The Final Sigh

"The Heavenly Boy", read by Donald Winkler at the installation of the memorial plaque to John Glassco. The poet's last published verse, it appeared in the December 1980 issue of Saturday Night. Glassco died the following month.

John Glassco Memorial Plaque

The plaque is cast.

Alloy Foundry, Merrickville, Ontario

20 November 2009

I do complain. Back in April I was going on and on about the dearth of historical plaques in this country, pointing – predictably – to a pub that now occupies what had once been John Glassco's pied-à-terre. Seven months later, with the Glassco centenary just weeks away, I'm pleased to report that a memorial plaque to the author will be installed at the city's St James the Apostle Anglican Church.

It's the most appropriate of locations, I think. St James the Apostle was the Glassco family church. On 19 September 1905, his parents were married there in an elaborate ceremony that was covered in the Montreal Daily Star. Glassco married both his wives, Elma Koolmer (1917-1971) and Marion McCormick (1924-2004), at St James, and it was at the church, on 2 February 1981, that his funeral was held.

The installation, which is open to all, will take place at 4:00 pm, Thursday, 26 November 2009.

St James the Apostle Anglican Church

1439 St Catherine Street West

Montreal, Quebec

Love and Unhappiness

The Master Motive [À l’œuvre et à l’épreuve]

Laure Conan

[pseud. Marie-Louise-Félicité Angers;

Theresa A. Gethin, trans.]

St Louis: B. Herder, 1909

254 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

A Tory Bodice-ripper?

Strange days, indeed. This past Wednesday, Remembrance Day, Linden MacIntyre received a well-deserved Giller Prize for The Bishop's Man. A day later, the novel's position as the country's most discussed book was lost to a 62-page government publication intended for prospective immigrants. The reviews of Discover Canada have been glowing:

"... a reasonable, balanced assessment of the national past."

– Adam Chapnick, The Ottawa Citizen

"...a solid step toward a healthy, self-respecting Canadian nationalism we can all share."

– The Gazette

"...a comparative bodice-ripper when stacked against its bland predecessor..."

– John Ivison, The National Post

I don't think Ivison really means Discover Canada is cheap or disposable or sexually-charged – and read nothing into his use of "stacked" with "bodice-ripper" – but he is very, very excited.

A newly minted Canadian himself, the National Post columnist cheers on Discover Canada as "yet another incremental step in the re-branding of Canada into a conservative country, full of people more inclined to vote Conservative." So, pay no attention to the participation of non-partisan bodies, ignore advisors like Andrew Cohen and John Ralston Saul, Discover Canada is the "Tory guide to a blue Canada". Why? Because it promotes "patriotism, pride in the armed forces and support for the rule of law" (in much the same way Ivison promotes American punctuation). These aren't Canadian values, the columnist tells us, they're Conservative values. Oh, and that maple leaf on the cover? That's not a Canadian symbol, but one that became Tory after a successful "hijacking".

And then, predictably, Ivison's off on another rant about the gun registry.

I can understand why the columnist so wants to claim Discover Canada for his team; it may not be a bodice-ripper, but it's most certainly an improvement. Yes, Bloc MPs hate the thing, but that's just a job requirement; all the other parties are pretty well on board. The greatest criticism thus far comes from New Democrat Olivia Chow, who laments that the new guide doesn't recognize our UNESCO World Heritage sites.

This is not to say that there aren't greater flaws. Christopher Moore notes that there's no mention of First Nations rights and treaties, while Daniel Francis rightly claims that BC receives short shrift (and points out that not one of the 26 advisors comes from the province).

Much more modest, my own complaint deals with the "Arts and Culture in Canada" section. It consumes little more than a page and, curiously, is dominated by sports, science and technology. Oh, there's paragraph on the visual arts, which mentions the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, les Automatistes, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Kenojuak Ashevak. Another paragraph on film and television boils everything down to Denys Arcand, Norman Jewison and Atom Egoyan. But what does Discover Canada have to tell prospective immigrants about our literary heritage?

The answer, in its entirety:

So there you have it: Canadian literature in fifteen or so words. I could make more of this, I suppose, but these guys and their fellow singers and songwriters didn't even get a sentence to call their own.

RIP Joshua Slocum

Recognition this morning of Nova Scotia's Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail alone around the world. The mariner wrote about his adventure in the aptly titled Sailing Alone Around the World (1899), a travel classic still published around that same world, but not in his own country.

Slocum loved a good book and was a fervent reader, sometimes at his own peril. Here he is after departing the Cape of Good Hope on his good sloop the Spray:

The wind was from the southeast; this suited the Spray well, and she ran along steadily at her best speed, while I dipped into the new books given me at the cape, reading day and night. March 30 was for me a fast-day in honor of them. I read on, oblivious of hunger or wind or sea, thinking that all was going well, when suddenly a comber rolled over the stern and slopped saucily into the cabin, wetting the very book I was reading. Evidently it was time to put in a reef, that she might not wallow on her course.

It was one hundred years ago today that Slocum and the Spray set sail for the West Indies... and disappeared. Though an optimist, I don't expect we'll ever hear more from him. Slocum's end was probably pretty horrible – he never could be bothered to learn how to swim. No, much more pleasant to think that he simply drifted off while reading in bed.

Reverend King's Great War Novelette

Going West

Basil King

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1919

First published as a short story in the September 1918 issue of Pictorial Review, 'America's Greatest Woman's Magazine', Going West has nothing of the inflated style of The Inner Shrine. This appears to be such a rushed piece of work. Sentences are clipped, yet repetitive, and characters appear as incomplete and airy as the ghostly figures on the dust jacket. In the opening pages of The Inner Shrine, King writes of a few tense hours; in Going West, he covers an entire life and geneology.

A great-great grandson of a Revolutionary War veteran, the grandson of a Civil War veteran, the son of a Spanish-American War veteran, Lester is a "genial, jovial soul" who, without reservation, heads off to fight the Hun in the Great War. What's termed "irresistible fate" brings him face to face with a blonde Bavarian who has blue eyes that dance "with a kind of bloodshot fire". Lester dodges, prances, leaps and weaves, stabbing the enemy with his bayonet, but gets his face "all bashed in" just the same. Both men die.

In death, Lester finds himself not in heaven, but Oberammergau (site, perhaps uncoincidentally, of the Passion Play). His companion is not Christ, but the man he killed. Together they look over a woman and two children in prayer - the dead German's family.

Lester, it seems, has lived a life in which his thoughts were limited to the physical world; and so, unlike his enlightened companion, he is unable to "whisper" to his loved ones. He has not yet learned that all is "a matter of thought, of consciousness." The German provides guidance:

When we've learned that everything exists in a great mind, that mind itself becomes a medium of intercourse. Give up the idea that people you love live in one sphere and you in another. We all live together in one great intelligence that understands all our needs. Meet your needs not by your own efforts, but by co-operation with that intelligence, and what you want will be done.

What, I wonder, did the Anglican Church of Canada think of its retired reverend? This is a Spiritualist's story, one in which non-believers are as sceptical about the New Testament as they are about Ouija boards, one in which the living draw strength through a blanket of protection and love laid upon them by the departed. Coming in the weeks leading up to the Armistice, it all must have been most welcome.

Object: Slim, printed on heavy paper, Going West is a very handsome little book. A portion of the dust jacket image, features the comrades united in death, serves as frontispiece. Removing the jacket reveals a rather elegant cover. Quite a contrast, it serves to remind that the author was a minister of the cloth.

Access: Library and Archives Canada fails where the Toronto Public Library succeeds. Less than half of our university libraries have the book – a sign, perhaps, that King had come to be seen as an American author. Buyers should keep in mind that King was quite popular... and the Basil King collector appears to be an extinct creature. Prices vary greatly. One crazy Connecticut bookseller is asking US$150 for a copy that is no better than those going for US$20. "Unusual to find a copy of this book in this condition [Very Good] with a DJ", claims another asking US$45. In truth, it's more unusual to find a Very Good copy without a dust jacket. Pay no more than US$20, dust jacket included.