Anything for a Buck (or Thereabouts)

Well, will you look at what I found at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store. You don't see much erotica in charity shops; I'm pretty sure this is the first I've come across. Do they weed out these things? Or is it that no one thinks it appropriate to donate grandpa's porn collection? Maybe they just haven't found his stash.

Whatever the case, this particular Fanny is a good example of the rush to cash in on The Queen v. C. Coles Co. Ltd. It was a bit expensive for its day, but was priced identically to the seized Putnam edition that had caused all the fuss.

Thrown together at the end of 1964, Swan's Fanny went through four printings, helping to launch a peculiar publishing program that lasted at least six years. There were few titles; sixteen, if one includes Canadian Indians Colouring Book and Stag Party Humor, their one-off digest. Looking at the list, it's evident that Fanny Hill was no anomaly; Swan seems to have always been on the prowl for something to exploit.

Just look at this quickie memorial from 1965.

Forty-four pages of photographs, eight "suitable for framing", along with a chronology of his life. Hard to argue that 1874 to 1965, the years the man was alive, weren't his greatest.

And Bond... Bond's hot, right?

Fleming wasn't two years dead when this appeared, but Swan had already been beaten to the bookstores by Henry A. Zelger's Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Came in with the Gold (1965). Such a tortured, needlessly confusing title – Fleming, LeCarré, Leamas, Bond – Ian Fleming: Man with the Golden Pen (1966) is an obvious improvement... so obvious that another Fleming biography was published the very same year with the title Ian Fleming: The Man with the Golden Pen. First time in paperback, claims the cover. True enough, though there never was a hardcover edition. While the Pelrines didn't collaborate on another book, Eleanor went on to write a second biography: Morgentaler: The Doctor Who Couldn't Turn Away. Just as timely as it was when first published by Gage in 1975.

More Swan anon.

Related posts:

Gay Swans

Serving Up Louis Riel

Jack Kent Cooke in Extra Innings

Looking into The Chartered Libertine I was surprised – shocked – to find that The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry on Jack Kent Cooke. In fact, Mel Hurtig's baby contains not even a passing mention of the man. What gives? Yes, he left Canada in 1960... sure, he became an American citizen... but Cooke was a Hamilton boy born and bred. Self-made, before heading south he'd come to own the most listened to radio station in Canada. His Triple-A Toronto Maple Leafs led the International League in attendence. What's more, bucking stereotype, this high school drop-out turned Saturday Night into the best Canadian literary magazine of its day. Robertson Davies was one of his hires.

So, why no entry? Cooke underwrote the first Ali/Fraser fight, built the Los Angeles Forum with his own money and owned of the Lakers, the Kings and the Redskins. I mean, c'mon, the man bought the Chrysler Building.

In Toronto, Cooke was a very powerful man; Ralph Allen, who relied on print media for his livelihood, was brave in taking him on. The reader of 1954 would've had no problem in identifying Cooke as the inspiration for Garfield Smith. Cooke owned CKEY, Smith owns CNOTE; Cooke made the Maple Leafs a success with gimmicks that are similar to those used to sell the Queens d'Amour. Then there are the lesser known things; like his model, Smith has an enviable library and an appreciation of fine art.

Reviewing The Chartered Libertine in the Globe and Mail, William Arthur Deacon displayed a certain caution, complimenting Allen on his use of "imaginary characters". The novel itself features no disclaimer – you know the type: "...any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." Allen covers himself by having Smith twice mention Cooke as a talented business rival. He also provides no glimpse of Smith's personal life... that is, until the very end of the novel, when he marries between innings in a game against the Cincinnati Barmaids. The bride, Queen d'Amour Honeybear Rodney, served as Smith's male assistant before agreeing to change sex as a publicity stunt to help sell tickets.

Barbara Jean Carnegie Cooke and Jack Kent Cooke, Maple Leaf Park, Toronto, c. 1954

Cooke's own marriages were only a touch more conventional. Where The Canadian Encyclopedia is silent, Wikipedia steps in. The entry is awkward and repetitive, but the facts are spot on:

Cooke's first marriage, his longest, lasted 45 years. He and Barbara Jean Carnegie married in 1934, and were divorced in 1979. Carnegie was awarded what was then the largest divorce settlement in history - $42 million. The presiding judge during the bench trial was Joseph Wapner, who later became famous as the judge on television's The People's Court. Cooke and Carnegie had two sons: John Kent Cooke and Ralph Kent Cooke.

Cooke's second marriage, to Jeanne Maxwell, lasted only 10 months.

Cooke's third marriage, to Suzanne Elizabeth Martin, was even shorter: 73 days. During that brief marriage Martin, age 31, gave birth to a baby girl whom the couple named Jacqueline Kent Cooke. At the time of Jacqueline's birth, Cooke, her father (age 74), was 43 years older than Martin (age 31). Martin in the divorce action sought $15 million from Cooke.

Following Cooke's death, it was revealed that his final wife, Marlene Ramallo Chalmers - a former drug runner from Bolivian who was 40 years his junior - had been cut out of his will. Cooke and Chambers had married in 1990, divorced in 1993 (after she made headlines in May 1992 by accidentally shooting herself in the finger and in September 1993 by driving drunk in Georgetown with a man pounding on the hood of her Jaguar convertible), and remarried in 1995. Chambers filed suit against Cooke's estate and reportedly received $20 million in a settlement reached about a year after Cook's death.

To the good folks at The Canadian Encyclopedia: Please don't make me have to turn to Wikipedia again.

Related post:

Baseball in Panties, of Course

Baseball in Panties, of Course

The Chartered Libertine

Ralph Allen

Toronto: Macmillan, 1954

As a young man I placed Ralph Allen with Thomas B. Costain and Thomas H. Raddall; Canadian writers whose book club editions choked church bazaars, thrift stores and library sales. Raddall, I would learn, was a perfectly fine writer; The Nymph and the Lamp was one of the more enjoyable novels read during my undistinguished university years. And Costain? Well, I could never get through more than a few pages. I didn't touch Allen, which is a pity because The Chartered Libertine is one of the cleverest satirical novels to have come out of this country

Timely and timeless, it concerns attacks on the CBC and its struggle for survival. At the centre is businessman Garfield Smith, "sole owner and president of radio station CNOTE, part owner and business manager of the Toronto Daily Guardian, chief debentures holder and Editor Emeritus of True Blue Revelations Magazine, and non-stockholding past chairman of the board of the rather disappointing Drive-in Dentistry Inc." Smith's newest acquisition is a failing women's softball franchise called the Swansea Lady Slugerettes. He brings the team to Toronto, renames it the Queens d'Amour and clothes the players in new uniforms consisting of "scarlet bodices and long opalescent pantaloons".

No fan of public broadcasting, Smith has been content to limit his attacks to station identification: "This is CNOTE, a station that is listened to and makes money." The trouble begins after the CBC refuses his cash offer to air Queens d'Amour games in place of cultural programming. Working under cover of anonymity he sets out to destroy the broadcaster through the League for the Incorporation of Godly and Humanistic Training (LIGHT), folks who don't much care for Shaw and take great objection to mention of unwed mothers on the radio.

The Globe and Mail, 29 May 1954

There's a good deal of noise, but no culture war. With an eye on the polls, the Conservative-Liberal PM orders the crown corporation sold, thus outmaneuvering the Liberal-Conservative leader who had always hoped to do just that... not that he'd ever let on.

You see, he had a hidden agenda.

Trivia: Robert Fulford, amongst others, has identified the model for Garfield Smith as Jack Kent Cooke.

Object: A nicely bound hardcover, it belonged to my father, a CBC employee.

Access: Easy enough to find in our university libraries. As far as I've been able to determine, there was just one Macmillan printing, and no paperback edition. The book was also published in the United States by St. Martin's – one wonders what American readers made of all that stuff about the CBC and Canadian party poltics. No surprise, I suppose, that one Yankee bookseller is selling the book as a "different kind of baseball novel". There are a few Very Good copies currently listed online in the C$15 to C$20 range. Of these, the real gem is one signed by blurb contributor Northrop Frye. And at only US$19.95! Then we have the sad example of an Ottawa bookseller who asks US$100 – four times more than anyone else – for a jacket-less copy with previous owner's signature. Priced fairly only if that previous owner was Jack Kent Cooke... and features his annotations.

Related post: Jack Kent Cooke in Extra Innings

Another Sunday, Another Lesson

Following the first, another story of faith from Thomas Conant's 1898 Upper Canada Sketches:

During the summer of that memorable year (1843) the Mormons came to the country, in the hope of making converts. At Butterfield's Corners (Taunton) a man named John G. Cannon held forth for several days, sometimes in the open air and again in the houses of those inhabitants who appeared to have leanings that way.

On one occasion, in the midst of a heated harangue out of doors, he raised his right hand and said, "I ask Heaven if this is not true?" at the same time looking upwards. A moment, and the answer came from above, in a deep bass voice, "It is true," thus startling the audience almost into belief. Again, on making the assertion that the golden tablets of brother Joseph Smith were inspired, he asked, raising his voice, "Are they?" and again came the deep-voiced reply, "They are." One of the men, listening, declared there must be a man in a hollow basswood tree standing near, and said he would go for his hired man with his axe and have it cut down. "Don't you touch it," the Mormon cried authoritatively; "if you do the Lord will strike you dead." Perhaps half convinced, the man did not have the tree chopped down, the fraud passed, and the Mormon thus scored what appeared convincing arguments.

Quite near this scene a young girl was very sick with a fever, and lay in a state of coma. That he could raise the dead he now gave out, as in the illustration he is represented as doing. And it is only fair to the Mormon to add that after his pressure and manipulations over the girl she did open her eyes and look about.

Several converts were made. Among these a family of the name of McGahan embraced the faith, sold their farm for $4,000, gave the money to the Mormon, and went off to Salt Lake. Another, named Seeleys, also sold all and went, but they could not raise much money.

My father had charged me many times, that if ever I went to Salt Lake I should go and see these people. In 1878 I happened to be in the Mormon centre. From a man cutting stones for the new Mormon tabernacle I enquired for the family. The stone-cutter dropped his mallet as quickly as if shot, and replied that he knew them well, and would get a conveyance and take me to them, twenty-five miles down Salt Lake valley, and assured me of a most hearty welcome.

I did not, however, accept his offer, for, honestly, I confess I was afraid of the Mormons. As a "Gentile" I feared to risk my life among them, and preferred not to leave the protection of United States troops at Camp Douglas.

Related post: A Lesson for Sunday

Happy May Day!

'Poetry to us is given'

James McIntyre's obituary in the the Globe of 2 April 1906, two days after his death. Not a word about his verse.

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

James McIntyre's Fair Thames

The end of National Poetry Month approaches, and with it the stragglers in the parade of things McIntyre. I suppose he'll always be remembered as "The Cheese Poet"... a bit unfair, but as noted at the start of the month, the poet brought this on himself. Certainly, the couplet feaured on the title page of his 1889 Poems of James McIntyre didn't help:

"Fair Canada is our Theme,

Land of rich cheese, milk and cream."

The dairy does distract, but McIntyre is honest in writing that his theme is Canada. "Canada Before Confederation", "Canada's Future" and "Birth of Canada as a Nation" kick things off, leading to poems about maple sugar, the railway, the North-West Rebellion and a tribute to politicians, living and dead.


The centrepiece of this self-published collection is not McIntyre's seventeen "Dairy and Cheese Odes", but "Sketches on the Banks of the Canadian Thames". Twelve poems in all, they deal with the river that McIntyre calls the "Happiest spot". It's the same body of water that in April 1891, two years after publication, overflowed its banks and quite literally carried away his livelihood.

He never published another book.

The vale of the Thames, St Marys, Ontario

Before Apple, Before the Bic Banana

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Here's to Robert Gourlay!

Three or so years ago, I happened upon a newly installed bust of Robert Gourlay in Toronto's St. James Park. It was a pleasant surprise; we have so few of these sorts of things in Canada. Gourlay, being very much a forgotten figure, I suppose it was felt that something of an introduction was warranted. The pedestal reads: "Banished from Upper Canada in 1819 on false charges of sedition brought by the Family Compact. His writings had an impact on events leading to the 1837 rebellion." True enough, though Gourlay would be the first to add that he condemned that rebellion; indeed, he fought against it by sending Lieutenant-Governor Francis Bond Head intelligence on rebel activity south of the border.

It's simply not possible to reduce such a complex and confusing life to a couple of sentences – and I'm sure not going to try it here. The best account of Gourlay's life, written by S.F. Wise for The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, is recommended reading, if only for the description of the "darling system" (which proponents of electoral reform are encouraged to study).

When James McIntyre met this frustrated man, Gourlay was an octogenerian. Newly married to a 28-year-old bride, he was attempting one last time to gain some small amount of influence in a run for parliament. McIntyre reports his sad defeat.

In The Four Jameses, William Arthur Deacon treats the poet rather unfairly, writing that Gourlay "returned to Canada in 1856; and contested the Oxford seat in 1860, not in 1858 as McIntyre asserts." In fact, McIntyre is correct, though he does misspell Gourlay's surname – an obvious error that appears to have escaped the critic's notice.

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Drowning by the Dock of the Bay

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

It seems they were forever fishing bodies out of Toronto Bay in the 19th century. Here's a small sad story from the 29 June 1886 New York Times in which authorities dragging the bay for one man found another.

The next day the paper used the the very same headline in reporting the death of a third man.

James McIntyre's young Montrealer of genteel form and dress may have been Henry Jaques, eldest son of Great Lakes shipping magnate G.E. Jaques, whose body was found floating in the harbour in May of 1873. Though initial reports drew attention to head and facial wounds as evidence of foul play, a coroner's jury found otherwise. According to the 28 May 1873 Montreal Daily Witness, his "features were much swollen and discolored from immersion in water", not as "the result of violence." Blame was instead placed upon the dangerous state of Toronto's Hamilton Wharf, from which, it was presumed, Jaques fell.

A Lesson for Sunday

A cautionary tale concerning faith from Thomas Conant's Upper Canada Sketches:

During the winter of 1842-3 the Second Adventists, or Millerites, were preaching that the world would be all burnt up in February, 1843. Nightly meetings were held, generally in the school-houses. One E— H— , about Prince Albert, Ont, owned a farm of one hundred acres and upwards, stocked with cattle and farm produce, as well as having implements of agriculture. So strongly did he embrace the Second Advent doctrines of the Millerites that he had not a doubt of the fire to come in February and burn all up, and in confirmation of his faith gave away his stock, implements and farm. Sarah Terwilligar, who lived about a mile east of Oshawa "corners," on the Kingston Road, made for herself wings of silk, and, on the night of 14th of February, jumped off the porch of her home, expecting to fly heavenward. Falling to the ground some fifteen feet, she was shaken up severely and rendered wholly unfit to attend at all to the fires that were expected to follow the next day.

The apocalypse was to have begun at two o'clock in the morning, at which time the fresh February snow would have turned to blood and started to burn. Obviously, the Millerites were a bit off in their prediction.

Conant was less a year old at the time of the anticipated apocalypse, and so relied on others in penning his sketch. This including a manufacturer named Whiting, who complained that come morning "he could do no business, because the people had not gotten over the surprise of finding themselves alive."

And poor Sarah Terwilligar? The author tells us she broke her leg.

Related post: Another Sunday, Another Lesson

Nineteenth-Century Logrolling

In this hectic week it took me three days to realize that Thomas Conant's cautious praise of James McIntyre was part of an exchange of mutual admiration that began with this awkward verse:

Though the date these lines were sent is unrecorded, we know it must have been before they appeared in Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889). Conant was a frequent contributor to the Globe, and did indeed "give fine sketch of bird and fowl", but his masterpiece, Upper Canada Sketches (Toronto: Briggs, 1898), dealt with much more than ornithology. An entertaining blend of nature writing and history, it gives the Conant family a bit more weight than might be their due. That said, it is worth mentioning that Thomas' namesake, his grandfather, was one of the four people killed during the Upper Canada Rebellion.

The scene was imagined by Edward Scrope Shrapnel.

The artist contributed twenty-six paintings to Upper Canada Sketches, making it one of the most attractive books to come out of nineteenth-century Canada.

Uncollected McIntyre: Mars on Hogs

Five weeks after publishing "The Evolution of the Hog", James McIntyre returned to the pages of the Globe with this mysterious, seemingly untitled poem. His inspiration – "signals sent to us from Mars" – escaped the attention of the newspaper. I've been unable to find even one account of these historic messages from the red planet.

Eighteen hundred and ninety-four, in which this poem was written, is remembered by aresologists as the year in which Percival Lowell studied and sketched the canals of Mars. Could it be that the Cheese Poet was just a tad confused? Whatever the answer, Mars provided an opportunity to touch upon the First Sino-Japanese War, then in its first month, before turning yet again to the ravenous hog.

The Globe, 15 September 1894