fairly certain that our paths crossed.

Expo Summer? Fitzgerald's memoir begins with the solstice more than fifty-five days in the future, yet she manages fewer than 163 pages, a good deal of which have to do with events that occurred in March, during which time she lived in residence at the university's Royal Victoria College.

"Bubbly", says the Province. I wonder what other adjectives they used. The Gazette went with "good":

16 August 1969

Eileen Fitzgerald was not of Montreal, but Eastchester, New York. Her writing in Expo Summer suggests a sheltered life lacking in inquisitiveness. I quote from the pages in which the author and her two girlfriends hunt for off-campus accommodation:

We wandered out of the Guy Street station somewhat lost, since at that time our world in Montreal didn't stretch much further west than Mountain Street.

Now, I point out that Guy is only two stops from McGill. Guy Street itself is just eight blocks west of the university campus. The trio find a flat on Mackay, which is invariably referred to – thirty-two times – as "MacKay Street". The Décarie is "DeCarie" and Cedar Avenue is "Cedar Street". The author's flatmates, Lyn and Gate, are just as clueless:

No one knew the exact location of Place Bonaventure except that it was a Metro stop, so we took the Metro from McGill east to the Berri-de Montigny [sic] transfer, and then back west on the other line until we found ourselves in Bonaventure station. Clearly, it was going to be a lively night.

Expo 67 aficionados, of which I am one, will recognize Place Bonaventure as the venue in which François Dallegret held his pre-Expo Super Party, which featured Lothar and the Hand People, Suzanne Verdal, Tiny Tim, and the Blues Project.  Juan Rodriguez wrote a very good piece on the event here, but Eileen Fitzgerald's is much more succinct:

They finally did show up on the roped-off stage, which looked like a little boxing ring rising out of the crowds of teenyboppers, costumed hippies, young sophisticates and just passers-by. But by the time we had tuned in to their sound sufficiently to tune out the steady roar of the hall, they had already finished playing and had hurried toward the periphery of the Salle Bonaventure.

You really can't expect much by way of observation from a person who doesn't know the name of the street on which she lives.

It's always a mistake for a reviewer to criticize a book for not being what he wanted it to be, but  Doubleday did deceive:

A COLLEGE GIRL TELLS US HOW IT WAS AT THE GREATEST WORLD'S FAIR EVER

Expo Summer doesn't have a whole lot to do with Expo 67. Fitzgerald worked there for a bit selling postcards, and she did visit a few pavilions, but this book is more about getting that first apartment, hassles with Hydro Québec, friends crashing on couches and making meals on a budget. I have my own stories, each every bit as interesting as Fitzgerald's – some more! –  but none worth writing down.

She attaches herself to a band called the Service Entrance, I think because she has something going on with one of the guitarists. For a couple of dozen pages I thought this might lead to something interesting. The band shares the bill one night with Tim Buckley at the New Penelope, but it ends up as their only Montreal gig. Author and guitarist don't so much as kiss.

Still, it's a memorable summer:

A Swiss chocolate ice cream bar stood right across the way from a Brazilian counter where they sold flavors of sherbet which no one who wasn't a Brazilian had ever heard of before, and we couldn't decide what to get, or forget them all and have Dutch ice cream. Seymour had black raspberry, and I had banana, and Lyn had pineapple rum. Mat volunteered to try the Dutch chocolate across the way. And they all were great.

I too ate sherbet at Expo, and though four, had tasted pineapple rum.

The critics rave:

Young Miss Fitzgerald is a student at McGill University and golly, didn't she just practically drool to be in Montreal at Expo time. With her friends Lindsay (the moneyed one) and Gate (no one ever called her Mary) Eileen shares an apartment, works off and on at an Expo postcard palace, and pals with Mat, Josh, Eric, etc., students who were hoping to make a go with their electric rock group, the Service Entrance. Discouragement, and Mat cuts out, but there's a zoomy offer at the close and Mat returns. An occasional cut-up and jolly jape — sneaking into Labyrinth; copping a swim in an alien pool by hopping a rooftop; and the gosh-awful day when Lindsay's mother visits and discovers a boy or two in the bedroom (all innocent as a cub den). Eileen, bless her busy little pen, is undoubtedly the only member of her generation who admits to putting on a "gay summer frock." Dull as dishwater and pure as the drivelling snow.

— Kirkus, 3 July 1969

About the author:

A bonus: Not by Suzanne Verdal, but about her.

Object and Access: A slim hardcover in black and brown boards, my Fine first edition copy was bought in January from a bookseller in Woodbury, New York. At US$20, I did well. As of this writing, just one first edition – price-clipped, Near Fine – is listed for sale online (C$25). After that, you're left with a lone book club edition (US$15), and two less than pristine copies of the uncommon Curtis paperback (C$4 and US$4 – take your pick).

Toronto has the only public library to carry a copy. Eleven of our university libraries come through. Expo Summer is not to be found at  the author's alma mater.

Related post:

The Little People of Expo 67

Related plea:

All these years later, I'm still looking for a copy of Winston Smith's Sexpo '69 (North Hollywood: Brandon House, 1969).

C'mon, someone's gotta have a copy.

The Hairdresser as Straight Man

The Happy Hairdresser

Nicholas Loupos

Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1973

175 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Globe & Mail, 1 December 1973

Related post:

Figuring Out the Queers of New York

A is for Amtmann

I complain.

The narrow focus of this exercise – this casual exploration of our suppressed, ignored and forgotten – has prevented comment on the contemporary, the celebrated, and even the passing of friends. I made an exception once, when it didn't seem too personal. I'm doing so again in recommending The Pope's Bookbinder, a new memoir by antiquarian bookseller David Mason.

One might expect that such a book would find good company amongst Canada's ignored, but this has been far from the case. The National Post, The Toronto Star, Quill & Quire... attention has been paid. Here's the Washington Post review:

David Mason’s ‘Pope’s Bookbinder’ features lively recollections of a life filled with books

Buy it.

For someone like myself, a buyer not a seller, the book has provided an entertaining and informative look into a culture with which I have much to do, but of which I am not a part. I've come away with an even greater appreciation of those in the business... the honest ones, at least. It's proven to be my favourite read this summer.

Buy it.

One of the honest souls mentioned in the book is Bernard Amtmann, whom Mason describes as "the father of the Canadian antiquarian book trade". Thirty-four years after Amtmann's death, collectors chase his catalogues, so you'll understand my delight last month in coming across the nondescript items pictured at the top of this post: twenty-four catalogues dating mostly from 1961 and 1962, with a few more from the late 'sixties. Bound in black card stock, the two volumes set me back two dollars.

Always fun looking through old catalogues, imagining a time when, say, George Vancouver's A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World... (London: Robinson, 1798) was going for $650 (the equivalent of $5,080 today). A cursory look online reveals five copies on offer right now, beginning at US$58,500. The most expensive, yours for US$95,000, includes free shipping!

As they say – antiquarian booksellers, I mean – condition is everything, so it surprised me to discover that Amtmann's listings provide little in the way of description. This, from the earliest catalogue (#146), is typical:

CAMPBELL, Wilfred. Ian of the Orcades... New York [etc.] [n.d.] $3.00

The inside back cover of each catalogue features this blanket notice:

Books and other material listed may be assumed to be complete and in very good condition unless otherwise stated.

All this has me wondering about dust jackets. Not a one is mentioned in the twenty-four catalogues. Surely some were missing. Take Ian of the Orcades, which was published in 1906 – you don't see many dust jackets from that year. I turn to Mason, who in an anecdote from his earliest years in the trade writes that the dust jacket was once much less significant, "not yet having reached the ludicrous point it occupies today."

The Campbell is typical of the prices found in these catalogues. The vast majority of the items are priced between $2.00 and $5.00 (roughly $15.50 to $39.00 today). Here are a few of the items that caught my eye:

ALLEN, Grant. The British Barbarians, a Hill-top novel. London, 1895. 2d ed. Cf Watters, p.170.    $5.00
BARTON, Samuel. The battle of the swash, and The capture of Canada. New York, Dillingham [1888] 131 p. Not in Can.Arch. $7.50
BARTON, Samuel. same. with: [also a patriotic speech by Dr. W. George Beers, of Montreal, in reply to the toast of "professional annexation." Authorized Canadian edition.] Montreal, Robinson [1888] 137 p. Can.Arch.II, 1253.    $7.50
CHINIQUY. Why I left the Church of Rome. London: Protestant Truth Society [n.d.] 24 p. cover-title.    $2.50
GREGORY, Claudius. Valerie Hathaway. Toronto, 1933.    $5.00
RIEL. Poesies religieues et politiques, par Louis "David" Riel. Montreal, 1886. 51, [1] p.    $10.00

Bargains all, even when converted into 2013 dollars. That said, anyone thinking that books are a sure investment is advised consider this listing from catalogue #151 (1961):

DUMBRILLE, Dorothy. Stairway to the stars. Toronto: Allen [1946] vii, 72 p. (verse) Watters, p. 44.    $3.00

By coincidence, I purchased this very book as part of the very same haul that brought the catalogues. It cost a buck, less than 13¢ in 1961 dollars.

And it's signed.

I was a high school student when Bernard Amtmann died. The most valuable book I then owned was probably a first of Two Solitudes ($3.00 in catalogue #146). Though I'd inherited it from my father, back then I cared much more about Ian Hunter's Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star. My first encounter with Amtmann's name came years later when I first began researching John Glassco. The bookseller had several dealings with the poet/pornographer, selling various rare books and the odd letter. On three occasions, he handled collections of Glassco's papers. It was in this role, the Amtmann received the most revealing letter ever penned about Memoirs of Montparnasse:

Dear Mr Amtmann 

     Re: Documents in the Glassco Collection 

With regard to the first item (A. 1) of the list I supplied you last month, I would like to make it clear that these six scribblers of Memoirs of Montparnasse date, to the best of my recollection, from somewhere between 1960 and 1961, and not from 1931-2 as might be inferred from the Prefatory Note to the published book. They comprise of course the first, only and original manuscript of the book itself, and its only holograph record. 

                    Yours sincerely 

                                    John Glassco

Dated 28 September 1973, the letter is just one of 147 found within The Heart Accepts It All, the forthcoming collection of correspondence edited by yours truly.

Buy it.

Enough about me. In his book, David Mason writes that much is owed Bernard Amtmann, "not just by the Canadian book trade but by the whole country." He then adds some words of caution:

Bernard did himself enormous damage by his unceasing attack on the institutions who ignored or denigrated Canada's cultural heritage. He died broke in the honourable tradition of the trade but his influence is still felt amongst those who care about Canada's heritage.

Oh dear.