Gabrielle Roy at 100 (and One Day)

The Globe & Mail, 26 April 1947

Referencing the above yesterday, I thought it best to hunt the thing down - if only to make certain I had the correct wording. In doing so, I came upon the following less attractive, but more interesting ad, published the year before Hannah Josephson's translation became available.

The Globe & Mail, 27 April 1946

I can't imagine many French-language novels received similar promotion in 1946 Toronto.

Gabrielle Roy at 100

The great Gabrielle Roy was born one hundred years ago today. Recognition is, I suppose, not in keeping with the stated theme of this blog. Never suppressed, never ignored and very much remembered, she towers over nearly all of her contemporaries. A quarter-century after Roy's death, eight of her titles remain available in English translation; two posthumous collections of letters are also in print. Of course, Bonheur d'occasion dominates. A best-seller from the start, it was advertised, without exaggeration, as 'the Greatest Canadian Novel ever written'. In 1947, as The Tin Flute, it sold over 700,000 copies in the United States alone.

While Roy's popularity south of the border soon dissolved into nothing, it remained strong in Canada, despite the author's refusal to promote her books. Not surprisingly, signed copies are uncommon. And so, in honour of the day: the front free endpaper of The Tin Flute, purchased from a Montreal bookseller for... well, you can see. He's no longer in business. I don't think he much cared for books.

Stephen Harper's Forgotten Speech

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

To think only five years have passed since 20 March 2004, the day Stephen Harper took the reigns of the new Conservative Party. What a short, strange trip it's been: the In and Out Scam, the Bernier Affair, NAFTAgate and, just this week, a Science Minister who equates evolution with one's choice in footware. Setting aside the prorogation of Parliament, next to which all else seems so very trivial, my favourite moments came courtesy of the Canadian Press and their rather late discovery of a 1997 Stephen Harper speech delivered somewhere in Montreal to the American Council for National Policy.

Choosing not to rely on John Howard's words, the former Young Liberal, ex-Progressive Conservative, one-time Reform MP and future leader of two further political parties delivers a fairly unfocussed piece of oratory. Still, the speech presents such a very sharp image of someone who thinks little of his country and finds his fellow citizens ignorant. Here is a man who looks to the republic to the south and its conservative movement as 'a light and an inspiration'.

At first it seemed the address, uncovered mid-way through the 2006 federal election, might do significant damage. The Council was quick to remove the speech from its website, and strategist Tim Powers fielded questions. Harper was silent. The fourth estate paid a bit of attention; but then came Christmas, after which attention was diverted by RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and some unfounded allegations against Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale. Harper's address has since been all but ignored - CBC.ca dropped the text long ago - leaving all sorts of questions unanswered. Never mind our Prime Minister's relationship to the Council for National Policy, we don't even even know just where or when the speech was delivered.

A Saint Patrick's Day Fragment

It's no insult to describe Thomas D'Arcy McGee as a better politician than poet; he was, after all, one of our great statesmen. Still, I find this verse from The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier, 1869) has stayed with me longer than any of his speeches. That the poet was cut down by an assassin's bullet on an April evening lends weight.

Funeral procession of the Late Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee

St. James Street, Montreal, 13 April 1868

Photograph by James Inglis (LAC C-083423)

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

D'Arcy McGee's Query (with a response)

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

'IN MEMORIAM! The Hon. T.D. McGee'