America's Canada and Ours

Canada
Richard Ford
New York: Ecco, 2012

Canada
Richard Ford
Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2012

Giving lie to that old saw that books with green covers don't sell.

When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

For my poet friends, these observations from Canada 1962:

A striking feature of Canadian letters in recent years has been the consistently high level of Canadian poetry. Although the poet's audience was often not large, he was at least assured of publication in one of the many literary magazines of the country where his work would receive discriminating critical attention. Too often, however, such limited circulation was the most that could be expected. More recently a growing interest among a wider reading public has made possible the publication of a number of volumes of poetry, some of which have achieved minor commercial successes.

A comprehensive picture of Canadian poetry was made available to readers during 1961 by the appearance of the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Several other important collections also appeared during the year, including Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth, River Among Rocks by Ralph Gustafson, The Devil's Picture Book by Daryl Hine and Irving Layton's collection of stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh. The Governor General's Award for poetry in English for 1960 went to Margaret Avison for Winter Sun and Other Poems, her first published collection. Poetry in French Canada is no less important and vital as was amply illustrated in the Oxford Book. Among the most widely known of the younger poets are Alan Grandbois, Rina Lasnier and Anne Hébert. The latter received the Governor General's Award for French Poetry for her book Poèmes. 

Canadian fiction is perhaps somewhat less vigorous.

The Greater Canada of 1962

Canada 1962: The Official Handbook of Present Conditions
   and Recent Progress
Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1962

I missed the better part of 1962; by the time I showed up at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Marilyn Monroe and William Faulkner were gone and E.E. Cummings looked in rough shape. I wasn't a reader then, of course, but had I been this handbook would've provided a good introduction to the land of my birth. This is Canada as it was just before I came to know it, a country in which bookmobiles rode the rails,

a personable young woman might find employment as a bus hostess,

and mothers and daughters bought groceries from vending machines.

The Grocerette never caught on, but I don't imagine that it's failure was recorded in subsequent handbooks – challenging enough just keeping up with the successes. In 1962, Canada was undergoing great change, as reflected in the caption accompanying this photograph of my hometown.  

Our cities were changing so quickly that it seemed pointless to include new buildings; better to feature models of those under construction. Here's Place des Arts, which would be built to a similar, yet superior design:

And here are the new offices of the Toronto Telegram and Sudbury Star:

While the Telegram is long gone, the Star hangs on. A year ago, the Star building "that once bustled with a library and an archiving service, a press and a pre-press operation, a distribution centre and warehouse, the largest newsroom in Northern Ontario and a full complement of sales agents, circulators and office support staff" was put up for sale. There have been no takers.

Stray tears drawn through nostalgia can blind. In the Canada of 1962, homosexual acts were criminal, employers could pay a woman less than a man for equal work, and Native Canadians had only just won the right to vote in federal elections. Yet that Canada was moving forward; building more than just skyscrapers, concert halls and newspaper offices, it was investing in institutions, education and services. All comes into focus with this photograph:

The uniformed man pictured is a food inspector. While the country's population has almost doubled since 1962, fewer people hold his position today. This year alone, our Minister of Agriculture, comedian Gerry Ritz, a man who finds humour in death from listeriosis, will be overseeing the dismissal of 308 people from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Ours is a contracting Canada. The self-described "Harper Government" would have us believe that we can no longer afford the services and protections offered under the record surpluses of previous governments not ten years past. As these Conservatives run up record deficits, the advantages they themselves enjoyed, the programs from which they themselves benefitted, are being stripped from my generation and denied the next.

We are a smaller country now.

Object: A very well-constructed, remarkably heavy trade-size paperback printed on glossy paper with tipped in fold-out map of the dominion. The cover was a commissioned piece by Kiakshuk.

Access: It  should come as no surprise that Canada 1962, a five-decade-old reference book, has disappeared from our public libraries. Those looking to add it to their own collection should be happy to learn that Very Good copies of the paperback begin at seven dollars. The uncommon, bland hardcover edition is yours for forty bucks.

The True North...

From Canada 1962, a proud publication of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics' Information Services Division, further evidence that we were once a stronger, gentler people.

The World's Most Unusual Detective Magazine!

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Check out the gams! It took me a while to realize that that blonde's about to take a leap. Or is she being pushed? Whatever's happening here, the fella sure looks happy.

International Detective Cases was "THE WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE!" No question. So unusual was the world's most unusual that it seems to have vanished without so much as publishing a single issue.

The above, which comes to me courtesy of the family of the late Leo Orenstein, looks to be yet another of the artist's unused covers. Formatting and presentation suggest that like Aphrodite, Against the Grain and Curious Relations of Mankind, International Detective Cases was an aborted effort of Toronto's Fireside Publications. But here's the thing, Fireside didn't produce any original material, rather they'd re-issue, re-package, re-package... My hunch here is that publisher meant to mine the corpse of a dead American true crime monthly by the same title.

International Detective Cases, December 1937

I'm keeping the file open.

An aside: Where the title of England's "A Case for Scotland Yard" seems rather ho-hum, the Canadian entry, "The Tale of Singed Dog Island", did intrigue. I spent a happy half-hour yesterday reading newspaper accounts of this forgotten case. It began 23 November 1935 when the appropriately named John Harms, a trapper, murdered his partner. He next terrorized a neighbour by showing her the body, then made repeated attempts to break into her home. Eventually Harms gave up, yelling: "Report to police that the kid is dead. I will be waiting for them at my cabin on Singed Dog Island."*

The Leader-Post, 30 November 1935

It's clear that the papers were hoping Harms would turn out to be another Albert Johnson, the "Mad Trapper" who had led the RCMP on a 16-day manhunt four years earlier. Instead, Harms sat in his cabin and gave himself up when the Mounties arrived on 3 December. Found guilty of murder, he was hanged five months later.

No detectives needed.

* There really is a Singed Dog Island; a nine-acre piece of land just inside the Saskatchewan portion of Lake Athabaska, from the air it resembles a rotting steak. The actual murder took place at nearby Spring Point, but "The Tale of Spring Point" doesn't sound nearly so interesting.

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

Monument George-Étienne Cartier

For la Fête de la St-Jean, George-Étienne Cartier's 'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!',  a song I've written about in the past. No reason to go over it all again here; instead I offer this link to my favourite recording, sung by M Alfred Poulin.

The above comes from Devoilement du Monument Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Baronnet, Le Six Septembre 1919. It's an odd little booklet as the Montreal monument had been standing for all to see for three years. Hard to miss. A note on the last page provides something of an explanation:

The celebration of the Centenary of Sir George Etienne Cartier [sic] was to have taken place in September, 1914, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The outbreak of the war in that year necessitated a postponement of these festivities until peace had been declared.

Rien n'est si beau que son pays...

Ralph Connor's Beautiful War of 1812

The Runner: A Romance of the Niagaras

Ralph Connor [pseud. Rev. Charles W. Gordon]

New York: Triangle, 1939

481 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.