Edna Jaques' Award-Winning Thanksgiving Verse

For this Thanksgiving weekend, verse from Canada's beloved Poet Laureate of the Home. First published in 1932, "Thankful for What?" was named New York Times Outstanding Poem of the Year. She received twenty American dollars.

Thankful for What? 

     Not for the mighty world, O Lord, tonight,
          Nations and kingdoms in their fearful might —
     Let me be glad the kettle gently sings,
          Let me be thankful just for the little things. 

     Thankful for simple food and supper spread,
          Thankful for shelter and a warm, clean bed,
     For little joyful feet that gladly run
          To welcome me when my day's work is done. 

     Thankful for friends who share my woe or mirth,
          Glad for the warm, sweet fragrance of the earth,
     For golden pools of sunlight on the floor,
          For love that sheds its peace about my door. 

     For little friendly days that slip away,
          With only meals and bed, and work and play,
     A rocking-chair and kindly firelight —
          For little things let me be glad tonight.

Related posts:

Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Prayer'
Thanksgiving in the Midst of War

A Thanksgiving Hymn

Thanksgiving Day Advice

'Thanksgiving Morn'

An Expatriate Canadian Poet's New England Thanksgiving for Canadian Thanksgiving

A Poet Laureate's 'Prayer for the New Year'

My Kitchen Window
Edna Jaques
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1935

Related posts:

Decades-Old Verse for the New Year by E.J. Pratt

Temperance Verse for New Year's Day

An Old Poem for the New Year by Arthur Stringer

Immature Verse for the New Year

A New Year

Hunting the Hun by the Banks of the Niagara

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S. on the Frontier
Harold C. Lowry [sic]
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1918

A boys' adventure story from the Great War, doesn't this look like a series title? Could've been, I suppose, had the Armistice not been signed the month after publication.

Lowrey's "Young Canada Boys" are the "Scouts of the Allies' Patrol", a Baden-Powell-inspired group  whose members more or less represent the Allied Powers. "Cod" Martin was born in Newfoundland. "Cinders" Thomas's father is a Welshman, "Marne" Armand's veins flow with French blood and "Rusty" Kelly will never deny he's Irish, "even though he hated the mention of the evil word [sic] 'Sein Fein.'" Twelve in number, they're a pretty tight group, though "Jap" Douglas, whose missionary parents proselytized in the Orient, is repeatedly accused of being "yellow".

All of 'em – well, maybe not Jap – are itching "to give the Huns such a corking good lickin' they'll never want another war as long as the world lasts." But because they're too young, the scouts do the next best thing by enlisting as Soldiers of the Soil.

Scouts of the Allies' Patrol existed only in Lowrey's imagination, but Soldiers of the Soil – the S.O.S. of the title – was very much real. Formed in the final year of the war, it sought to fill the labour shortage on Canadian farms with strapping young lads like Cod, Cinders, Marne, Rusty and… okay, we'll take Jap.

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S. on the Frontier was intended as a work of propaganda, and Harold C. Lowrey was just the man for the job.

Canadian Grocer, 31 January 1913

True, he wasn't a novelist, but Lowrey was a fruit grower, a grocer and an agriculture journalist. I expect he also owned a typewriter. In his first chapter, "Enlisting", the scouts join Soldiers of the Soil. In the second, "To the Farms", they travel to adjoining farms in the Niagara Peninsula. Lowrey himself was from the region and uses his knowledge of same to good effect. He recognizes that there is only so much excitement to be had in pruning and tending to plum and cherry trees affected with black knot, so adds a chapter on a runaway horse and makes it so that one of the scouts nearly drowns in the Niagara River. Elderly farmer Grandpa Secord appears from time to time to share folksy tales of his Auntie Laura and the War of 1812.

Dumb luck leads the scouts to stumble upon instructions left behind by the clumsiest German spies found in fiction. They share the evidence with the commanding officer of nearby Niagara Camp (read: Camp Niagara), who promptly hands the group over to dashing Chief Intelligence Officer Major Watson. The scouts are smitten – the mere sight of the man sets "Anzac" Woodruff's "lithe young body a'throb with excitement" – but I wasn't so affected. To be perfectly frank, I found the Major himself a bit of a suspicious character. Consider this: Niagara Camp has fourteen thousand men, but Watson sets out to catch the enemy accompanied only by the boys and an underling named Lewis. Lowrey's explanation only fuelled my suspicions: "he could not resist smiling at the eager looks on the faces of the scouts. Anzac's keen eagerness quickly caught the officer's fancy and approval; he was a boy after his own heart."

My fears were unfounded.  The climax, such as it is, involves slingshots, revolvers, falling boulders and a pit of thirty-eight seventeen-foot rattlesnakes that crush the life out of two men.

Seventeen-foot rattlesnakes? The whole thing, fantastic and incongruous, was hard to take seriously.

Black knot, on the other hand…

Bloomer? Bloomers?:

"Catch a spy ? Why say, kid, you couldn't catch a spiced pussy, let alone a German spy," laughingly asserted Chuck, giving Anzac the spanking he deserved. A lively tussle followed, which all the patrol enjoyed immensely.

Object:  A bland hardcover, 202 pages in length, the most interesting thing about it is the misspelling of the author's name on the title page.

Shades of News Stand Library.

Access: Two copes are right now listed for sale online, neither of which is in great shape. At US$25.00, the cheaper is falling apart and is splattered with white paint. The other copy is just about as bad, though it does bear the author's signature. It's yours for US$55.00. I bought mine earlier this year for one Canadian dollar at a thrift store not four blocks from my home.

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S, on the Frontier can be found at the Toronto Public Library and seven of our universities. It can be read online here at the Internet Archive.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Related post:

Dreaming of the Hun

Dale's Dumb Luck; or, A Mountie Messes Up

Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment
Joe Holliday
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1956

First off, I should make it clear that the book I really wanted to read is Dale of the Mounted: Atomic Plot. Published in 1959, it involves a Pakistani scientist, East Indian religious fanatics and a terrorist attack on Canada's Chalk River nuclear research facility. I read Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment only because it turned up in our local library's most recent used book sale.

The Globe & Mail,
1 November 1952

That I haven't come across any others says something about the passage of time, I think. Dale of the Mounted books were once very popular, each landing in early November so as to take advantage of Christmas gift giving. Having been born the year the series ended, I never received one myself, but I remember a friend's older brother having a few.

Dale of the Mounted is Constable Dale Thompson. His "Atlantic Assignment" follows Dale of the Mounted in Newfoundland as the sixth adventure in six years. As in the previous book, Dale sets aside his Red Serge to adopt the guise of a journalist. Where in Newfoundland he was on the trail of Portuguese smugglers, here Dale investigates suspicious incidents that have taken place on HMCS Pegasus, Canada's newest aircraft carrier.

Was there really a time in which it fell to the RCMP to investigate possible crimes of sabotage aboard Royal Canadian Navy ships? If so, would that task have been entrusted to a constable? And why is Dale a constable, anyway? After all he accomplished in the previous books, isn't a promotion long overdue?

These were the first questions raised in reading Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment. Though not answered, by the end of the first chapter they'd been supplanted by another that I simply could not shake: How is it that Dale is still alive?

If Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment is anything to go by, the constable should've died in the series' first book. His end might have come at the hands of a foe or while cleaning his gun, but he would be dead.

Dale never gets a chance to investigate past incidents. He's newly arrived on the aircraft carrier when a mysterious fire breaks out, destroying two planes. The challenge in describing what comes next involves time; Holliday is never terribly clear as to just when events take place in this novel. His narrative is lost in irrelevant facts and figures. These aren't presented as red herrings, rather they serve to pad.

Dale learns all about sonobuoys, the Habbakuk Project, Pratt & Whitney Wright Cyclone engines, and a navigation and interception computer invented by an RCAF Wing Commander. One of the novel's 158 pages is devoted to the ins and outs of automobile ownership in Bermuda.

As the Mountie struggles to stay focussed, he's easily outpaced by his lone suspect, a mechanic named Joe DeMarco. The Pegasus loses three more planes, though this does not prevent the carrier from participating in a "United Nations sea exercise". The ship's commanding officer takes it all in stride:

The plane was lost.
     When the young Mountie said how impressed he was with the part that aircraft carriers played in the war games Captain Grayson smiled. He liked anyone who thought that carriers were the finest things afloat. 

Captain Grayson likes Dale so much that he readily follows the young Mountie's advice. When dynamite is discovered in DeMarco's toolbox, Dale suggests they play a waiting game:

"I've a hunch that DeMarco can't plant any kind of time bomb unless he has plenty of time to do it. Unless I'm badly mistaken, the movies tonight will give him that big chance. Let us attend the movies. I'll keep within sight of DeMarco. I'll watch every move he makes. If he leaves the flight deck I'll follow him."

DeMarco does leave the deck. Dale follows but is knocked out cold (for the second of three times). The next morning, the mechanic manages a flight off the carrier, resulting in the loss of yet another plane.

As it turns out, DeMarco is one of two fifth columnists. The Mountie doesn't get either man. What happens is that the first saboteur kills the second, then plunges to his death in a kamikaze-like attack on the Pegasus. It's only through a bizarre accident that the carrier is saved. The attacks were the work of a Balkan "dictator country" – though why it targeted the Pegasus is anyone's guess.

The novel ends improbably with a chance meeting between Dale and the Secretary of State for External Affairs. I was distracted by the narrator's cock up in referring to the latter as a diplomat – five times in less than a page – so didn't quite recognized its importance as a set-up for the series' next book. I was put right by the lamest of endings:

The promised adventure, Dale of the Mounted: DEW Line Duty, arrived in stores the following November. Five more adventures followed. The series ended in 1962 with Dale of the Mounted in Hong Kong, in which Dale is finally killed.

Okay, I don't know for a fact that he dies – but, really, dumb luck can only last so long.

Dedication:

For The Men Of The

Royal Canadian Navy

particularly the crew of

HMCS BONADVENTURE [sic]

(aircraft carrier)

Trivia:

The Globe & Mail, 14 November 1953

The Globe & Mail, 26 November 1955

The Globe & Mail, 17 November 1956

The Globe & Mail, 15 November 1958

A bonus:

Object: A 158-page hardcover in burgundy boards with dark blue type. The dust jacket illustration is by Bob Turnbull. My copy was once presented as a Christmas gift.

I've not been able to identify Wayne or Alan.

Access: Sixteen of our university libraries have copies, as do the Toronto Public Library and Library and Archives Canada.

An American edition, published in 1959 by Pennington Press of Cleveland, Ohio, features a whole mess of illustrations by a man named Bill Humrickhouse. Canadian children had to use their imaginations.

Both the Thomas Allen and Pennington editions can be found online at prices ranging from US$3.50 to US$26.25. The Vermont bookseller trying to get $65.00 for her "Very Good" copy in "Good" jacket is ignored.

Update: I'm reminded by Ralph Mackay of Chumley & Pepys On Books that comedian Dave Broadfoot's Sgt Renfew of the Mounted was forever being knocked out.

His catchphrase: "When I regained consciousness…"

The Pornographic Edna Jaques

Back-Door Neighbors
Edna Jaques
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1946

Related posts:

The Erotic Brian Moore

The Homoerotic A.E. Van Vogt

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

J is for Jaques, the Poet Laureate of the Home

from My Kitchen Window
(Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1935)

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.

The Healing Hands of Rocke and Locke

The third part of my review of The Canada Doctor by Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell 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.

Related posts:

The Canada Doctor: First Visit

The Canada Doctor: Second Visit

The Canada Doctor: Second Visit

The second part of my review of The Canada Doctor by Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell 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.

Related posts:

The Canada Doctor: First Visit

The Healing Hands of Rocke and Locke

The Canada Doctor: First Visit

The Canada Doctor

Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell

Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint/[Toronto]: Thomas Allen, 1933

361 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.

Related posts:

The Canada Doctor: Second Visit

The Healing Hands of Rocke and Locke

More Dope, More Danger, Fewer Dolls

The Black Candle

Emily F. Murphy

Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1922

Returning to Dope Menace, I find that much of the most sensational writing featured comes not from the pulp and porn houses, but from religious outfits like the Pacific Press Publishing Association, owned and operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Its books, like Plain Facts for Young Women on Marijuana, Narcotics, Liquor, and Tobacco, were anything but. The press was, as Stephen Gertz writes, 'a great thorn in the side of anyone trying to rationally educate the public on drugs.' Perhaps the most outrageous of its publications was On the Trail of Marihuana: The Weed of Madness, published in 1939:

The marahuana user, freed from the restraint of gravitation, bumps his head against the sky. Street lights become orangoutangs [sic] with eyes of fire. Huge slimy snakes crawl through small cracks in the sidewalk, and prehistoric monsters, intent on his destruction, emerge from keyholes, and pursue him down the street. He feels squirrels walking all over his back, while he is being pelted by some unseen enemy with lightening bolts. He will thrill you with the most plausible accounts of desperadoes who lurk in the doorway ahead, waiting with long sharp knives to pounce on him and carve him to pieces.

Imaginative stuff, Pacific Press - but my favourite passage belongs to Fundamental Truth Publishers, who in 1943 issued a booklet, The Moloch of Marihuana, by the Reverend R. J. Devine:

An ordinary man or woman becomes in the eyes of the Marihuana addict, beautiful beyond compare. Marihuana, grown by trusties on prison farms unknown to prison officials, has been taken to the inmates. Under its influence the prisoners fall desperately in love with one another; as they would with members of the opposite sex outside prison walls. One can understand the debaucheries that take place.

It seems Canada's religious leaders didn't dwell nearly as much on the threats posed by drugs; we certainly had nothing comparable to Pacific Press (our own Pacific Press dispersed propaganda of a different kind). In this land of peace, order and good government, its not really so surprising that our single widely-read work of propaganda would come from a judge. There is much to admire in Emily Murphy, she was the first female magistrate in the British Empire and shares credit in the Persons Case. Still, I find her Historica Minute (née Heritage Minute), performed by the Kate Nelligan, cringe-worthy. Oh, it begins well enough - nice set, beautifully shot, with the attention to detail we've come to expect - but then comes the line: 'I, Emily Murphy, author of the Janey Canuck books, pioneer in the war against narcotics...'

And so, attention is drawn to the fifth of the Janey Canuck books, The Black Candle. Here we find similar panicked misinformation, such as these quoted words from Charles A. Jones, for all of six months the Chief of the LAPD:

Persons using this narcotic [marijuana] smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under the influence, are immune to pain, could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they becoming [sic] raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.

When coming from under the influence of this narcotic, these victims present the most horrible condition imaginable. They are dispossessed of their natural and normal will power, and their mentality is that of idiots. If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict.

Judge Murphy then passes on some information from W. H. B. Stewart, Superintendent of London's Bethlehem Royal Hospital, that 'the drug is used for the purpose of inducing pleasurable motor excitement and hallucinations which are commonly sexual in character among Eastern races.' This is just one of many unreferenced statements in The Black Candle, presented in support of her xenophobic world view. The author writes of 'a well-defined propaganda among aliens of color to bring about the degeneration of the white race', she tells of 'Chinese pedlars' [sic] who boast that the 'yellow race would rule the world' and 'would strike a the white race through "dope"'. According to Murphy, threats come from all sides: 'Some Negroes coming into Canada - and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either - have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white men.'

Who, one wonders, is this great writer?

The Black Candle is not just another 'Janey Canuck' book; the author departs from her tiresome travelogues to become 'Judge Emily F. Murphy'. Her billing as 'Police Magistrate and Judge of the Juvenile Court' lends an air of authority and knowledge that Rev. Devine and the Pacific Press lacked. The Black Candle was read, reviewed and discussed. The following year, the author thought enough of the work to nominate herself for the Nobel Prize in Literature (not to worry, it was awarded to Yeats). It may be long out of print, but The Black Candle lives on - its considerable influence on our narcotics legislation would be acknowledged by the Le Dain Commission.

As one whose drug of choice is supplied by the Upper Canada Brewing Company, I write without bias that The Black Candle is the most destructive book yet produced in this country.

We honour the author with a statue on Parliament Hill.

Object and Access: Still found in our larger public libraries. The first edition, one of Thomas Allen's more attractive titles, appears to have been published without a dust jacket. Not nearly as rare as some booksellers claim, decent copies can be bought for C$75. The only reprint, the ugly 1973 Coles Canadiana Collection facsimile, features a top-notch Introduction by Robert Solomon, researcher for the Le Dain Commission. Do not pay more than C$20.