The Great Canadian Great War Novel

Tomorrow marks the day that Peregrine Acland's All Else is Folly officially returns to print. That more than eight decades have passed since the last edition defies explanation. This was a novel praised by Bertrand Russell, Frank Harris, Havelock Ellis, and prime ministers Robert Borden and Mackenzie King. So impressed was Ford Madox Ford that he penned a preface. In short, All Else is Folly is the very best Great War novel written by a Canadian combatant.

I had a time trying to interest publishers in reissuing the novel. It was my good fortune that in the midst of that effort I encountered James Calhoun, with whom I co-authored the Introduction to this new edition. No one knows more about Acland.

No one.

His writing at Field Punishment No. 1 is an invuluable contribution to our understanding of Canada's Great War literature. I've never met a more dogged researcher.

Not once.

Now Acland's novel finds a home with Dundurn's Voyageur Classics, where it joins The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, Wyndham Lewis'Self Condemned and other unjustly neglected books from our past. Thanks go out to Series Editor Michael Gnarowski, who recognized the importance and terrible beauty of this, Acland's only novel.

I never imagined that my name would one day share a cover with that of Ford Madox Ford, but there it is. A better man than I, the last words on the novel should be his:

When I read of the marching and fighting towards the end of the book, I feel on my skin the keen air of the early mornings standing to, I have in my mouth the dusky tastes, in my eyes the dusky landscapes, in my ears the sounds that were silences interrupted by clicking of metal on metal that at any moment might rise to the infernal clamour of Armageddon… Yes, indeed,one lives it again with the fear and with the nausea… and the surprised relief to find oneself still alive. I wish I could have done it myself: envy, you see, will come creeping in. But since I couldn't, the next best thing seems to me to be to say that it will be little less than a scandal if the book is not read enormously widely. And that is the truth. 

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Remembering Peregrine Acland

Canada's Great War Novelists: Peregrine Acland

A Neglected Novelist's Neglected Grave

Peregrine Acland: Fifty Years

Misfortune Follows Reverend Knowles

Robert E. Knowles is the very sort of fellow one would expect to have been the subject of a biography. I'm thinking here of those dry, polite stories of a life, often penned by friends, that were published in the early half of the last century. Not only was Knowles "One of Canada's Best Known Novelists" – this according to the March 1909 Canadian Bookman – but he was once Canada's preeminent Presbyterian preacher, a man renowned throughout the Dominion for his sermons and oratorial skills.

That same March 1909 Canadian Bookman positions Knowles as "the Ian Maclaren of Canada", in large measure due to St. Cuthbert's, his wildly popular debut novel.

Unlike Maclaren, Knowles' sermons were never collected. Most were delivered at Knox's Galt Presbyterian Church, which I visited last Sunday.

Literary sleuths will find it on Queen's Square, just across from Central Presbyterian Church, in that awkward composite city we know as Cambridge, Ontario.

Reverend Knowles once preached at St Marys Presbyterian Church, the steeple of which you can see from our garden… in winter.

He stayed in a house that is now owned by friends…

…during which time he worked on his commercially successful second novel:

The Undertow was published by Revell in the autumn of 1906, just months before the reverend's blessed life became less so. On 26 February 1907, Knowles was a passenger on a train that left the track outside Guelph, then travelled a further 356 metres. Mr Charles R. Rankin of Stratford was killed in the accident. It would appear that Knowles' recovery did not proceed as anticipated:

The Globe & Mail, 13 March 1907

The City of Cambridge is cagey concerning the accident's impact on the author – and messes up the year of the accident. Jean O'Grady is more forthright, writing in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature that Knowles, a prohibitionist, likely descended into alcoholism. In January 1915, at forty-six years of age, he formally retired from his ministry, but not before having suffered through two further tragedies.

The Globe & Mail, 8 September 1913

On 7 September 1913, Robert Knowles, Sr, in whose footsteps the popular pastor novelist had tread, was struck by a Toronto streetcar. Rendered semi-conscious, he was first brought to the surgery of Dr Robert T. Noble, and was then "taken to his home by a carriage… suffering greatly from shock."

A larger tragedy, perhaps the greatest in the Knowles family history, occurred one hundred years ago today – 19 June 1914 – when the novelist's brother was killed by a blow to the head with a milk bottle wielded by a drunk named Émile Lebrie.

The Globe & Mail, 20 June 1914

"The blow fell upon a portion of the skull, it is said, where a silver plate had been placed in treatment of a wound received in battle in South Africa", reported the Globe. The altercation between James Knowles and Émile Lebrie was supposedly over a trivial matter. When arrested at the Miners' Hall in Cobalt, Lebrie was unaware he'd killed Knowles.

"MANSLAUGHTER LIKELY CHARGE" reads a headline in the 22 June 1914 Globe. What little I know about our legal system leads me to agree. I've not been able to find out whether I'm right, nor do I know the fate of Émile Lebrie, the Milk Bottle Murderer™.

If only there was a biography of Robert E. Knowles.

Addendum: I don't mean to suggest that the reverend's life had been untouched by tragedy before the train derailment. On 18 June 1905, a few months before the publication of his first novel, Knowles had officiated at the marriage of Mr William Lash and Miss Jane Anderson.

The Globe, 19 June 1905

The Globe reported that eats were served, glasses were raised, and the groom replied to a toast to his bride. The happy couple had then retired to an upstairs bedroom "to prepare to take the 2.45 Grand Trunk train", at which point the newly-wed Mr Lash collapsed. The paper was nothing if not polite: "It is supposed that, unaccustomed to speaking, the strain of replying to the toast had unduly excited him".

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On Pearson's Pennant and Ezra Levant's Fiction

"…a distinctive flag which will say to the future: I Stand for
     Canada!"
L.B. Pearson
Ottawa: Liberal Federation of Canada, [1964]

I saw Lester Pearson once. This was in front of the Parliament Buildings on the sunny Saturday the country celebrated its centenary. Look carefully and you'll find me there in the crowd, along with my mum, my dad and Prince Philip. His wife has just taken a knife to that great big birthday cake. Balloons!

Pearson is the first prime minister I remember, though I don't remember much. The man stepped down when I was in kindergarten and died when I was eight. He wasn't prime minister for five years – and never enjoyed a majority government – yet managed to usher in the Canadian Pension Plan, universal health care and, of course, the flag. This address, delivered fifty years ago today, might be seen as the official beginning of the great debate surrounding that last struggle, but in truth the bickering stretched back into the nineteenth century. The great Sanford Fleming proposed this:

The Week, 31 May 1895

Pearson would've argued against Fleming's flag for the very same reason he argued against the string of red ensigns, affixed with various coats of arms and stylistic elements, that had at one time or another stood as an unofficial Canadian flag:

The red ensign has served Canada honourably and well since it was designated for such service by order in council; but those who are in favour of retaining it and making it permanent and official by parliamentary action must surely realize that basically – this is certainly no disrespect to the red ensign – it is the flag of the British merchant marine and it is similar, except for a different coat of arms, to the flags of certain British colonies.

Pearson went so far as to propose that his own preferred design be accepted by Parliament:

The speech is both cautious and calculated; history weighs heavily. Claude Ryan was sold, as was Charles Lynch. Scott Young – Neil's dad – predicted success in words reproduced at the back of this booklet:

Of course, John Diefenbaker would have none of it. Since 1926, he'd been railing against changing the ever-changing red ensign. In 1964, as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, he walked from farmhouse to outhouse, removed the stained wooden seat, and lowered himself into the pit with the insinuation that those who supported Pearson were being bought through bribery. That July, still waist-deep in excrement,  he soiled himself thoroughly by asking why the government insisted that Christian crosses be removed from the flag.

His followers' filibustered. So dull, dull, very dull were their words that in September 1964 Pearson agreed to convene a fourteen-member Flag Committee composed of members from all four parties in the House of Commons. The flag we know is their doing. Their work inspired this wonderful Rex Woods' cover for the 8 July 1964 edition of Maclean's:

Growing up I  never heard so much as a word against the flag. I took pride, cringing only once: in 1998, when Reform Party clowns hooted, hollered and honked about Parliament Hill for the right to display miniatures made in China on House of Commons desktops.

Today, members and defenders of the unholy party Reform spawned rank amongst the most vocal haters of that very same flag. 

Mark Steyn dismisses our flag as a propaganda tool. Kathy Shaidle looks at the centuries-old national symbol worn by my grandfather during the Great War and sees "a dead leaf – basically tree dandruff".

And then there's Ezra Levant, who is wont to go on about "the Liberal-red Pearson Pennant". Never one to be bound by fact, he refers to our flag as the "Pearson Pennant", the nickname of the rejected red, white and blue flag the prime minister proposed. Levant would also have you believe that it was "Lester Pearson's decision to change the Canadian flag to a pennant in Liberal colours".

 

Not so much a clown as the country's biggest boor, Levant long ago revealed himself as a man not to be taken seriously, but he does have his followers. Whether the topic is the restructuring of the armed forces or Thomas Mulcair's leadership of the NDP, Sun News junkies build on Levant's fantastical tale. Lester Pearson "decided to change our flag without even bothering to ask the nation's citizens", one sniffs in the comments section of a story about the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario.

Well, the 1963 Liberal platform did call for a new flag, as did those of the New Democrats and the Social Credit Party. Two-thirds of voters cast ballots in their favour. The flag flown today was supported by members of all four parties – Conservatives included – then sitting in the House of Commons.

Ah, but bastards will bastardize, trying to convince that the flag was forced upon the country. Whether it was rammed or shoved doesn't matter, the thing to take home is that it's in our throats and it's about time we cough it up. Visit the Sun News Network website – they'll appreciate the traffic – and descend into an alternate world every bit as imaginative as that of The Man in the High Castle. 

My favourite story is the one about a "flag that over 90% of Canadians wanted". Apparently, it was "designed by a young girl from Quebec – it had Three [sic] green maple leaves in the centre and sea blue borders."

Like most oft-told tales, it improves with each telling. My favourite version appeared on the site last December:

Ity [sic] was a school child [sic] a young girl from Quebec and her flag had three green real maple leaves and sea blue borders which was truly representative of our country and the most popular with the people. But the sneaky liberals [sic] under Pearson declared this was not a decision that required the full parliament [sic] and a few liberal [sic] MPs stayed behind on a Friday afternoon when parliament [sic] had supposed [sic] shut for Christmas and marked our country liberal [sic] red!"

Over to you, Ezra. You're sure to come up with something even more fanciful. 

Object and access: A twelve-page booklet with paper covers. My copy, salvaged sixteen years ago from the bin of a Toronto Goodwill, appears to have been distributed by Joseph Macaluso, Member of Parliament for Hamilton West (1963-68). A barrister, the late Mr Macaluso served as one of the fourteen members of the Flag Committee.

Just where this booklet might be found is difficult to determine; ephemera such as this isn't often recorded in library catalogues.Only two copies are listed on WorldCat, both at the University of Toronto. I can find no copies for sale online.

Still Strange (if a little less so)

The Gynecologist

Sol Allen [pseud. Barney Allen]

New York: Pyramid, 1969

I imagine publication of The Gynecologist provided considerable relief to Sol Allen enthusiasts. Sixteen years earlier, Toronto Doctor, his previous novel, had ended abruptly. Just as handsome gynaecologist Guy Fowley and winsome patient Eleanor Hollis started in on what had all the makings of a revelatory scene, the reader was met with a note:

There was no Toronto Surgeon, but I'm certain that much of what the author intended for that unrealized book appears in The Gynecologist. For one, the novel "picks up the thread of the story in Guy's office" – albeit fourteen chapters in.

The first seventy pages of The Gynecologist are little more than rewrites and revisions of bits and pieces from Toronto Doctor, including the very passages that so disturbed fourteen months ago. The reader new to Allen will find the sudden swarm of characters and relationships without benefit of backstory confusing. The enthusiast, I am one, will be confused by threads cut, rearranged and brought forward ten or more years. Episodes that had taken place in the months following the Second World War now happen in the dying days of the Diefenbaker government. The effect is disorienting, much like the peculiar advertisement Allen placed in the 11 March 1949 edition of The Canadian Jewish Review.

Readers new and old benefit from a gentle narrative arch, though it achieves no real height. The most important event, the appointment of a new Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at fictitious Metropolitan Hospital, much anticipated in Toronto Doctor, is first mentioned here on the day the announcement is to take place.

Guy gets the post, though this isn't to say that he's the main character. Just as Toronto Doctor isn't about any one Toronto doctor, no single practitioner dominates. The spotlight darts between each man – and they are all men – resting occasionally on a wife, daughter, son or secretary. Things are very much as they were in the previous novel, switching between the tension of the operating theatre and dramas played out in drawing rooms. Dinner parties continue to be held, only now wives begin to cheat on husbands, and husbands begin cheating on wives. Unhappy marriages become more so. One character's death proves beneficial to another, while another achieves sudden wealth. But throughout it all, babies are born. Babies are born.

Such is life.

Favourite passage: 

She was a big woman, but well proportioned; and he could see the pangs of life swelling in her axilla, which was shaven but not very clean, in the veins of her strong neck, in the flux of her bosom. With a soundless cry, he moved toward her.

Trivia: Where I'm not sure I've so much as met a gynaecologist, Allen counted several amongst his friends, including Benjamin Cohen, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, who is thanked for "placing the inmost details of his vast clinical and personal experience at my disposal." Contributions by the living are also recognized, though only through initials: "J.G., S.S., S.C. and Wm. A. C."

How hard could it have been in 1965 to identity Toronto gynaecologist "Wm. A. C."?

Object: A 318-page mass market paperback consisting of very small, dense type. My copy, the second Pyramid edition, includes this:

Having died the previous year, Allen was not a resident of Toronto. He wrote four novels, though not one was titled The Black Sheep. It would appear that Sex and the H Bomb was never published. Pity.

Access: I first spotted The Gynecologist on a shelf at the Central branch of the Vancouver Public Library. The Toronto Public Library also has a copy, as do seven of our universities.

The first Pyramid edition can be had for as little as one American dollar. The less common second edition, featuring hot cover by Frank Kalan, will set you back at least US$4.95.

Allen put out two editions of The Gynecologist – both in 1965 – through his own Rock Publishing. Copies in dust jacket are scarce, with only one currently listed for sale online. A Very Good copy of the second edition, at $50 it's a bargain.

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