The title poem from Agnes Maule Machar's "The Call of Christmas – 1914". What can be said about this scarce chapbook? Who published it? When? Where? 'Tis a true Christmas miracle.
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Rêves de Noël
2 hours ago
24 December 2014
22 December 2014
Comfort in Cans
Vancouver Aquarium Seafood Recipes
Ainley Jackson
Vancouver: Gordon Soules, 1977
No living creature from the aquarium was killed in the making of this book. I'm willing to bet on it.
Vancouver Aquarium Seafood Recipes was a fundraiser; its contributors – 79 by my count – were members and supporters. I was once a member myself, and for a time lived within walking distance.
So, yeah, cans are fine.
The first dish tackled was patron Isabel M. Latta's "Buffet Salmon Casserole".
I wanted to make it just as Ms Latta had, so resisted all temptation to add ingredients. Anyone looking to follow my lead might consider adding a dram or two of milk to the condensed cream of mushroom soup, cutting back a bit on the bread, and, oh… pepper.
Kate Salter's "Tuna Baked in Scallop Shells" was even better.
Again, I'd cut down a bit on the bread.
Though neither was anything like what mother used to make, I recognize both dishes as comfort food. Just the thing as we head into the holidays.
The one quibble I have with this fundraiser is that all measurements are imperial. This made shopping for cans a chore. I mean, really, in 1977 metric wasn't coming to Canada – it had arrived.
As for fresh seafood? For my family, in the 'seventies it wasn't even on the horizon.
Trivia: Ainley Jackson not only put the whole thing together, but contributed over one hundred illustrations.
Object: A 112-page trade-size paperback printed on glossy paper with binding fairly designed to come apart. I purchased my copy for 75¢ at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Stratford, Ontario.
Access: As of this writing, nine copies are on offer from online booksellers. Prices range from one to five American dollars.
Library and Archives Canada and the Toronto Public Library have copies, as do four of our university libraries. Vancouverites will have to make do with a single reference copy housed in the stacks of the Central Branch.
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19 December 2014
Arthur Stringer Pines for Christmas Past
Seasonal verse found in Arthur Stringer's The Woman in the Rain and Other Poems (Boston: Little, Brown, 1907). The writer was then living in New York with wife Jobyna Howland, 650 kilometres southeast of the London, Ontario, of his youth.
No apologies for the pun. It's brilliant.
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15 December 2014
A Royal Screw Up?
Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road
R. Henry Mainer
Toronto: Briggs, 1906
Robert Henry Mainer served one term as President of the Canadian Authors Association and was at least twice mentioned alongside L.M. Montgomery as a writer of promise.
Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road is his only book.
At 127 pages, I consider it more novella than novel, all the while wondering just how much of it is fiction. The book's dedication not only implies that Nancy McVeigh was a real person, but that the stories featured actually happened. If true, it might explain why Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road is so uneventful.
When first we meet the title character, a widowed Irish-Canadian tavern owner, she has begun proving herself an unlikely pillar of her nameless community. The pages that follow see Nancy McVeigh pay a patron's hospital bills, visit a dying man, nurse an injured man and play cupid. In one of the chapters she travels to Chicago in the hopes of seeing her only child, a successful businessman. He's visiting Mexico. She returns home.
Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road is a banal little book; were it not for its title I might never have picked it up. You see, Nancy McVeigh's story is meant to begin during the "régime of Governor Monk". Her tavern is located on a military road named for the man.
But we never had a Governor Monk. Victoria's representative was Charles Stanley Monck, 4th Viscount Monck. The military road "cut through the virgin pine" described in Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road is the Monck Road.
Though the 1852 census of Upper Canada contains no record of a Nancy McVeigh, an anonymous Globe review (19 December 1909) suggests that she did exist – "her hostelry seems to have been on the shores of Lake Simcoe". An earlier Mail (7 January 1884) contains reference to a meeting that took place at "Nancy McVeigh's" somewhere in or around the Muskokas. That I don't much care either way probably says something.
I like to think Nancy McVeigh existed. If Mainer's stories are true, she would've been a generous soul. It seems a shame that her trip to Chicago was for naught.
As for Governor Monk, I'm not so sure
Object: A slim hardcover featuring three plates by F.H. Brigden. I bought my copy early this year at Attic Books. Price: $10. It once belonged to Mrs G. Grant of Prescott, Ontario.
Print on demand vultures have moved in on this one, though I doubt their efforts have proved lucrative. The most attractive edition, from Dodo Press, stains Brigden's work pink, yellow and blue.
I count twenty copies held in Canadian libraries.
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