The Dusty Bookcase

01 January 2025

'Premier janvier' by Jean Bruchési

New Year's verse by Jean Bruchési from Coups d'ailes (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l'Action française, 1922)

PREMIER JANVIER

Comme un vase dont le cristal s'est émietté
Sous la main qui venait y déposer des roses,
Un an est disparu, brutalement jeté
Au gouffre où vont mourir toutes les vieilles choses.

Il n'est plus, sauf peut-être où vit le souvenir.
Il n'est plus. Oh! pourquoi faut-il donc que tout meure?
Pourquoi sur le passé reposer l'avenir?
Pourquoi vivre et lutter, puisque rien ne demeure?

Pourquoi? C'est que la vie émerge de la mort!
C'est que par le passé doit s'écrire l'histoire,
Et c'est que la richesse est faite de l'effort
Journalier, sans lequel il n'est pas de victoire!

C'est qu'il n'est point d'amour qu'il ne soit de douleur,
Qu'un plus doux parfum vient de la rose fanée,
Que l'âme se retrempe aux sources du malheur,
Et c'est qu'à Tan détruit succède une autre année!

Bonne Année! Happy New Year!

'A January Morning' by Archibald Lampman

Agnes Maule Machar's New Year's Wish (& mine)

'The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star...'

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

26 December 2024

The Very Best Reads of 2024: Hilliard's Hat-Trick

With five days left in 2024, there's little chance I'll read and review another neglected book before the calendar turns... and so, the summary!

This was an unusual year for the Dusty Bookcase in that nearly half the books covered – twelve of the twenty-five – were published over a century ago. I don't know that I've reached half that number in the past. This years titles span 173 years, from Major John Richardson's Hardscrabble; Or, The Fall of Chicago (1850) to Richardson biographer David Richard Beasley's Canadian Authors You Should Know (2023). The former is the earliest paperback in my collection; Mark Breslin's Son of a Meech: The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes (1991), also read this year, is the ugliest in both appearance and content.

The best-looking book I've read in the past twelve months is the 1875 Lee & Sheppard edition of The Lily and the Cross by James De Mille. Coincidentally, De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was the most beautiful read last year.

To tweak the early Chapters slogan, great looks are just the beginning. The Dusty Bookcase has always been more about content than appearance. I write this, despite the near certainty that the jackets for this year's list of the three books most deserving of reissue were illustrated by the author herself:

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard
[Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &

Scott, 1956

The first of the Nova Scotian's books to be set in Ontario, this one concerns four women brought together by the imminent death of their father, once a successful rumrunner. It's about them, not him.

Miranda
Jan Hilliard
[Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,

1960

This was the very best novel I read this year. The titular character is the focal point, though her story is told through her daughter Rose. An servant in London, in Canada Miranda tweaks her past and takes on airs, while Rose grows to see through it all.

Morgan's Castle
Jan Hilliard
[Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,

1964

Her fifth in ten years, this is the author's final novel. Though Hillard lived a further three decades, she wrote only three more books; all were non-fiction, all were published in the 'sixties.

Sadly, of all the books covered, only one is in print today:

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, Jane Brierley's Governor General's Award-winning 1990 translation of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's posthumous Divers (1893). Copies can be purchased directly from publisher Véhicule Press through this link.

I was tempted to include The Missing Chums (1928), the fourth Hardy Boys book penned by Ontario boy Leslie McFarlane, but that would've been cheating. The edition being flogged today was rewritten in 1962 by James Buechler. As I understand, all that's left of the original is the title.

This year, I was involved in the publication of only one book, the Ricochet rerelease of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street with new cover and revised introduction by Will Straw.

Next year will see a Ricochet reissue of a 1952 Canadian pulp novel that was deemed to spicy for the American market.

I'll say no more.

As for New Year's resolutions, I have but one. I resolve to read more humour. Given the racket from south of the border, I have a feeling I'll be in need of a good laugh every now and then.

As always, keep kicking against the pricks! Do Johnny Cash and John Metcalf proud.

Bonne année!

My Mistake in Reading Richardson

Of Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, Unknown Unknowns,
and David Richard Beasley

Too Soon?

Acadian Driftwood

As He Lay Dying

Growing up with Mother

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Last Words of a Raconteur

Here's to Absent Chums

There's a New Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street

25 December 2024

'Cloches de Noël' by Jean Bruchési

For the day, a poem by historian and diplomat Jean Bruchési from Coups d'ailes (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l'Action française, 1922), his only volume of verse.

CLOCHES DE NOËL

Cloches qui, dans la nuit, sonnez éperdument,
Carillons qui volez au-dessus des prairies,
Mêlez aux flocons blancs vos claires sonneries
Cloches qui, dans la nuit, sonnez éperdument.

Laissez tomber sur nous un peu de votre joie,
Emportez jusqu'aux cieux les désirs de nos coeurs;
Sans jamais mettre fin à vos accents vainqueurs,
Laissez tomber sur nous un peu de votre joie.

Chantez pour le vieillard et riez pour l'enfant,
A l'un donnez la force, à l'autre l'espérance;
Loin du pauvre qui pleure écartez la souffrance,
Chantez pour le vieillard et riez pour l'enfant.

Du Roi de Bethléhem, alertes messagères,
Vous annoncez partout la venue ici-bas.
En passant, répandez des roses sur Ses pas,
Du Roi de Bethléhem, alertes messagères.

O carillons d'airain, chantez: nous écoutons.
De cet Enfant qui nait, célébrez les louanges,
Et mêlez vos accords aux douces voix des anges;
O carillons d'airain, chantez: nous écoutons.

Elevez-vous là-haut, près des pâles étoiles,
Effleurez-les sans bruit de vos sons argentés,
Et revenez vers nous, pleines de leurs beautés...
Elevez-vous là-haut, près des pâles étoiles.

Chantez-nous la splendeur de cette grande nuit:
Parcourez sans arrêt les pays de la terre;
Redites à chacun le sublime mystère;
Chantez-nous la splendeur de cette grande nuit.

Sonnez, sonnez toujours, cloches de nos églises;
En nos coeurs déposez tous vos accents joyeux,
Et, demeurant pour nous la voix qui vient des cieux,
Sonnez, sonnez toujours, cloches de nos églises.