The Great Fire of Ingersoll Remembered

One hundred and forty years ago today – May 7, 1872 – the small Ontario town of Ingersoll lost Oxford Street, then its main commercial thoroughfare, to fire. Newspaper reports of the day record that flames were first spotted just before eight in the evening in the stables of the Royal Exchange Hotel.

The disaster inspired verse by townsmen James McIntyre, Cheese Poet and undertaker. He included "Great Fire in Ingersoll, May, 1872" in his 299-page Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889).

Though a nobler town did indeed rise, today the corner upon which the Royal Exchange Hotel once stood now serves as a parking lot used by folks visiting the Dollarama across the street.

A Private Dick's Disturbing Descent into Darkness

Murder Over Dorval
David Montrose [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1952

Early in this second David Montrose mystery, private detective Russell Teed checks in at LaGuardia Field for a late night flight to Dorval. "Will you be using our limousine service from the airport into Montreal?" asks the airline representative. This same clerk then offers a few nips of Seagram's V.O. in the privacy offered by a back room office.

Teed loses the booze, along with his dinner, lunch and breakfast, during the flight. He isn't alone. All but one of the ten passengers is sick, as poor stewardess Maida Malone moves around a cramped DC-3 with "paper cartons at the ready – lids off, all set to be used."

So much for the romance of air travel.

The sole passenger to be spared the unpleasantness and indignity is Senator Cedric Kelloway. But he's dead of a head wound before the plane lands.

A DC-3 at Dorval Airport, roughly a decade before Senator Kelloway's murder.

Teed, the first to notice the senator's injury, suspects murder. Wanting "Grade A homogenized cops" on the case, he has the pilot radio for Inspector John Dorset, RCMP, a man who has "a mind like a Friden automatic calculator".

This is meant as a great compliment.

Ça change.

But then Teed too has changed. The private investigator introduced in The Crime on Cote des Neiges (1951) is something less in this follow-up. Gone is his preference for Dow – now any beer will do, and the hard stuff has really begun to flow. Teed's corporate clients appear to have been washed away. More of a drunk, he's grown dark and disturbing.

Your business has decayed pretty badly, Son", warns his old McGill pal Danny Moore. "Nobody outside a padded cell would take risks like this without reasons. Have you got reasons? Are you still doing jobs you want to, for some crazy motive? Or have you slid into this? If you have, please let me slap it out of you."

Danny doesn't know the half of it.

Later that same day, Teed will run his Riley over the already broken body of a man who'd tried to kill him:

There was a bump as the right front wheel went over the form, and a scraping tearing noise as the oil pan caught in something and then pulled away again. The differential ploughed through something more solid, and then we were clear.

He'll find a girl waiting at his flat and will suggest that she might be more comfortable in his bed:

   There was no reply, but bare feet whispered on the floor. Then my bedroom door clicked.
   I counted up to ten, just to give her time to reconsider. But even if she had changed her mind, I don't know what she could have done. There was an eight-storey drop from my window, and no lock on the bedroom door.

Just how low can he go?

Full disclosure: I'm Consulting Editor for Véhicule Press' Ricochet Books series, which last year returned Murder Over Dorval to print.

Object: A fragile, yellowing paperback, the anonymous cover art is all wrong. DC-3s had twin seats on one side of the aisle and singles on the other. The senator had chosen a single seat. A "neat little man" with sparse white hair dressed in the "executive grey suit", his final moments are described at the end of the fourth chapter: "The colour had faded from his smooth pink face, leaving it white with a grey overcast. He was slumped down in his seat, head back and mouth slightly open."

I'll add that the hair on the head of that panicked stewardess Maida should be "smooth and shining like black satin." Such is its sheen that Tweed can't help but notice as he attends to the dying senator.

Access: Véhicule's 2011 reissue features the same cover art and has the advantage of being properly printed and bound. Montreal mystery writer Michael Blair provides a Foreword. Price: an even twelve bucks.

Like all Montrose titles, the original edition enjoyed just one printing. A lone copy is listed for sale online. Price: US$59."Extremely RARE number in the White Circle Paperback series", says the bookseller. Can't disagree with that.

POD Cover of the Month: Special Montreal Edition

An ambulance races a sedan in the Grand Prix, a female Olympian takes aim in the War of 1812, Vancouver thrives in the Canadian Arctic... Seem familiar? All were featured in a post published here some six months ago about the whacky Wikipedia packages put together by Alphascript, Betascript and other imprints of Germany's VDM Publishing.

Montreal Aquarium is graced with the publisher's latest series design. Attractive, I suppose, but not so captivating as this image of a man waiting impatiently for the October Crisis to end.

Time moves much more slowly as a child. In my mind the October Crisis consumed much of third grade. Police cars crawled as I walked the five blocks to elementary school, but the real drama and horror played on stages public, private and hidden several kilometres from my Beaconsfield home.

One of Montreal's older suburbs, Beaconsfield had a certain beauty, but looked nothing like a Mediterranean town. And this isn't Montreal:

Nor is this:

Three decades ago, I left Beaconsfield for the city. I never imaged Montreal would give birth to the world's greatest band, or that another of its suburbs would inspire a song played around the world.

Arcade Fire are big – so big that Betascipt has begun offering books devoted to each of their songs... well, the songs that have Wikipedia articles anyway.

Betascript's 116-page Wake Up (Arcade Fire Song) can be purchased through Amazon.ca. Price:  $50.56.

I wonder who that is on the cover.

Related posts:

Alpha, Beta, Dada
Alpha, Beta and Other Crap Sold by Amazon

POD Cover of the Month: Montreal for Tourists..

The Little People of Expo 67

Expo 67: Album Souvenir/Souvenir Book
Montreal: Benjamin News, [1966?]

Expo 67 opened forty-five years ago today. The most successful World Exhibition, it once held the record for single day-attendance: 569,500. I was one of those people. My father spent 28 April 1967, and nearly every day of the following six months at work in the International Broadcasting Centre.

A sort of unofficial CBC pavilion, the IBC housed the largest studio the corporation has ever built. Visitors might watch a news broadcast, an opera or take in the fun offered by some technical guys working behind angled plate-glass windows.

Not much to look at, architecturally the Centre was overshadowed by pretty much every other pavilion of the Exposition. My favourite, the Canadian pavilion, graces the cover of this album souvenir.

A curious booklet, it appears to have been put together well in advance of the fair itself. It presents no images of the actual site, rather a selection of models and sketches that were done in advance of the Exposition.

All are remarkably faithful to the final product. No false advertising here.

The exception comes with the German pavilion.

The roof that went up – in a mere six weeks, it was boasted – was less transparent, less elegant, and looked much like a sturdy foundation garment.

The award for most accomplished model goes to that created for the French pavilion.

 Those working on the Venezuelan pavilion had a much easier time of it.

And, finally, we have the pavilion for Monaco, which looked for all the world like an elementary school art project.

"A reminder that art class is tomorrow. Don't forget to bring in those toilet paper rolls you've been saving at home."

Kindergarten brought an abrupt end to my Expo experience. Over the years that followed, from vantage points at the old port and Île Sainte-Hélène, I watched with some sadness as its pavilions were dismantled. It wasn't until 1980 that I returned, passing the rusted carcasses of the Expo Express to take in the B-52s at the Place des Nations.

I vowed to never go back. And I haven't

Object and Access: A 32-page, staple-bound booklet in full-colour. It would seem that at a later date the album souvenir was reissued with photographs of the completed pavilions replacing the models. Once steady thrift shop stock, copies still show up from time to time. The impatient might try the internet, but should be forewarned that most vendors are flogging the more common later edition. Six copies are listed for sale online, five of which can be had for US$15 or less. The sixth, offered by a Montreal bookseller at C$75, should be ignored.

The Curious and Unknown Leo Orenstein

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Leo Orenstein is worthy of much overdue attention for his work as one of this country's early television directors and producers. I hope that a bookish fellow like myself will be forgiven for focussing on his even earlier work as an illustrator.

Curious Relations of Mankind is one of two recently discovered cover designs that come to me courtesy of the late Mr Orenstein's family. Curious, indeed. It would appear that the book it was meant to grace was never published. WorldCat gives us no hits, Abebooks is silent... and yet the identity  of the intended publisher is clear. Those familiar with the eariest days of Canadian paperbacks will recognize the three-sided Fireside Publicatons style in the price.

But what was Curious Relations of Mankind? And who was Doctor J.G. Wood? I step out on a limb in suggesting that the good doctor was Reverend J.G. Wood. I'll even be so bold as to suggest that Curious Relations of Mankind was the clergyman's The Civilized Races of Men retitled and bowdlerized.

It would not have been the only time Fireside gave an fresh title to an old book. Here's their edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:

Now, to be fair, From the Earth to the Moon is naught but a translation of the true title: De la Terre à la Lune. Yes, it's the most common, but we've also seen the novel published as A Trip to the Moon in Ninety-seven Hours, A Voyage to the Moon, The Moon Voyage, Balbicane and Co.,  and The Baltimore Gun Club. The problem I have with Rocket Flight to the Moon is that the novel features no rockets – the adventurers are sent to the moon in a projectile shot from a massive cannon.

Of the two discovered Orensteins, I prefer this mock-up for The Queers of New York (Pocket Books, 1972), his lone novel.

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

One is left to assume that Those Queers of New York was a working title, just as the cover itself was something that was not quite ready. The Queers of New York is a better title, I think.

A favourite Canadian cover of that lost decade, my only complaint is that Leo Orenstein's name is so very small.

Related posts:

A Leo Orenstein Tripych

Figuring Out the Queers of New York

The Talented Mr. Orenstein

Ce Soir: Montreal Noir

Tonight at the Blue Metropolis festival I'll have the honour of hosting 'Montreal Noir', a panel discussion focussing on the city's suppressed, ignored and forgotten novels of the mid-20th century.

Joining me on stage will be Trevor Ferguson, Jim Napier and Will Straw. Actor Marcel Jeannin will be reading excerpts from work by David Montrose, Martin Brett and the great Brian Moore:

Montreal Noir: The City's Forgotten Pulp Past

OPUS Montreal Hotel, Salon St-Laurent

10 Sherbrooke Street West

Saturday, 21 April, 8:30 pm 

Shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize

The Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English Section), which each year honours the best work of Canadian literary criticism published in English. This year’s shortlisted finalists (in alphabetical order) are Brian Busby for A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer (McGill-Queen’s UP); Alan Filewod for Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada (Between the Lines Press); Sophie McCall for First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship (UBC Press); and Herb Wyile for Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature (Wilfrid Laurier UP).

The shortlist was chosen by a jury composed of David Creelman (UNB, Saint John), Carrie Dawson (Dalhousie University), and Cynthia Sugars (University of Ottawa).

The winner will be announced publicly on May 26th, 2012, at the Gabrielle Roy Prize reception at the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures annual conference, which this year will take place in Waterloo, Ontario. The prize reception will be held from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on May 26th in the Graduate Lounge on the first floor of the Student Services Building at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The jury was unanimous in selecting A Gentleman of Pleasure for particular recognition. One member described the book as “a beautifully written and very well researched account of Glassco’s life and, equally interesting, of his interactions with so many other Canadian writers, artists, and intellectuals. Never before has the mid-twentieth-century Canadian literary and cultural scene appeared so … scandalous!” Another wrote: “Balanced, incisive, and precise, Busby has produced a carefully researched and elegantly written biography. Focusing on a minor writer with a persistent talent, the book is more than a chronicle of the main events of Glassco’s life. A Gentleman of Pleasure captures the tone of the different eras through which Glassco moved and is imprinted with the anxieties and difficulties of an uncentered writer emerging in the midst of the emptiness of the modernist era. The writing is professional, clear, and engaging, and the research is meticulously documented.”

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure

Mean Mister MacDonald Attacks a Prime Minister

Day seventeen of National Poetry Month and there's been nary a mention here. Today, the 120th anniversary of the passing of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, will be different. He's remembered as a humble man who took pride in his working class origins, though you'd never know it from this verse by J. J. MacDonald, the "James MacRae" of The Four Jameses.

I'm not so unfair as the poet in describing the verse below as bad. The misspelling of Mackenzie's name is minor; sin comes with the claim that in 1875 the politician travelled overseas with the sole goal of obtaining a knighthood. In fact. Mackenzie thrice declined the honour.

The poet pretends otherwise, adopting the prime minister's voice in addressing "dear generous Brown" – George Brown – whom Mackenzie had succeeded as leader of the Liberal Party (and who had also declined the title):

A. McKENZIE AT QUEBEC IN HIS RETURN FROM GREAT BRITAIN IN 1875, WHICH IT WAS SAID HE VISITED IN ORDER TO GET THE TITLE OF “SIR” 

My sight you would pity, dear generous Brown,
On nearing a city or reaching a town;
For charity hide me from scornful disgrace,
Or crows will deride me and laugh in my face. 

They know when we parted I travelled for fame;
To find as I started my title’s the same,
To party relations returning, I swear
Is more than my patience is able to bear. 

How gladly I’d wander, how swiftly I’d stride
Where back streams meander, and wild beasts abide!
The Ottawa Valley unseen would I roam,
To reach and to rally my dear friends at home! 

In rural seclusion to live as before,
I find ’tis delusion to seek any more;
My standing much lower than ever I see;
The honors of power are useless to me. 

To want them’s unpleasant, to have them no gain;
They prove evanescent, delusive and vain;
They give us more trouble than ease or delight,
And, fleet as a bubble, they’re out of our sight. 

An humble mechanic, oh! did I remain,
And titles Britannic not seek to obtain,
And prosper as Alick with friends as before,
When fables in Gaelic alone was my lore. 

My curses with Britain forever abide–
Her children have smitten by glory and pride.
Though aristocratic, I think they are fools,
They speak so dogmatic on etiquette rules. 

When my predecessor went over before,
They thought no aggressor invaded their shore;
Their nobles held meetings to honor him there,
Nor jovial greetings to him did they spare. 

Though fate made me humble, yet chance made me great,
No mortal should grumble at doings of fate;
Through folly and error from greatness I fell,
My anguish and terror no creature can tell. 

"A. McKenzie at Quebec..." joins the similarly mean-spirited "A. McKenzie's Reflections While About to Address His Constituents at Sarnia in 1875" in leading off the poet's self-published debut, Poems Written by J.J. MacDonald, a Native of Glengarry, Ont. (c. 1877). It precedes further attacks on an unnamed Grit politician, drinkers, bachelors, Protestant converts, Charles Chiniquy, Maria Monk, one Miss A— and pretty much anyone who was not an immediate member of the poet's family.

"In submitting the following poems to your judgment, the author does so in a truly Christian spirit", MacDonald writes in presenting his verse.

Were he alive, I'd call him out on this.

A John Glassco Soirée

Later this month I'll be joining Carmine Starnino, editor of the recent John Glassco and the Other Montreal, in a discussion of Glassco's life and work at St. James the Apostle's Writers' Chapel:

A John Glassco Soirée

The Writers' Chapel

Church of St. James the Apostle

1439 St. Catherine Street West (corner Bishop)

Montreal 

Friday, April 27, 7:00 pm

Glassco's good friend Michael Gnarowski, editor of John Glassco: Selected Poems with Three Notes on the Poetic Process and publisher of the only Canadian edition of The English Governess, will be hosting the evening.

St. James the Apostle was the church of Glassco's childhood. The plaque celebrating his life, affixed to its walls in 2009, marked the beginning of the Writers' Chapel.

This is a free event presented by the Argo Bookshop.

All are welcome.

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure