A JOURNEY THROUGH CANADA'S FORGOTTEN, NEGLECTED AND SUPPRESSED WRITING
The greatest Canadian humorist of his generation, he would've enjoyed the typo.
...August nights are coolIn these north regions. Summer goes so soon!
In gleam of pale translucent amber wokeThe perfect August day;Through rose-flushed bars of pearl and amber brokeThe sunset's golden way.
The river seemed transfigured in its flowTo tide of amethyst,Save where it rippled o'er the sands below,And granite boulders kissed.
The clouds of billowy woodland hung unstirredIn languorous slumber deep,While, from its green recesses, one small birdPiped to its brood asleep.
The clustering lichens wore a tenderer tint,The rocks a warmer glow;The emerald dewdrops, in the sunbeam's glint,Gemmed the rich moss below.
Our birchen shallop idly stranded layHalf mirrored in the stream,Wild roses drooped, glassed in the tiny bay,Ethereal as a dream!
You sat upon your rock, enthroned a queen,As on a granite throne,And all that world of loveliness sereneHeld but us twain alone.
Nay! but we felt another presence there,Around, below, above;
It breathed a poem through the fragrant air
Its name was LOVE!
Several months ago, The Dorchester Review asked me to review David Staines' A History of Canadian Fiction.
Who am I to turn down an invitation.
Professor Staines' book was read at great sacrifice. Going through its 304 pages I ignored Stephen Henighan, a favourite critic, who shared his opinion of A History of Canadian Fiction in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement. A blind eye was turned to Stephen W. Beattie, another favourite, who reviewed the book for the Quill & Quire.
After submitting my review I read the two Stephens, sat back, and watched for more. I was more than rewarded with John Metcalf's newly published The Worst Truth: Regarding A History of Canadian Fiction by David Staines (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2022).
He provides a useful introduction to Inuit literary culture, paying the 39,000 native speakers of Inuktituk an attention he denies to Canada's 7.3 million native speakers of French.
How is it that a book titled A History of Canadian Fiction would exclude work written in French? Remarkably, Staines does not address this issue. In fact, he doesn’t so much as recognize the existence of Canadian fiction written in French. Of the hundreds of writers of fiction named in this book, we find two French names: Roger Lemelin and Gabrielle Roy. They first feature in a short list of “important people” who were once interviewed by Mavis Gallant and reappear as in another list of writers whose fiction Mordecai Richler had read. Roy’s name is in a third list, this of writers with whom Sandra Birdsell corresponded.
And that’s it.
The only mention of a work written in French appears in a nine-page "Chronology of historical, cultural, and literary events" that precedes the text itself. Next to the year 1632, we find: “Jesuit Relations, an annual, begins and continues until 1673.” But of course, they weren’t the “Jesuit Relations,” they were the Relations des jésuites.
One of the Fourscore years, Mary,Has passed like a dream away,A dream of laughter and tears, Mary,Like a showery summer's day,With its rainbow bright,In the warm twilight,Fair pledge of a happier day, Mary,God's pledge of a happier day.Swiftly the seasons roll, Mary,Like the waves o'er a mighty sea,Searching the depths of the soul, Mary,With their power and mystery.Every hour that flies,Tells in distant skiesThe words that it heard from thee, Mary,The deeds that are done by thee.See that the tale be pure, Mary,That the Hours may have to tell;Goodness and Truth, we are sure, Mary,Heav'n loveth exceeding well;And the beauteous mindWhere Truth is shrined,Glows bright as a sunny dell, Mary,Glows bright as a sunny dell.More of the Fourscore years, Mary,Must pass like the first away,Each, as its turn appears, Mary,May not be a summer's day;But Hope's rainbow bright,With its smile, will lightThe close of a happier day, Mary,The dawn of Eternal Day.
