The Dusty Bookcase

01 November 2019

Virna Sheard Sees November as a Hooded Friar

Bookseller & Stationer, March 1905

Verse for the month by Virna Sheard (née Stanton), daughter of Coburg, Ontario, from The Miracle and Other Poems (Toronto: Dent, 1913).

NOVEMBER

How like a hooded friar, bent and grey,
Whose pensive lips speak only when they pray
Doth sad November pass upon his way.

Through forest aisles while the wind chanteth low —
In God's cathedral where the great trees grow,
Now all day long he paceth to and fro.

When shadows gather and the night-mists rise.
Up to the hills he lifts his sombre eyes
To where the last red rose of sunset lies.

A little smile he weareth, wise and cold.
The smile of one to whom all things are old,
And life is weary, as a tale twice told.

"Come see," he seems to say —"where joy has fled—
The leaves that burned but yesterday so red
Have turned to ashes — and the flowers are dead.

The summer's green and gold hath taken flight,
October days have gone. Now bleached and white
Winter doth come with many a lonely night.

"And though the people will not heed or stay,
But pass with careless laughter on their way,
Even I, with rain of tears, will wait and pray."

Archibald Lampman's 'In November'

22 October 2019

Let the Margaret Murray Robertson Revival Begin!

Christie Redfern’s Troubles

by the author of “Mark Wedgewood’s Wooing,” etc. [Margaret Murray Robertson]

London: The Religious Tract Society, [c. 1866]

384 pages

Christie Redfern’s troubles are so many that they spill over into her backstory. Poor girl, she began life as the fourth child of a Scottish businessman and his loving, fertile wife. Mrs Redfern died, but not before giving birth to four more children. The role of family matriarch was then taken up by Mr Redfern’s stern spinster sister Elsie, but the aunt’s firm, yet helpful hand was not enough to prevent the decline of Mr Redfern’s enterprise. What was that enterprise? Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it failed, causing Mr Redfern to move the family to the New World and a farm in Canada West’s Glengarry County. That Mr Redfern knew little about agriculture suggests something about his failure as a businessman. To make matters worse:

Soon after their arrival in their new home, Aunt Elsie was seized with an illness which lingered long, and left her a cripple when it went away; and her temper was not of the kind which suffering and helplessness are said sometimes to improve. It was a trying time to all.

No doubt.

So begins my latest Dusty Bookcase review for Canadian Notes & Queries. The issue in which it appears – number 105 – arrived in yesterday's post. I poured over it last night, between peeks at election coverage.

"Grand Theft Bibio," Michael Melgaard's excellent piece on book thieves, was the first to distract my troubled mind.

Ray Fawkes' adaptation of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson was a visual feast.

I couldn't have agreed more with Rod Moody-Corbett's essay on Saul Bellow.

All, as always, is wrapped in covers by Seth. Lord knows, this snap doesn't do it justice.

I ask you, how many magazines have French flaps?

Other contributors include:

Jeremiah Bartram
Jeff Bursey
Andreae Callanan
Paige Cooper
Candace de Taeye
Emily Donaldson
Deborah Dundas
Carey Fagan
Stephen Fowler
Alex Good
Brett Josef Grubisic
David Huebert
David Mason
Edward O'Connor
Rudrapriya Rathore
Yusuf Saadi
Nathan Whitlock
and
the late David Helwig

Christie Redfern's Troubles is just about the most depressing thing I've ever read.

Does that not make it a novel for our time?

(& Canadian literature's most tear-stained novel)

21 October 2019

Number 43 in a Series

The 43rd Canadian general election takes place today. The first I remember was the twenty-ninth – October 30, 1972 – which Pierre Trudeau's Liberals won by all of two seats. We may see something similar befall son Justin... who happens to be the baby pictured above between Pierre and Margaret Trudeau.

My prediction is that Trudeau fils will do a little bit better, but I'm not prepared to put money on it. I don't recall an election with so many three-way races – and don't remember four-way races at all. Will the NDP win sixteen seats or sixty? Eric Grénier won't commit.

Can you blame him?

Me? I'll be more than happy with a Liberal minority. Lester Pearson, the greatest prime minister of my lifetime, never once enjoyed a majority. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – each time I speak medical care. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – whenever I see our flag. I will think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – when my Canada Pension Plan kicks in. My Quebec Pension Plan, too.

Polls close at 9:30 in my riding, which means this could be a very long night. Much of it will be spent dipping in and out of Hotter Than Hell, a 2005 political thriller penned by Mark Tushingham, Senior Advisor to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Sound familiar?

It received little notice until Conservative Environment Minister Rona Ambrose forbade the author from speaking publicly. Though this made the news, I've yet to find anything by anyone who has actually read Tushingham's novel. Should be interesting – especially to we who make a habit of reading Richard Rohmer.

Does Dr Tushingham's novel give an indication of my vote?

It should.

Truth be told, at this late hour I'm torn between two candidates... neither of whom belongs to the People's Party.

Vote!

Related posts:

Wanting Justin Trudeau Dead

Wishing the Prime Minister Dead:

The Tory Joke that Wasn't as Funny the Third Time Around

Trudeaumania II

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book