Canada's Great War Novelists: Will R. Bird

William Richard Bird

(1891-1984)

Author of Private Timothy Fergus Clancy

Related posts:

Canada's Great War Novelists: Peregrine Acland

Canada's Great War Novelists: Philip Child

Canada's Great War Novelists: Charles Yale Harrison

Canada's Great War Novelists: Peregrine Acland

Peregrine Palmer Acland

(1891-1963)

Author of All Else is Folly

Related posts:

Alec Falcon, c'est moi

Remembering Peregrine Acland
A Neglected Novelist's Neglected Grave
The Great Canadian Great War Novel

The Bank Swindler's Signature

A brief addendum to Wednesday's post, in which I happened to mention that my copy of Lucius A. Parmelee's The Confessions of a Bank Swindler is signed. One correspondent asks me to post the signature. I'm happy to do so.

Must say that for a man who made his money in large measure through forgery, it does seem rather awkward.

Related post: A Bank Swindler Tries to Cash In

A Bank Swindler Tries to Cash In

The Confessions of a Bank Swindler

Lucius A. Parmelee

Waterloo, QC: Duval, 1968

The author begins by boasting that a member of the Canadian Banking Assocation once suggested he be offered a pension as an inducement to retire, adding: "I achieved fame of a sort and did very well." These more modest words set the tone.

Born in 1889, Lucius Parmelee was blessed in being a member of family of affluence and influence. Newspaper editor and three-term Liberal member of parliament Charles Henry Parmelee – that's him on the right – was an uncle. Another uncle once served as Quebec's Minister of Protestant Education. The latter's good work is reflected in this, nephew Lucius' only book; until Conrad Black, The Confessions of a Bank Swindler was likely the best written work by a Canadian criminal. I provide as evidence this passage in which the author looks back to his earliest years in Waterloo, Quebec:

One must remember that in this day there was no auto, radio, TV, and the thousand and one distractions, which are today offered to gratify our jaded appetites. Nor were they distracted by the innumerable incidents of a bizarre, and even sinister nature, which is the record of our daily lives. I do not agree with the French philosopher Rousseau, that the solution to the world's ills consist of a return to a state of nature. I do feel that there have been times in the past history of mankind, when the clock of destiny could well have been arrested, for a temporary breathing space, at least. Our characteristically North American attitude of service to the Gods of progress, may well mean serving an illusion.

No common criminal.

As a young man , Parmelee set off down the straight and narrow as a bank clerk, only to develop a rooted resentment toward the very industry in which he was employed. The low pay, which our grand banks expected to be supplemented by clerks' families, led to his resignation. Parmelee tried his hand at a number of occupations, including farmhand and barkeep, but returned to the banks as an unwelcomed visitor during the Great War:

From a moral point of view I had no scruples whatever. They paid their employees atrocious wages. They offered very little in the way of a life career. They obtained subsidy from the general public, due to the fact that their employees must have help from their parents for a few years, and in the case of the institution in which I served they had no pension plan. All in all I considered them bigger, and more cowardly robbers than myself.

Make no mistake, Parmelee's crimes were not robberies; they were swindles carried out though study, impersonation and forgery. The author's criminal activity spanned three decades, interrupted by an ill-considered investment in a chicken ranch, work at a wartime munitions plant and time spent in San Quentin. His final foray into financial fraud, in 1947 Ottawa, was in his own words a "disaster". He hit the Royal Bank, the Bank of Toronto, the Bank of Montreal and the Dominion Bank, walking away with some $17,000... only to be arrested a few hours later at a railway station in Vars, Ontario. Contemporary crooks will learn no tips from The Confessions of a Bank Swindler; Parmelee's scams and schemes were dated well before his book was published. The world into which he was ultimately released, on 15 June 1955, was foreign. "Montreal proved a revelation to me", he writes, unable to reconcile the metropolis with the tranquil city of his youth. The Confessions of a Bank Swindler owes its existence to the late Weekend Magazine, which in 1956 published a rudimentary version of the memoir. I expect the reception wasn't quite what editorial director Craig Ballantyne had anticipated. Readers took considerable offence to Parmelee's unrepentant nature; the banks, it would seem, were unassailable. The swindler's memoir attracted no interest from McClelland and Stewart, Macmillan or Ryerson; it ended up being self-published through a little printer in the author's birthplace.* No fame followed. Having gone straight, the man was accorded no obituary. Crime pays.

Object: A trade-size paperback, my copy is signed and includes a Weekend Magazine clipping that appears to have been used for promotional purposes. The first edition, I think, the only other I've seen – also signed – was published in mass market by a short-lived Montreal house called Bodero.

Access: There are no copies of either edition listed for sale online; look instead to the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and the Toronto Public Library. Seven of our university libraries hold the book. Library and Archives Canada? Don't ask.

* This was the very same printer that two years earlier produced John Glassco's self-published Squire Hardman.

Related post:

The Bank Swindler's Signature

'November the First' by the Master of All Poets

One of the more restrained poems composed as "a truthful guide" by James Gay, self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Canada and Master of All Poets.

NOVEMBER THE FIRST

Being one of the oldest settlers in your town,
I cannot remember of seeing such a beautiful day;
On the first day of November, see the stars so clear and bright,
They give us light,
All through the night.
Young gents and ladies walk out bold,
The weather is not too hot or cold;
Jack Frost has kept his hand away,
Those young and old can sport and play
All through the night till the break of day.
The leaves in October have passed away;
Like man on earth, he cannot stay,
Falling more or less each day,
Our bodies soon return to clay,
Thousands do never give this a thought;
Then what will be their awful fate?
With millions this word, too late, too late.
Leave off this sinful life, and try to act more clever,
Put your trust in Providence, life changes like the weather.

Related post: Local Poet!

It's Harlequin Halloween Time!

Related posts:

A Harlequin Halloween

Another Harlequin Halloween

The Brilliance of Frank Newfeld

Purchased for five dollars – five dollars! – during my most recent visit to Montreal, Ralph Gustafson's Rivers Among Rocks (McClelland and Stewart, 1960) provides an excuse to revisit the wonderful work Frank Newfeld. The cover may be a bit weathered, but it more than hints at the brilliance within.

Pardon my thumbs.

After all this beauty comes a lengthy "NOTE ON PUBLICATION":

This book is the result of a unique association dedication to improve of the standards of design and manufacturing in the making of Canadian books. It is the first of a group of selected works of poetry and belle lettres chosen both to inspire and to complement fine craftsmanship in the designing and manufacturing arts.

It has been published in a limited edition and will not be republished in this format. Its publication is experimental in the sense that the strict economic limitations that might normally prevail were waived to permit adequate attention in the various stages of production.

It was planned and illustrated by Frank Newfeld, a brilliant young Canadian designer, typographer and art director, whose work has earned him an imposing series of awards in various fields of design.

It was produced under the joint auspices of the Polland Paper Company Limited who supplied the stock, Laurentic Japan and Rolland Extra Stong; H & S Reliance Limited who supplied engravings for the illustrations, the jacket, and the case; T. H. Best Printing Company Limited, in whose plant the type was set and the books printed and bound; and McClelland and Stewart Limited.

Of that "group of selected works of poetry and belle lettres", I think it ranks second only to Newfeld's work on Leonard Cohen's The Spice-Box of Earth.

Related posts:

McClelland's Experiment, Newfeld's Art

Frank Newfeld's Masterpiece (and Leonard Cohen's Unseen Face for Tits)