Remembering la Corriveau

Executed 250 years ago today, Marie-Josephte Corriveau – la Corriveau – was a survivor. Just thirty at the time of her death, she'd long outlived her ten brothers and sisters, all of whom died in childhood. Marie-Josephte also survived her first husband, Charles Bouchard, the father of her three children. Widowed at twenty-seven, in 1761 she married Louis Étienne Dodier who, like Charles,was a farmer from St.Vallier on the St. Lawrence, just south of Ile d'Orléans. A little over eighteen months later, poor Louis was found dead in the barn, his head nearly caved in. The horse was to blame... or so it was thought at first. Then the rumours began to circulate.

In the spring of 1763, Marie-Josephte and her father, Joseph, were brought before a military tribunal. Joseph was found guilty of the murder and was sentenced to death. Marie-Josephte would've been flogged and branded as an accessory had it not been for her father's confession to a priest. Seems she'd been more than willing to see dear old dad swing for a crime she had in fact committed. At a second trial she confessed.

After Marie-Josephte was hanged, her body was placed in a gibbet – quite possibly the one pictured above! She was then transported across the St Lawrence and was suspended for five weeks from a post at the intersection of what are today Rue St-Joseph and Boulevard de l'Entente in Lévis.

Now, watch those property values soar.

An Anglo Quebecer, I first read of la Corriveau as a teenager in Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's Les Anciens Canadiens. Her presence in English-language Canadian literature is negligible, though she did get off to an early start; William Kirby featured Marie-Josephte in his 1877 novel The Golden Dog. Here la Corriveau is a poisoner for hire, a direct descendant of Catherine Deshayes, the 17th-century serial killer known as la Voisine.

The Golden Dog: A Romance in the Days of Louis Quinze in Quebec
William Kirby
Toronto: Musson/Montreal: Montreal News Co, n.d.

Others, historians included, have added to the legend. Charles, her first husband, has come to be seen as one of her victims; in some tales,  five more ill-fated husbands are added to the mix. And what about the ten dead siblings?

The 20th-century brought more novels, a ballet, and plays by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Anne Hébert and Guy Cloutier.. She lives on in this century:

There's even something for the kiddies:

Were I not so far away, I'd make the effort to attend this evening's Marie-Josephte Corriveau Commemoration in Quebec City.

As it is, I'll be raising a glass, if only in recognition of the contribution she made – unwittingly – to the country's literature.

A black oatmeal stout with ruby highlights, la Corriveau seems the obvious choice, but like the lady herself, it's rarely seen in Upper Canada.

A bonus:

Just look at what the sorry souls at VDM Publishing have on offer:

Saturday Night with the Alpha Jerks

Montreal's beloved Alpha Jerks – Dan Babineau, Thomas Bachelder, James Malloch and novelist manqué Daniel Richler –  caught on film as "The Eatables", from the 1980 Alison Burns' film of the same name.

Related post:

One Band Wonder?

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

Monument George-Étienne Cartier

For la Fête de la St-Jean, George-Étienne Cartier's 'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!',  a song I've written about in the past. No reason to go over it all again here; instead I offer this link to my favourite recording, sung by M Alfred Poulin.

The above comes from Devoilement du Monument Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Baronnet, Le Six Septembre 1919. It's an odd little booklet as the Montreal monument had been standing for all to see for three years. Hard to miss. A note on the last page provides something of an explanation:

The celebration of the Centenary of Sir George Etienne Cartier [sic] was to have taken place in September, 1914, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The outbreak of the war in that year necessitated a postponement of these festivities until peace had been declared.

Rien n'est si beau que son pays...

Songs for Sunday Suggested by John Wesley White

Following Tuesday's post about John Wesley White's Thinking the Unthinkable.

Pastor White is a rock 'n' roll revisionist, a fearless man who strays far from conventional thought and expression. Billboard be damned. In Arming for Armageddon (1983), White put it that Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" not only topped the U.S. singles chart, but was part of a satanic effort to lure listeners into accepting the Antichrist.


Thinking the Unthinkable (1992) has Laurie Anderson allied with Kiss in playing the devil's music:

"The Elder", the bands's all-time top album, was "concerned with a group of god-like figures who've watched over the planet since its beginnings in primordial ooze." The Elder is "an orphan boy who, through a succession of events, comes to save the world"*

See... just like Kal-el.

During the nine years separating the two books, White has come to believe that the Antichrist is an orphan (hence the dropping of King Juan Carlos from contention); otherwise the pastor's thinking is unchanged: "Britain's successors to the Beatles were the punk rock groups. Most notorious was Sid Vicious..."

Here White continues to be confused about Sid, whom he describes variously as a man and a band. Eventually, he settled on a the former with a sentence lifted from Arming for Armageddon: "His theme song was "Anarchy in the U.K.", in which he boasted of being an 'anarchist' and 'antichrist'."

I take issue. Sid was no role model, but I can find no evidence that he appropriated "Anarchy in the U.K.", a song he didn't write, performed here by a band of which he wasn't yet a member.



White is never so interesting, nor surprising as when he writes about popular music. I was taken aback in reading that in 1993 teenagers were being drawn increasingly to old chestnuts about ending it all:

Elton John sings about contemplating suicide; Elyse Wineberg says he is mortuary-bound; and British rock group Tin Lizzy belts out 'Suicide'.

Emboldened by the pastor's wavering over Sid Vicious, I challenge his assertion about "British rock group Tin Lizzy" through verse:

Lizzy was thin,
Not made of tin,
And came from Dublin.

Phil Lynott, the man who sang "Suicide", was long dead when Thinking the Unthinkable was published, but not by his own hand.

I admit, Elyse Weinberg was a mystery to me. A bit of digging reveals that Elyse is not a fella, as the pastor believes, but a woman. "Mortuary Bound" features on her 1968 debut album Elyse, which was released on the obscure Tetragrammaton label:


The same album peaked at #31 in the United States, and failed to chart in Canada, which pretty much explains why I'd never heard of Ms Weinberg.

The same album features a song with Neil Young on guitar:



Nineteen-sixty-eight was, of course, the year Young left Buffalo Springfield. He struck out on his own, playing intimate venues like Canterbury House, a small Anglican – sorry – Episcopal chapel in Ann Arbour Michigan.

Pastor White doesn't think much of the Episcopal Church.

Wonder how many people showed up for the free eats.

* The album – correct title: Music from "The Elder" – was a commercial failure. Released in 1981, it holds the distinction of being the worst-selling album in the band's 39-year history.

Related posts:
Same Old Same Old about Armageddon

Come, Come, Come - Nuclear Bomb

A Song for the Irving Layton Centenary

 
Irving Peter Layton
(né Israel Pincu Lazarovitch)
12 March 1912 – 4 January 2006

He is the light of our generation and after his 130 or 140 years are over and the man's removed from his work so that nothing lies between the reader and the work, the universe Irving created will shine forever.

– Leonard Cohen, 1997

Where is Catherine Deneuve?

The Shrewsdale Exit

John Buell

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972

Read the book, see the movie. Always thought that was the way to do it, so I have only myself to blame for spoiling The Shrewsdale Exit. Buell's third novel, it begins blandly – intentionally so, I think – with a family vacation:

They ordered sandwiches and beer, a Coke for the little girl, and were served in good time. They weren't in a hurry. They were going to the coast, to work their way along the ocean, camping where possible and staying in boarding houses when necessary. They talked as they ate, and in a short time they were about finished.

Within an hour – it could be two – mother and daughter are raped and murdered by a motorcycle gang. The father is left for dead, but is really only knocked out. Things move quickly in this novel; six weeks follow, during which the man buys a gun, plugs the thugs, is sent to prison and escapes into a world of pastoral beauty.

I'm spoiling things here, but not nearly as much as my reading experience was spoiled by the 1975 movie adaptation, L'agression, posted on YouTube:

Jean-Patrick Manchette's screenplay moves the action from somewhere (but not anywhere) in the United States to southern France. Buell's unwashed, wild bikers appear as efficient, faceless contract killers – characters in conspiracy. Jean-Louis Trintignant is cast as the vengeful husband and father, playing opposite Catherine Deneuve, who brings beauty and talent to the role of Sarah.

Sarah?

Sarah is not in the Buell's novel. In fact, not a word or action from la déesse de l'amour features in the book. Silly me, turning the pages I kept expecting her to appear.

I'm placing too much blame on the film. The Shrewsdale Exit is a weak novel with a strong start; the shift from the mundane to the violent is jarring, horrific and uncomfortably real. But when our hero enters prison plausibility passes, and the sure hand that wrote The Pyx and Four Days becomes shaky. In the third act, it brings us as close as I ever want to get to a Jeanette Oke farm. It's no coincidence that L'agression draws on the beginning, and only the beginning. But don't see the movie, read the book... the first 166 pages, at least.

Trivia: The L'agression soundtrack was written, in part, by Robert Charlebois (who also plays a biker). I offer this brief sample:

The very music that made the Sex Pistols seem so very attractive.

Object: A hardcover with green cloth boards with a bland dust jacket by Larry Ratzkin. The English Angus & Robertson first edition cover image trades the green road sign for blue, but is otherwise identical.

Access: The Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Angus & Robertson editions received no second printings, though there were a couple of subsequent editions in mass market paperback: Pocket (1973), Carroll & Graf (1984). I've yet to find evidence that it was included in the 1991 HarperCollins Canada trade paper reissues of Buell's novels. Canadian library users are encouraged to visit their university libraries. As far as public libraries go, only that serving the suffering residents of Toronto satisfies. As always – well, nearly always – Library and Archives Canada fails.

More Marwood

Like the Oscar Peterson Trio, I get requests. Many come from those seeking information on the great Brian Moore or the tragic Maria Monk, but most concern Harriet Marwood, a woman who never existed. Was the English governess modelled on a real person? When, if ever, did she use a birch? How might I meet such a woman?

The most common query comes from folks hoping for more Harriet Marwood stories. For those with the hunger, I have very good news: the beautiful, brunette disciplinarian exists outside the pages of The English Governess and Harriet Marwood, Governess. We find her first in The Augean Stable, a 124-page, three-act play that Glassco composed in 1954. Unproduced and unpublished, you'll have to consult his papers at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa to read this alternate, rather polite version of Harriet's romance with Richard Lovel.

Much more accessible is "The Black Helmet". Published in The Fatal Woman (Anansi, 1974) as one of "Three Tales by John Glassco", this is the novella that Glassco struggled with – forever revisiting and revising – for most of his 71 years. Here Harriet is mentioned frequently, if fleetingly, by her former charge, Philip Mairobert. In this passage, our hero recalls the the arrival of the governess at his family's estate in rural Quebec:

Today I will think of her as the person to whom I owed everything, not as a woman I loved – and think of my life here before she came, with no one but those two old servants in the twilight of dotage who were so terrified of me. I must have been like a wild animal then, with those fits of rage – screaming, biting, breaking things, rolling on the floor. I remember almost nothing of that time: it seemed to be mostly walking through these ruined gardens and in the woods where I set my ineffectual little traps for birds and rabbits, hoping to catch them alive. How desolate and wild a life! Yet when mother left to live in Paris for good, and Miss Marwood came, I was furious. I thought I would lose me freedom. Freedom! As if it ever mattered to me.

Well I lost it certainly – the child's freedom to be lonely, bored, idle, frightened. And I found, quite simply, happiness. A week after she arrived I could sleep without nightmares; and I had stopped stammering: I simply hadn't time! As for my rages, I really think she enjoyed them. as if they offered a challenge to her methods and muscles, to the very strength of her arm.

Though The Fatal Woman enjoyed just a single printing – likely 3000 copies – for a good many years it seemed quite common. No more. I note that only five, one a crummy library discard, are currently being offered by online booksellers.

Fans of the governess are advised not to hesitate. Strike now!

Trivial: The author's biography on The Fatal Woman errs in stating that Glassco won "the Governor-General's award [sic] for both poetry and non-fiction." In fact, he received only the former.

I'll step out on a limb here and say that Anansi's mistake is borne of a common misconception that Glassco won a Governor General's award for Memoirs of Montparnasse (his only "non-fiction" book). No Governor General's Award for Non-fiction was awarded for 1970, the year in which it was published.

Incredible, but true... and oddly appropriate.

Not trivial:

Cross-posted in a slightly altered form at A Gentleman of Pleasure – less flippant, more images.

My Career as a Teenage Rock Photographer

From the archives, these handbills and related photographs from my aborted career as a concert photographer. I never was serious and asked for no special favours. In fact, these were all taken using an old 35mm Canon (with broken light meter) that was smuggled into each show in a friend's purse.

Gang of Four's Jon King at Montreal's Beer Garden, 4 July 1981. thirty years ago today. I've since seen the band three more times, but have never once heard them play "5:45", my favourite of all their songs.

Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill. It's my understanding that this was the last time Allen played with the band until the 2005 reunion. Here it looks like he's packing up:

Durutti Column with American Devices. Véhicule Art, Montreal. 2 April 1982. With an audience of twenty or so, it was much harder to go unnoticed at this show. Still, no one seemed to mind. Damn that light meter.

The great Vini Reilly.

Montreal was their first ever Canadian gig, squeezed between New York and Toronto on a three-date North American tour. They've never been back – no return of the Durutti Column.

Sorry.

A bootleg recording of the Véhicule Art show is out there under the title dcmtl 1982. It includes this, for three decades my favourite Reilly composition:

When Liberace Winks at Bobby Gimby

When Liberace Winks at Me

Bobby Gimby and Johnny Wayne

Toronto: BMI Canada, 1954

One day I'm arguing with a friend that earlier times weren't necessarily "more innocent times", the next I come across this sheet music in a local shop.

Gimby was the first musician I could name. His "Ca-na-da" took root in my four-year-old brain and, like all good commercial jingles, has proven to be a hardy perennial.

And make no mistake, "Ca-na-da" was a commercial jingle; something to sell the centennial.

"Respectfully dedicated to LIBERACE, America's favorite performer", "When Liberace Winks at Me" is just as catchy. I found it here in this "Liberace Medley". The song begins at 6:49, but you'll want to see the whole thing.

Dear "Fan Club President",

I'm dropping you this line,

I'm sorry to have to tell you

I really must resign.

I've found another idol,

He's as charming as can be,

I really can't describe

The strange effect he has on me

I start to shake,

I start to shiver,

Every fibre in me really starts to quiver.

It's a feeling very close to ecstacy.

That's what happens when Liberace winks at me.

You can't compare his charming manner

With an ordinary Jerry, Joe or Jim.

And when he sits there at the piana

No one can hold a candelabra to him.

I never work,

Just dilly dally,

Since I fell under the spell of this Svengally,

I just sit there spellbound facing my T.V.

That's what happens when Liberace winks at me.

I start to blush,

I start to stammer,

And my pulses start a pounding like a hammer.

I'm bewitched as any fool can plainly see.

That's what happens when Liberace winks at me.

It's really very, very simple,

'cause he makes me feel just like a royal queen.

And when he winks and shows that dimple,

I start to hug and kiss my television screen.

I go beserk,

I start to tingle,

And I'm so gosh darned glad that I'm still single.

When he drops that eyelid, I just shout WOE-EE!!

That's what happens when Liberace winks at me.

I start to whirl,

I'm getting dizzy,

I'm in a haze, I'm in a haze, I'm in a tizzy

I'm a victim of a strange new sorcery.

That's what happens when Liberace winks at me.

International readers and those too young to have been exposed to "Ca-na-da" may be interested in the clip below, which was shot one chilly spring day at Expo 67. A 48-year-old man in robes, dubbed "The Pied Piper of Canada", leading skipping schoolchildren in song...

Seems like a more innocent time.

Trivia: "When Liberace Winks at Me" was one of several songs Gimby wrote with comedian Johnny Wayne (of Wayne and Schuster). The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us that they had their greatest success with something called "The Cricket Song" (1956) , recorded by Ray Bolger.

Q: How many times can I mention Bobby Gimby in one month?

A: Two.

A Long Lost Song of the Sea?

Sailors don’t care,
Sailors don’t care
Whether she’s dark
Or whether she’s fair!
As long as her lily-white bottom is bare
Sailors don’t care!

I caught myself singing this ditty while going through some paperwork last night.

Better at my desk than in church.

Ribald? You bet! But my real interest lies in the song's connection to American author Edwin Lanham's debut novel Sailors Don't Care (1929), first published in Paris by Contact Editions. The author and his publisher, Robert McAlmon, had contradictory stories as to the origins of the title – each credited the other – though it's probable that they drew from our own John Glassco. Then a teenager, the Montreal poet had learned the song aboard the Canadian Traveller, the ship that in 1928 carried him across the Atlantic to his Montparnassean adventures. Fourteen years later, Glassco wrote McAlmon, reminding him that the title "was taken from Captain Miller's (no relation to Henry) song in the second chapter of those abortive memoirs of mine ... both you and Ed read it, I know."

The lyrics to Captain Miller's song are found in John Glassco's papers at Library and Archives Canada... and, it seems, nowhere else.

Andrew Draskóy, of Shanties & Sea Songs, tells me that "'sailors don’t care' was a common saying around that time in its sense of sailors aren't picky." I note that the phrase also gave title to two American films, the first released the year before Lanham’s book was published. However, what I find particularly interesting is its appearance in the Victor Schertzinger/Johnny Mercer song "The Fleet's In", from the 1942 film of the same name. Its use is... well... fleeting. You'll hear the words just after the two minute mark:

She may be dark or fair,

But sailors don't care...

I wonder, was Johnny Mercer also familiar with Captain Miller's song?

Trivia: Really, isn't everything about this post trivial? That said, it's worth noting that Sailors Don't Care was published twice. The less ribald 1930 Jonathan Cape edition, pictured above, will set you back US$1000. The truly wealthy might consider the most desirable copy of the dirtier first edition. Inscribed by Lanham to McAlmon's partner in publishing William Carlos Williams, it goes for a mere US$2250.

Reliant upon his siblings, McAlmon died in near-poverty in 1956. At the time, Lanham was living a hand to mouth existence as a writer of mystery novels.

Encore!

Une deuxième chanson pour la fête de la St-Jean. Composed by George-Étienne Cartier, "Avant tout je suis canadien" follows his better-known "Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!". It was first sung 175 years ago today at a banquet of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, and was later adopted by les Fils de la Liberté. A president of the former and a member of the latter, Cartier seems a problematic figure for the Société and its allies. I've twice seen "Avant tout je suis canadien" attributed incorrectly to "les Patriotes". Manfred Overmann makes this mistake, and includes this song by a leading Father of Confederation in his Anthologie de la poésie indépendantiste et souverainiste.

This version is taken from the third volume of Benjamin Sulte's Mélanges historiques (Montreal: Ducharme, 1919).

Related post: A Song for la Fête de la St-Jean

One Issue Wonder?

I was going to include this artifact from 1980 in the previous post, but does it not deserve one of its own? Amongst contemporary Montreal music mags Mode & Musik stands out in so very many ways, not the least of which is its use of a typesetting machine in place of a typewriter. I bought this thing as a teenager, but otherwise know nothing about it. Looking at the masthead, only Yves Thériault's name is familiar – but I very much doubt that this is the same man who wrote Agaguk. That said, there is an piece by Jacques Lee Pelletier, who was "New Wave's first cosmetician". How do I know this? Because his article is preceded by one on... Jacques Lee Pelletier.

There's a good deal of mode and muzik here, but precious little Montreal. In mode, M Pelletier is the lone Canadian, presented beside designers Betsey Johnson and Thierry Mugler. In music, there are articles on XTC, the Specials and the Boomtown Rats, but aside from a lone, blurry photograph of sixteen-year-old disco diva France Joli and producer Tony Green, there's not a sign of the city's music scene.

Could it be that they sensed the mirror ball was about to drop?

Something is going on here. Publisher les Éditions Alquint has spilled an awful lot of expensive ink on something called "le Salon Disco" and the awkwardly named "Long Night of the disco... New Wave". Running through the magazine is a peculiar, seemingly desperate attempt to somehow link New Wave with disco and, more than anything else, the discotheque:

The New Wave phenomenon is spreading... in one way or another, it touches almost everyone. But it's still in the discotheques that it finds its natural habitat.

Fashion has been refashioned, clothes becoming as it were the elements of disguise. Anything goes... the wilder, the more outlandish the better! But one can still see blue jeans side by side with the latest New Wave craze like gold and red running shoes.

Clothes... make-up... hairdos... whatever turns you on!

The urge for disguises, to go dancing, to let it all hang out, is slowly but surely infecting the masses...

The hapless reader is told that New Wave is bringing great changes: "Some discotheques have pulled out all the stops to satisfy their clients' taste for the bizarre, some even transforming their dance floors into roller skate-dancing tracks!"

Can't say I remember Andy Partridge or Jerry Dammers on roller skates... but then, I don't remember France Joli on wheels either.

She's perched on stilettos here. Enjoy.

One Band Wonder?

The Gazette, 28 November 1980

I remember Daniel Richler as lead singer of the Alpha Jerks. Did I see them at Cinema V? Was his nom de punk Kenny Lingus? Was Richler in other bands? It all seems a fog. Digging through old Montreal newspapers brings no clarity. Thomas Schnurmacher's little write-up on the Alpha Jerks is unique, an oddity that exists only because the lead singer's dad wrote Joshua Then and Now.

In those days, children – when there wasn't so much as a Montreal Mirror – we old timers relied on our student newspapers for coverage of the alternative scene. But, every once in a while, someone took a stab at starting a local music magazine. I checked these, too. Still no Alpha Jerks!

The first and only issue of Going Underground. No publication date is listed, but reviews of Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and Architecture & Morality by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark suggest the dying days of 1981.

The first issue of Clea Notar's Red She Said, published – photocopied, actually – in August 1982.

The Summer 1983 issue. I'm pretty certain that this was the end.

From 1984, "JUST ABOUT FIVE GOD DAMN YEARS IN THE MAKING", the first issue of Sugar Diet. Belated congratulations to Rick Trembles.

Q: What is Mark Hamill's photo doing in a piece on Fonda Peters (Lindalee Tracey) and the Alpha Jerks?

A: Later in Schnurmacher's column we're told that "the star of Star Wars is filming a comedy with George Burns in the wilds of Vermont, but he occasionally finds the time to party in Montreal." Apparently Hamill had drinks at Disco Charly with owner Johnny Battista, and even asked some girls to dance. How'd he do? "Most of them accepted even though they did not recognize him."

I can find no record of a Hamill/Burns collaboration.
Pity.

Related post:

One Book Wonder?

A Tory Bodice-ripper?

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

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

– Adam Chapnick, The Ottawa Citizen

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

– The Gazette

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

– John Ivison, The National Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer, in its entirety:

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