The Great War and Its Discontents

The Magpie
Douglas Durkin
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974
351 pages

Craig Forrester has received a telephone call from Mrs Gilbert Nason, wife of one of the wealthiest men in Winnipeg, inviting him to a dinner party at the family home: "no dinner party was complete nowadays without its war hero — she would promise that he would not be asked one question during the evening, about his experiences at the front — and Marion would be there to tease him — and, well, would he come?"

Craig accepts the invitation. Marion, the Nasons' daughter, does indeed tease, as when she ushers him toward another woman, whispering:

“She’s a war widow, but she’s young and — come on, you’ll see for yourself.” She took him by the hand and pulled him after her across the hall and through an open doorway into a small reception-room. Mrs. Nason got up from where she had been sitting and came forward to meet him. “So here you are!” she greeted him, extending her hand. “My, but you’re looking well! Here’s our hero, Jeannette."

The scene takes place in July 1919, eight months after the Armistice, and one month after the violent end of Winnipeg General Strike.

The promise of the post-war future is very much a topic of dinner conversation. Methodist minister Reverend George Bentley, who joins Craig and Jeanette at the Nason family table, has strong opinions about the demands of the working man:

“Unless we restore our institutions to their status of the days before the war,” Bentley declared, “there is no hope for civilization.”
   Jeannette Bawden broke through at last with a word of protest. “Why take the trouble to save it, Mr. Bentley?” she asked in her softest voice.
   Marion chuckled in spite of herself — or because she had been awaiting just such an opportunity — and was reprimanded by a look from her father.
   “Why take the trouble to save our Christian heritage?” the good gentleman asked, surprised.
   “I wasn’t aware that it was Christian,” Jeannette retorted.
   Craig caught a glance from Marion and the two exchanged furtive winks. He was beginning to like Jeannette Bawden and was pleased, for some reason or other, to find that Marion shared her views.

   “Jeannette, you heretic,” Mrs. Nason interrupted, “I’m not going to permit you to badger Mr. Bentley. Craig, can’t you talk her off the subject.”
   “On the contrary,” objected Bentley, recovering himself, “I think I rather enjoy being badgered by a woman when she is as charming as—”

Craig makes no attempt to take Jeannette Bawden off the subject, he'd much rather hear what she has to say. Craig is the Magpie of the title, so named by a colleague who'd noted his habit of listening to conversation without contributing. Invariably, another would make a point he was contemplating:

“Craigie has a nimble wit but a heavy tongue,” his father had said of him in the old days.

Craig's father died on the family farm while he was off fighting overseas. He blames himself for not having been present. The two had always been very close, and were no doubt brought closer by the early death of Craig's mother.

At twenty, Craig was sent off to university. At twenty-four, his father bought him a seat on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as a graduation gift.

The Winnipeg Grain Exchange as it was c.1920.
Craig's office is described as being on the seventh floor.

While tense moments in the pit follow, I admit my eyes began to glaze over. Debate over barley futures wasn't for me. I was more interested in the promises that had been made working men who had brought victory. More than anything, what grabbed my interest was the reception of the returning soldier and the portrayal of women.

Mrs Nason's assurance that Craig would not be asked about his experiences at the front proved true. However, the very next month, during a second dinner, this one at the Nason summer home, he finds himself seated beside coquettish Vicky Howard:

“Don’t you think you can persuade Captain Forrester to tell us some of the heroic things he did when he was in France, Marion?” Miss Howard cooed, with her cheek touching Craig’s left shoulder.

   “I should think you could get him to do that, Vicky,” Marion suggested. “I’ve never known how to get a returned man to tell of his experiences.”

   “I’ve heard some — some perfectly wonderful stories from men who have come back — one boy in the bank —”

Vicky Howard is one of several female characters of Craig's generation in the story. Each interesting in her own way, together they reflect a jarring shift in societal expectations and social norms. The Magpie spans 1919 and 1920, a touch early for bound breasts and flapperism to have reached the Canadian prairie, though it should be noted that one of the characters has bobbed her hair. 

Marion Nason delights in her friend Jeannette's needling Reverend Bentley, whose ministry has been supported by her father and other wealthy businessmen. This, combined with her beauty, leads Craig to make her his wife. However, once she has left her father's house she becomes a different person, one who is more concerned with maintaining the lifestyle into which she was born rather than the plight of others less fortunate.

Jeannette Bawden's life has been very much changed by the war. It killed her husband. Jeanette's desire for social upheaval is fuelled in part by revenge. Jeanette will end up living in sin with an outspoken veteran who shares her newfound politics.

Vicky Howard flirts openly with Craig during that second Nason dinner and in the evening that follows. When he does not respond, she opts for a one-nighter with Claude Charnley, Craig's rival for Marion's affection. The following summer, by which time Craig has married Marion, Vicky makes an overt pass: "People don’t wonder about such things nowadays. They used to.... before the war.... but not now. They take some things for granted.....” 

Then there's Martha Lane, Craig's friend since childhood. The girl from the neighbouring farm, they'd lost touch when she went off to study sculpture in Europe. Martha's father doesn't understand her art, but takes pride in her achievement. Once she and Craig reconnect, they spend hours alone together working on an exhibition of her works. 

These young women  are so unlike those depicted in pre-Great War Canadian novels and live in a much different world. To have a man, in this case Craig Forrester, spend time alone with, say, Jeannette Bawden or Martha Lane, would've destroyed reputations.

Hodder & Stoughton ad in The Victoria Daily Times, 15 December 1923

For other characters, the post-war world is all too familiar. Craig is driving late one afternoon when he encounters Jimmy Dyer as he walks home from work. They''d served alongside each in Europe and are now, to paraphrase Neil Young, back in their Canadian prairie homes. Jimmy's is the same little green and white shack he left to fight, leaving behind his wife and children. He's a cheerful sort, until talk turns to the war: 

"They’re all doing their damnedest to forget about it. They’re sticking a few hundred of the broken ones in hospitals here and there and they’re putting in a cenotaph and a bronze tablet here and there for the fellows who won’t be back. For the rest of us they’re putting green seats in the parks where we can sit down and go over our troubles if we want to without being asked to move on. In a year’s time they’ll send us a medal with a couple of inches of coloured ribbon and a form letter and the thing will be all over. Instead of shouting ‘On to Berlin’ they’ll change it to ‘Back to Normalcy’. We’ve spent four years of the best part of our lives fighting for the big fellows, and we’ll spend the rest of our days working for them just the same as we did before the war. The only real difference is that we had a band or two and a banner or two and a chaplain or two to remind us that we were fighting for the glory of God and the brotherhood of mankind, and now we have the squalls of hungry kids and the insults of a few God damned slackers to cheer us on our way. That sums it up for me, just about.”

Contemporary reviewers really struggled with this one. Some papers merely acknowledged the novel without reviewing it. In this case, the political elements are downplayed: 

The Border Cities Star, 22 March 1924

The Magpie was first published in 1923 by Hodder & Stoughton Canada. My 1974 edition was published as number 23 in the University of Toronto Press's Social History of Canada. It was given to me by a generous reader of this blog.

I'd assumed that the novel had been in and out of print over those five decades, but I was wrong. The Magpie had been out-of-print. What's more, after the University of Toronto Press reissue, The Magpie again slipped out of print for decades, until brought back in 2018 by Invisible Press.

It can be purchased through this link.

I'd been meaning to read the novel since my days as a Canadian Studies student in the 'eighties. Its depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike made it important, or so I thought. In fact, there are no depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike in The Magpie, just as there are no depictions of the Great War. The novel is a reaction to both events. It is a novel about the aftermath of conflict, as experienced by those who were harmed and those who benefited. 

The once-silent Magpie begins to speak out.

Favourite pasage (w/ spoiler): After his chance encounter with Craig, we never see Jimmy Dyer again. Craig keeps meaning to call, but many months pass before he returns to the Dyer family's extremely modest home. On a whim, he's decided to bring along Gilbert Nason, his liberal-minded businessman father-in-law. Over tea, they learn that Jimmy is dead; he never quite recovered from his encounter with mustard gas. Gilbert Nason reacts by offering help, but is soundly rejected:

"There’s a lot of women left alone in the world — lots of them right here in this city — and some of them might take help if you offered it to them. Some of them can’t help themselves. But I can. Jimmy Dyer never took charity from anyone and he wouldn’t want his wife to take it from anyone, either. No, Mr. Nason, there are some of us who are strong enough in body to go out and work for our children and strong enough in mind, too, to do a little thinking for ourselves. Somewhere I read of what one woman made her mind up to do when she got word that her husband had been killed. She was going out to take the life of some warmaker — take it with her own hands. And that’s what the men who make war are driving us to do. They will force the women to make war on those who made war for us. We’ll go out and find the men who sit in upholstered chairs and play the game of politics and business and move the Jimmy Dyers of the world about on the checker board like so many bits of wood. We’ll find them. They killed our men. We’ll kill them. What else have we to do? We’ll dog their steps. We’ll make them afraid to go out unattended. They’ll be afraid to touch food or water for fear of being poisoned. There’ll be ways, and ways—and ways! But we’ll stop it — we’ll stop it! We’ll bring no more sons into the world for them to feed to cannons. We’ll send no more husbands out behind brass bands to spill their blood in the field. We kept the homes — the gardens — the flowers.... the poppy beds....” 

Trivia (w/ spoiler): In the final pages, Craig is forced to come to terms with the fact that from the early days of his marriage Marion has been having an affair with Claude Charnley. The last page suggests a future with Martha Lane.

Canadian Singers and Their Songs
Edward S. Caswell, ed.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1919

In his own life, Durkin was the unfaithful spouse. His lover was also named Martha – Martha Ostenso – with whom he collaborated on over a dozen novels, including her 1925 bestselling debut Wild Geese. Their affair lasted over two decades, ending in marriage only after the death of his wife. 

Object and Access: My U of T Press edition is bound in black boards. The jacket design is not credited. 

Used copies of the first edition aren't nearly as dear as one might expect. Very Good and better copies of the first edition (all sans jacket) begin at $36.00. The copy to have is an inscribed and signed, offered by a Gatineau bookseller for $155.00.

The novel is available here – gratis – thanks to Faded Page.

Related posts:

Dead Man Sitting
Wild, Wild Geese

A Man Reaps What He Sows

The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West
Robert J.C. Stead
Toronto: Musson , 1916
347 pages

The first edition is bound in boards reading The Homesteader when it should be The Homesteaders. The distinction is important, particularly in the early chapters, though it becomes less so as the novel progresses.

The Homesteaders opens in Quebec's Eastern Townships as one-room schoolteacher John Harris watches students scatter at the end of the day. He's soon joined by his fiancée Mary. 

This being 1881, John is expected to support his betrothed, and so has made the decision to give up his paltry teacher's salary and try his hand at farming in Manitoba. The plan, which John has taken care to hide, involves traveling west the next spring, locating a homestead, constructing some sort of shelter, and breaking ground. If all goes well, he'll return for Mary. If not, well, there's aways the year after that.

There's something about Mary in these early pages. Lithe and beautiful, she is not "a daughter of the sturdy backwoods pioneers, bred to hard work in field and barnyard," rather "she was sprung from gentler stock." Mary is also the only character in this novel to demonstrate a sense of humour, as when she ribs John:

“Always at your studies,” she cried, as he sprang eagerly to his feet. “You must be seeking a professorship. But I suppose you have to be always brushing up,” she continued, banteringly. “Your oldest pupil must be—let me see—not less than eight?”

Clever and quick, Mary was onto her fiancé from the start. “I declare, if it isn’t Manitoba!" she says, snatching a map from his hands. "What next? Siberia or Patagonia? I thought you were still in the Eastern Townships.”

Mary insists on accompanying John west, moving up their wedding day in the process. What follows is not an account of their honeymoon, rather descriptions of lengthy train travel to Emerson and an oh-so-slow trek northward to tracts of land Ottawa is offering gratis to men who prove themselves able to establish working farms. The couple's first marital home is a windowless sod shack with a heavy blanket for a door.

These are the novel's most interesting pages, no doubt drawn from Stead's childhood memories and experiences. Born in Ontario's Lanark Highlands, as a toddler Robert, his father (Robert, Sr). and mother (tellingly, Mary) established a Manitoba homestead in the very same year as John and Mary Harris.

Robert J.C. Stead
Bookseller & Stationer, October 1916

The fictional couple's success in meeting the government's terms has to do with hard work, but not necessarily self-sufficiency. Friendships were formed as those cramped railcars made their way across Ontario. Though the homesteaders settle miles away from one another, their struggle is common. The men work together, loaning each other mowers, plows, and hayracks. As for the women:

Mrs. Grant was the proud possessor of a very modern labour- saver in the shape of a clothes-wringer, as a consequence of which wash-day was rotated throughout the community, and it was well known that Mrs. Riles and Mrs. Harris had to do their churning alternately.

Stead takes great care here. This is not drudgery, rather progress, with each couple striving for a better life. The most dramatic pages are set after the first harvest, reaching a climax in the fifth chapter when, during a winter storm, John abducts a drunken doctor to aid with the delivery of Allan, his first child.

cliquez pour agrandir

Moving between chapters five and six can be jarring. Twenty-five years have passed. The sod shack has been replaced by a brick house. Family and farm have expanded with the addition of a second child, Beulah, and many more acres of land. But all this is no way satisfies John:

He saw the light ahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, “When I am worth ten thousand I will have reached it”; when he was worth ten thousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-five thousand. He said, “When I am worth twenty-five thousand I will have reached it”; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glow still ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred to him to slacken his pace—to allow his mind a rest from its concentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet, have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck of his ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, and John Harris held nothing in heaven or earth so great as its attainment.

The John of the early chapters has become crude; even his whole manner of speech has changed. Mary too is transformed, but only physically. The years have taken a toll, "the shoulders, in mute testimony to much hard labour of the hands, had drooped forward over the deepening chest; the hair was thinner, and farther back above the forehead, and streaked with grey at the temples; the mouth lacked the rosy sensuousness of youth, and sat now in a mould, half of resolution, half submission."

The community formed a quarter-century earlier in those railcars is already a thing of the past. Though one of the most prosperous homesteaders, John cannot help but compare himself to others. Wanting more, he teams up with neighbouring homesteader Hirim Riles. They plan to go out to Alberta, the new frontier, and procure four or five tracts of free land. John will set up a homestead on the first and Riles will establish another on the second. The third, four and possibly fifth would be worked by men who will be provided grub and a small wage during the three years required to secure titles which would subsequently be be transferred to Harris and Riles:

This was strictly against the law, but the two pioneers felt no sense of crime or shame for their plans, but rather congratulated themselves upon their cunning though by no means original scheme to evade the regulations.

Indeed, by no means an original scheme. There is no way the two men would've succeeded, though the scheme does serve to bring further notice to John's descent from the decent, dedicated Eastern Townships schoolteacher with whom Marys fell in love.

The last fifteen chapters are far less interesting than the first five, in part because there isn't nearly so much about the pioneer experience, and in part because too many of its pages focus on a crime that takes too long to unfold. I suppose there is a lesson to be learned about working with another when committing a crime, but only if one has never heard of the time-worn observation on honour amongst thieves.

What I liked most was Mary leaving John.

Beulah running away was second.

She is in every way her mother's daughter.

Censorship?: Riles reaches Alberta before partner-in-crime Harris. Though a miser, he enters a bar in order to get the lay of the land (no pun intended). What follows is a scene somewhat reminiscent of this 2016 Heritage Minute:

The American in Stead's novel threatens a lumberjack – yes, a lumberjack – for what he perceives as a personal slight.

By far the most superfluous scene in the novel, it is nevertheless interesting for these two instances of... what exactly? Is it censorship? An author well aware of the impermissible?  Or just Stead having some fun?

I leave it for you to judge.

Object: My first edition is printed on paper so acidic that it's a wonder I didn't burn my fingers. It was acquired in 2018 as part of a lot. A few years earlier, I'd purchased a copy of the 1973 University of Toronto Press reissue with introduction by Susan Wood Glicksohn.

Access: A Canadian bestseller, The Homesteaders went through five printings. It was also published in the UK by Unwin (1916) and Hodder & Stoughton (1923). Used copies aren't at all difficult to find online. 

 

The Dodo Press print on demand edition uses a detail of Abraham Louis Buvelot's 1873 painting Tubbutt Homestead in the Bombala district, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. Two different countries, two different continents, the distance between the Tubbutt and Harris homesteads amounts to roughly 15,000 kilometres. 

The novel is available online here thanks to the Internet Archive.

Related post:

A Man of Peculiar Notions

The Scotts of Quebec City

Having praised Quebec City and its plaques bleu on Wednesday, I now condemn.

And with good reason. 

As one may divine, the above – 755, rue Saint-Jean – was built as a church. Dedicated to St Matthew, patron saint of tax collectors and accountants, its history dates to 1772. The grounds surrounding hold centuries-old bones of the Anglican faithful.

St Matthew's most notable rector was Frederick George Scott (1861-1944). A charismatic Anglo-Catholic, his views on religion fit well – as well as might be hoped – in a predominantly Catholic city. Outside the Church, Scott is best known as the Poet of the Laurentians. He produced thirteen volumes of verse in his 82 years. The favourite in my collection is a signed copy of Selected Poems, which was published in 1933 by Emile Robitaille, 30 Garneau Street, Quebec City.

In 1980, the Anglican Church of Canada gave St Matthew's to the Ville du Quebec. It was remade and remodelled as a library. In 2017, it was named after novelist and memoirist Claire Martin (1914-2014).

I'm a great admirer of Martin, and have sung her praises here and here.  She deserves greater recognition in English-speaking Canada. I wonder how she's remembered in French-speaking Canada? In the very same hour I took these photos, I purchased three signed Martin first editions at between six and eight dollars apiece.

I digress.

La bibliothèque Claire-Martin features a very attractive entrance detailing the author's life and work.

This is supplemented with a half-dozen displays lining the library's centre aisle.

Much as I was happy to see them, I was bothered that there was no recognition whatsoever of F.G. Scott. Not only that, there was no recognition of the reverend's third son, Francis Reginald Scott (1899-1985), who was born in the manse overlooking the aforementioned cemetery.

F.G. Scott was one of the most celebrated Canadian poets of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Son F.R. Scott was a founder of both the CCF and the NDP, was Dean of the McGill Law Faculty, fought dictatorial Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, and defeated the censors in Canada's own Lady Chatterley's Lover trial. F.R. Scott's bibliography consists of over a dozen books, including the Governors General's Award-winning Essays on the Constitution: Aspects of Canadian Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977) and The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1981). He is recognized as a pioneer in the translation and promotion of Québecois literature.

La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no books by either man. In fact, there are no books by F.G. Scott in the entire Quebec City public library system. La bibliothèque de Québec has one – one – volume by F.R. Scott, Dialogue sur la traduction, (Montreal: Éditions HMH, 1970). I can't help but think this has everything to do with it having been co-written by Anne Hébert.

My copy, inscribed by Scott to Hugo McPherson, purchased thirty years ago at the Montreal Antiquarian Book Fair.

This is not to suggest that the Scott family is unrecognized. Sharp-eyed visitors will spot this century-old plaque dedicated to members of the St Matthew's Anglican Church congregation who fell during the Great War.

The second column bears the name of Henry Hutton Scott, F.G. Scott's son, F.R. Scott's brother, who was killed during the capture of Regina Trench. A chaplain in the First Canadian Division, Reverend Scott shares a moving account of the search for son's body in The Great War as I Saw It (Toronto: Goodchild, 1922). For those who haven't read it, this short piece from the 1 December 1916 edition of the Toronto Daily Star gives some idea of what to expect.

All this is to recognize the absence of recognition. La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no plaques bleu dedicated to F.G. Scott and F.R. Scott. La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no books by F.G. Scott and F.R. Scott.  

To borrow a phrase used by Jacques Parizeau, it's a bloody disgrace.

Related posts:

Blue Plaque Special: Quebec City Edition

Blue Plaque Special
Going to Bat for Lady Chatte

Best Book Buys of 2018 (four of which were gifts)

Twenty-eighteen was a year of great change. In April, we sold our home of ten years and started packing up our belongings. We moved in early July, settling several hundred kilometres to the northeast. The books that once surrounded now lie boxed in the dark basement of the house we're renting on the banks of the Rideau Canal.

Living in a house without bookshelves is disorienting. Where I once knew where everything was, passing by the same books day after day, month after month, year after year, I now spend hours hunting. This past summer I bought a copy of James M. Cain's Serenade because I wanted to reread it. There's a copy in the basement... but where?

I purchased fewer books this year. Why add to the confusion? This annual list of ten best buys – best acquisitions, really – was made strong through the generosity of friends.

Philistia
Grant Allen
London: Chatto & Windus, 1901

"A NEW EDITION" of Allen's first novel, published two years after his early death, this copy is well travelled. It began life in a Boots Booklovers Library, and somehow made its way to a British Columbia bookseller's shop. The book now sits on my desk, one hundred or so kilometres from Allen's birthplace.

Brother, Here's a Man!
Kim Beattie
New York: Macmillan, 1940

This birthday gift from my friend James Calhoun is the only biography of Joe Boyle. An extraordinary man, had Boyle been born south of the border, there would've been a movie and and a two-part American Experience documentary. We Canadians are so bad at these things.

Murder's No Picnic
E.L. Cushing
London: Wright & Brown, 1956

The first and only English edition of Cushing's 1953 debut novel, it vies Margerie Bonner's The Shapes That Creep as the worst mystery read this year. And yet my research into this forgotten Montreal mystery writer continues.

Maid-At-Arms
Enid Cushing [and Andre Norton]
New York: Fawcett, 1981

A curious romance about a closeted, corseted, petticoated poet and his masculine twin sister, written by an unsuccessful mystery writer in collaboration with a Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame member. Need I say more?

Rebound
Dick Diespecker
Toronto: Harlequin, 1953

After years searching for the great – only? – Vancouver post-war pulp, I asked my friend bowdler of Fly-By-Night if he might have a spare copy.  He did... and gave it to me as a gift. It didn't quite live up to expectations... but that cover!

The Magpie
Douglas Durkin
Toronto: University of Toronto
   Press, 1974

Reviewing Basil King's The Empty Sack here last month, I wondered whether it might just be the Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel. Beau not only suggested The Magpie, but gave me a copy. To be read after the holidays.

The Arch-Satirist
Frances de Wolfe Fenwick
Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard,
   1910

A first novel by a journalist and elocutionist who once served as secretary to fellow novelist Sir Andrew Macphail. Described as a "clever novel" in the April 1910 Canadian Bookman.

The Complete Poems of
   John Glassco
John Glassco
London, ON: Canadian
   Poetry Press, 2018

A gift from Brian Treherne, who worked for over a decade editing this monumental work. Invaluable to any Glassco scholar.

The Street Called Straight
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1912

I read two Basil King novels this year, both of which made my annual list of three out-of-print books deserving reissue. This book was purchased in error from Babylon Revised Rare Books for US$75. What I'd meant to buy was their signed copy, listed at US$100. Je ne regrette rien

Christie Redfern's Troubles
[Margaret Murray Robertson]
London: Religious Tract Society,
   [c. 1866]

The most popular novel ever written by an instructress of the Sherbrooke Ladies' Academy, Sherbrooke, Canada East. Despite its commercial success, used copies are uncommon. I was fortunate in spotting this one being offered online from a UK bookseller.

Bonne année!

Related posts:

Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
Ten Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year (2016)

Ten of the Best; Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books (2014)

No Picnic
Mrs Lowry's West Coast Murder Mystery
Vancouver Shakedown
The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?

A Curious Romance About a Closeted, Corseted, Petticoated Poet

and His Masculine Twin Sister

The Strange Satanic Canada of a Future Past

For My Country [Pour la patrie: roman du XXe siecle]

Jules-Paul Tardivel [Sheila Fischman, trans]

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975

250 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:

Global Warming as Nationalist Dream

Beware the Savage Jaw of 1981

Trudeaumania II

One prime minister weeps over the coffin of another. I doubt anyone at McClelland & Stewart was thinking this back in 2000 when they put together that cover. It's not something I saw coming – not until last month, anyway – and certainly not in so decisive a victory. The results aren't quite what I would've liked, but I'm thrilled just the same. 

And so, the country's darkest decade ends with Stephen Harper defeated by the son of a man he'd demonized leading a party he'd vowed to destroy. There's a certain justice in that.

In recognition and celebration, ten favourite books by and about Trudeau père from my collection.

Trudeau
Ottawa: Deneau, 1984

A souvenir from the 1984 Liberal convention at which Pierre Trudeau stepped down as party leader. I bought my copy at a local Goodwill at precisely 4:00pm on 28 September 2000 – I kept the receipt – then arrived home to learn that Trudeau's death had just been announced on the CBC.

Federalism and the French Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968

Ex-libris John Robarts, 17th Premier of Ontario.

Sex and the Single Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1968

The first of three pieces of similar silliness published during Trudeau's first term. Glimpses of each can be found here and here.

PM/Dialogue
Keswick, ON: High Hill, [1972?]

A mysterious book I picked up sixteen years ago at a United Church book sale in Merrickville, Ontario. I've never seen another copy.

Conversations with Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: University of Toronto, 1972

A signed first edition, excavated just last year in a local thrift store. Price: $1.00. 

The Trudeau Question
W.A. Wilson
Montreal: Montreal Star, 1972

Written "to make both the issues and the politics more comprehensible to the voters who will make their judgement this year."
Thanks, Montreal Star!

A Time for Action:
Toward the Renewal of the Canadian Federation
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
[Ottawa]: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1978

Found amongst a pile of newspapers left behind by the previous owner of our first house. Bonus!

Trudeau and Our Times
Volume 1: The Magnificent Obsession
Stephen Clarkson & Christina McCall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990

"He haunts us still." Great first line. I was mistaken for Alexandre Trudeau at the launch.

Memoirs
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993

Signed.

Related posts:

Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada
Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ladies Man

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market