Remembering Ron Scheer… on a Friday

Ron Scheer died this past weekend. He was my teacher. We never met.

A son of Nebraska, for more than four years Ron served as a patient guide through the frontier literature of a century past. His blog, Buddies in the Saddle, opened the eyes of this cynical easterner so that I might recognize that these weren't simple novels of cowboys and Indians, but of commerce, railroads, mining, farming, timber, politics, suffrage, temperance, religion and racism.

Early last year Ron was diagnosed with brain cancer. Buddlies in the Saddle took a turn toward the personal. Ron's posts on books were now punctuated by musing on life, health, beauty, family. Family was the subject of his final post.

Ron posted his last book review seven weeks ago. His subject was Blue Pete: "Half-Breed", a popular 1921 novel by Ontarian Luke Allan (né William Lacey Amy).  The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry on Allan, nor does The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, nor does W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada; everything I know about the writer and his work comes from Ron.

In the four years and nine months of Buddies in the Saddle, Ron tagged thirty book reviews with the word "Canada". Most were written by Canadians, while others had a Canadian setting. Some covered contemporary writing, but most came from the days of great and great-great-grandparents:

The Outlander – Gil Adamson
Blue Pete: "Half-Breed" – Luke Allan
The Blue Wolf – William Lacey Amy
Alton of Somasco – Harold Bindloss
The Boss of Wind River – A.M. Chisolm
Desert Conquest – A.M. Chisolm
The Doctor – Ralph Connor
The Story of the Foss River Ranch – Ridgwell Cullum
Woodsmen of the West – Martin Allerdale Grainger

A Man of Two Countries – Alice Harriman
The Promise – James B. Hendryx
Out of Drowning Valley – Susan Carleton Jones
The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence
A Daughter of the Snows – Jack London
Scarlett of the Mounted – Marguerite Merington

The Lost Cabin Mine – Frederick Niven
Northern Lights – Gilbert Parker
The Backwoodsmen – Charles G.D. Roberts
Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse – Paul St. Pierre
Smith and Other Events – Paul St. Pierre
The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses – Robert W. Service
The Trail of '98 – Robert W. Service
Raw Gold – Bertrand W. Sinclair
Big Timber – Bertrand W. Sinclair
Wild West – Bertrand W. Sinclair
The Prairie Wife – Arthur Stringer
The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderhaeghe
A Good Man – Guy Vanderhaeghe
Frontier Stories – Cy Warman
The Settler – Herman Whitaker

So many neglected titles. Small wonder that Ron was a regular at Friday's Forgotten Books, that weekly round-up hosted by mystery writer Patti Abbott. His was a unique voice. Friday's Forgotten Books will not be the same without him.

"I read old books so you don’t have to," Ron wrote more than once. The thing was that he made you want to read them. His enthusiasm was infectious. He was a dogged researcher; I suspect he often had a hard time moving on. Ron's thoughts on Raw Gold by British Columbian Bertrand W. Sinclair spanned two posts. His longest review, it begins:

I have this funny habit when I hold an old library book. I wonder how long it’s been sitting on the shelf in the stacks untouched, then of the different hands that have turned its pages over the years.

I share the very same habit. Now, picking up Ralph Connor's The Doctor, I can't help but think of Ron.

Ron read this novel. 

RIP

Collard's Cock-up (and a curious coincidence)

Edgar Andrew Collard seems to have been a pretty interesting fellow. A Montrealer armed with a M.A. in history from McGill, in 1942 he found to work in the Gazette library – eleven years later he was editor-in-chief. Robertson Davies, once a newspaperman himself, wrote of his tenure: "I follow about 25 Canadian editorial pages day by day, and I see nothing to compare with this work, either in subject or in treatment."

In 1971, Collard stepped down. Youngsters like myself remember him only as a columnist. From August 1944 to August 2000 – the month before his death – Collard's "All Our Yesterdays" appeared each and every weekend. With titles like "When Dominion Square Was a Cemetery", "Was Dr. James Barry a Woman?", "Strange Experiences of Colonel Ham" and "College as the Ruination of Girls", they focussed on the more colourful aspects of Montreal's past. Several hundred were collected in books like Montreal Yesterdays, Montreal: The Days That Are No More, All Our Yesterdays and 100 More Tales from All Our Yesterdays, but this column on the country's first political assassination isn't one of them :

Saturday, 16 November 1963
(cliques pour grander)

Writes Collard:

Did D'Arcy McGee foresee his sudden death at the age of 42? He did. And he wrote about his fate in a poem entitled "Forewarned."

"Forewarned" meant nothing to me; it doesn't figure in the 612-page Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. A quick search reveals that the verse isn't by McGee at all, rather it belongs to Irish novelist, poet and playwright Gerald Griffin (1803-1840). You can find all 64 lines beginning on page 395 of The Life of Gerald Griffin (Dublin: James Duffy, 1872), written by brother Daniel.

I wonder if Collard ever realized his mistake. As far as I can tell, he never issued a correction. Published the following weekend, Collard's next column dealt with the sculptures gracing the Bank of Montreal Head Office.

Here's that day's front page:

Saturday, 23 November 1963

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

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

'Death of D'Arcy McGee'

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

Remembering Edith Eaton and D'Arcy McGee

'Erin's Address to the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee'

Verse on the 147th anniversary of the assassination of the great D'Arcy McGee. "Erin's Address to the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee" precedes "Death of D'Arcy McGee" as the first of two poems to the politician in Nora Pembroke's Verses and Rhymes by the Way (Pembroke, ON: S.E. Mitchell, 1880).

ERIN'S ADDRESS TO THE HON. THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE

O thou son of the dark locks and eloquent tongue,
With the brain of a statesman sagacious, and strong,
And the heart of a poet, half love, and half fire,
Thou hast many to love thee and more to admire;
But I bore thee, and nursed thee, and joyed at the fame
Which the sons of the stranger have spread round thy name,
I am Erin, green Erin, the "Gem of the sea."
Listen, then, to thy mother's voice, D'Arcy McGee.

Since the crown from my head, and the sceptre are gone
To the hand of the stranger, who held what he won,
I have borne much of sorrow, of wrong and of shame,
I've been spoken against with scorning and blame;
But still have my daughters been spotless and fair,
And my sons have been dauntless to do and to dare;
For as great as thou art and most precious to me.
Still thou art not my only one, D'Arcy McGee.

At the bar, in the senate, in cassock or gown,
Our foes being judges, they've got them renown;
On the red field of battle, of glory, of death,
They've been true to their colours and true to their faith;
And where bright swords were clashing and carnage ran high,
They have taught the stern Saxon they know how to die.
Well, no wit, poet, statesman or hero can be
More dear to my heart than thou, D'Arcy McGee.

Wild heads, may plan glories for Erin their mother,
Weak plans and wicked plans chasing each other;
To me worse than the loss of a sceptre and crown
Is a spot that might tarnish my children's renown,
'Tis the laurels they win are the jewels I prize,
They're the core of my heart and the light of my eyes;
For my children are gems and crown jewels to me,
And art thou not one of them, D'Arcy McGee!

I had one son, and, oh, need I mention his name!
He who well knew where lay both our weakness and shame;
His true, tender heart sought to measure and know
This thing, most accursed, formed of babbling and woe;
And his life did he dedicate freely, to slay
The monster that made my bright children his prey;
In the place where the wine cup flows deadly and free,
The bane of the gifted, oh D'Arcy McGee.

For so well hath the father of lies tried to fling
A false glory around it, so hiding the sting,
Saying wit gets its flash, and high genius its fire,
From the fiend that drags genius and wit through the mire.
Ah! it biteth, it stingeth, it eateth away,
And our best and our brightest it takes for its prey,
'Tis the bowl of the helot, no cup for the free,
As thou very well knowest, my D'Arcy McGee.

Hast thou risen my loved one and cast from thy name
All the shadows that darken thy life with their shame;
Thou hast raised thyself up, against wind, against tide,
Thou art high, thou art honoured, my joy and my pride;
Now the song of the drunkard is chased from thy place,
And my pride is relieved from this touch of disgrace.
Thou wilt help to make Erin "great, glorious and free,"
And I bless thee my silver-tongued D'Arcy McGee.

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

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

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

'Death of D'Arcy McGee'

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

Remembering Edith Eaton and D'Arcy McGee

'The Easter Parade, 1915' by Robert Stanley Weir

Lines from a century past found in Robert Stanley Weir's After Ypres and Other Verse (Toronto: Musson, 1917).

With Easter wishes from the Chaplains of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Related posts:

Uncollected Easter Verse by Arthur Stringer

'Communion Pascale' de Émile Nelligan