Q is for Queer People (but not kweer kapers)

The plaque on Palmer Cox's gravesite went missing last year. Its disappearance, believed to be the work scrap metal scavengers, is perhaps the greatest in a long list of insults to his memory. No other name in Canadian literature has suffered such a decline in death, few have been quite so snubbed as this son of Granby, Quebec. Palmer Cox is nowhere to be found in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature or W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, yet a century ago his presence was inescapable. Here the man's image graces a cigar box:

Cox's verse and illustrations featured in newspapers, magazines and books published around the globe. Much of his popularity had to do with Brownies, mischievous little sprites inspired by stories told by his Scottish grandmother. Touring companies performed theatrical adaptations of Cox's Brownie verse, while the characters themselves were sold in places like Birks as porcelain figurines.

Tacky? Perhaps you'd prefer some Brownie cutlery or dinnerware? Salt and paper shakers? A creamer? How about a tea towel for the kitchen and some wallpaper for the nursery?

No? Okay, but you'll want a Brownie Ice Cream Sandwich for the road.

You'll say they're great!

It's Disney before Disney.

Cox wrote and illustrated something in the area of thirty books – I've yet to find a reliable bibliography. I think my favourite, Queer People and Their Kweer Kapers (Toronto: Rose, 1888), provides some indication as to why the author is so ignored by the keepers of the canon. We begin with the tale of Grim Griffin, a "giant bold" who lives off the labour of hardworking farmers in stealing their produce and livestock. Cox took the time to draw "heaps of hoof and horn" lying at Grim Griffin's feet. Not a pleasant sight, but then neither is this:

Grim Griffin meets his end when he hooks a whale that pulls him out to sea.

The people rejoice:

The high point of the collection to this discerning reader is Cox's "Cock Robin", in which a dark nursery rhyme is made more morbid.

I suppose subsequent generations came to consider these images and accompanying verse inappropriate for young children. A shame, because they often carry some valuable advice. Consider the last lines in Grim Griffin's tale:

Palmer Cox died at his home, Brownie Castle, which was built by his brothers not far from his childhood home.

It stands to this day, a short stroll to his resting place and the monument that once bore these words:

IN CREATING THE BROWNIES

HE BESTOWED A PRICELESS

HERITAGE ON CHILDHOOD

Not in Canada, he didn't.

The Harlequin Horror That Just Won't Die!

Vengeance of the Black Donnellys
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: Harlequin, 1962

Winnipeg: Greywood, 1969

Toronto: Modern Canadian Library, 1975

Toronto: Firefly, 1995

Canada's most feared family strikes back from the grave!

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New Brunswick Boy in Number 10

Here's to Bonar Law, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who took his final breath ninety years ago today. No one was much surprised by his passing; a diagnosis of inoperable throat cancer had forced his resignation just five months earlier. Law holds an unenviable record as the shortest serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Still, his 209 days as a PM (23 October 1922 - 22 May 1923) is far longer than Kim Campbell can claim. In this respect, Law is in Joe Clark's league.

I mention Campbell and Clark because Bonar Law, also a Tory, holds the distinction of being the only British prime minister to have been born on Canadian soil; in fact, he's the only person born outside the British Isles to have held the office. The son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Law drew his first breath in Rexton, New Brunswick, where he lived until the age of twelve.

Law's forced retirement was much to brief for him to pen his memoirs; he had no ghostwriter or "editorial consultant". The longest piece I have by the man comes in the form of a two-page Preface to Canada in Flanders (Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916) by friend Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, a fellow Presbyterian pastor's son and native of New Brunswick.

Two of Law's sons would be killed in the Great War, losses that followed the death of his wife and a stillborn child. For all his political successes, the 20th century wasn't kind to Law, yet he embraced it. Here Law "marks an epoch in Cinematography" in the first cabinet meeting to be filmed "within the historic and sacred walls of No. 10 Downing St."

"A fine study of the quiet and yet steadfast dignity of the New Prime Minister," reads one of the cards. I see a man looking uncomfortable before the camera. A shy smile breaks through in the last seconds.

Look carefully and you'll see members of this very same cabinet in this Pathé newsreel twelve months later. I recommend watching with the sound off.

Andrew Bonar Law
Rextion, New Brunswick, 16 September 1858 -
London, England, 30 October 1923
RIP

P is for Plus ça change...

National Post Editor-at-Large Diane Francis has been making the rounds flogging her latest. I've felt some sympathy. Her book, Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country, landed in the midst of the government shutdown in the republic to the south. Ever the capitalist, Ms Francis did her level best of capitalize on the sorry mess, beginning her interview with Evan Solomon thusly:

If we were to merge like quickly, like East and West Germany, we'd be 35 million Democrats and the Republicans wouldn't get anywhere in the House or in the White House. So there you go.There'd be no more logjams.

That Ms Francis, a born and bred Chicagoan, thinks Canadians would flock to the Democrats en masse suggests that she has much to learn about her adopted country; that she believes Canadian children would be granted the right to vote suggests that she knows nothing at all about the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Ms Francis began with the very same assertion when speaking with Anna Maria Tremonti, which leads me to think that it also features in the book itself. I don't know for certain because I just can't be bothered to check it out of the library.

Hers is a tired, old idea (see: Smith, Goldwin), one that comes around every couple of decade or so. As with Encke's Comet, no one much notices – but the few who do, like her publisher's jacket designer, find little in the way of inspiration.

Looking through my library I see that I've bought only one volume on the topic: Canamerican Union Now! Published in early 1978 by Griffin House, it's the lone book by D.K. Donnelly, a computer industry consultant from Toronto. Canamerican Union Now! was very much a knee-jerk response to the November 1976 election of the Parti Québécois. The author considered the months – months, I tell you – of handwringing that followed, before throwing up his own right and left in frustration.

Canamerican Union Now!

Diane Francis surrenders because, as she put it on Power & Politics, the Russians and Chinese are "wolves at our door." The author repeated the same words on The Current, in her National Post column, and in numerous – albeit identical – online posts.

Griffin House pitched its book as an open discussion, but it would seem that the computer industry consultant was talking only to himself. Though Merger of the Century, a HarperCollins lead title, ranked 8,358 on Amazon.ca at the time of this writing, I believe Ms Francis has done a bit better. Her newspaper's website has comments on the book from several dozen people, including the author herself. What's more, Amazon has three customer reviews! Someone calling himself "Interested American" informs: "the numbers and data (and new ideas) are presented here for us to take in, especially about the Arctic NW Territories [sic] I had little awareness of, and consider in light of a changing world." Jared Nova chimes in with enthusiasm: "I'm an American who's always had a great interest in Canada. But this book helped me realize how much I didn't know."

The naysayer – tellingly, I think – is the sole Canadian, who observes that "the US nearly gutted itself financially and nearly took down the rest of the western economies", then dares add that "Canada's pragmatic mix of capitalism and socialism protected us from most of the blowback." He also notes that we don't kill each other nearly as much.

"The above critique is infused with anti-American bigotry", responds South Carolina's "C.I. Kendrick", who also believes Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory rates five stars. "A new Classic!"

I was greatly disappointed by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory myself... and, truth be told, I've never taken to the idea of a union between Canada and the United States. It's not that I don't love my American cousins, but that I see their country as being, well, foreign.

Those few campaigning for union, like self-described "Canadian-American" Diane Francis, may blame my father, whose record collection introduced me to the idea before I began elementary school. From The Brothers-in-Law Strike Again! (Arc, 1966):

            Oh, we share a common border with a country that you know,
            Just take a look at your atlas, it's the one that's down below.
            There's fifty states in the union and something should be done
            To forget the War of 1812 and make it fifty-one.

            Chorus:         

            There'll be color television,
            Social security,
            Racial segregation,
            And the Birch Society.
            You can cheer for Jimmy Hoffa,
            You can join the Klan today.
            You can even burn your draft card
            When we're Canada, USA.

Everyone!

Now the ladies... 'cause with 35 million more Democrats an Equal Rights Amendment might finally get passed.

Note to American readers: Canada now has color television. We spell it "colour".

Trivia: The first Brothers-in-Law concert took place on 22 November 1963, the day the United States suffered its twenty-fifth political assassination.

There's a cultural difference for you.*

* "I have this great quote in the political chapter. Peter Drucker – who's the business guru of gurus, the late great Peter Drucker – and he said 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast.' So, I get it, but I'm a business person, I deal in facts and reality." 

– Diane Francis on The Current, 30 September 2013

Sugar-Puss Returns!

Sixty-three years after it disappeared from drugstore spinner racks, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street is finally making its way to bookstore shelves. This is not your grandparents' Sugar-Puss, but a brand new edition with Introduction by Will Straw. Reset and printed on FSC certified paper, unlike the News Stand Library original this baby is built to last!

Much has changed since the story of young, innocent, farmette Gisele Lapine last saw print. Dorchester is not a street but a boulevard. No longer a centre of the city's nightlife, it's now a bloodless artery lined by some of the city's blandest buildings. Even the name is gone. The honour conferred upon Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, the man credited with saving Quebec from the Americans during their Revolutionary War, has been stripped and given to a former United States Army liaison officer.

Enough. This is not a time for speeches. In celebration of her return, I present a Sugar-Puss Top Ten – favourite passages from the novel, beginning with the very first sentence:

1 - Dorchester Street spews out almost within shadow of the Harbour Bridge in Montreal’s slummy, crummy East End. Her spawning ground is wedged solidly between vermin-ridden tenements where French and English meet – but do not blend – and the greasy waters of the St. Lawrence River.

2 - Her eyes were large and softly brown as was her skin thereby hinting of a strain of Basque blood. Her breasts were large and firm; a legacy of her Norman ancestry. Long legs tapered off from well-rounded thighs to shapely ankles. Her feet were small and beautifully formed as are those of most French Canadian women.

3 - Bewildered Gisele looked at her newly acquired, giant-sized and self-appointed protector. He smiled back at her through a cloud of smoke. "It's okay, Honey. I'm Jim Schultz. I own this flea trap and you're safe here as you are in yah mudda's arms. Safer unless yah mudda'sgot cauliflower ears."

4 - The girl slouched against the bar beside her. "My name's Trixie. Helluva name that. Pop said he named me after a mongrel that died but Ma said it was a burlesque broad he used to sleep with."

5 - He turned slightly and looked down at her. The lamp cast a bluish glow across her flat stomach. It was like television, he thought.

6 - He didn't trust himself to speak. Instead he drank slowly looking into the light until his eyes blurred.
     She whimpered like a spaniel. "Please, Jimmy."

7 - "Today, Gisele," she told herself, "you are a woman." She paused for some time reliving every one of the precious moments of the night. "You are," she said, "a young woman in love – and what's more you look it."

8 - "Gisele ma petite bebe you are the greatest thing to hit show business here since Fifi D'Orsay. You are superb, magnificent, you are – shall we say – tres, tres? A combination of Pavlowa and Mam'selle St. Cyr. You were great."

9 - Madame Lapointe had given the nearest possible example of a human being sparked with atomic power.

10 - "So she's still in the city," he thought grimly, "and so are a million and a half other souls – plus a few heels."

The Gazette, 2 November 1949

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'THE NEONS GO UP ON MONTREAL'

O is for OW!! OW!! OW!! OUCH!!! OUCH!!!!

A glimpse of Jazz Age Montreal published ninety years ago today in The Axe, John H. Roberts' much-missed muckraking tabloid.

"HE-SWEETIES HAUNT HOTELS" is pretty great, but I much prefer the sub-headline. Click to enlarge.

The Axe, 19 October 1923

Eleven Earth and High Heavens

It's been a week since the celebration of Gwethalyn Graham at the Writers' Chapel, which isn't to say that she is no longer on my mind. Looking through my collection, I'm beginning to think that nearly all Anglo Montreal families once had a copy of Earth and High Heaven. That pictured above, published in 1948 by Bantam, was ours. I picked up my own, the Lippincott first American edition (below) from the "FREE" box at Cheap Thrills. Like Lionel Shapiro's The Sixth of June, there was a time when it was pretty thick on the ground.

Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944

I like the Lippincott cover because it reminds me of Charles Addams; those trees are most certainly his. The English Jonathan Cape edition, which I understand to be the true first, doesn't have nearly as much going for it:   

London: Jonathan Cape, 1944

The edition I've always wanted was given away to Americans serving in the Second World War. Cheap, so cheap, it was not designed to survive – Lippincott didn't want thousands of used copies flooding the market in peacetime – but they are out there.

New Delhi: Editions for the Armed Services, 1944

Much more rare is Entre ciel et terre, the French translation. I've never seen a copy. The image below was found in my online wanderings.

Entre ciel et terre
Paris: Tallandier, 1946

Odd to think that this novel of Montreal – one that dominated bestseller lists, one that is still studied university – should have enjoyed just one printing in French translation... from a Parisian press.

Welcome to the depressing world of Canadian literature.

Outside the English-speaking world, it's the Germans – yes, the Germans – who have paid the most attention to Graham's novel.

Im Himmel und auf Erden
Nürnberg: Nest Verlag, 1948

The novel has also found a home with the Dutch, the Danes and the Finns.

Maa ja korkea taivas
Helsinki: Otava, 1947

In the nearly seven decades since Earth and High Heaven first appeared, it's pretty much retreated behind Canadian borders. The novel that once topped the New York Times Bestseller List was last published down south during the Johnson administration:  

New York: Paperback Library, 1965

While Earth and High Heaven has had more legs in Canada, this didn't mean much for its author. Graham received a $100 advance on royalties in 1960 when the novel joined the New Canadian Library. Four years later, the author received a further three dollars when it earned out.

Gwethalyn Graham died in 1965, so was spared witness to the ugly New Canadian Library editions credited to "Gwenthalyn Graham".

  

Two bucks will buy a copy from a Yankee bookseller. That said, he has "McClulland and Stewart" as the publisher, so I can't be sure it's the same.

Never mind. The one you want is the 2003 Cormorant edition:

By far the most attractive edition ever published in this country, it has an Introduction by Norman Ravvin.

Buy it!

With Norman Ravvin, Claire Holden Rothman and the Venerable Linda Borden Taylor
The Writers' Chapel, Montreal, 11 October 2013 

Credit: The image of the NCL "Gwenthalyn Graham" edition was lifted from the very fine Chumley and Pepys on Books blog. 

Related post:

The Paralyzing Success of Gwethalyn Graham