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| From Jean Blewett's Poems (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) |
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09 October 2016
Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Prayer'
07 October 2016
Canadian Notes & Queries en couleur
The new Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in the post a couple of days ago. The first colour issue – after forty-eight years in glorious black, white and grey – 'tis truly a thing of beauty.
My contribution, this season's Dusty Bookcase on paper, was inspired by the centenary of Ted Allan's birth this past January. The Gazette did not recognize, but I did. Of all the Allan titles in my collection, the focus of the column was the one that had remained unread: Don't You Know Anybody Else? It's a slim volume of short stories, published in the wake of Allan's fraudulent Stephen Leacock Medal win. Disturbing, though perhaps not so much as his original Love is a Long Shot, Don't You Know Anybody Else? it is one of those books sold as something it is not.
In the same issue, I've contributed to a new feature: "What's Old: Notable CanLit reissues & offerings from the country's antiquarian booksellers". Still more retro goodness is to be found in Stephen Fowler's exhumation of Let's All Hate Toronto, a "narration, illustration and exhortation" by Jack McLaren.
Wish I could join in, but I can't... our daughter was born there. God Bless Women's College Hospital, I say!
Other contributors include:
Mark CallananPeter DubéAlison GilmourAmanda JerniganShaena LambertColette MaitlandDavid MasonShane NeilsonDiane ObomsawinLaura RitlandPatricia RobertsonAnakana SchofieldSethPatricia SmartJ.C. SutciffeBruce Whiteman
Finally, it would be a great mistake to not mention Jason Dickson's interview with bookseller and poet Nelson Ball. I've drawn on Nelson's extensive knowledge of obscure CanLit so very many times in writing the Dusty Bookcase; what's more, he has provided me with many of the books covered here over the years. Just last week, Nelson sent me these two by Kenneth Orvis, the subject of a future CNQ Dusty Bookcase.
How's that for a tease?
Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased through this link.
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06 October 2016
Tonight: A.M. Klein at the Writers' Chapel
Not Klein himself, of course, but an evening held in celebration of his life, culminating with the unveiling of a plaque in his honour.
Ian McGillis writes about the Chapel in yesterday's Montreal Gazette:
St. Jax Montréal (formerly St. James the Apostle)
1439 St. Catherine Street West (Bishop Street entrance)
Montreal
Montreal
The event begins at 6:00.
All are welcome.
04 October 2016
The Return of Frances Shelley Wees
Regular readers may recall last November's rave review of Frances Shelley Wees's 1956 The Keys of My Prison. Titled "A Rival for Margaret Millar?", it began with another question:
Is The Keys of My Prison typical Frances Shelley Wees? If so, she's a writer who deserves attention. If not, the worst that can be said is that she wrote at least one novel worthy of same.You may also remember passing mention last December of a novel I was hoping to return to print.
That novel is, of course, The Keys of My Prison. I'm pleased to announce it is shipping as I write. The eleventh Ricochet Books title, the new edition features an Introduction by Rosemary Aubert, author of the Ellis Portal mystery series. It marks a return to print of one of this country's earliest mystery writers. From The Maestro Murders (1931) to The Last Concubine (1970), Wees's career stretched nearly four decades.
Is The Keys of My Prison the very best of Frances Shelley Wees? I won't pretend to know. All I can say at present is that it is the best I've read. It is also one of the very best Canadian mysteries of the 'fifties.
Here's how I describe it in the catalogue copy:
A disturbing tale of identity and deception set in 1950s Toronto.
That Rafe Jonason’s life didn’t end when he smashed up his car was something of a miracle; on that everyone agreed. However, the devoted husband and pillar of the community emerges from hospital a very different man. Coarse and intolerant, this new Rafe drinks away his days, showing no interest in returning to work. Worst of all, he doesn’t appear to recognize or so much as remember his loving wife Julie. Tension and suspicion within the couple’s Rosedale mansion grow after it is learned that Rafe wasn’t alone in the car that night. Is it that Julie never truly knew her husband? Or might it be that this man isn’t Rafe Jonason at all?The Keys of My Prison is available in our very best bookstores and from publisher Véhicule Press.
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03 October 2016
Behold! The Man from Glengarry!
A brief addendum to last Monday's post:
Given the once overwhelming popularity of The Man from Glengarry: A Tale of the Ottawa, it is curious that illustrations depicting its hero are so very few. Connor may have outsold Montgomery, but Ranald Macdonald is no Anne Shirley. I count only a few, beginning with the man on the cover of the Westminster first edition:
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| Toronto: Westminster, 1901 |
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| Chicago: Revell, 1901 |
Of course, not one of these is so fantastic as that featured on the Tutis Classics' edition above. Here the God-fearing 19th-century lumberman is recast as some sort of futuristic warrior hovering over a barren wasteland. The effects of clearcutting, I suppose.
Another time, another place.
I'm happy to say that I grabbed images of the other Tutis Connors before the company's website disappeared. Their offerings began with the author's second novel, The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills (1899), the story of missionary Arthur Wellington Moore, who travels west to convert cowboys and settlers in what would one day become the Province of Alberta.
In The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail (1914), Corporal Cameron, hero of Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police (1912), faces the prospect of rebellion along the northern plains of the Saskatchewan.
Often misidentified as a sequel to The Sky Pilot, The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land (1919) has handsome Chaplain Barry Dunbar ministering to the troops in the muddy and bloody trenches of the Great War.
Finally, there's To Him that Hath (1922), a novel set just after the Great War in the fictional town of Black Water, Ontario. Connor drew his inspiration from the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
That's it. Just five of the author's twenty-six novels.
Come back, Tutis! I want to see what you'd do with The Girl from Glengarry, never mind The Gay Crusader.
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29 September 2016
A.M. Klein Memorial Plaque
A week today will see the installation of the eighth memorial plaque at Montreal's Writers' Chapel. This year we will be honouring the great poet, novelist and lawyer A.M. Klein.
Esther Frank will speak.
Esther Frank will speak.
Thursday, 6 October 2016, 6 p.m.
Church of St James the Apostle
1439 St Catherine Street West (Bishop Street entrance)
Montreal
A wine and cheese reception will follow.
All are welcome.
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26 September 2016
Behind Every Successful Man from Glengarry
The Man from Glengarry: A Tale of the Ottawa
Ralph Connor [pseud. Rev. Charles W. Gordon]
Toronto: Westminster, 1901
I think it likely that my paternal grandfather had a complete collection of Ralph Connor's novels. Uniform in size, but not in design, they took up the bottom shelf of the largest bookcase in the family home. My father inherited the books, but a decade or so after his death my mother donated the lot to our church's annual rummage sale. She offered them to me beforehand, but I was a teenager; family history and Canadian literature were nowhere near so interesting as Low or the tall Icelandic girl who was in the grade below mine.
Four decades later, family history and Canadian literature obsess. Sixteen Connors sit on my shelves, including two editions of Glengarry School Days and signed copies of The Major and The Prospector.
I have rule when it comes to collecting Connor: I pay no more than two dollars. The Man from Glengarry didn't cost me a thing. I rescued it from a pile of books that were to be stripped of their covers and pulped. The thing is in rotten shape. At some point in its past, an anonymous bookseller identified it as a first edition and hoped to sell it for twenty dollars. I'm betting he didn't.
The Man from Glengarry may be Connor's longest book – at 473 pages it's certainly the longest of those I own – but then the author has a lot to say. This is a novel with a message. It was to Presbyterian aspirations what Antoine Gérin-Lajoie's Jean Rivard novels were to the Catholic. The Preface is essential reading:
There are many men from Glengarry, but the one who takes centre stage is Ranald Macdonald, lone son of ill-tempered lumberman Black Hugh. A boy in the opening pages, young Ranald bears witness to his father's bloody, ultimately fatal, beating by Louis LeNoir of the Murphy gang. The mid-nineteenth-century timber trade is dangerous place, but its gloomy forests are brightened by the Word of the Lord, as brought by Mrs Murray, wife of the local Presbyterian preacher. There is no more accurate word than "saintly" to describe this woman. Mrs Murray
It is through Mrs Murray's guidance – and not, tellingly, that of the flawed Rev Murray – that Ranald grows to become the most intelligent and virtuous of young men. Ultimately, his principles cost him both a partnership in a lumber company and the hand of Maimie St Clair, the woman he has loved since boyhood. However, we know our Father, who seeing what is done in secret, will reward him (see: Matthew 6:4).
This tale of the Ottawa is a good one. I found myself caught up in the struggles between rival gangs and the final days of the romance between Ranald and Maimie. The only eye-rolling moments come at the last chapter, which sees Ranald meeting with Sir John A. Macdonald (no relation, one presumes) to press the importance of the national railway in keeping British Columbia in the federation. The scene brought to mind René LaFlamme, the young hero of Connor's War of 1812 novel The Runner, who kills the man who killed Brock, rescues Laura Secord, etc, etc. "I have heard a great deal about you," Lady Mary Rivers says to Ranald. "Let me see, you opposed separation; saved the Dominion, in short."
So many novels are weakened by their final chapters.
"It is part of the purpose of this book to so picture these men and their times that they may not drop quite out of mind," Connor writes in his Preface. In this, he succeeds. The Man from Glengarry gives a good sense of what Glengarry was like in the day. While it doesn't have anything like the readership it once had, but it remains in print, continues to be studied. More than this, through Mrs Murphy, it has kept the memory of his mother alive.
Family, you understand.
I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has Ralph Connor books bearing the signatures of Edward Busby or Maurice John Busby.
Bloomer:
"What a wonderful boy he must be, Hughie," said Maimie, teasing him. "But isn't he just a little queer?"Dedication:
"He's not a bit queer," said Hughie, stoutly. "He is the best, best, best boy in all the world."
Trivia: As an adolescent, the author attended Ontario's St Marys Collegiate Institute, which sat on the property that borders ours. Until this summer, when the 141-year-old structure was torn down, I could see it from my desk.
I'm pleased to report that pretty much every academic library in the Dominion and more than a few public libraries have it in their collections.
The Man from Glengarry is currently in print as part of the moribund New Canadian Library, but you'd be better off buying a used copy. Connor claimed that the novel sold five million copies (and here I remind you that he was a clergyman). Hundreds are listed online, starting as low as one Yankee dollar.
Pay no more than two Canadian dollars.
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