No Weddings and Three Funerals

Quebec in Revolt
Herman Buller
Toronto: Swan, 1966
352 pages

The cover has all the look of a 1960s polemic, but Quebec in Revolt is in fact a historical novel. Its key characters are depicted on the title pages:

At far left is Joseph Guibord, he of the Guibord Affair.

The Guibord Affair?

Like Gordon Sinclair, one of twelve columnists and critics quoted on the back cover, the Guibord Affair meant nothing to me.

It most certainly didn't feature in the textbooks I was assigned in school. This is a shame because the Guibord Affair would've challenged classmates who complained that Canadian history was boring.

Here's what happened:

In 1844, Montreal typographer Joseph Guibord helped found the Institut canadien. An association dedicated to the principles of liberalism, its library included titles prohibited by the Roman Catholic Index – the Index Librorum Prohibitoru. These volumes, combined with the Institut's cultural and political activities, drew the condemnation of Ignace Bourget, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Montreal. In July 1869, Bourget issued a decree depriving members of the sacraments. Guibord died four months later.

Here's what happened next: 

Guibord's body was transported to a plot he'd purchased at Montreal's Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, only to be refused burial by the Church. The remains found a temporary resting place at the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery, while friend and lawyer Joseph Doutre brought a lawsuit on behalf of the widow Guibord. In 1874, after the initial court case and a series of appeals, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ordered the burial. In response, Bourget deconsecrated Guibord's plot.

The second attempt at interment, on 2 September 1875, began at Mount Royal Cemetery:

At Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, a violent mob attacked, forcing a retreat to Mount Royal.

The third attempt, on 16 November, was accompanied by a military escort of over 1200 men. Guibord's coffin was encased in concrete so as to protect his body from vandals.

The sorry "Guibord Affair" spans the second half of the novel. The focus of the first half is the man himself. Young Guibord woos and weds Henriette Brown, the smallpox-scared orphaned daughter of a poor shoemaker. He moves up the ranks within Louis Perrault & Co, the printing firm in which he'd worked since a boy, eventually becoming manager of the entire operation.

Louis Perrault & Co, c.1869

Henriette and husband come to be joined by Della, the daughter of one of her distant Irish cousins. Poor girl, Della was part of the exodus brought on by the Potato Famine. Her father and lone sibling having died whilst crossing the Atlantic – mother soon to follow – she clings to life in one of the "pestilential sheds" built for accommodate diseased immigrants. The most dramatic scene in the novel has Joseph defying authority by lifting he girl from her sickbed and carrying her home. 

"Skin and bone had given way to flesh and curves," Della recovers and grows to become a headstrong young woman. Buller makes much of her breasts. Ever one to buck convention and authority, Della spurns marriage, has a lengthy sexual and intellectual relationship with journalist Arthur Buies, and ends up living openly with Joseph Doutre ("Josef" in the novel). Truly, a liberated woman; remarkable for her time.

I've yet to find evidence that Della existed.

Joseph Guibord's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography informs that he and Henriette, a couple Buller twice describes as childless, had at least ten children. The entry for Joseph Doutre, whom the author portrays as a lifelong bachelor, records two marriages.

Were it not for the novel's Author's Note, pointing out that Guibord began his career working for John Lovell (not Louis Perrault), or that he was born on 31 March 1809 (not 1 April 1809), or that women didn't wear bustles in 1820s Montreal, might seem nit-picky.

The Swan paperback quotes Al Palmer, author of Montreal Confidential and Sugar Puss on Dorchester Street):

In fact, what Palmer wrote is this:

The Gazette, 19 November 1965

I expect there many more fabrications and errors in this novel and its packaging, but can't say for sure. Again, we didn't learn about the Guibord Affair in school.

About the author: Herman Buller joins Kenneth Orvis and Ernie Hollands as Dusty Bookcase jailbird authors. A lawyer, he rose to fame in the 'fifties as part of a baby-selling ring.

The Gazette, 13 February 1954

Buller was arrested at Dorval Airport on 12 February 1954 whilst attempting to board a flight to Israel with his wife and in-laws. The worst of it all – according to the French-language press – was that the lawyer had placed babies born to unwed Catholic women with Jewish couples.

La Patrie, 11 February 1954

Remarkably, Buller served just one day in prison. He paid a $20,000 fine, was disbarred, and was good to go.

Though Quebec in Revolt was published just eleven years after all this, not a single review mentioned of Buller's criminal past.

I hadn't heard of the Buller Affair (as I call it) until researching this novel, despite it having been  dramatized in Le berceau des anges (2015) a five-part Series+ series. Buller (played by Lorne Bass) is mentioned twenty-two seconds into the trailer. 

Fun fact: I read Quebec in Revolt during a recent stay at the Monastère des Augustines in Quebec City. 

Object and Access: A bulky, well-read mass-market paperback, my copy was purchased for one dollar this past summer at an antiques/book store in Spencerville, Ontario.

Quebec in Revolt was first published in 1965 by Centennial Press. If the back cover is to be believed, McKenzie Porter of the Toronto Telegram describes that edition as a "Canadian best seller." I've yet to come across a copy.

As of this morning, seven copies of Quebec in Revolt are listed for sale online. At US$6.00, the least expensive is offered by Thiftbooks: "Unknown Binding. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting," Take a chance! Who knows what will arrive!

There are two Swan copies at US$8.00 and US$12.45. Prices for the Centennial edition range from US$10.00 (sans jacket) to US$24.00. 

Surprisingly, Quebec in Revolt enjoyed an Estonian translation: Ja mullaks ei pea sa saama... Google translates this as And you don't have to become soil... 

There hasn't been a French translation.

Is it any wonder?

The King of the Canadian Pulps Bowdlerized

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1968

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Toronto: General, 1974

Thomas P. Kelley crowned himself "King of the Canadian Pulp Writers", so there should be no surprise that he considered his father a monarch amongst medicine men.

Who knows, maybe he was

From 1886 until his death forty-five years later, Kelley, père – a charismatic farm boy from Newboro, Ontario – operated the traveling Shamrock Concert Company. If Kelley, fis, is to be believed, their shows attracted crowds numbering 12,000 and more, bringing in many millions of dollars.

The Fabulous Kelley is typical of the author's non-fiction writing in that it contains nothing in the way of endnotes, references or bibliography. It's also atypical, standing out as the most polished of his many titles. Credit could go to the editors at Pocket Books, whom one might expect were more strict than those of previous publishers Harlequin, Arrow Publishing and News Stand Library, but I'm sentimental enough to believe that Kelley made an extra special effort here.

This is the story of a beloved father told by his son. Thomas P. Kelley, Sr., was indeed an extraordinary and unusual man. He was also a charlatan. In the 208 pages of the Pocket edition junior remains blind to this fact, all the while providing damning evidence. His greatest and only defence is that Dad never wavered in maintaining that he was superior to all others. Here papa medicine man is confronted by a disgruntled Oklahoma undertaker:

   "We had a medicine man pass through here about three years ago. He came with a horse and wagon and peddled some worthless fluid he advertised as 'Snake Oil'. He called himself Professor Logan."
   "I've heard of him,"was the other's answer. "Logan is a fraud, a cheap pitchman working solo. He's not a medicine man."
   "Oh, then there's a difference?" and there was a tinge of sarcasm in the other's quietly spoken words. "How interesting. Pray tell me, just how much difference is there between a pitch man and a medicine man?"
   Doc Kelley, one hand on the doorknob, turned and shot a glance at those pallid features and asked: "The woman who answered the door is your wife?"
   "She is."
   "Have you seen a photo of the famous beauty , Lily Langtry?"
   "I have."
   "There is that much difference..."

This exchange, my favourite, is not found in General Publishing's 1974 reprint. In fact, the latter publisher cut over 30,000 words, something approaching half of the original text. Here we have an odd instance in which a hardcover edition bowdlerizes a paperback original. What makes this even more unusual is the fact that the 1984 edition of The Fabulous Kelley marks the first and only time in which Thomas P. Kelley, Jr. was published in anything other format than paperback.

I've taken some swipes at Kelley in the past, but won't here. Sure, there's a good amount of exaggeration and embellishment in The Fabulous Kelley, but this is easily stripped away to reveal an all too rare glimpse of the medicine show by a man who grew up in its world. General's edition, which is much more common than any other, does a great disservice in ridding itself of things that are verifiable.

Thomas P. Kelley, Sr.

14 April 1865 - 31 April 1931

This is not to say that there isn't superfluous stuff – the junior Kelley does tend to run on, but here I'm happy to let him go. What follows is Thomas P. Kelley's comment on his father's death from a heart attack on 31 July 1931 in the Ontario town of Uxbridge:

So died Thomas P. Kelley, the King of the Medicine Men. Yes, and the medicine-show period died with him. The entertainment that had brought joy to millions throughout North America for more than a hundred years perished with its King.

So ends the General's bowdlerized edition. The Pocket Books edition continues:

Passed into oblivion, its distant glories forgotten, like the flame of a candle blown out with his final breath, Now it was all over; at long last modern times had triumphed and the medicine show days were no more. But it was a triumph which could only be gained by the death of the man with the golden tongue. A death that marked the end of an era.
   And even today the dwindling few old-time medicine show performers continue to tell: "Nature made only one Doc Kelley then threw away the mold." 

- FIN -

Objects: The Pocket Books first edition is an unexceptional mass market paperback, but looks much more attractive than any of the other editions. Credit should go to Peter Max, though I'm betting he had nothing to do with the design.

The oh-so-bland General Publishing edition features a lazy 400-word Introduction by Gordon Sinclair. Yep, he's had a quick look through the book, and is ready to repeat a few tidbits. Consider them spoilers.

General dropped all fifteen Bob White cartoons found in the Pocket first.

Curiously, General also got rid of nearly all photographs of the Pocket edition, replacing them with others that are neither better nor worse.

Access: Bowdlerized or not, The Fabulous Kelley is next to impossible to find in our public libraries and is a rare thing at our universities. The Pocket Books paperback is both uncommon and cheap – the few copies available online can be had for five dollars or less. The General Publishing hardcover is not only much more easy to find, but much more cheap. Good copies can be had online for as little as a dollar. The last edition, published by Paperjacks in 1975, uses General's shorter text (Gordon Sinclair's snoozy Intro included). It's easy to find and cheap... but really, it's the Pocket mass market you'll want.

Fact-Checking Gordon Sinclair

Bright Path [sic] to Adventure

Gordon Sinclair

Toronto: Harlequin, 1954

Was Gordon Sinclair ever so dashing a figure? I remember him from Front Page Challenge. Not nearly as sharp as Pierre Berton, lacking Betty Kennedy's class and poise, to my young eyes he was just a boorish little man in a loud sports jacket.

What I didn't know, sitting there on the floor in front of my family's Viking colour television, was that Sinclair had written a number of commercially successful books. Royalties from the first, Foot-loose in India (1932), paid for his faux-Georgian manor in Islington. Bright Path to Adventure was, perhaps, less successful. Still, in 1945 the Globe and Mail reported that it had sold 10,000 copies in just two months.

The Globe and Mail, 1 December 1945

At this distance, it's difficult to explain the popularity. Bright Path to Adventure is such a slapdash effort; a book that seems to rely on the author's memory alone. Sinclair offers up a collection of tales, which like the cover, are worthy of Men's Adventure, Man's Action and other muscle-flexing magazines of the post-war era. What jars is that such a prominent, respected journalist cares so little for truth or accuracy. Reading Sinclair's words is much like to listening to a half-drunken stranger at a dinner party going on about some article he once read in school. Everything is sketchy. Sinclair devotes several pages to the case against Jack Fiddler without once mentioning his name... or the name of his co-accused... or the name of his supposed victim; nor does he report the year or location of the alleged crime. He describes all, laughably, as a case of "cannibalism and voodoo".

We move from dinner party to campfire with a ghost story. It seems that one dark September night a car containing two unidentified female teachers from an unnamed girls' college broke down, unaccountably, on an unspecified Kansas highway. The journalist tells us that the pair took shelter in an abandoned farmhouse (location undisclosed) where they encountered the ghost of a fisherman. Then they learned from an innominate local that the farm had once belonged to a nameless man whose heart had been broken by a son who had gone off to sea. Sinclair writes that the apparition left behind some mysterious vegetation, "a type of seaweed only found on dead bodies." This, according to an anonymous professor of botany, who was "frankly dubious but curious. He showed the foliage to others who agreed that this type of seaweed could never have been found anywhere near the Kansas prairie."

Never.

Reportage from "Canada's most widely travelled journalist".

Object: Though it drops the Stanley Turner illustrations found in the McClelland and Stewart first edition, Bright Path to Adventure is fairly thick for a Harlequin. Curiously, this edition also drops the letter S from the title; Sinclair's bright paths becoming a single trail. Full page adverts for Raymond Marshall's Lady... Here's Your Wreath and Come Blonde, Came Murder by Peter George only contribute to buyer's remorse.

Access: The Toronto Public Library has a copy, as do a bunch of Canadian universities. A quarter century after Sinclair's death, signed copies of the Harlequin edition can be bought for as little as US$5. Good signed copies of the McClelland and Stewart edition can be had for under US$20. Unsigned copies are cheaper still.