OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES. A proflle 01 biographer Elspeth Cameron. By John Goddard 9” PERSONAL OEOUCTIONS. The Canadian sleulh has become 4 central figure in crime licbon. By Wayne Grady 17 ROUY lANGUAGE. Female writing makes direcl use 01 personal experience more often lhan male wrking. Ry Libby Schemr 20 CRITICAL NOTICES. Brief rwlews of recent liclion. non-flclion. and poetry 30 LARGER THAN LIFE. John Grterson bmughl 10 his publlCCareer much more than an mlemst ln blm By I M. Owen

WEZVOE33%3

THE PRIVATE CAPITAL: AMBITION AN0 LOVE II I THE AGE OF MACOONALO AN0 fAUGIER. by Sandra Gwyn JEAN LESAGE AN0 THE OlJl9T REVOLUTION. by WI“-‘e C. Thomson 84: BEST CANADIAN STORIES and COMING AllttAC ;TlONS 2. edlled by Uawd Hehwg and Sandra Mart,” YEARS OF IMPATIENCE: 1950 I-1900. by Gdrard Pellelier THE BOOK OF MATTHEW: THIE STORY OF A LEARNING OISAGLEO CHILD. by Belly Jana Wylie THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES: A HISTORY. by Gerald Frlesen FIELOING. by Dennis Cool9; AMGERGAl3 MOON. by Brenda Niskala: KISS ME DOWN TO SIZE. by Ken Rivard WE WEHT TO WAR: THE STORY OF THE JAPANESE CANADIANS WHO SERVED OURINS THE FIRST AND SECONO WORLD WARS. by Roy II0 BLACK WOLF: THE UFE OF ERNEST THOMPSON SEIDN. by Belly Keller 1944: THE CANADIANS IN NORMANDY. by Reginald H. RGY: GLOOGY VICTORY: CANADIANS AND THE D-DAY CAMPAIGN OF 1944. bv .t.L~ Granalslein and OesmorId Morton ADAM AND EVE IN MIDDI!E AGE, by Rona Murray: SHESA AND SOLOMON. by Karen Mulhallen GIG REAR: 1‘HE EN0 OF FREEGOY. by Hugh A. Dempsey GETTING TO KNOW THE GENERAL: THE STORY OF AN INVOLVEMENT. by Graham Greene SEEIUNG A BALANCE: UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN, 1907-1982. by Michael Hayden

3 FIELG NOTE3 40 INTERVIEW with Charles Rdchle. by George Gall ENGLISH, OUR ENGLISH, by Bob Blackburn 41 CANWIT NO. 100 3: FIRST NOVELS, by Albert4 Manguel 42 RECOMMENDED 42 RECEIVED aDG~iBnwl!lT~~

Mark Abley Is 4 Montreal-based poet and critic. Brad Adams IS a Tommo lreelance wriler wdh a spew mterest m hlstory and sporls Rob Blackburn’s corporate name Is Bob Slackburn Communlcalions. While Iaching al York Unwersily. Ramray Cssk has published The Mapte Lea/ Forever (Macmdlani and other works. Krlsty Eldredge is a Toronto freelance writer. The drawings in this nssueam the vmrk of Howard Engel. whose latest detectwe novel IS Murder Sees the l@d (Penguin). reviewed on page 91. Ray Flllp. our Ouebec conlribuling editor. IS at work on a noveL George Gall is ediling the Al Purdy-George Woodwck cor- respondence. James Gamtt is a naluralisl. and Mark Gerson a lreslance wriler m Tomnto. Our cover slmy and accompanying photographsare lmm the pen and camera of John Goddard. A IOrmer managing edllor of Books 111Canada. Wayne Grady perlorms Ihe same lunclion at Harmwsm~lh: ha translation. Christopher Carliwoltlazehur~. Is revlewd on page 23. Mlchlel Horn. who tsschss at Glendon College. IS mlerested in issues of academic lreedom Lorraine Johnson writes lor Tomrdo Parenf. Oavld Lstham Isaches English at the Universily of Lelhbndge. A transplanted Winnipegger. Stsvc Lsklts has taken mat m Kingston. Ont R4y Msclaen. a former federal cabinet mlnisler. Is the author 01 Canadians Behind Emmy Lines 1939-1945 (Universdy 01 British Columbia Press] Albells Mangsel has is progress a dramatic wsrk called The Kipling Hay. Gebn Martens is I freelance wraer in Momreal. Rsbln Melcdlls. a Haligoman. wrdss lor The Booy Fvlrhc Ilalhleen MDOre is a Montreal pnt. and editor of The Fmxpine Review: her most recent book is The Beast Unveded Eva Nichols 1s executwe director of the A~~~CI~IIOPfar Children with Learning DlsabillIles. Barbara Novak is a lreelanca wrder in London. OnI. John Oughton’s Gssrmg of Low was reviewed m our January-February issue. I.M. Owen Is a Tsmsto edilor and CriliC. Helan Penin and Sheris Psrerorrki am Tsronlo freelance wnters. Srsee Allsn Powo’s lourth novel. The Aborbatl Summer. is now available In Penguin. Veronka ROSS.an ex-MadtImer. recently published F~shsnvmnan(Pollerrbeld Prsss) Libby Scheler 1s a Tomnlo poet. A resldwd of North Ray. Oat.. Ken Stsnga iS sdltor of Nebula. Paul Stuswe operates Annex Books m Tomnlo and recently pubkshed Cksring fhe Ground (Pmper Tales Press). Lizs Vandermser Is a hiologis1wilh the Ontario Minlslry 01 the Environment. Barbara Wads 1s the editor 01 Newsweekly.

EDITOR 0 Michael Smith MANAGING EDITOR 0 Fraser Sutherland ART OIRECTOR 0 Mary Lu Tams .‘. GENERAL MANAGER and AOVERTISING MANAGER 0 Susan Traer CIRCULATION MANAGER 0 Susan Aihoshi CONSULTANTS 0 Robert Farrelly 0 Jack Jensen CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 0 Eleanor Wachlel (West Coasl) 0 K.G. Pmbart (Prairies) 0 Alberlo Manguel 0 Shirley Knight Morris 0 Paul Wilson 0 Ray Fllip (Ouebec) 0 Terry Goldie (Easl Coasl)

------_- _~.~_._-.__.. _ .~__~ Scorning the excesses of 20th.century writin a new review seeks to reacquaint its readers with t ! e spirit of 18th-century journalism

HE EDITOIUAL offices are io thae volumes on wooden shelves are the wall- Skvorecky. Gage Jonar, and Aubemn rooms,” says David Warren wiih paper of The Idler’s offices. The only Waugh but consists mainly of young, a sc’cep of his m. He moves visible paperback is a two-volume set of relative unknowns. Many contributions along the bamdstered corridor. John Locke’s 18th~century essays. don’t carry a byline but are part of a set- 1 “This is the room where paste-up The 18th ceniury, in fact, is the lion the editor calls ‘Yhe Idler’s Nota is done, and so forth. And this anceslral home of The Idler, inhabited book.” “We work out of apartments door ls shut because that’s our by essayists like Johnson. Addison, and and coffee shops in the way our bedroom.” Steele. The periodical from which The ancestors did - the periodical essayists It seems appropriate that the Idler takes its name was written by of the 18th century,” states the in- newly establishedoftices of The Samuel Johnson fmm 1758 to 1760 and troductory essay, “and like lhose Idler reside in publisher David inserted weekly in the pages of The gentleman-hacks of old. we are without Warren’s family home lo Toron- Universal Chronicle. Warren chose to secretaries to answer our ‘phones. The to, since he feels “a sort of pos&partum revive the name because Johnson is one capital for our veolure has ban raised depression” now that the fust issue is of hll favourite writers. He spent fmm our own pockets, and the necks we out. That issue is a saddle-stitched, “about a month last summer immersed expose are our own.” c The Tatler> The Idlers The Spectator, black-and-vrhlte paper of 32 pages and in When Warren is asked to expound five advertisements. one of which is for and so forth - completely negleciing upon lhe premise of The Idler, his reply The Idler itself. Warren refuses to the 24lth century - in order to teach ticks to an Enlllhtenmenr world ordered divulge the review’s paid clreuladon myself the spirit of ISth-centwy jour- by the Divine Clockmaker. “We believe unril a fev: months have passed. but he nalism.” in the philosophy of natural right,” he printed 5.290 copies of the first issue, a The excessa of 20th~century prose says. “the idea that there are such things number he hopes to triple - his target is and poe!xy horrify him. “I am tired of as good and bad, which mao cannot 15.150 - within three years. Al a cover know absolutely bur which he can Lry to price of $2.25, with a IZissue subs&p understand. We’re a bit sick of ZOth- tion going for 824, the target is ambi- century moral relativism.” But the tious -to say the least. writers of The Idler also believe in “the For January the tossed salad of lopies dialectical process. I’m not inlera%ed in included an assessment of the western producing a paper that becomes ‘us con- democracies’ knowledge of Depression- servadves versus those liberal%,” says era famine in the Soviet Union, reflec- Warren. “That’s a very mind-chilling tions on Ihe way music reaches our ears sort of thing.” through iostmment and eovimnment, Tweotieth-eenary eyes may have to and ao anonymous look ai the “Bland refocus occasionally when reading a Election.” The last begins. “The story that begins, “There was a time, Regressive Preservative Party swept all well within living memory, when musical regions of Canada to achieve the most taste and connoisseurship habirually - astounding political triumph ever relegated the usage of ancient instm- recorded by Barbara Fmm: menls and amane performance practice The publisher and parent of The Idler to the substatus of antiquarianism.” is a small “p” preservative himself. The reader somerimes finds himself on Warren is a stmlght-haired. bespectacled an exhausting hike when he stated on man of 31 who smokes a steady chain of an invigorating walk in the woods. cigarelles and says he likes to shock peo- open@ a book of a poet’s latest offer- Another ZOLh-cenhry lonovatlon The ple. His last full-Limejob abroad was as iog and seelog the word ‘shit’ in the mid- Idler could adopt is the occasional refer- editor of r paper called Bushess in dle of the page. I am even more thzd if ence to “girls” as “women.” Came to Tlkdhmd, and in Canada he has a he thinks he’s shocking me.” What he think of it, Dr. Johnson never called a ~putatlon primarily aa an economic appretiates are “stories operating on the female over 24l a girl, either. journalist. By choice Warren has never highest lilerary level, but which never Bul The Idler means more to Caoa- spat much time in his homeland. He forget the entertainment they were sup- dian letters than real-men-don’t-eat- IeFrCanada for Britain as soon as he was posed to be. Verse that is exhilarating kitsch pedantry.It understands thal the old osough Lo travel on his own, ac- just for being language.” In Canada, he truly dedicated reader has a natural quircd a British accent, and spent a few feels. that makes him part of a small but curlosily about almost every subject and years holtd up lo the London library SigoIfiCanlgroup. deserves to satisfy il with articles of acquiring ao in-depth knowledge of the The Idler’s coUection of what Warren reasonable depth. It assumes that Cana- classics in lieu of a formal post- calls “polential co-religionisls” reaches dians can read foreign and domes& secondary education. Hard-bound out to a few established writers like Josef rvrilers for wil and laming without I I. _. _ -.. -._. _._~_ ..--_ _-_.--L_____~~

reachina for their Canadian-content regulati&s. And it believes that the timely comment on this week’s intellep tual fashion is less important than the timeless piece of good writing that will be read - and appreciated - many years hence. - a*aa*aA w*oa

Jake and the id

wsnms me mysterious creatures - evolutioqmy pmducts thrown up to assist the race to survive.” So contends Joseph Gold of the University of Waterloo. the only university in Canada that offers a credit coarse in biblii ‘Moore isa wonderful story-teller. His books are never dreary and therapy. An English professor for IS rarely untidy; their excitement is poised, almost serene.’ years (he is a graduate of the University - Books in Canada of Birmingham, with a doctorate in literature and communications from the A story of hypnotic fascination. moving from the Riviera to the University of Wisconsin), Gold now coast of California, in which elements of the bizarre. the limits his academic work to twice-weekly ineqlicable, the supernatural, and the eooentrioities of ordinary seminars in bibliotherapy while he con+ life are unforgettably mingled. pletes an internship with the Inter-Faith Pastoral Counselling Centre in Waterloo, Ont. To his knowledge, he will be the fust therapist to combine a literary background with counsellii training - the perfect combination, he feels. for use of bibliotherapy as an ad- junct to traditional therapies. Bibliotherapy is not new. The library at Thebes was inscribed “The Palace of Iiealiag”; the medieval Abbey library in St. Gall, Switzerland, was catled “The Medicine Chest of the Soul”; and in 1841 John Minson Galt wrote the fust North Amexican book on bibliotherapy - a book with a decidedly religious and moral slant. Later referencesappeared in the AIlanlicMonth~ in 1916. and in a 1949 docloral dissertation by Caroline Shroda, who defined bibliotherapy as “a prows of intemction between the personality of the reader and imagina- tive litemturr which may engage his emotions and free them for conscious and productive we.” Karl Meoninger compared bibliotherapy to phar- macology, “IO be withheld or prescribed specifically tith the expectation of . specific outcomes.” Joseph Gold holds that Yiteratwe Adtamaticnewfitstpe ttamdatkm ofCaesar’s exists to compress the greatest amount Gallic\Vars-oneofthegreat&nilitatycam@aigns of information and mperienre for the evercon~~and-ti.Thiahandsotilelyillillus benefit of the reader.” He suggests its trateds-bookhasstrongappmltothecheming use is most appropriate for clients ex- pertending “feelings of depression. anx- readec iety, helplessness to the normal range of “Hereis historyas it should be written- and mrely is m stress situations - puberty, marriage, - Houston Post divorce, grief. and job loss.” He em- $19.50 papar phasizes that it is unsuitable for more seriously disturbed patients, who would be better served by psychiatits. Gold became interested in bibliotherapy ‘whileworking on a com- mittee for the retention of compulsory

_. - . _ _._ _.. ..I..r_.._ .., .- - _..~--T~-.-~-- --_ _I I _. ~.~..---L . ..- ~...--.---- .;------. high-school English. His interrst in the when a reader diiplays what he calls no prescribed list of therapeutic titles. problem of illiteracy led him to wonder “the eureka phenomenon” - the At the moment Gold Is compiling a corn-- how story-telliig affects people’s lives. shocked realization that a writer has ex- puterlzed directory of books of fiction He points out that even traditional perlenced and expressed something rele- for use by other bibliothempists. psychotherapy con&s of a patient vant to the reader’s plight. Some bibliotherapists regard telling his “story”; the therapist is there Matching the book to the client ls “a Dostoyevsky as a therapeutic writer, “to give control and assistance in very individual, intuitive thing. Not only because he explores the dark side of reshaping the story to colnclde with the does the book serve to release material man’s soul. Would Gold recommend patient’s needs and desires.” for discussion, but it develops a sharing him7 “Not likely - or with great cau- He believes his clients approach a bond between therapist and client.” tion.” Sylvia Plathl Gold strokes his writer with an openness and trust that Books that Gold user for seminar discus bead. “She certainly would not im- few vould bring to a therapist. “With sions include Dimy of a Young Girl, by mediately spring to my mind.” Da hir books there is always the option of get- Anne Frank; Jake and Ihc Kid, by W.O. theories draw on those of Jung7 “No. ting in and gettiw out.” (He cites Alice Mitchell; Tu, by S.T. Himon; Lives Q/ I’m not interested in patterns and in JYonderland as dealing dlre& with Girls and Women. by Alice Munm; and systems in a story. A novel is uniquely the fey of no-return.) He is gratified IAm David, by Anna Helm, but there ls itself.” -HELEN PBtEutA

‘What is to bacome of us if there Is not one person In the Commons who can be reiled on to say precisely what he (or she) means?

HB FORMiX mime mi”ister of you to imagine Joe Clark going all over out of a surmundlng medium, and any Canada and tt& external affairs the world negotlat~ our future in hlr fgurative use of it should be bared on minister Joe Clark read a state FIeneh7) the literal sells% ment In the commons recently in Perhaps this comes down to a ques- There mists, of course, danger that which he spoke of “reducing the tion of semantics. rather than diction. someone might start a nuclear war. and danga of nuclear mnilict.” If we Doubtless Clark .and his aides and that, presumably, is the danger that do have a nuclear war, I don’t writers could cltc dlctionarles that would Clark wishes reduced. But that is not thii anybody, even the mighty support his use of danger in that sense. I what he said. Joe Clark, can do anythins to I am now prepared to he scoffed at by make it less dangerous. If he was profaional cruclve&iist; who has a people who will tell me that it’s perfectly talking. about the threat, or tbe roomful of dIctionarles. When I chal- obvious what was meant. I’m used to probability, or the pnsslbitity of nuclear lenge him on what I consider to be his that, but the attitude of those who war, he should have used one of those misuse of a word, he always is able to dismiss fme dlstbxtlons as bmmsequen- words. I repeat, this was a prepared fmd at least one authority to back him tial quibbles create an environment that statement (probably witten by a corn- up. When I chided him for defii ~“cotuages dangerous misunderstand- n&tee) of considerable importance. II+ ings. an off-the-cuff speech. Here Is a sentence from a Toronto In the yeas since the begInning of live Globe CmdMailreport: “The report was tclevlsion coverage of tbe debates of the immediately dismissed as a ‘complete Howe of Commons, I have become fabrication’ by Mr. Muhoney’s press accustomed (but not tmmd) to the secretary. William Fox.” Is it perfectly gmterque maltreatment of the 6nglish obvious what was meant there7 The Iulguage (to varying degrees) by ali of writer mlgbt claim that it is, but ewn a our elected reQresentative3, and I often careful examination of the context does nuder what is to become of us if there not rule out the possibility that the is not one person in that chamber who reporter was quoting some anonymo”s can be relied on to say precisely what he person who had called Fox a liar. (or she) means. This is a useful example of the pltfaUs But Clark is our nation’s top diplo- of the passive, s voice much favoured by mat. I was brought up to believe that emergent asprain& he had no trouble journalists trained to put fust tbll diplomats were required to be very fmdlng s popular modern dictionary fmt. In this example, the fact that the careful about their diction, since’ one that supported him. Indeed, the O,I3D report was dismissed was more impor- carelessly chosen wxd could start a war. cites, but says nothing to condone. tant than the identity of the dismisser. That was one reason that French. examples of that “se as early as 1706, hut The passive constn~ction enabled the honoured for its subtlety and respected I suggest that the only thing that that reporter to report in the descendii for the consistency imposed on it by the indicates P that the misuse of words is by ‘order of importance., but it also resulted French Academy, was until very recently no means peculiar to modem times. If in ambiguity. And ambiguity can lead to the language of dtplomacy. (Does it one wishes to say urgent, that is what lawsuits. make you giggle or scare the hell out of one should say. Emergenl means rising Or even wars. 0

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lives ‘I try to be transparent, to drop away my own prejudices, says Elspeth Cameron, whose approach to biography has made her a leading chronicler of literary personalities

Ey John Goddard

ITHA L~LB slimming down snd a researched and beautifully written,” said Dudek in his rcvicw snappy soft cwer. it might rise to for Conadim Forum. “A major work.” said William French the best-s&x list in the paperback in the Globe and Mail. “A model for literary biographers,” n trade.” wrote Montreal poet said Ken Adachi in the Toronto Sfur. The book was a finalist Louis Dud& of Blspeth in 1981 for the Govemor General’s Award for non-fiction. Cameron’s biography on Hugh won in the end by George Calef% Caribou and the Barren- MacLeman in 1981. “Butnow we lands. Cameron won the University of British Columbia’s haw it as a university press book. medal for Canadian biography. with three strikes against it as far Tbe editors at Sutunfuy Nighf took notice, inviting Camema BSwide readershipis coacemed - to write book reviews, then major personality pmftis, begin- fairly high price, modest edition, ning with Peter C. Newman. The Newman profile won her the II schokuly format. I hope it does 1982 Fiona Mee Award for 8teraty journalism. Articles on Tmd its readers anyhow.” Jack McClelland and Timothy Findley followed as Cameron It did. Hugh MacLennan: A Writer’s carved out a niche for herself ss a chpnicler of Canadian Li/e. published by University of Toronto literary lives. Now she is nearly through writing a biography of Press, was won on the Ma&m’s best- Irving Layton, scheduled to be released this falI by General seller list, remainiag there for three Publishing and almost guaranteed to attract a mass audience. months. Last AprIl it went into paper- “I was astounded that [the MacLeanan book] was in any back - all 421 paaes. Praise from the way popular,” Cameron says. “I wa$ only aiming to be irecu- rate in a scholarly sense.”

AT AOE 42, Elspeth Camaon has a tint%. perliinctmy haad- shake, a charming manner and stunning good looks, a mature version of what one high-school contemporary remembers as “smouldering, unusual beauty, like a heroine out of Hardy.” On a bright, wintry day, she is in her office at New College, University of Toronto, where she teaches Canadian cultural history sad is coordinator of a Canadian literature aad language program. She bar three writing projects on the go: a book review for Scrlurdqy Night; a pmffle for Cha:elnine of Laura Legge. the tirst woman treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada; and the Layton biography, which is moving along at more than 2,000 words a day, three days a week. She also has three children, ages 14,12 and 6 - two by her second husband and one by her third. Paul Lovejoy, chairman of the hiitory department at York University and a professor of African economic history. “And WChave no housekeeper,” Cameron says, laughing, as if wondering herself how she manages to keep up. She does it, she says, by being a good administrator. “It may not look it” (there are boxa of fde folders on the floor, on a chair, and on a desk) “but I could put my hand on any- thing in this room.” Both her parents were administrators. Her father, now retired, wa3 general adminislrator of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Banie, Oat.; where Cameron grew up, the eldest of three girls. Her mother took a job, when the youngest was 16, as secretaty at the Simcoe Counly Museum and quickly rose to become its director. “My parents were the kind of people who, when I asked about things, always told me the aawms,” Cameron recalls. sitting at ha wiring desk next to book shelves lined with Irving Layton books and suppcutingprints of Hugh Mac&en- “an. “My curiosity was never stifled. They encouraged me to read about almost anything.”

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She was a top student, chose” in grade six to write her first The biography mainly deals with the events of Ids Life, ibe book review: (for a locel radio station), and described by her excruciating sadneu of his fast wife’s death. the books that former high-school English teacher es “unrelenting in pursuit intluenced him, the people he knew and corresponded with, of her goals.” She was also a star athlete. end the difficulties of trying to write for e Iiv%g in the days “I know it sounds odd.” she seys. “but writing to me feels when Canadian literature had no public following. The book like competitive swimming or playing basketball. I was very in- includes an extensive analysis of MacLe”“an’s writing, and volved in sports. I was in ballet for I5 years, I wes in skating, I occasionally delves into his eccentricities and cmious obses- have oil the swimming stuff - you know, the bronze, silver, sions. instructors’. all that. both Royal Lifesaving and Red Cross. I “He literally moved out of Ids home at the age of twelve and set reeordr in high jump and ve.rIoos track-and-field events in slept in a tent ln the back yard. summer and winter, until he high school. And when I’m writing I fezI the same kind of graduated from university. . . ,I’ Cameron writes. “His Spar- e.xhilaration, the feeling of moving forward, the sort of ten father approved of the whole idea, thinking it would momentum that I used to feel when I was ln sports. It’s like, toughe” hi up. . . :’ She tells how MecLe”“a” continued to YOUknow. three more lam to eo.” write to his father after his father died, a series of six letters In 1974, Cameron attended the Canadian literatore sessions that speak of the great force that Dr. Sam MacLe”“en had of the mmuol Leemed So&&s meetlnss in Toronto and heexd exerted on his son for so long. poet Frank Davey speak pessionatel~ about the deplorable v:ay in which bibliography and biography were bel”g ignored Cameron’s biography ‘astounded me, in the study of Canadian writing. The speech struck a chord ;t~~i;~gh Maclennan. ‘It’s_mettculously with her. By this time, she had acquired an honours B.A. in . . . .I’m lost in admtration’ English at the University of ‘British Columbia, a” M.A. in Cmmdian Literature et the University of New Brunswick, end a Ph.D. in Victorian Utemtwe at McGill (on advice, whllh she She also describes MacLenmm’s zeal for tennis. He rarely continues to resent, that she would never get a teaching job lost, but when he did, “his reactions could be spe&~~ular: whh a Ph.D. in CanLit). She agreed with Davey that the so- tbmwi”g his racket away, he would fall down on the grass and called Neem Criticism, with its concentration on the study of tear it up with his bare hands, or pitch himself I” fury onto the themes and images. had to be balanced with work of factual wire fence that surrounded the comt, such wes his frustration substance. with information about the author. at losing.” Davev’s talk in&red her to ettemot whet turned out to be MacL.ennan was pleased with the book. “It astounded me,” the firsi major biography of a C&Ill witez She fuat he wrote to Cameron after receIvi”g the fmt copy. “It’s thoucht to write about Robertson Davies. Hw M.A. thesis wes meticulously eccurete. . . . I’m lost in admiration.” But he on I&vies and she had written a short book about hi, now didn’t remember hll perfommnces over losing at tennis and he out of print and lost, she says, among the plethora of short remains strangely obsessive about the tennis pessege. “That biographical books that hit the market emund 1970 when never happened,” he illsists. “I never tore the grass with my CanLit comses became the rue. But bv now she was Ilvine in hands. I wes probably Iylng 011the grass liecause I wes tired.” Montreal, teaching Cenadiin ~terature~t Loyola College, and Cameron is not defensive about his objections and prefers es a sin&de oarent with two small ebildren she thou&t she had not to argue the point. But when passed she gives a better ⁢ about a Montrealer. “Hugh MaeLen& wes the philosophic explanation that says something of the hazards a obvious choice.” biographer faces when writing about a living subject. “A lot of people make the assumption that I must be a fan “I thi”k it’s sort of a symbolic thing. Nobody really wems of MacLennan’s or I must be agmupie of Layton’s, but that’s to think that his life hes bee” contained in 400 pages end I not so. I’ve never chose” any subject either fmm admiring don’t see how you can avoid e negative response on some level. them excessively or disliking them excessively, only from the The same if someone does a portmlt of you, you feel, ‘Well, I fact that they’re important figures and weneed to know more look better the” that,’ or ‘It’s not the way I see myself.’ And I about them. think that detail for him has become the outlet for the negative “I basically set out to accumulate information about response. I did doublacheck it afterwads. There ws mom MacLennan that was othemise going to be lost. And 1 know the” one eyewitness. But if the tennis hadn’t been mmtioned, that’s true, because a number of people I interviewed for I think he’d have fti on something else.” MocLc”“an and now for Layton have since died. I wanted to know: Iiov: did he get where he is7 Where did he come from? ~~t’rttw ABOUT a living subject at be a “very tricky What are the fects? People meke rash statementi about situation.” says Clara Thomas, co-author of WilliamArthur famous people, a”d they in a smse feU for the public image Deacon: A CanadianLitany Le. “You have to get the per- without knowing what really happened.” son’s trust, and that requires a speeiel kind of temperament MacLennen consented immediately to cooperate - to give and patIe”ce, all kinds of chemt end pezsonel integrity. interviews tmd turn over his papers end letters. “Frankly, I Blspeth has aII that.” doubted if she would ever get through it,” he said recently. “A She needed eU that to deal with the mercwlal Irving Layton. lot of people had come to me before with the sane idea, end Layton read the MscLemten biography, and in the fell of nothing would ever come of it. But 6lspeth is vemendously 1981, when he wes writer-I”-residence at the University of industrious. very intelligent. She went everywhere - to Toronto, he invited Cameron to write a biography about Engkmd, Germany. She met e whole lot of people 1 hadn’t himself. Cemem” had been toying with the idea of writi”g a see” for years. She knnv more about me the” I could mystery novel about a biographer who discovers her subject remember. And that book is longer than anything I’ve ever hes committed e crime. But publishers were calling with offers crltten.” for another biography, and Layton’s invitation wea too good The research, crammed in with her other duties, took six to refuse. At least, that’s how Cameron ranembers the ev&s. Layton but the mamtscrlpt in five months. In &e pm&s, she fo&d tells the story to his own advantage. “One day when I vies h~IacLennan was an excellent essayist, and as a by-product of writer-in-residence at U of T,” he says, “she came over to me the biography she compiled a coUection from 400 he had writ- when I wes having lunch and asked if she could write a ten, published as The Other Side of Hugh MacLbman. biography about me. It took me by uprise, and I think my _,_~ ._ _.~ . .._ - .-_. _~..._--.- ~1 -..-.---

face registered surprise, but then it must have registered agree- “I tbl”k that in IvfacLennan I was able to have the book ment. I had a” idea she was letting herself io for a great thl of rdleet the person,” she says, resting ha chin on one hand. work. but I said, ‘yes,’ not something sensible like, ‘Let me “The images in the chapter titles, for instance -The Voyage think it over for 24 hours’.” Out, Chatting a Course, Storm at Sea - those are hfacLe”- Nor Layton has ieservations about the project. “I’ve read aan’s images, they reflect MacLeonan. Writing a biography most of the profdes she’s done, and I thought they were very isn’t just * question of cbronic&g facts, it’s a question of re- well done. And the MacLe”oao book 1 thought was very good. presenting the facts in such a way that they somehow express But I’ve read a lot of biography, and hers is not so much a the persobality. It’s a question ofgetting the facts straight fust biography as a story. To me, she ls telling about the external snd then somehow finding the form, style, pace, narrative, all events of his life. Hugh’s life was quiet, sedentary, un- the things you would associate wltli creative writing. I would tumultuous, compmed to my cross-starred life. I thought, how not want to be creative to the point of skewing the facts,but I was she going to be able to handle the compulsions, the obses- want to make it entertaining to read,‘llke a novel, and to make sions, the dark spots, and the llghtw spots too, to make it clear the form and style expressive of the subject. what it is that drives a person? Any biography should do some- “Now, Layton is a completely differeot kind of person from tbiag like &at-how a writer’s work comes out of the swamp, MacLmnan. Layton is a Romanian Jaw. MacLeman is a the ma& of his life, the sewer-laden stream, and gets woos- Nom Scotia Scot. Layton came from a very poor fsmlly. tiyred into poetry.” MacLennao came from a we&by family. They’re miles apart One critic had had reservations similar to Layton’s’about in terms of upbringing, the kinds of ideas that are going to be the hIacLennan biography. “[Camemn’sj discreet accuracy is floatlog around, the kind of life options that are g.oiag to be bought at a price: vitality,” wmte Mark Abley in Maciear~k presented, and so on. Even the pace Layton lived at is corn- “The accumulation of orderly facts and the scarcity of plctely different fmm MaoLeansn. Therefore it aeems to me disorderly anecdotes gives this biography a strangely abstract, the book on Layton has to be different io pace if the feel@ of bloodless quality. . . . Hugh IvlacLennan’s inner Life remains a Layton is ping to come through.” closed book.” Faced with trying to convey the personality of the subject As If antlcipatig a shortfall in Cameron’s work, Layton, aad the atmosphere of his times implicItly in the prose style, while continuing to cooperate with her, has also begun writing she says, a biographer virtually has to become the other per- his memoirs. @‘airingfor the Me&h it is to be called, son. “I try to be transparent, to drop away my own expe chronicling his youth to 1943. He says it will be in the book riences and prejudices, and in a sense live the other person’s . stores about the wne time as Cameron’s book. life. “It becomes a kind of obsession. You get to the point where CUtERON IS aware of the challenge of trying to capture you know in advance what that person would thlak on some Layton, and = she discusses this in the late afternoon at her subject, even when you don’t know what the person actually oftice she illuminates the more creative, subjective side of her said about it. If you asked me what would MaoLennao think own personality, and something of.tbe struggle a biographer about sometbiag, or what would Layton think. I would pmb- goes through. ably be pretty accurate.” 0

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Unlike his English and American counterparts, the sleuth himself has become a central character in Canadian crime fiction

B’lurderon Ire, by Ted Wood,Charles aitcmpB Lo develop him as e character narrow shelf of Canadian detective fie- Seribncr’sS&IS (John Wiley& Sons)162 are like attempts at endowingMr. T with tlon. Sal&r is e ndddlc-eged, flabby. pqcs, glS.95 cloth (ISBN 0 684 18134 personality. In fact, the whole novel kindly, troubled “m” who works along 7). readslike a ~101outline for an episodeof establishedpmccduml Linesto arrive at SmokeDetector, by EricWright. Col- The A Tea&. three or four plausibleconclusions, one lins Publishers, 186pages, S16.95cloth Murder on Ice would have been of which may be lhe correct one. He is (ISBN0 00 222643X). helped. though nol saved, by B few sub- solid rather lhan brilliant. rather like Murder Sees Lhe Li8hhl,by Howard plots and same local colour, but Woods John Rccvcs’s Inspector Coggin, or e Engel, Penguin, 240 pages. $14.95cloth seems bxallv uninterestedin the genre of mom pmvlnclal George Smiley. (ISBN0 670 803049). detective fitlo”. During a rc.& radio In Smoke Derector, Salter pursues en interview,he defmed the differcncc be arsonist who hap killed the ow”er of d THOSEwy~o WERE diseppoinied by Ted ween e “LhrilIc? end a “mystery” es cheap second-hand fumlturc shop on Wood’s award-winning first novel, follows: “Women read mysteries, me” Blew West. The novel ls a quiet, De& in IlIe Kuulcr- the wcmy. stale, read thrillers.” The complexities of ruminative. deducdvc quest - not the flat (though noi unprofitable) acwunt pamlIe or dove-tailingsub-plots would high-speed chase we got fmm Ted or the exploits of Reid Bennett, chief no doubt prove too demanding for e Wood, “or en lntcllcctual wnundrum and sole member of Murphy Harbour’s writer with so little understendll of. solved by sir John Appleby or Gcrvaise policeforce - will find little ceum for end so great e contempt for. his own Fen-endtheseemhl.vtiedupwlHithand celebrationin this second instelmcntof a craft. at times interrupted by Salter’s ccmccm threatened tetmlegy. Bennett, llet es It is not es though Wood c&t write. about the gm&g diseffccdon between cardboard in the first book, has thinned His book of short stories, Someboay himself end his ad&scent son, his enx- to tissue in this one, and the plot, which Eke’s Summer (Irwin), contains some lctv about his wife’snew cercw. the little 81 least aspired to hvo dimensions ln very fme writing. Here is the opening p&tic wheel on the patio &or that Dead in the Water. chu@ along a single paragraph of B curiously Faulknerian keeps breaking, end his own failing Uncerline in I\fw&r on lee. Bad Guys shortstory, “Out of Ihe Rain”: health. Salter is, in fact, a character;we IddnapCarnival Queen, Good Guy goes The aRcmoe”light had dimmedto e care about hi. The crime ls almost OUT,kicks a few heads and brings her sulphurous yellow and e sudden secondaryto our intcmst in Salter’slife; back. The limp twist. by which the Bed rrightcncdwind had sprungup. spin- ir bothem us beceuse it bothers Salter. Guys turn out fe be Bed Gals, members ning the roadsidemaples. Dusteddied And hrein, ironically, Lies the of something called the Canadian along the shoulder of the mad and a “ovcl’sshortcoming. The crime tends to Leaye of Angry Women (CLAW),who cloud of fragmentstore loose from the get short shrift. There is not enough h;rve been the=dupes of even Beddcr load of slraw to fly over Gcorse’shead description: the scene of the crime, the and away down the long concessionthat Guys from the city. spreads the plot lo stretchedin front of hi tractor. pollee routine, the body itself. the cvc” thinner propotilons, but deepens it suspccb. We see it all through Salter’s not a jot. In Murdw on Ice we St this: somewhat preoccupiedeyes, and he has Bennetr ls B ccmiebbookhero - a I hit thesnew mllily, allmy soldier’s in- see” it all before: “The room wes char- .xoss, perhaps.between Superman and stinctsmkieg over automatically. It wes red end blackenedend sllll drippins with Sergeant Rock. He swings like an harder in my parkathan it had been in the water Lhethad been poured into it.” mtmneten from scuffle to scuftle, from my combat fatigues in Nam and the This ls the basement of e junk shop on snwmobile chase Lo hand-to-hand to snowshoeswere shnosl impossible to Bloor West? scout car M hand grenade, with e turn, but I shuckedthem quicklyend There ls also a small problem with tessedthem against il treewhere I would mcsmcrizedsiyleness of purpose that is method thal it/would be unfair Lo in- be ableto lind themagain if 1 had (0. at times embarrassinglydifficult to take vcstlgere here. The point is that too seriously. At one point he ppls e ncal How’s fhet for action? It is unfortunate many questions are left to dengle enlll bullet hole in the forehead of en that Wood feels hc doun’t need to wile the lest few pages of the book, by which assailantwho is downslairsfmm him in well to writethliuers for me”. time the reader,caught in Lhe web of pitch darkness; at another he cetches a Brie Wright undcntands the in- Salter’s pcrsonel Ufe. has lost tmck of grenade, runs rvhh it through a crowded trlcacles of plot, sub-plot, character, their importance. IOO~and tosses it into a conveniently and locele, and the result - a s&s of The suspects in the cese - among opened safe in the back office. He goes we&written, evenly paced novels based them Oeorgc Kemp, “the independent through these motions with e military on the - of Charlie Salter of the old Ncwfie who rcgardcdCanada as thoroughness(he is, as we are tediously Metropolitan Tomnta Police Depan- another country”; Gene Ta”abe, B reminded, L Vietnam veteran); the few ment - is a welcome addition to the Japanese Canadian who had been . ._. . _.... .__~_.-_-.II._---- ._____.._ _ ..__.._. _ ._ -_- . . . .-----.-_.- ._.__

evacuated fmm Vancouver in 1942 midsummer heat. He spends whole Iike Smoke D&&r, it works on levels Mmdrick “the hvister”; and Da&g th; p&g- ln a tin boat. pretending to be other than that of pure mystery, and this Cabbaptovm sandblaster - form a fang while keeping a private eye on may be the direction Canadian detective kind of microcosm of Toronto’s Norris Patten. B” Am&an cult leader fiction will take. When other detective cosmopolitan social substructive. A who is hiding out in the park. The long writers wanl to write character novels, more studied portrait of their inter&+ wait posed a problem for Bngel -he has they generally leave their detectives out tionships might have done for Toronto to fdl up the slIence with words - and of the book altogether - Ruth RendelI’s what Jan van der W&ring, for exam- he solves it tolerably welb The Lake of Dwkness, for example, or ple, did in his novel about a Japanese Nothlw moved. My head was getting P.D. James’s Innocent Blood. Both businessman in a Western capital city, hot. I should have worn a hat. That Wright and Bngel have moved toward Outsider in AmsIerdam. But Smoke madea preuyplcture as I dosed my eyes “straight” lIction but have centred their D&ctorworks WeIlas a detective novel, agalrnl tlK magenta Ilght creeping books on theii detectives. In the English and the series is shaping up into what tbmugh my eyelids. My normal hat mys~erles it is the murder itself that one hopes v/lIl be a long-nmning BC- wouldsuit the north woodsLike a bikini fascbmte - the sealed room, the quaintawe with Charlie Salter. at lhe opela . . . . I took off my shirt, remote country house, the plethora of removedthe undurbirt and dipped il in- Murder Sezs the L&M is the fourth to the lake. After winging it out. I tit- suspects, the intertwined motives-and and best of Howard Engel’s Bennie ted It to my fryi& brow. For a minute though George OnveIl may have be- Cooperman books. InJhe earlier batal- or so, rcfmhiw rivulets of lake water moaned the decline of the actual English merits, Cooperman was presenled as a ran downmy shouldersand dlsap~eared murder. ficlional English murders are BP kind of aw-shucks pamdy of the into the folds where my b&y rested on gruesome and gratifying as anything American private eye, self-effacing in- my bell. . . . ever perpetrated by Dr. Crippen. stead of brassy and pushy, inept and Like cooperman hbnself. engel% pm The English detective remains a mother-ridden rather than omnicapable style ls unpretentIotu, workmanlike. It remote, austere fwre with IittIe private and independent. It seemed at times as if gets the job done. life at all outside the confines allowed by Blake Edwuds bad cast Woody Allen in The second half of the odvel, hii profession (or hobby): Albert Cam- the mle of Lew Archer. It was firmy however, fails to maintain this slow. pion collects rare first editions: Peter rambling pace, and the novel suffers for Wimsey seems to know a lot about wine. - y& another return of the Pink Pan- it. Things suddenly happen, scenes Even though a sort of cult hap been built ther. become obligatory rather than rising out up about him, very little is known about The new Cooperman ls quietly self- of demands made within the text. Wbnsey’s personal habits and his im- contident, likable rather than oitiable, Cooperman is attacked and, for no good mediate family - information we do get and b~ckientally more effect& as a reason, not killed. Thls h always bother- about him rrads like excerpts from private investigator. Instead of stum- some in crime novelsz one poor sod gets Debrett’s Peerage. In American crime bling over the solution to a crime, he an axe through the head while a poten- novels the detective is often in- now interprets clues and manipulator tial v&near to the act ls merely knocked distinguishable from the criminals he suspects in true detcctlve style. He is no out and left for dead. It is a bit like ask- pursues: he acts outside the law, a kind longer the gumshoe, teetering on the of guide to the undenvorld, like a edge of self-parody, though he is still a demenred Virgil dragging us through the far cry from Albert Campion. He has Inferno. Though it serves equaIly well as not lost his humorous cynicism - the a description of the main action in the nmning chopped-eg&sand\vich gag, for Ii.w$ my plot smnmary of Murder on example, is still there, but it has been ab- Ice - Bad Guys kidnap Carnival Queen, sorbed into Cooperman’s pemonality and so on - adequately sums up rather than included as part of hi reper- American popular fiction from The toire. The snide asides and tough-guy Lkeskyer to Hollywood. There is little one-liners have also been pared down to development of character type from become part of Cooperman’s style: Daniel Boone to Humphny Bogart to Clint Eastwood. I found a quiet comer by a bookshelf thal contained copier of NatIon It may be that Canadian mysteries will Gmgmphic going back Lo before Cc- ing why Hamlet didn’t just march into be a blend of the two types, not unlike lumbur. Bebiid one of them I mvgniz- the castle and stick his bare bodkin into 6uropean models - the police pro- cd the elder of Klpp’stwo boyr. He told Claudius’s golIet: because then there cedurals of Nicolas Ffreeling, Per me hb name \v~?iRow, and he FBO woujd. have been no play. But the Wtihloo, van der Weterlng - in which thirteen. Before I rrskedhim he told me dissembling has to be convincing, and at the detective develops from novel to that his molhu was laid up in Ben- novel much as the protagonist in straight nlnslon whh hepatitis she had caught it is not. fiction would do, while the murder is eatingat il vcwarian restaurant. Our suspension of disbelief becomes merely sometbll that happens to him Though both Murder Seep Ihe Light more and more strained. Toward the that either alds or impedes his develop and Murder on lee take place in approx- end of Murder Sees the Light there is a ment as a character. Canadians do not bnateIy the same area - Algonquin seduction scene that is so totally un- share the English fascination with Park and nearby Muskoka cottage coon- necessary and pointless that eveo murder, nor do we idolize gangsters as try respectively (Murphy’s Harbour is Caoperman feels bad about it. And the Americans do. what is left for the supposed to be Port Sevem) - the dif- there is a variation on the death-bed con- Canadian detective novelisr but to ex- ferences betwen them are significant. plore OUTinterest in the development of Wood’s caper takes place in wintes; Ben- as a last r&t in a novel that an individual identity, through due pro- nett has to keep moving, as though to teas and within the confines of a social slow down for five minutes would mean my other way, which Murder Sees ihe order. a field that has been so carefully freezing to death. Cooperman. on the Light is not. and wonderfidly searched by the Dutch other hand, swelters. fully dressed, in Yet Engel has written a good novel; and Swedish writers? 0 _~.. ~_ .-. ~.____ .~.~ __.___~_. - -... ~..~. ..-- -. ---I.-._-.-.__- . .

“It is refreshing to have a lively, knowledgeable book, % CanaaYans,by an de&gent journalist, sympathetic but hardly uncritical about our very own Canadian comm- Jrums. That it happens to be by an American, reaching us even as our new government is reviewing our tangled love-hate relationship’with the Goliath to the south, also makes it timely” Mmdmu’R&kr

remarkable book, Canadians at last have the opportunity to see themselvesfi-om the unusual perspectiveOf an outsider,an awan%winningAmerican journalist who lived and worked in Canada for four years as Tbmnto Bureau Chief of i’le Nsw YmkTimes. 27~ CaMdimrris a rich, cdourfid and adventurouswork in which Malcolm camfullyand clearly tracks down the essence of Canadians, who seem at once so similar to Americans and so dissimilarfi-om each other, and yet who are uiiquely themselves. I

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have always lured young people into the fades From the scene in 1879.. Gwyn frantic life of the ministerial aide. While resumes the story mainly tbmligb the there was no doubt that the cabinet and eyes of a lively woman society colum- senior mandarins were the power ce”- nist, one LIAmarylIls” who, with “a tres. the top of the pyramid, at least streak of elegant bitchiness,” was a socially, continued to remain at Rideau sharp observer of local foibles. (Like U-KSHill Iiau. reviewers of mysteries, I can’t disdose It is to that pervasive intluenee over Gwvn’s detective work to ““cover the Ely l3foce Allen Powe the years that Gwyn brings her sharp woAan*sreal name). powers of observation: What saved Ottawa sodety fmm utter The P&ale Capilnl: Ambilioa and In the mstt~ of politics lhe kind of misery was a successton ok imperious Love In ihe Age of Macdonatd and governor-generalcy Duiferin (I 87% British Sovemors general who became LaurIer, by Sandra Gwyn. McClelland & 1878) invented came to iu end during the Focal point of that unique ViceregaI Stewart, illustrated,’ 514 pages, $34.95 [he King-Byly crisisof 1926. As wtelder court. Oddly enough, it was these cloth (ISBN 0 7710 3736 8). of social power. though. the Dullerin dispI& &tocrats, tryiw to make the style pcntsted rtght up to our own Ume. best of it, who’lent popularity to winter Indeed. some of the diiticuhtes thal ON READIN Sandra Gwyn’s account of sports: tobogsaning, skating, and ski- how Ottawa’s upper crust amused itself Governor General EdwardSchreyer ex- periedcedbetween 1978 and 1984 in his ing. Celebrities like Anthony Trotlope., in the years 1865 to 1911. I began to efforts to impose a more poputtst and Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, think what a useliil backgroundar it lower-keyed approach to the oftice, Charles Dana Gibson, Lily Langtry, v:ouId have been For the raw Tory stemmed Fromthe facl that Csnadians, Guglidmo Marcoal. and Rupart Brooke hordes who arrived in the Fall of 1984. without rcatizing it, bad come to expect pass across an extraordinary social For. as Gwyo points out in her colour- that their aovemors general would scene. ful, intricate narrative, Ottawa is a un- Forever behave ss the DuNerim had With the Edwardian era came the New ique society in North America based on once behaved. Woman. the fmt of tbe emancipated its origins as “a raw little wloniaI socie- White Gwyn concedes the vlceregal who rode biiles and dared to take ty with a viceregal court perched on top court lent to Canada a touch of class lovers. While the “multi-layered clothes as a coronet among piaecona.” missing in Wavblngton, she leaves little of the day inhibited the quick assigna- To appreciate the forces that have doubt of her Feelings on that score: tion,” an active sexual Lifewent on, and shaped the peculiar character of our na- Ths arrogance of the viceregal court one unfortunate cabinet minister was tional capital, the newcomer can learn cowed Canadians and so, by extension. actually chlomiormed and gelded by a much from Gwyn’s fm plunge into prolonged the nation’s immaturity. It cuckolded doctor. social research. I wish it had been took us until 1952, only tifteen years Dali it wasn’t, and neither Is the lively available when my wife and I joined a short of our centennial, to swnmon up narrative that Gwyn has constructed long line of pr&essors in shocked sulficient nerve to appoint a Canadian From diaries and other sources. With the GovernorGeneral. disbelief when we arrived on the Ottawa eye of one of our best politicat jour- scene in 1951. And the appointee, Vincent Massey, was nalists, she also relates long-ago events Havim arrived iixsh from Edmonton hardly your typical Canadian. to today. including a iasdnating parallel and uni&sity - with an MA. in The stmwz oresewe of the Ridead between Laurlermanla after 1696 and economics and a starting salary of lass Hall court is> &rring theme as Gwyn Trudeaumania in 1968. than S2,600 as an administrative oit%xr takes us Lwk to 1865 when, to this mud- “The parallels between the two are trainee - I couldn’t believe that this dy, stinking shantytown, came the tirst almost uncanny.” she writes; except that dump was our national capital. Row 350 or so civil sarvants to get ready for Laurie1 was a much smoother. con- upon row of &omy red brick buildings clllator and was well coached by Emille (invariably trimmed with dark green or Lavergne, who was probably his brown paint). narrow pot-holed streets, mistxss. She taught Laurier manners rickety streetcarb, poor shopping, no and dress. how not to blow on his tea. restaurants of any note, were charac- and showed him “how to understand teristic of this rundown city. Among all IEmdtsh Canadians1 so that he could usx the other overeducated, underpaid ex- ihe&” patrkites From across the country. we Gwyn describes her hook as a “so&I wre thrown into a perpetual housing history.” Not really. Rather, it’s a shortage, Forever moving from one history of so&y, of the upper strata. dingy flat to another. The only cornpen- Only titfully do we pt glitbpses of the sstlon was that our lowly incomes threw lot of the ordinary Folk as the glittering us into tbe midst of tbe less affluent Ot- parties pars them by. Her approach, tawa natives who spoke with Irish and the new Dominion. The Ottawa of the too, is From a Feminist perspective (she ;ri; accents and became lIielon9 1950s was a uaradise in comoarison. The describer Amaryllis as “a kindred new anivais suffered &en greater soul”), and the book ends on a lament: For official government arrands we cultural shock at the poor housinn. At about the time Amaryltls stopped vxre grandly supplied with streetcar odorous drains, lack of -mooing wat& writing (1902). Oltawa began to’decline tickets, not cab slips. Possibly it is constant danaa of l=m. swarms of llla. noticeably as PII environment favour- nostatgia For the lean, meek civil service mosquitoes, &d rats. Fevers ran ram- able to’womea. Here, as ebewhcre in of 30 years ago that, partly at least, pant. It was terrible. the country, women revertedmore and more to being the “Childlike Woman” motivates the Tory cutbacks today. Through the diary of one Edmund . . . . In the capital. the descent was psr- It wasn’t until I got a job on the Hill Meredith, a professional civil servant Ucularly steep and continuous, all the that a new world of Limousines, govam- transiemd Fmm Ouebec. we are taken way down to about themid-1970s. when meat planes, receptions, and cabinet through the early-days .a tbe capital the women’s movement began to assert gossip opened up glimpses of power that 6mduaUy took shape. Then, asMeredIth itself.

~._C___-. After the careful writing in the rest of tionalized; the independence movement the book, the statement is out of con- in dissnay; even Bill 101, important as it ten, a panlag shot that she hasn’t at- is,is less than meets the eye. tempted to substantiate. Yes, I Quebec pre.mlers, then, are pan corn- remember when my wife (no “childlike The nationalist me Ies autres, partIy because of their woman”) was one of the first married personalities but chiefly because they romea to be hired by the Domialon w%wrl lead the only Canadian province with a Bureau of Statistics, and was prohibited French-speaking majority. Cbnsequent- from advancing beyond the clerical ly in political practice, though not in level. This was in 1951. But I also recall By Ramsay Cook constitutional law. it is a onwince unlike that women aides were often the power the others. Running a p&we and a na- in ministerial offices. And Charlotte Jean krnge and the Quiet Revolu- lion at the same time is a trying business. Whitton, Ellen Fairdough, and Judy La tlon, by Dale C. Thomson, Macmillan, It drove Jean Lesage to drink and a Marsh (from 1960) were notable excep- 501 pages, $34.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7715. minor heart attack. It contributed to the tions to Gwyn’s thesis. 9797 5). early deaths of Daniel Johnson and Finally, about the book’s d&n and Jean-Jacques Bertrand. It often sewned format. The publisher has chosen a w”tLg Mtxr provincial premiers leave to frighten Robert Bourassa and it now Chemistry Two textbook layout with only a shallow footprint on the sands of threatens to exhaust Red L&esque. ride margins filled with footnotes and Canadian time almost every Quebec Every Quebec premier since Met&r in postag=tamp photos. It’s an unusual premier, at least in this century, has left the 1880s has been concerned not only treatment. but I must admit that it a mark that will not quickly wash away. with the administration of a province gradually begins to work on the reader Sir timer Ciouin presided magisterially but also with the defence of French- and allows one to follow along instead . over Quebec’s first industrial revolution Canadian culture. Almost ewy Quebec of flipping pages for photos and notes. and kept the national& in their place.. premier has found it politically conven- The cover design. though, is a clutter of Maurice Duplessis played at being a na- ient to play upon the nationalist feelings contllctiy type styles and graphics, and tionalist while ensuring that the in- and insecurities of French Canadian surely someone could have thought up a dustrial revolution continued without voters and to do battle with Ottawa. better title than The Private Capih?i, any interference fmm the state. Jean And almost every premier from cith its intimations of an economies Lesage brought Quebec’s public instito- Duplassis to L&esque has discovered test. tions into the 20th century and started that the nationalist tiger, once aroused, These quibbles, however, do not the nationalist hare that Ret16Levesque runs where he chooses. seriously detract fmm what ls sure to has been attempting to run with ever That was certainly Lesage’s ex- become a landmark in popular history since. Lhresque has been an impressive perlence. When thin capable and am- writing in Canada. A rather cute epi- personality, but his government has not bitious federal politician took over the paph - “The End of t& Beginning” made much impact either on the pro- Quebec Liberal partyin 1958 and led it - hints at a sequel. Let us hope so. 0 vince or the country: the PQ Union Na- to power in less t&n two years, his na-

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54 W.lseley .%%,Tomnto, Onlyio M5TtA5 _ _._ .~. _._. __._ .,-_ __ ~,._ .___.._ ~_ _. __-~_..I.~ . ______~ .._.-__-~~_ _~...___._ ..,. ____ . lionalism was indistinguishable from went to the separatist candidates) Lesage Quebec nationalism until the last that of Lautier or St. Laurent. As a tried to call a halt to the process he had chapter, where he offers a few un- back-bencher in Otta\\= he had made set in motion. But his coalition collaps- original. cursory comments. Nor does he only a few nationalist noises to ensure ed. Uvesque +td the clear-minded na- make any attempt to assess the social that bis talents were not ignored at tionalists went their own way. founding and economic forces that underlay the cabinet shuffle time. He was elected the PQ. claiming that only a sovereign political events that he so fully describes. premier on a platform that made the Quebec could continue the Quiet William D. Coleman’s recently puhliih- usual bows to pmvincial autonomy, but Revolution. Trudeau and the clear- ed Independence Movement in Quebec. emphasized the need to refoorm and minded fedeinlists went to Ottawa. 1945480 should be read alongside of modernize Quebec’s institutions. lia- Dale Thotnstitt’s lengthy, detailed and Thomson’s informative hut pmsaic ae tioualirm was in disiepute, associated sometimes repetiiive’scco~nt of Jean cuuut of Jean Lesage’s turbulent yeats. with the reactionary regime of Duplessis Lesage and the Quiet Rwohttion is the It provides the analysis that makes those in the minds of most intellectuals and most complete compendium of facts years under&utdable. 0 reformers. But once in power Lesage about the Lesage years in power that is found. s his predecessors had done, available. Each major development is that nationalism was a useful tool. It examined closely: edtiatio~al reform, pave a kind of moral tone to argumeuts hydm nationalization, federalprovincial that might otherwise have seemed to be squabbles and nuances, gc.vemme.nt about nothing more than sordid things economic planning. Quebec’s intema- like cash and power. Explaining the tional adventures, and tbe defeat of the economic advantages of a publicly own- Fulton-Favreau constitutional amending ed hydroelectric system was difficult. form&‘(One, by the way. that would Repeating and embroidering the emo- have served Quebec better than the pn- By Barbara Novak tionally potent slogan “m&es chew sent formula, adopted as a result of nou,” was simpler and more pot&t. Uvesque’s mishandling of the constitu- 84: Bert Canadian Stmies, edited by Pressing Ottawa for more room in the tional hegotiations.) Thomson also pro- David Helwig and Sandra Martin, direct t&y system could be justified by vides a good deal of biographical infor- Oberon Press, 177 pages, $23.95 cloth Quebec’s obvious need to catch up in mation, ittchtdhtg some quite frank (ISBN 0 88750 544 9) and $12.95 paper educational, social, and public health comments on Lesage’s increasing (ISBN 0 88750 545 7). policies after those years of neglect hy Coming Attraction 2, edited by Duplessis. But to add a little glitter to the lint time) his heart t&k shortly David Hehvig and Sandra Mmtin, the boring statistics of federal-provincial aftet his 1966 defeat. All of thii is Oberon Pms, 139 pages, $21.95 cloth finance. there was the claim to be speak- valuable. (ISBN 0 88750 540 6) and 811.95 paper ing for a province that was also the na- Unfdrtunately. the sum of the book is (ISBN 0 88750 541 4). tional homeland of the French- less than its pa&. One weakness is that Canadian people. How the other tbe author was unable to decide whether *‘IDO~THAVE the heart to go on wiling premiers, anxio”s to squeeze Ottawa, he wanted to write a biography or a mom short stories; there is little market envied Lesage. All they had were the , study of a govemutent in oower. The for them,” announced David Lewis boring statistics, at least until test& is partof each. with th; parts inef- Stein in an introduction to four of his “regionalism” was reinvented by fectively integrated. Another problem is stories that appeared in Clarke Itwih’s scholars and poets and politicians and in documentation. Though Thomson fmt collection of New Canadian Wriding oil me”. But not even Newfoundland na- has had access to the Lesage papers the (1968). The market must have improved: tionalism was as saleable as Quebec na- revelations are surprisingly meagte. his “The Working clasr,” set in Tomtt- tionalism, for Quebec really is different: And, worse, the author does not always to during a teachers’ strike, is among the powerful enough to destroy Canada. document his claims 2 when he dozen stories cullacted in 84: B& Cane- Once Lesage and hi ministem - aid- dian Stork ed and abetted by the new intelligentsia In making their selection, editors in search of government jobs and sub- Sandra Martin and David Helwig looked sidies - had amused nationalist emo- for stories that “were wittat t” be read tion and harnessed it to a reform cause, rather than merely admired or even en- others began to raise the ante. If Quebec vied . . . . We wauted stories that would was not a province like the others. as expand the traditional narrative frame Lesage claimed, why should it be a pro- work without sacrificing artistry or vince at all? EgalM ou Inde?pendance technique.” vw Daniel Johnson’s ambiguous de- Though c~twtvative, their selection is mand; Viw Qudbec libre was Piem eclectic, and there isn’t a we& story in Bowgault’s - and Charles de Gaulle’s. the book. It could be argued that some, Wasn’t that a ftee translation of muffres such as Frauces Itani’s “Chaitdutother,” clrer n&s? Lesage, always a federalist, Audrey Thomas’s “Elevation,” or newt seemed to understand the eonnet+ Mavis Gallant’s “Lena” perfect rather tio”. Surely it was possible to be a little than expand the traditional narrative pregnant. But Rent LeVesque and the framework. I have cume to expect per- new technocrats who swarmed around diicusses some crucial details of the fection fmm Gallant and Thomas, but Quebec City in 1960s - Jacques FranceQuebec waltz for example. Itani is a new writer to me. Her portrait Patizeau, Claude Morin, Louis Bernard. But the most disappointing aspect of Andr8 Marier, aud Andre Patty - the boo& is that it contains no real at- a wo”deTf”l surprise. thought they were presiding over a tempt to at&se the events it describes Other stories succeed in expanaing natural birth, a new nation. Once out of or to placethe events of the 1960s ott a their authors’ narrative frameworks. power in 1966(defeated by the votes that larger canvas. Thomson hardly discusses Cam1 Shields’s “Home” departs from

-_-- -... - .._._,_ _,._.__ i _.~-_-..--_---~__~._-,~~_) .~” :__.. .--T.,..C .I__ 7-z._..--* the naturalism of ha novels to the realm people reading this story aloud in the Pelletlet sets out to answer ln YeaIs qf of the surreal. and she unleashes a fine local bar. nod&g one another knovfhu- Immdienn. He does it by means of a sense of comic absurdity. A powerful ly. Scho-rmperlen’s other storlcs shti very personal memoir, thestory of four coupling of poelry and prose in Gwen- slndlar characters. settings, tone, and a friends and what they did in the 1950s.. dolyn MacEwen’s ‘Xetters to Josef in tendency to rely on the active voice and (With cbamcterlstlc modesty he says it’s Jerusalem” propels tbii story into a predent tense. As tbe refrain in her tbll a book about three men.) He starts with literary dimension beyond that of the story goes: “What we want is a change a very effective prologue, showing the stories in her 1972 collection, Noman. of style.” four in 1961. Three of them - Pelletler, Set against the background of the Mll- A young girl growing up in the 1940s Jean Marchand, end Piem Trudeau’- east v;ars. ~‘Letters . . .” reflects on the provides the first-person narration in are in a private mom in a Montreal imminence of a global nuclear night. each of Joao Fern Shw’s three stmie~. restaurant. They have been there for In “Mine . ” a chilling. well-paced In “Transfer” she flees her parents’ more than an hour. but the fourth, who story of a recluse, Nom Keeling exercises abuse and ls confronted, on a Toronto made the lunch date, hasn’t shown up. gcater narrative control than in any of streetcar, with a victim of Nab atm- And, even If we’ve been wailing more the stories in T!reDriver, her first collee cities. In “Red Sequins on Markham than an hour for RenCL&esquc. I still tion. And Tom Marshall’s contml in Street” she connects with an old, Jewish don’t feel Impatient. *IT” elevates this story about a pm- junk-dealer long enough to leant some- My two companionsdo. fessor terrorized by a preschool boy to a thiig of the truth about him (and more Mar&and never could stand railing level above the merely clever. By intm- about herselfj. And in “Raspberry for people unlessthere wasgood maso” Vhegd she confronts death with for it. and L&ewe never has good teasees ior keeping people waiting: il the sentence, the-author forces the honesty and courage. None of these eomea naturally to hlm. like breathing. stories contains tbe faintest hlblt of sen- Trudeau, Forhis part, considers lateness interesting reverberation results. timentality, though Sbaw’s choice of a mark of contempt for those who are Bonnie Burnard’s “Moon Watcher” subjects could easily have led her into kept waiting.But he b mtgned to it and (about P woman contemplating whether that trap. The author ls too sure of her has Imperturbablyordered hb lunch. or not to divo=e her husband) and material to allow it to stray fmm her ar- We do the same. and hue we are. all Elizabeth Spencer’s “Madonna” (about tlstlc intention. three of us. busy with dessert. a womao reflecting upon her infidelity) The title of this series, ComingAUrac- An hour later. Marchand is about to are both comoellillp. evocative stories. stamp out In a rage when “the door Robin M&&s has captured the developmemai stat.?,a sat of literary opens. Ren6 bursts in. his long forelock cadences of Gab&l Roy’s The Tin FluIe chrysalis. This is rmgeading. They may flying, an enormous briefcase under his in “Plorentlne Letoumeau,” but hi be new voices to tbe reading public, but arm, his tie crooked, a dgarette bansing story aroused my admiration more than they are new&less mature writers. from his Ups, full of energy. ‘Hello, interest. They are not “comiae” attractions. guys! Baten already?“’ Coming Atlmclions, Oberon’s annual They have arrived. 0 Thus, deftly, in a fe\v pages, the four showcase of the works of relatively personrdltlea are *Itablished. Then we go

had met each of the others and how their remarkably disparate backgrounds and scope of Michael R&don’s wi&g ls characters affected their alliance. The international. Two of his three stories point isn’t labowed, but of course B included in this collection are set in good dea! of the interest of the book Spain. one contemplates the natore of exiles from the point of dew of a nar- 20 yeal3 later the centml fact of Cans, mtoc who both rdmlres and judges tbelr By I.M. Owen dian politics would be the dud between behavioor. The other ls an account of hvo of these friends - one of them, in two orphaned brothers who are sent to Years of Impntlenee: 19504960, by the 1950s. the least public of the four, live with their British uncle in Valencla. okard Pelletier, translated from the the other the least interested in domestic The third, “Paracorsions.” is set in French by Alan Brown, Methuen; 255 p0lltlc.s. North America and explores tbe impact 6~. $24.95 cloth (ISBN 0 458 98270 The gre& events are all here: the of a teenage suicide on a variety of char- retom of Trudeau fmm his vavels in acters. All three storiep are remarkably time to join Marchand and Pelletier on rich in texture, and are sophisticated, To bm, rmmtm-~ the most In- the picket lines at Asbestos in 1949; the &gent. and (except for their titles) teresting development in Canada in our foundling of CirC iibre, and later of the accessible. time has been the emergence of the new Rassemblement; the belated politicizing Diane Schoemperlen’s stories a~ Quebec. We date the beginning of the of Rend Levaqoe in the CBC producers’ cleverly conceived. Written in a dell- transformation from 19M): what needs strike. They take on a new quality, for berately flat style, they tend to distance explaining is why lo that ye& there was a me, by being seen fmm tbe inside. The the reader. “This Town,” strochued to t?muo of dlltbuuished and soohlstlcated curious method of editing CitC libre resemble a Chamber of Commerce people, mostly-&dabout 40;who were fascinates me: each contributor would brochure or a sociological study, ready to step forward and domloate the readhisarddealwd.andtberestoftbe presents pertinent information under ap- political and cultural life of the pro- group would cb&ge it sentence by pmpriate headings, such as Climate, vince. How was it that a generation of sentence. one night a new young man Population, Hobbies, etc., with cross- such quality had come to mknity in a came to a meeting with ao article in his references where necessary. Contr&ng period that they themsehw c&d the * pocket. After hearing this intimidating with this impersonal structure 9 the Great Darkness, and what had they bnd process he wept away. tbe article still in author’s use of direct quotes and anew doing in the immediately preceding years bis pocket. Hi name was Hubert Aqti. dotes, su_wstily something much more to prepam themselves for tbe dawn? What I most regret about those years intimate. One can imagine the towns- That’s the question that Gerard is the blindness of the CCF to what was going on in Quebec, and its consequent failure to become a significant force there. Pelletier makn this vivid; he recalls how in 1947. just back from Europe and quite ready to join a socialist, labour-oriented party, he had a long conversation with David L&s. Lewis said firmly: “We don’t cater to Quebec nationalism.” Pdletier had to look up the English word “cater” %vhen he got home. “My research revealed that David Lewis was missing the train.” Against this, to be fair, should be set the almost total Iack of inferest in events in the rest of Canada displayed by P&tier and his friends. What was it that made the generation born about 1920 so different fmm its “o Business Manager doubt equaUy talented predecessors. and Canadian Literature led it to create a society in ahllh hs SUD The University cessors would flower as they have? of British Columbia Pelletier suggests that the intellectual Anniversary #22S-2029 west Mall and cultural capital of Prench Canada Vancouver, B.C. was Paris; when in June, IWO, Paris was Yesar Canada V6T lW5 plunged into its own Great Darkness, (604) 228-2780 French Canada was saddenly on its own. And after the war France was too preo~ cupied wilh its thtlle and disastrous ef- fort to keep its empire to have much to offez to Canadians. So they made their own ~twe. Pelletier remembers F4Ix Leclerc in 1943, sitting on the floor with his guitar, singing his own songs for his own amusement. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that they might interest the public. Bat it soon did. And when t&vi- sion came. he and others were ready to PENGUIN - SHORT * FICTION use it. It’s a striking fact, by the way, that Duplesris avoided appearing on television, and expected his ministers to do the same; whereas Levesque made his name as a televlsio” star. Ala” Brown’s translation is ad- mirable, and might have been perfect if there had been an editor to save him fmm the ga%ls~m into which tram- Iators almost inevitably fall sometimes, like “militantism” for 9nllitancy” and %ggrcssivIty” for “aggressiveness.” Now I’m impatient. for the sequel to Years o,JImpnGenos, and also for other memoirs from this group. It’s probably too much to hope that Tradeaa wlIl ever settle down to write a book; Uvesque is ‘All the writing of thii extraordinary yonng woman is so individual, still busy with other thiigs; PelleiIer teUs so unlike anything else being written on this contbtent . . .’ us that Marchand hates writing; but -Robertson Davies, TheNew York TimesBookReview what about that formidable figure, so important ln the political background The Day is Durk tells the story of a” orphaned, despairing family and the publishing foreground, Jacques whose members experience their moments of youthful love and also Hebert? I recall a long, tedious, and haunting tragedy and bitterness. The second novella, Three pointless meeting in Frankfurt, perhaps Tmvders is a variation of the traditional French triangle. in 1970. Desperate with boredom, I observed out of the comer of my eye that Heben, beside me, was busily writing short notes to hls family and a long reflective letter to Pierre Trudeau. Now that he’s in the Senate, he should have enough tedlom meetings to wite a whole book. 0 As many women writers have discovered, personal experience need not be repressed In order to produce objective, ‘universal’ poetry

Eindln8 Trrioe, by Penny Kemp, Rag- writing freely explores the relationship story. The other writing I have seen by seed Press, 122 pa%es, $8.95 paper between the body and language, ex- Kemp centres on language experimenta- (ISBN 0 920304 32 X). perience and kmgoage. tion. word-play, and fantasy, but the Gold Ew&s, by Sharon Stevenson, On the surface. such generalizations form she wisely chose for this book is a pulp Press. 111 pa8e.5, $7.95 paper (granting maoy exceptions) would seem narrative, broken up into many short, (ISBN 0 88978 147 8). to reflect the different ways women and connected poems. And the book is a Ecneatb the Skin of Psradise: The men live, whether the-result of sodal good read. a pege&mer. In her bum- Piof Poems, by Judith FitzgeraId, Black conditioning, bio@y, or some com- duction. Kemp writes: Moss Press, 84 pages, $6.95 paper (ISBN bination of these. Women, the clich& My task has been to transmutemy per- 0 cc753 116 4). goes, are more able to express personal sonal experienceinto somahbg larger, feelings. Why should art be any dif- more acc&bIe: LOmake my trulh avail- DuatNq +. DIsCusgloN on feminist ferent? able so that a mrrrrpondence is sei up aesthetics at the kt League of Canadian The reason some male critics place a with the reader. I don’t know why the Peers annual meeting, two of us said we greater value on writing that is not run-on lined Of prose ere conridered thooght it was not possible to write well obviously personal may be that they feel more accessible&an poetry. Poetry can about childbirth unless one had had a easier with work that functions more or ray so much in a singlephrarc. child. Robert Enright objected that tbis less as they do. The value in a work is Kemp fulfii her intentions, but it’s meam authentic writingcmdd only come not how personal it may be, but ia bow not the strength of single phrases ibat out of personal experience, to which I well it expresses either the personal or makes the book work. Indeed, as Phyllis responded, “The trouble vdtb some the “other.” Personal matters, expre.+ Webb notes on the dust-jacket, Kemp male writiog is that it’s diseonnecred sed personally enough, with courage and “risks the plein, the prolix and the from experience-it’s disembodied.” honesty by a talented writer, apply obsessional” In her narrative. The Our views cwa not really that far universally - because none of us is on- language is not rich; there is little apsrt. Enright wasn’t rejecting the value ique in ourselves or in our experience. description or imagery. Kemp carries os of personal experience as part of the Personal experience plays en important along with lean and simple phrases. She vniwr’s raw mat~lials. and I am not of mle, but in very different ways, In the tells us what happened, what was said, the opinion that Flaubert should not three books under review. bow it felt. What comes through is the have wilten r%fudameBove~ because he Binding Twine makes direct UM of power of her love end the coom8e of her v;as a man nor Doris Lessiag Briq%g experience, tellin the story of Kemp’s honesty. for LTDescau in:o Hell because she is a custody tight for her children. After her I was tripped up a few rimes in the woman. The question is important, marriage broke up. she tells us in the in- book by Kemp’s fondness for puns and hovxver, in determining the chemcw. troduction, her son and daughter lived similar-soundiig words. Sometimes this istier of a female aesthetic and a male with her for six years, their father seeing is \vRry and on target: aesthetic, if such anbnalr exist. (The them infrequently if at all, and not pay- Subtle digs I dug: question of a feminist or masculioist ing any child support until served with a the kids mUed resti& is a somewhat different sub- court order. For four of those years ;pmP. my nome 1cct.1 Kemp raised her children on welfare. Female v:riw makes direct use of The father eventually decided to But sometimes it is superficial, at odds personal experience more oftm than spend some time with his son, tid the with the depth of the whole: male writing. Male wrib.?rsare more like boy stayed several months with him. prrin.p17h1 go 0~. Comeagain ly to mediate their experience through a When he wanted to r$un to his mother, mm.? other mry variery of dwices, with the result that Kemp says, he was not elIowed. Her ex- Nol this. Nol #his. Weqv. their dependence on it is often uorecog- husband and his new wife had tided to Wary. Wony. Wnr. Wem. Worn. &able. It may be aryed’tbat great seek custody. Kemp reacted by taking OUI. wirers of either gender can write about the children out of the country for \Vhile the direct use of experience in experiences they have never had - socb several months, then returned to battle writing seems simple - a form available as chiIdbirth - if they possess empathic to retaio custody. She lost. The judge to eveo a beginning witw - io fact it is 8mius. I’m noOtsure about this. I prefer decided for the father, Kemp tells us, on diifcult. There en several dangers. The to believe that language is an extension the grounds tbal the husband and new writer might remain too close to the of the body, that Starises out of personal wife had a better income than her and a material to maintain her artistry. She and social relations. Some of the most more conventional IifeAyle. might become too concerned about in- interesting current work in women’s This is the raw material for a rivetiog dudiing all the details of what happened,

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rather than the core troth. Or she might earrings, it meant she was writing Endres further notes that Marxism simply sink into a well of emotion end poems. Hence the title of the book. In trig to fit “all problems into itself.” 1978, Stevenson killed herself by Stevenson tried to fit it all. unsuccess- Kemp avoids th&e pitfalls, sticking to weshing down SO sleeping pills with e folly. into a Marxist aesthetic, and ran the herd truth: bottle of turn. into some of the same problema that A” atticle in the Toronto Star quotes artists find themselves in today when Dorothy Livesay’s assewnent of Steven- they try to include everything into son BIi “the first young wo”la” in .mnist dogma or a fured definition of Canada to write about &king people feminist aesthetics. A body of artistic from a sense of experience.” lo my work does not fit easily into a large, The distinctlo” between mnfesslonel reading, thii does not come through. enclosed philosophical structure; it and personal poetry is important. Con- The authenticity of experience and per- needs en open field. fessional poetry is a” outpouring of sonal feelings that does emerge can be The political, philosophicel views will emotion, which controls fort” and con- found in a poem about her father iind a place within the body of work; if tent. It is liable to be self-pity&. I” (Yiolocaust”), in several funinist they enclose the work, they limit and effeaivc pcrsonel poetry the pact is able poems (such es “Dream”), end in lyrical damage it. l%dres offers whal might be to pot enough distance between herself and descriptive interroptions in the later sea es good-advicptoo-late for Steven- political poems. But the infusion of a son: I’. . . the purpose of radical poetry control &I to achieve an honest end world-view with personal passion. which ls not socialism. The purpose of “ruthless contemplation of events.” gives power to the work of many Latin- socialism is a world where more end bet- Binding Twine does this, and is the kind American poets, is not there. ‘ter poetry is possible.” Stevenson’s of personal poetry that it personal stevetlson’s politics come across es represslon of her personal experie”ces es enou8& thereby trenscading limita- something she thinks she ought to feel, artistic material, and her attanpts to tions. rather than something from the heat. write in accord with certain moral and Gold Earrings is the work of a poet et Her true poetic sensibility end personal intellectual imperatives, prevented her war with herself, a prolonged. ““- authenticity are elsewhere. from achieving a fullerrealization of her resolved mntlict betvti two s&t that Strangely enough, the most mmpel- poetic gifts. are very far apart. Stevenson makes a Liogpart of the book is the poems writ- In Beneath the Skin of Parad&e: The valiit attempt to force all her work into ten secretly while she was a Maoist, with Piaf Poems, Judith Fitzgerald takes o” a political envelope, but it is %ellectual awful titles like “Poetry Too Has a Class the persona of the French cha”teuse. politics, not politics from the soul. Her Nature.,” “Dow” with the Theory of Edith Piaf. The book’s tone is mnfes- personal, emotional self is not easily ‘Human’ Nature,” “The Native People sional. exceot that the confessions are beaten down, however, and intrudes on Are Standing Up/The Workii Cless attrib&ed tb someone other than the her political discourse in strange weys, Supports Thrm.” I” the period before author. This is a fom that has bee” uxd a.5 in several Lines of striki”g imagery she took her life, the mntlict within had soeeusfidly me”y times; often the titer that she the” tom6 around and makes heated up unbearably. and the result is a has identified with the chosen character. fun of. What you get is a kind of poetry kind of shiny, bleeding language that the A reading of some ofPitzgerald’s earlier inrerMprus, where the personal and work, pertlcularly the obviously auto- lyrical imiihts are doused with cold biographical poem series “Pest Cards” water before poetic fulfilment is in Split Levels, indicates that she idm reached. tifm with aspects of Piaf s life, and that The story behind this book is impor- her choice of this form is a method of tant for ao understanding of what ls mediating some of her own personal hwxoing here. Sharon Stevason was experiences. This can be see” in verses the daughter of a mineworkers’ like: organizer end Communist Party p&ups I’m tiny but I’ve got strengrlr poet attempts io “ail do&with multi- union organizer. She rv& e member of nonethetev syllabic words and multi-clause the Communist Party of Crmads in her andI’ve beenfihtiw sCnte”ees from her party’s newspaper. one thlw qt?eranodwr early 20s. got expelled, becdme cstra”ged fmm her father, and later Whole verses and lines ere quite joined B far-left Maoist group. the Com- beautiful. interspersed with the heavy munist Party of Canada (Marxist- singing of mandatory praises of the Leninist). party line. It is strange and painful to read, but fascinating. When she wes 25, Stone. her first Robin .Ftodrcs has written an itttelli- bdynamlte . gent, insightful introduction to Gold L&r. v/hen she was B “Past Cards” is a more soccessfid Burr/ngs which, although it perhaps member of the CPCML and an English work the” the Piaf poems; its language student at the University of British praises too highly Stevenson’s overall achievement, articulates the nature and emotion are sharper. Fitzgerald is Columbia. she wote a thesis attacking of better when she is direct about whet is her fmt book for petty-bourgeois self- the mntlins Ste.ve”so” pot herself through: on her mind. indulgence. While in the CPC and in the A” editor I was talking to lest year period before she joined the CPCML. For the Marxist poet, the law of cause mmplai”ed that there wes too much “1” she openly vxote poetry, but es a and effect in history collider with the ex- in correct fiction: that what fiction was Maoist, she denounced ell that. peiienceof synchmnicirywhich is at the mot of ail writing. The poet must have reelly about WBP“WC.” This strik’ me But she continued writing, secretly. the ability to suspend the sense of linear es a bit of a” old-fashioned prejudice She told one old friend to watch for her time and live - for moments at least - when the lines between autobiography when she sold party “ev~spapers on the in a world where things like to happen and fiction, poetry snd prose, and other street corner - if she was weming gold together. forms are becoming blurred. The que- ;l.~ _____-_...--__- _-.._--. ----- _.- .._._. _.__.-- ..__.__ -. _.. _

tion is not whether to make use of per- a lea&g-disabled child is a” experience really obscure mneeptual and social sonal experience in writing. but ho& to sharrd by about 10 per cent of the dift%ulties. It may impact o” one’s life do it well. Although much great litera- population, and even for them the con- in one discrete area, such as read@ or ture does not tie use of personal ac- cept of leaming disabilities may be co”- writing. or cut across all aspects of dally perience in any obvious way (of course it fusing. Life, such that the leaming disabled per- all does in some way), the attempt to Yet even those who are involved and %.” cannot apparently function well at disguise or repress personal experience knowledgeable, who truly care, have any time. out of a misguided eoneept of abject- complained about one aspect of this Matthew Wylie was and co”tb”& to ivity or universality GUI pmduce writing book. Wylie’s son, Matthew, is a bmin be fortunate in having a mother who will that lacks authenticity and power. 0 damagedyoung man. Brain-damaged is fght for what she believes in. The sym- a term that Wylie uses interchangeably nathetic reader can Iaaah with. but “ever with learning-disabled. perceptually iit, Matthew. She &shed a few tears handicapped, and mentally retarded. with Betty Jane. But no truly sy”~- Clearly she does reco&.e that there we pathetic reader will be untouched by the differences between these labels, but simple prose: since they had all bee” used at one time “I asked how he lhf*“hew, felt when or another to describe Matthew, she he was sad.” does so as well. Unfortunately, this has **Ifeel lonely.” he said. “What do I provoked a negative reaction in those do with lonely? I try to be unlonely.” By Eva Nlchola who have for years bee” tryins to fit ~Andagain: The Book of Matthew: The Story of a the idea that learning disabilities are I asked him Learning Disabled Child, by Betty Jane synonytnous with retardation. I wonder “Would you like ta be borna&17” Wylie, McClelland & Stewart, 179 if thereby she has lost her potentially “Probablynot,” he said “I’m okay pages. $12.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7710 9059 most sympathetic audience: the paxnts as I anl.” 3). of other leamlng-disabled youngsters. If only one could be sure that all So what is a learning disability7 It is a learning-disabledehitdren could become htms PmPm view the writing of 811 ccvnmunicatlon disorder that strikes ‘Sunlondy” and could feel that they are autobiography as an essentially self- about 10 per cent of the general popula- okay as they are. Please, if yoc have a indulgent exercise. After all, unless the tion and rea”lts I” messages being mixed soft spot in your heart for a child, any author is someone particularly interest- up in the brain. It tends ta occur in pea- child, but capeeiallyone who has to fit ing or wll-lxmwvn, who, other than the pie with predominantly average to to live in spite of incredible odds, read author is likely to be interested? I do not above-average intelligence. It may thll book. The Matthews of thls world altogether agree with this point of view, manifest haelf in numerous ways ranging need all the understanding and halp that althou& I rem&e that one soul’s from the best-know” one, dyslexia, to they eat get. 0 catharsis may indeed be another one’s poison. Betty Jane Wylie’s biography of ha so” Matthew is not a run-of-the-mill PENGUIN - SHORT - FICTION autobiography. Mother as much as so” serves as the heroine/hem of this story and it provides a” interesting insight into an exceptional relationship. Of course. I my be biased. I enjoyed this book because my daily e?cperie”ces involve me \vith many Matthews and many Betty Janes. And their relationship to one ylother and to society at large is one that should be repeated a thousandfold in the lives of other learning-disabled children and their families. But how vrill the reader react who does not eve” know what a lear”lDg disability is? We cannot assume that books about groups or individuals with ‘Fight funny . . . C& Ls Dog is an special needs will be read only by others and elegant stories ajoyablc vdth similar needs or those with at least collection which mastcrfolly combiies objective reality with the a” titImate knowledge of them. WhlIe I lomfnoos, larger-than-lii troths of the human heart. timd it bud to judge thii clearly, I do - i?faokun’s sense that the puzzle created by the idea With a new introduction by Matt Cohen. Cofd LB Dog, presenk a of learning disabilities for those who do selection of sewn stories plus * ncvclla. This is a refw&ng not knov: this panIcalar hidden handi- collection that sparkles with Cohen’s unique sensibility, at once cap would not be daritied by The Book earthy, wise, and ironic. of Matthew. Wylie has had previous successes with autobiographical books. But the dif- ference lies ln the fact that her other ex- periences. such as widowhood, althowh no less painful for her, are more readily comprehendedby the lay reader.Having

1 .- s.-- -2%. I . . . . .~. ..- .-.-- - _. i ___ __ ._~_._.~ _ _~ _-_. ____.._I _...._ -_ .__-. .~--~.-~-~--._-_---- .-__.-_. _

Generally, the production quality is mitted to give pleasure by writing and good, although some of the colour paintins the plain simple things of my plates seem slightly washed out. 0 life fiUs me with the deepest gmtllude; Conlemporsty Canadian Photo- that lhese things spoke so that I might graphy from Lhe ColleclIon of Ihe . hear and in a language I understood Notlouul Film Bosrd/PhotognphIe Sunllghl in the Shadows: The Land- even a little of.” * canadienne coolemponine de la wllec- scape of Emily C~rr, edited by Kerry lion de I’offlce Nutlonul du Rim. by Mason Dodd, Oxford, illustraied, 84 Pierre Dessureauk, Martha Iianna, and pages, $14.95 cloth (ISBN 0 19 540464 Martha Langford, Hurtlg, illustmted, 3). 176 pages, $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0 88830 264 9). By John Oughtin Rememberlog Orwell. compiled by By Jaim Oghiun THISE&BGANT. well-printed Little wllec- Stephen Wadhams. introduction by tion is a tribute to Emily Cmr. IL com- George Woodcock, Penguin, 227 pages, THERE’SA SENSE of botb urgency end bines sensitive colour photographs by $7.95 paper (ISBN 0 14 007 4589). elegy to this EoUeEtionof photographs Michael Breuer of the exact B.C. lace- from the stills division of the NFB. BIegy By Ray Filip dons she used in her plntings with because, after 43 years in the NPB, Lhe apposite and previously unpublished BORNERIC BLAIR. Orwell was groomed stills collection is being Uansferred to Lhe extracts from ha letters, notes. end to be a member of the gentry. The Eton National Museums of Canada: end journals. boy spent five years as a coloulal cop in urgency because, under the twin As the manager of the Emily Cm Bumm at the “dirty cud of Empire.” shadows of the Mulmney c”li”re-c”tters Gallery, Kerry Dodd is thoroughly The injusdcw he was trained to e&roe and the Applebert report, the future of familiar not only with Car’s ert bur also left him with “an enormous weight of Ihe whole NFB seems in jeopardy. with her unique approach to writing. guilt.” Noblesse oblige, Blair turned This collectlo” has therefore been pro- Carr used simple words and an into a bum, became OrweU,and went on duced for reasons of politics as much as economical style to express complex “tramping expeditions” in search of to give Canadians “long-awaited access thoughts and overwhelming emotions. A poverty. Privileged friends found his single Emily Carr sentence often gives Don Quixote complex frightfully emu.+ the co& blirb &is). Yet there l& the reader more than a whole page of art iog. coal miners continued io cdl the been no dearth of excelIen~ and well- criticllm, as fhe semples chosen he iu- 6’4” King’s scholar in rags “sir.” and he received books produced by the NFB dicate: “Canada is a land of spacey never wore his tramp’s gear around sdlls division, particularly during Law- sweeps of thousand mile spreads of fu Southwold in case his father should spot mine h’lonk’s rule. What Uds collectIon trees, wild mountains, tearing rivers. a him. offers is a survey of work since 1950 that land of terrific silences.” He only managed fo shock himself. in Park did not fit into previous exhibitions and Were it done with less teste. this book Down and Out andLondon was publications, as well as sdme that dll. could be accused of saondg&ing the rejecled by Cape end Faber. T.S. Eliot, Some photos wax fr6m NFB assign- artist: after aU. ha intemretations of the one of the readers, claimed the novel ments, and thus reflect a pholojournd- scene; are wh& should Aunt. But what wes “too loosdywilten.” Owell miser- istic uxthod; others arr “art” pictures Dodd and Scheuer provide through their ably unhanded his manuscrlpr to Mabel purchased after the fact. appreciative (rather than intrusive) Flln. whose Hampstead Garden house If that seems e rather unfocused served as a base camp for the Blair- approach to editing a book Lhat will, in Orwell rich-poor costume changes. some ways, ect as the stills division’s It took e bullet in the neck in Spain, memorial, the editors themsdves don’r rhe lazy in-fghtlng of ma&ma Maxis& offer e clearer methodology lhan Lh’eir and SteUnIsr violeuce in Barwlona to choice of “the best.” This does sidestep convince Orwell that workers were not churges of lack of geogrdphic balauee angels.However, his Spanish experieuce @hotographers east of Toronto seem did nol shatter his faith in the “Bnglish poorly represented). comprehensiveness genius,” in a revolution without a civil of leading pholographers (Karsh is war. where “a lion and a unicorn would included but not Bay), and originality still gmce the b”uons of the uniforms of (tbe brilliant B.C. photogmpher Tamio England’s postrevoludonary so&list Wdayama is left out). Some of their sokllers.” chosen imuges are memorable; the fmt Orwell’s utopian vision was not ln- five plates are brilliant, but the next few approach is both a aiebratlon of C&s fluenced by the sci-fi socialism of H.G. fail to live up to the same standard. genius and an interesti= way to evaluate WeUs (who called hi “that Tmtskyite Perhaps the task of winnowing 150.000 how she used rhe sltematdy lush end with bii feet”). The English countryside entries down to 127 representative stark beauty of the B.C. mast. Par- end the Tory table telk of 19th~cenuuy photos demanded a more defined ticularly for those who have never tiled rural radicals such as Willlam Cobbett editorial approach than this book took. Canada’s lotuslend, this is a good way to contributed more Lo Orwell’s sense of see Car’s work in the context of the healthy communiry and Peter Porcupine nature she loved so much. Proletadanism. For the Carr devotee, $ offers new Orwell wes upset when Animul Farm passagea from her wrldng that in became the fwourlte fable of anti- themselves meke this book’s mod& communists. Likewise, 1984 was meant price worthwhile: “To have been per- es a cautionary tale satirizing them sion of ideals in 1948. Michael Foot, patty, the abortion, the selfdefence show, a baseball stadium and more I former leader of the British Labour course, and so on. The feminism of thii than 600 residences. it now is mostly I Party, mentions Orwell’s “As I Please” anthology is gutless, wasting energy on parkland. The battles between the re- column in the socialist weekly journal the clich& of side issues while there is an maining r&dents, who want to maintain Tribune as “the only column ever writ- almost complete absence of articulated their tightly knit community, and ten in Fleet Street by a man who came theory. Metropolitan Toronto, which wants to I. into the oflice deliberately every week Only Penny Kemp’s poem “Simul- clear their homes for more parkland, v:ith the idea of offending as many taneous Translation” approaches a have found their way to the pmvlndal readers as possible.” clarity of feminist statement. This poem legislature and the Supreme Court of As for Orwell’s personal life, hi serves as a kind of preface to the work, Canada. And the war continues. death-bed marriage remains a macabre touching on the problems of Canada’s Gibson’s story is fascinating, par- xeomplirhment. The blonde beauty divided linguistic community and then ticularly as it places the current dispute Senia Brownell. “like a painting by extending them to the feminist issue of into historical perspective. As she tells it, Renoir,” remedied Orwell’s “repulslw” both French and English as inherited, Islanders have long had their hands full self-image at a late stage in the game. cultural (read patriarchal) baggage. In copins with municipal officialdom, and But they rvere happy in their brief-ever- Kemp’s provocative word-play. “au were grateful to be transferred to Metro after fantasy world together. Iangage masculin” is acoustically tnms- jurisditiion, if only to be free of heavy- Friends and enemies speak of OnveIl’s formed/translated into the astute “oh handed city politicians. Ironically, this large gIoomy presence. Big Writer Is long age mask you lent.” occurred just as city sympathies began Watching You. Yet the name on his Aside from this intelligent comment shifting in favour of the Islanders. This hospital door, as on his tombstone, on. women and words, the much-toc- is not an objective history, at least not as simply refers to a certain Eric Arthur short introduction lapses into the same it relate to the Islanders. But after Blair. A strange sad circle of triumph. 0 solipsism and self-reference that typifies reading it, it’s hard to disagree with Jane the anthology. The editors selected Jacobs, who told a rally in 1980 that works, the introduction tells us, that “when people defend a place the way Women and Words: The Anthology/ ‘%sflect as fully as possible the cultural you Islanders are defending this, that’s k-3 femmes et Ies m0t.s une antologle, and linguistic backgrounds. race, age, the greatest argument of all” for preset- edited by the West Coast Editorial Cob sexuality, class and location of the ving the community. 0 lective. Harbour Publishing, 7.87pages, women who submitted their work.” $10.95 paper (ISBN 0 920080 53 7). This is collective preening; the selection process itself defines any homogeneity Toronto Remembered: A Celebration Sy Lorraine Johnson the anthology has, but the process is of the City, by William KUboum, Stod- THEmu2 is suggestive, as if tapping all based on simply reflecting what they dart, 336 pages, $21.95 cloth (ISBN 0 of the post-modem, French, feminist, chose: a drcle with an empty core.. 0 7737 2029 4). and psychoanalytic resources. It implies By Mark Gerson that women somehow are initiated into the world of language differently from THISBOOK is among the literary gifts men and that they must affirm this dif- showered on Toronto in honour of its ference by rejecting the language of their 150th birthday last year. Unfortunately “fathers” and exploring the More Than an Island: A History Of it’s not among the best of the %sqti ‘*openness” of “ktiture feminine.” the Toronto Island. by Sally Oibson, season. Reminiscences and historical This Canadian anthology may borrow Irwin Publishing, illustrated, 324 pages. sketches by Kilboum are interlaced with in places the language of post-modem $34.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7720 1446 9). quatea, poems, and essays reprinted thought - French - but it in no way fmm various sources, and the result is an approaches the philosophical rigour of By Mark Gerson unfocused omnibus. this movement. a rlgour that is necessary WHATT-E MOUNTAIN’is to the Mont- That isn’t to say that individual pieces to substantiate any claims of linguistic realer, ‘the island’ is to the people of aren’t noteworthy. Pierre Berton’s mov- and ontological difference. Instead, Toronto.” hiitorlan G. Mercer Adam ing tribute to Union Station, written \*vomen’s experience with language is wrote in 1882. That the local obsession is when the railway terminal was threat- displayed in the mOStbanal terms; as if alive and well a century later is shown by ened with demolition, Harry Rasky’s the point were only to “reach out to my the flood of books about Toronto Island colourful descrlptiop of a Jewish neigh- sisters.” This sentiment ovemms the in recent years. Gibson’s is but the latest bourhood, Michael Bliss’s entertaining volume, with titles like “Earth and most complete of these. Pain+ account of the city’s Edivardian Mother,” “What We Want,” and “We takingly researched, scrupulously indea- Methodist mafia, Bharatl Mukherjee’s Bmwn Women.” ed and footnoted, and attractively illw run-in with racism, and Marshall After establishing “sisterhood,” the trated. it recounts in sometimes McLuhan’s clever analogy equating antholo# moves on to another over- numbing detail the island’s history fmm unscrupulous developers with airplane worked baltle zone of cliched images the days of French courews de bois to hijackers are all outstanding. So are and metaphors - mle models. These the legal and political wrangles of the Kllboum’s account of the absurdities of simply cannot carry a story. Take Can- Presmlt. municipal politics and the excerpt from dis Graham’s “Nothing Special,” for For anyone not familiar with it, the his biography of William Lyon Macken- example. Within the space of seven IslandI (actually a mini-archipelago) lies ale, although some of his other pieces pages, there ls a father beating his child between the city and Lake Ontario. It are not as successful. Also entertaining in the apartment below, an obscene was the defence potential of the Island, are the dozens of short quotations from telephone caller, sexual harassment on the pens of Brendan Behan (“Toronto the streets, and a working mother sup sa”:bar-to-the m&land, that helped will be a tine town when it is finished”). porting her only daughter, who con- favour Toronto for settlement. Once a Anna Jameson (“Toronto is like a wnienlly starts to menstruate on page 6. bustling summer resort, complete with fourth or fifth rate pmvincial town with One waits for the consciousness-raising hotels, amusement parks, vaudeville the pretensions of a capital city”), and ._;___:~_;_.._~__ ._d_i. L.I__ ,-- the wag who wrote that “no one should The Leocock Medal Trcawy: Four lishcd. The writing is brisk. aswed, visit Toronto for the first time.” Decades of lhe Best of Csnadlnn frcah. Somctima the tone ls ““eve”, The material. as tine as much of it is, Humour, edited by Ralph L. Curry, sometimes the endings are a bit pat, but is .~~~_ooorlv oreanizcd~~- and “cvcr eels into Lester & Orpen Dcnnys, 359 pages. these faults seem minor beside the anything more than an excuse lo toss a 511.95 paper (ISBN 0 88619 086 X). strengths. Some of the stories arc existctttial. series of thinly related pieces into one By lltlaria Horvalh rolumc. Perhaps Kilbourn should have others are accounts of mntempora& prepared three books - a memoir, a NOT ~uw~usmo~.~. this collection of life. the rcsl deal with being Jewish. The compilation of Tomnto quotations, and cxccrpts fmm each of the 37 winners of mistcntial storks are humorous, the an anthology of the best essays written the Leacock medal for humour is great wntctnporary ones moving. but the about the city - rather than the single fun. Most of .the pieces are nostalgic Jewish stories arc the most powerful. jumbled collcctlon that is Toronto reminiscences of life in the varied neigh- They hit you in the guts and heart. Sur- Remembered. q bourhoods of Canada. They range fmm vival, memory, history, suffering. guilt, FarIcy Mowat’s Newfoundland to Don love: there are Stcinfcld’s themes, and Bell’s Montreal and Morley Torgov’s they are weighty 0”~. For this rcaso”, Northern Ontatio towns, from Sandra one feels, these arc also the stories where Gotllcb’s North Winnipeg to Max the writer’s voice hedges, where Bmlthwaitc’s small town in Saskat- Steinfcld slides into a too-pat ending. Chnnctera Includhtg MC, by I. Gor- chewan. But humorous Canadians arc The title story, “Tltc Apostate’s Tat- don Dry&de, Lancclot Press, 103 not confined to Canada; Lawrence Earl too,” is the strongest. An assimilated pager. S4.95 paper (ISBN 0 88999 235 5). visits Ireland, and Eric Nicol recalls his Jew, Sam Morgan (Shlomo Markovitz). 5~ Kris$ E/&edge advcnturrs in England and Paris. becomes more and “tore troubled as he Perhaps reflecting Canada itself, the THIS AUTHOR did meet up with some studies his own heritage. Finally he bar. salty characters in his Nova Scotia humour collcctc.d here is quiet and smil- his mother’s concentration camp youth, but he’s made a mistake in ing rather than loud and uproarious. number tattooed on his arm. But it is the presenting hhnself as one of them. His Strikingly. almost “one of it is like that wvng 01: “1 low you, I love you, own full but unremarkable life becomes of Stephen Lcaeock. There’s little’of Shlomo.” his wife cries, which somehow the main focus of his rcmhdscencer. and that zany, sli8hdy skewed view of Life’s does not sound tight. his narration gives little justification for absurdities that made Leacock one of Similar problems exist in others, but self-interest. As far as one cc” gather the writers that Groucho Marx most the overall impression is that these are from his conscientious but personally admired. profound stories about mmplcx situa- rcticcnt account, Drysdale is a” amiable, While the book has only a few bdly tions. One hopes that Stcinfcld’s visions unassuming nmn who coped good- laughs, it is full of chwklcs. Two will lead to further exploration of these nrturrdly with a mggcd rural boyhood cxceepts stand out. Morley Torgov rc- thcmcs. Although the hand of the expert md went on to do nothing noteworthy. munts a ddightful talc about the search is sometimes missing, Stelnfcld is His interest in people has resulted in for a new leader of a Jewish communily; obviously a writer with enormous talent his remembering quite a few funny like all great humour, it is a mirror in and much feeling. 0 stories and conversational bon mols. which we all see someone we know, Mer- vyn I. Huston tells the story of the trial and these arc entertaining, but they’re Berlin Solstice, by Sylvia Fraser, often prcscntcd in a” odd, dipped man- of a local bootlegger who obviously is also one of the most popular men in McClelland & Stewart. 384 pages, ner instead of with the expansive case of $18.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7710 3176 9). a born story-teller. Dtysdalc has an odd town. What is the jury of his peers to tendency to give details where they do? The verdict is hilarious. By Sherie hsesorski aren’t necessary and to withhold thun Unfortunately,. ^ Mordecai Richlcr. . is SEttto”S INTENTIONSdon’t “c~essarily when they arc. On the first page, he not ~o~~~a. we can o”~y wo”oer \ make for fiction that can be taken witcs: “usoauy evctyone came home at what &itc.ria determine the- Leacock scrioosly. Case in point: Berlin Soktice. noon. for tt meal which we called ‘dm- awards so that one of Canada’s funniest Thii novel charts the fortunes of two ner.’ ” A few scntcnces later, he speaks writers has never won one. Despite his Gemmos, Camtcl Kohl, an entertainer, of hitching the horse up to “an old red ; absence, however, the others arc a funny and Kurt Schmidt, a Hitler youth. pung” - a word that evidently strikes bunch. Only a handful failed to make during the Third Reich. hi as less odd than “dinner,” for he me snlilc. 0 Fraser aims at creating a tiction that neither comments on “or cvplains it. will seriously cxaminc the political and The book is most interesting when it personal mentality of the Gcmmn Reich. does what it purports to do: dr%ribe She dcmonstmtcs her high seriousnessin characters. One of these ls Charlie her oversaturation of epigraphs Steele. a big. alcoholic woodsman who prcccding each scction. ovcrsc~pulotts would drink anything from extract of The Aposletc’s Tattoo, by J.J. Stein- historical ducriptions of place, and pop- lemon to shoe polish. With his brawling, fdd, Ragweed Press, 134 pages, $8.95 in historical figures. None of it his sexual prowess, and eventual mar- paper (ISBN 0 902304 28 1). _ coalesces. Huge blocks of historical riage to the town slattcm, he makes for summary and detail stand out from the By konica Ross ’ the liveliest reading. Some amusement is narrative, like the yellow-marked afforded by Drysdale’s accottnt of the ~‘WP.IIEAND perhaps the suffering will passages of a dogged student. Despite humourless, idiosyncratic citizens of make sense,” a character says in one of the length of the novel. it appears too Guysborough, N.S.. where he settlcs, the stories in this collection. One hopes short to carry the period covered, but his stories of the uneducated black Stclnfcld will heed this advice, becausc 19221945. whi:h forces Fraser con- people who live nearby arc distinctly his is an important new voice in Cana- stantly to synopsize historical events in patronizing. The book doa not prcscnt dian writing. dialogue asides. B large enough vision to have anything Of the 12 stories bt this collection, Her intention is the depiction of the but a very limited appeal. 0 only three have bee” previously pub- emergence of the Reich mentality - aloner the lines of E.L. Doctomw’s Rap. bemused unreality by asking $12.95 for from the human ntass. Th.wz is “ever a li&which in masterly fashion eaiIor& an utdlhtstmted book of 76 pages, five reason why one is spared and another the v:hirlpool of economic, social, and of which are to no evident purpose com- not. Ptecautions, such as hiding or pur- political events that created the men- pletely blank. 0 chasing forged credentials, are useless in tality of 20th~eentuty America. How- a deadly game in which someone else ever. Fraser’s linear narrative makes the Fury, by David Watmoogh, Oberon, holds the wild cards. Those who escape history of the era logical and explainable 152 pages, $21.95 cloth (ISBN 0 88750 - be it for a week, a month, or a life - trlvlolizing its impact. What the novel 542 2) and $11.95 paper (ISBN 0 88750 time - are forever paying for the eapen- lacks is the swirling dynamic behveen the 543 0). sive miracle that set them free. They pay personal and the political. As Schmidt By Rob/n Metcaffe in damaaed osyches. soured telation- rises thmugh the ranks of the SS and ships, at? &n&d; of smaller ways Kohl through the underground IN THUSVOLUME David Watmough cott- that are only noticeable in their cumula- rcristance mownrent. it seenx less a titmes the memaits of hi fEtional altet tive effect. political decision and more like ego, Davey Bryant. A complex, original The tint two stories ln the collection, historical train-hopping. 0 creation, Davey follows the author’s “The Gates” and “The Saviour,” ate own footsteps fmm beginttittgs in Corn- brief, well-crafted incidents that evoke wall to maturity in Vancouver. The su(i the horrors of a” era, the terror of itt- cessive volumes do not fomt a chrono- dividttals facing destruction, and the Xnoa” i Bez. by Antonine M~tillet, logical progression. but assemble parts trauma of those who are spared. ‘The translated from the French by Wayne of Davey’s life as might a jigsaw puazle. Leave-Taking” is a longer, more chtt- Grady. Rlethuen, 76 pages, $12.95 cloth The nine stories in Fury fall into two tered piece. The only one set in the pra flSBN 0 458 98110 91. groups. Five, closely linked, describe senr, it relies on tlashbacks and Davey’s boyhood in Cornwall and Lon- reminiscences to flesh in the details of LMUET’S P&git?-ia-charrette (tms- do”. Later, as the narrator’s youthful Henrietta Blum’s relationship with her bed as P&&e TheReturn to a Home- self-absorption gives way to a” adult son - a relationship molded during her land) won the 1979 Ptix Goncourt, o”e interest in those around him, the bio- struggle to keep the two of them alive of Fraoce’s ntajo: book awards, and in graphical conceit wean thin. These Van- and free after her husband and daughter so doing triggered a flood of better-lath cower stories stand as separate works, ate taken by the Nazis. In the play, “The than-never publicity from Engliih- in which the w”tinuity of narrator Aching Heart of Samuel Rlelnemtan” Canadian Uterati anxious to demonstrate seems incldentel. (pmduced last year both by CBCRadio that tlw’d known about her all the The title story, about a beloved pet and Czerniecki’s own Theattz Plus in time. This belated exolosion of interest ferret, develops themes that unite this Toronto), a Jewish family must decide in Msillet presumably accounts for the rambling collection: human betrayal, whether it can afford the moral toll its aooearance of a” E”aUsh tra”slatio” of the failure of eompassio”, and the survival would exact. While the power hh; Christopher Cm&, a very short and predator that lurks beneath the skin. vety slight tale situated on the borderline How twdily. Davey learns, we human dialogue and by superfluous narration, betwen children’s and adult Literature.. animals indulge the etude satisfactions the play retaiits much of its impact. In attempting to please readers of all of bllotry and violence. “Nelly Moriarty Czemiecki is himself a survivor. and ages, Maillet has created a fictional and the Jewish Question” treats these hi tales possess a moving authenticity world in which her adult narrator romps blind hatreds with a wry humour. Other that suffers in this book not from a lack v.ith friendly animals in benign naluml stories, such as “Incident in the Forest,” of objectivity but from the unfortunate settings. The other major character is depict young Davey’s horror at his own distraction of too many typos. 0 Christopher Carder or “Bear,” a young capacity for brutality. In “Where do I cub whose callow confoslons supply Weep When Your Sad Song is Sung?” lt sporadic moments of dramatic interest. is memory itself that betrays us. The Pmmire, hy Wanda Blyn” Catnp- Although he will inevitably be compared Although Watmough has woven the bell, Pulp Preq 129 pagea, 87.95 paper to that older cousin intntontiaed by life of Davey Bryant from the threads of (ISBN 0 88978 141 9). Matian’Engel. this bear is the stuff of his own, they do not fomt a single gar- gentle whimsy rather than erotic fantasy: meat. The facts are varied from one By Debra Martens Christopher Carder may be a great pra@ storv to the next to disoel the illusion of CAMPBELL’S 12 stories rough up the tical jol:er, but his amaloty efforts are a&biography. Like ail of os, Davey reader’s emotions, like sandpaper on old confined to being cute and cuddly. rementbers not one, but many, contra- wood. In three of than we learn the As the book mevlders on through a dictory Lives.All memory is fiction. 0 hunting values of Northern Quebec: series of innocuous and occasio”aUv wild animals ate killed for tlteii meat. inane occurrences, some amusement 6 The Gates: Three Sterier & A Play, by Although this may seem obvious to aU movided bv the verbal intemlav betwen Marion Andfi Czerniecki, Mosaic bear and narrator. “Lattgi on Tuyne” Press, 126 pages, $6.95 paper (ISBN 0 in the sattte way the as a pun on La Fontaine and mala- 88962 256 6). carcass site skins in “Rabbit”’ “with propisms such as “metaphor” for feelings that were clean of pity or “meteor” and “Winnifred” for “h&a- By Mark Gerson remorse.” The difference of values be- red” are good for several laughs, THE mm mc* in this unusual an- tween dty and country is highliihted in although 1 doubt that younger readem tbolow - three short stories and a full- the same tale when a Montreal drama rill be much lake” with them. This con- kmgth playscript - revolve around the student who likes to read de Sade aloud clusion also applies to the book as a Holwaust. Each is a tale of survival, not while dressed in thigh-hi boots gets rhole. which takes an adult perspective only of the atrocities of genocide, but of sick over a skinning that is for Laura on a” idealized children’s world and the bitter, cruel choices survival “the merclsing of a skill, a ritual as “takes a generally bloodless and unin- demands. the attilt it lm”oses. and the unextraardinary as sitting down to volving story out of it. The publiihem scars it &Ii&. Marion’ A”& Czar- supper.” This danci”g is take” up again have contributed to this atmosphere of niecki’s survivors are plucked randomly in the excellent, mildly ambiiuous “Birthday Party.” Made is visited by a notes that when lhae aulhors write Yet this is not a blinkered account of daughter who got rich in the city and about women’s experiences. they do not success stories alone. Although the word appears only at Christ”ms and on her do so fmm a “crabbed, eccentric” view- “death” does not even Illwe until page mother’s birthday. After the latest boy- point, but a universal one. Pondering 14. the reader is eased into the idea with friend is introduced, and the daughter the meaning of this coexistence of the whole process desaibed - both . adds, “He likes you, Ma,” Maude cuts women’s themes with more traditional physically and psychologically. Fine through pretensions with, “1 been subject matter, Sullivan offers an inter- doa not attempt to valorize death by wondering when you were going to drop esting view of a contemporary female speaking of heroes and victims and lhii Mother business.” Yet it ls unclear aesthetic, one detined historically rather battles, but she does try to make it acces- whether Maude is playing up to her than biologlcslly. Or, to update my slble to young adults, stressing that guests’ expectations. When they leave, vocabulary according to current many others have shared the same euper- she ignores the gifts she wUl eventually academic style, Sullivan sees a socially ieuce, felt similar emotions and worked give away, and resunm mopping the constructed but not essential female thmugh the guilt of another’s death. 0 floor. In “Thaw” Magda is a large, aesthetic (at least in this discourse). tough vvontun who falls in love and Noting that the traditional “universal” begins to tell people just how she feels. viewpoint has been “‘erpmded” (my and in “Kisses” a servant-like wife emphasis) by these women to “inmr- learns to tell her husband to “kiss my porate the pemcctive of the previously ass.” The wonder of it is that we hear silent majority,” Sullivan says: “This History on the Run: The Trenchcoat her transformation through the gossip declares that the human story is being Memoirs of a For&it Correrpondtit, Vera exchanges with her nelghbour. 0 rounded out; it is no longer andmcen- by Knowlton Nash, McClelland & tric.” Instead of seeing a female Stewart, 349 pages. $19.95 cloth (ISBN 0 aesthetic as narrowe.r than a male one, 7710 6700 3). Slodes by Canadian Women, edited or simply other. Sullivan suggests that. By John Goddard by Rosemary Sullivan. Oxford, 39.5 at this point in time, it encompasses a pages, S10.95 paper (ISBN 0 19 540468 male aesthetic and then adds some. This KNOWLTONNASH WCI.S I2 yeara old. E). . is a striking notion and Sullivan makes a standing with an armful of newspapers mod case for it. Q on a Toronto street comer in June, By Libby Schaiw 1940, announc_ing France’s sumnder to tT tg * pleasure to see this impressive col- the Gernmns. “France surrenders! Read lection of women’s short stories. An all about itl” he shouted, showing ‘an historical overview of Canadian early enthusiasm for broadcasting that women’s fiction, suitable - and this is Afraid to Ask: A Book About led eventually to his current job as anchor for CBC-TV’s The Nationat. not r dii - for use in the university Cancer, by Judylahte Fine, Kids Can Nash still has a lot of the newsboy in classroom, is long overdue. Press, $19.95 cloth (ISBN 0 919964 79 6) The anthology begins with such 19th- and 512.95 paper (ISBN 0 919964 56 7). him, judging from HIvtov ou the Run. century writers as Isabella Valaucy hi memoirs as a Washington caves- Crawford and Sara Jeattnette Duncan. BY Lorraine Johnson pondent during the 1950s and 1960s. and ends with young women like Aritha Dm.wSTtNtNo FeAtt is the main intent of Once, when tilmlng the Oval Office, he van Hwk and Diotme Brand. In between this book. Yet in purporting to write for “couldn’t resist sitting down in the bii are most of the women whose fiction has au adolescent audience, Fine Is caught in leather presidential chair.” And he a familiar trap; the tone of the book admits to asking Winston Churchill “a of those Sullivan would have included if wavers between an encouragement for useless question. . . just to be able to say she’d had more pages (and adding life and acceptance o/death. I’d once talked to the great man.” another volume might not have been a Perhaps this is a necessary paradox bad idea) ls listed in the introduction. when dealing with cattcer, particularly My only quibble with this fine anth- when tryiug to reconcile a young ology is that it might have included more audience to this UIness. But is it a useful wotnen whose witlng is a bit more off tactic to place a chapter on prevention the beaten path stylistically (Gail Scott, near the beginning of a book whose for example) and a few newer, less estab- main readers will probably already have lished writers. The only writer repro- contact with a cancer patient? For some rented whose prose is not already well young readers, this might simply add to known is Dionne Brand. (I should add, the feelings of anger and resentment however, that au attempt was made to which many psychologists find prevalent Nash’s analytic skill is boyish too. Of include Donna Smythc’s story, “Red among children of cancer patients. But it John F. Kennedy he writes: “it seemed Hot.” from the Bakers’Dozen short fie might also dbzct other readers to the clear to me that it was hi image, not his lion anthology, but permission to more positive and encouraging d&ions philosophy, that won the crowd.” publish was denied by Women’s Press, lhey can make within their own lives. The narrative skips from flat anecdote which held copyright.) Whatever the effect, Fine is clearly to shallow commentary to naive expres- As Sullivan points out in her intelli- concerned for her audience, and her sion of awe as Nash strains to look over gem and useful introduction, most of the heads of prominent U.S. repotters at the mujor %omen’s themes” are in- Lain& appeal to teenagers. Th; medieal newsmakers of the day. Never is there a cluded in these stories (motherhood, exegeses outUnion different bodily func- feeling of overhearing a private conver- pregnancy and abortion, the power tiois are b&n&l with various p&onaJ sation or peeking through the crack of a politics of personal relationships), as stories and thus, the language of door. Nosh rehashes events of the l&n- welI as other frequently used themes of melanoma and sarcotna and chemo- bower, Kennedy. and Johnson ems. literature: “love and hate, progeny, therapy is translated into people and while dealing only perfunctorily with culture, politics and power.‘~ Sullivan families and caring. topies he was best placed to address: the ChdhlGeS to a reporterin CBGTV’s Ushed oral history programs. Some set Lowry’s experience limns in a black pioneer days, and how TV changed the down the memories of the hllh and tight the extremity of self-aggmvated news business. 0 mighty; others chased the remembered alienation. The dislntcgratlon of his past of a more humble citizenry. In mind and body, its tedious and wllfully Canada, the most energetic and accom- sluggish regress cau, in Lowry’s case, plished proponent of the second only be accounted for by a diagnosis of approach was the project devised by the patholoGlcal masochism. That Lowry’s l?orccd Mare11to Freedom: A” Illus- provincial srchivcs of British Columbia. talent for ttWS”,ittitt~ his mordant tmted Dhy of Two Forced k!Iarches The best of its journal, Sound Iferifuge, vision has been internationally cele- ond the h~tcrval Between January to has bee.” gathered in this attractive, well- brated with cannibalistic fewour, aug- M”y. 1925. by Robert Buckham, produced volume. While more eclectic gesb to me the decayed spiritual health Canada’s Wings. 98 pages, 511.95 cloth and inferior, as a form of popular of the scatalogical voyeurs who rejoice (ISBN 0 920002 2.50). bistorv. to the more crafted works of in and feest uuon his mlserv rather than Studs~%rkcl or Barry Broadfoot this weep that such personai horror is .&’ &wa b&188 spirited collection pmvida a rich &e of intcllectuallv titillatbm and mmmacial- AS THE t”O,“entOlLllSweep Of gRat British Columbia’s colourful, often tur- ly viable. -Thus, tl& historical and hlstorlcal events recedes into the past, bulent so&l history. literary contexts in which These” has to we can leisurely look at their cffcct on stNggle for * nwlsion of this man, the lives of ordlnvy people. The Second of history know. the eud products thanselves ‘demand perceptive analysis World War has pmduced many such frustrate as they tantallae. When the and comment. unpretentious records. Buckham’s short material is fresh, the interviewer Gqfabulations defeats dramatic dkuy of t!vo forced marches across 0% informed, and the editor scnsitlve, the development by uncritically shiftiig many as a Canadian prisoner of war dur- results do satisfy. The first section on viewpoint from omnipotent narrator to iry tlz closing months of the conflia is B.C.‘s native oeooles is esoeciallv cffeo limt-parOn in the Voice Of LOwy. This unusual because it is UIustrated with his tivc; and the moit stlmul&g iiece of creates a nebulous perspective. CUch& pen-and-ink drawings. all in Sound Heritage is an elderly Indian abound, and too many participles drain A commercial artist turned bomber woman’s recollection of a turn-of-the- the cycle’s potential energy. negating the pilot, Buckhcm was shot down and century mission school. For other oracli- imprisoned in St&G Lufi III, scene of tioneti, oral history is a record of &ploi- for the volcano’s gradual incandescence “the mat escape.” But when the Ger- tatlon and struggle: the memories here and emption. Emotional identification mans forced the 20,000 Allied airmen to of workers in the lumber camps, mines, is absent, and thus the sympathy is for- march west, away from the advancing and fisheries of British Columbia do not mal rather than spcclal. Criticism of Russians. the senior camp officer stand so well on their own. In one alar- soclew’s ~rspon.w to the man, and its ordered his men not to escape. Their ing instance.. the respondent does not part in creating him is virrually unat- chances of survival were better if they remember the way the editor wants hi tempted. stayed together and waited for the Uber- to remcmbcr. These& painting of Lowry must, adn~ armies to rescue them. At other times. oral history fails to be finally, compete with his own IO-year One of the few exciting moments in anythins more than story-telling by pco- labowed image of hbnsclfz the language Buckham’s otherwise low-keyed “arm- plc with unusual lives and a gift for the of Under the Volcano; the dramatic tcx- tlve happens early in the march, when gab in front of a microphone. Good and tore. So considexedthen, These” may fatigue, diarrhoea, and freezing weather not so Good examples appear hen as not be entirely to blame if her treatment make bbn lag behind and he strusgla to wll. Best read in small and digestible of one of the century’s most complex catch up with his comrades. Otherwise, lumps, Sound Herifage succeeds as a and self-destructive pwsonaUtiu falls his words and sketches offer only collection of plain tales. But it dcmon- short of revelation. 0 detached Glimpsesof the undoubted suf- strates the pitfalls - and not just the fering endured by the marchem. A tone strengths - of a gemc of history it is Words for Elephant Ma”, by Kemteth of restrained endurance pervades this meant to celebrate. 0 Sherman, Mosaic Press, 88 pages, $6.95 modest little book. Self-control, studied paper (ISBN 0 88962 3). curiosity about the passing scene. and an appreciation of those whose ingenuity By Ken Sfange can scrounge or construct the humble pott THE RBADBRwho likes books - “ecessitiet of Lifehold the story together. Confabulations: Poems for Malcolm unified, complex objects - Kenneth There are also surprising moments of Lowry, by Sharon These”, Oolichan Sherman’s Eleplmnt Man is a major, distram humour, like finding a hath- Books, 41 pages, $6.95 paper (ISBN 0 substantial contribution to the world’s tub with hot water in a Prussian castle. 88982 072 4). library, and a handsome, thoughtfolly Buckham’s plcvure in such simple By Kathleen Moore deslgncd book whose visual appeal is things relieves the understated misery of augmented by a “umber of superb etch- the events he has carefully recorded. 0 ‘ME COMSlhlED gifts of actress, aualyst, ings by George Raab. This book is your and anecdotallst ere essential to create proverbial “Good mad”: by the second wnvineing biography. Add to these the page you know you’ll not be walm the Sound We&gee: Voices from British dog or t&log out the garbaGe until you Columbin, edited by Saeko Usukawa, the compres&, the crystalliad i&iiht; ftish it. The subject matter, df course, Dow+ 6 McIntyre, illustrated, 276 and the task may approach heroic pales, $24.95 cloth (ISBN 0 88894 443 dimensions. Dramatic identification ii it least partiaily why Bmadw& and G). with a morbid genius such as Malcdm Hollywood made so much money with @I Bfrfd A&ams Lowry was, must be ~pcclally difficult their vcrslons of Merdck’s Ufc), but this IN THE EARLYand mid-1970s. when to achieve; no less the sustaining com- morbid curiosity is not the cmtral money still GUShed from the public well, passion fmm which a sensitive portrait appeal here, but rather in the words, the mauy universities and arehives estab- must arise. writing. Sherman is capable of extremely

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gmcefitl shifts of tone and style, mixing For each plant discussed, there is a Although his subject Is grim, Mowvat historical quotations with epigrams and meticulous drawing, details on where to does surprise us with some facts; that, his ov;” protean verse to create a kale& search for it, which portions are usable for example, animals MW thought arctic doswpic and engmssbtg metaphor fmm and in what way, and cdmments cm indigenes, such as the wl~s, were once the tragedy that was the Elephant Ma”. medicinal or other properties. My faith vary cmnm”n amund the Gulf of St. This book Is to” much of a piece for any in WsJker’s lmcwledge was ccmflrnwd Lawrence. Mowat quotes one source as quotation to do it justice. Suftice it u) by her comment ihat the mot of the saying that polar bears used fo “infest say that it is a book so fresh, different, yellow water lily is “impmsible to eat.” [habitants’] houses” -which must have tmd absorbing that it negates all reason- Most “edible wild” speelalists cheerfully been a nuisance. I” any event, eve” if able expectations of the humdrum. 0 assert that morsels similar to Chinese skeptics believe that Mowat’s facts ars water chestnuts can be’obtained from only half-accurate, he “takes a powerful this plant, although I have found that no indictment of human attitudes toward am”unt of trouble pmduces anything other species that share our planet. * worthwhile. The recioe section is slanted toward things to do-with berria (rasp- Harvesting Ihe Northern Wild, by berry vinegar is very simple) but also in- Marilyn Walker, Outcmp (Raincoast), cludes savcwie.s and that staple of illustrated, 2.74 pages, 512.95 paper wilderness travel, batmoek. Q (ISBN 0 919315 IO 0). Tiger: A Hockey Story. by T&w Williams with James Lawto”. Dot&s & Sea of SIaaghtar, by Farley Mowat. McIntyre, illustrated, 172 pages. SM.95 ~.U_EER~NTENM her book t” be “a trail McCldland & Stewart, 438 pages, cloth (ISBN 0 88894 448 9). guide and sowce of practical informs- SZ4.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7710 6556 6y. By Brad Adams tion” about edible plants of the Nonh- By Liza Vandermeer wst Territories. Bat with its accurate, NOWA SPENTveteran. Dave “Tiir” attractive line drawings and maps, MOWWS LATESTbook deals with the Williams hooked, chopped, and descriptions of habitats, and uses of region of Canada that has gained world- scmunged hi way t” notoriety LLIa pug- plants. the book also contains much that wide notoriety for the great ia seal tmsed forward with the Tomnto Maple would appeal to thox who have no hunt. The international indignation over Leafs and Vattmuver Cattucks. Hi desire to eat anything wilder than the the East. Coast seal fishery has perhaps brash and outspoken autobiography, occasional blueberry. bee” unmatched by any similar eonver- penned by Vancouver spofls writer Jim Walker is a” anthropologist, attd she sation cause, probably because the Lawto”, tells us - unexpectedly - briefly describes different groups of visual images of fluffy white baby seals, much more about the heart. umsde, and Dene prople, their ranger. and major bloody ice pans, and me” with clubs warts of the sport than do countless food sources. These descriptions, al”“8 have a” etnotlonsl impact that is hard to hymns to hockey greats and eve” Ken with a section on “The Northern Land- better. The object of this book is t” draw Dryden’s The Game. Except to s&Is scape,” form as good a” introduction to attention to other animals that “ttee out a few wanton goons, Tiger maker no Northern ecology and inhabitants as I dwelt, or still exist in, the varied habitats apology for his brand of hoekey, and tit- have see” outside of Thomas Berg& between New Eneland attd Labrador. tle for an em in the 1970swhen the game repwts on the Mackenzie V&y. Many Although few of the species Mowat fell to the level of blood sport. Williams discusses (and they are “urnemus. rang- cannot be let off quite so easily. But he is ing from lobsters t” polar bears) would all t”” right to claim that nastiness, for better or for worse. is part of hockey, they h&all been subj&t to ma& p& and that players and teanxs without the penslties that, in Newfoundland sealers. talent to free-wheel have to tough it oat have bee” called greed and brutality. It in the trenches. is depressing to realize that no wild Tiger’s assessments and comments animal, no matter how hard-passed. about teammates,coaches, and life in will ever receive the same human advo- the NHL provide lots of fuel for change cacy as these cute, lucky whitecoats, but m”m chatter. But his story is of widei Mmvat hopes hi book will “help to relevance. For Williants, as for “early all change our attitudes and modify oar professional athletes, the big time is a future activities” with regard to nature gilded lunch bucket. The depiction here as typified throughout the Easter” Sea- of growing up poor in Weybum, Sask., board. Such attitudes are exemplified by of rough-and-tumble Prairie hockey the Ynanaging” of carnivores to extinc- lion to leave more game for sportsmen, make &nnething himself are starkly or the incressed catch of undersize shell- realistic. And there Is m”re than a touch fiih, now that the large, breeding-size of the Horatio A&r hem in Tiger: his individuals have become scarce. story is sprinkled with rough-hew” excerpts from the writings of such Euro- Drawing on an impressive mass of homilies to the work ethic, self- pean explorers as Samuel Heame and historical research, each chapter diipline, and loyalty to taM, fan, and Alexander Mackenzie are included, prc+ describes the pmlb00 population and family. Daggers arr hurled at teammates viding facts about indigenous peoples range of a” animal, and the human who took fat contracts but cheated their and explorers alike. An annotated activities that reduced it to present promise on and off the ice. With its bibliography of books on the North, and status. Pictures of the various animals bombast and abrasive honesty, Jim a separate “recommended reading” list desctibed (especially uncommon birds) Lawton’s bumpandgrind pmse is the are also attractive features of this multi- would have increased the impact of such perfect match for Tiger’s gritty and faceted s”“rce book. dewtiptions. sometimes likable intelliince. 0 L. -, .d i+ . .._ ._. k-i:_ _;._ :.. _

. ‘?. i.. .*: , L ,:: ,, , v / .I ~. . . . _.... .~. at the advent of white civilization; and in ment the unpredllable income fmm 1885, Indiis and Metis did not form a their farms. Fifty years ago,’ an mherent force of resistmee against a~tonkhing 75 pa cent of the agricul- British-Canadian settlement. In the 19th tural labour force in Alberta gained s century as in otu own, native peoples living fmm wage labour as well as from were bedevilled by their inability to farming. For all the region’s fertility and waswon grasp and use white men’s ideas of pro- size, it has never been easy to farm its perty. What finally dmve most the Metis land for profit. out of Manitoba, a province where for Inevitably, most histories of the decades they formed a majority, was not region have focused on the farms- on so much overt prejudice as sharp the dreams of settlement, the hardships The Cmmdisn Pnider: A Hislorg, by business practicea that resulted in the of the pioneera, and the endurance of Gerald Friesen, University of Toronto wnfwation of their land. those who outlasted the Dbty ’30s. Press, 52.4pager. 524.95 cloth (ISBN 0 Throughout The Canadian Prairies Friesendoes not neglect such topics, yet co20 2513 7). Friesa seems to take a quiet relish in he throws an equal light on the urban demollshlng persistent myths, the long history of the Prairies, and the extent to HISTORIESOF the Canadian West tend to familiar stereotypes. He emphasizea which they have always been subject to begin from the comfortable assumption pioneer mobility, for example, against social divisions. Hts perspective on Via- that the region had no histo@ wuthy of the customary image that Old World torian missionaries is refreshing: the name until the appearance of white wanderers reached the West and settled “Though it was not their goal to create me”, first Y explorers. the” as traders. down for good. The truth was somewhat race and dass divisions, this was the tinallp as settks. The first great merit of different. In the area amund Neodorf in rp.w1tof their work.” The virtual (and Gerald Friesen’s comprehensive re- southern Saskatchewgn, nearly one in to me, depressing)u”a”b”ity of co”scr- vision of Prairie history is his conwntm- three settlers failed to make a go of v@ive opinion in present-day Alberta lion on native culture and ways of life. farming; what is more surprising, can easily obscore a history of struggle He gives the Indians their due not as no- though, is that about one in two of the and poverty them. I was tiaad to ble savages but as people whose adapta- swxesalid settlers also moved away dieover. for i”staoce. that in the federal tion to a tough environment was endur- within a decade of gaining title to their election of 1945.54 per cent of voters in ing and intelligent. In so doing. he also land. As many as 804000 immigrants the coal-*ming town of Blairmore cast destroys a few common ideas about the had already left the Pmbia before the their ballots for a Communist candidate. past. The Red River battle of 1816 was Great Depression began. Even the Despite a valiant effort to explain not. it tams out, a massacre of whites by farmers who stayed in the West often such arcane phenomena BP the Crow the bloodtbirstyM&is; Indian society on supported their families by worltmg in Bate, F&en seems most at ease with the great plains did not simply collapse labour crews or as hired hands to aug- social and political history. One of his best chapters describes the waves of immigmtion onto the Pm&s, and the wryhtg adaptations to the British West. (The Icelanders, for instance, blended into the mainstream of Prairie culture much faster than the Ukrainians.) Although Ftieaen should at least have menrio& the bnportance of America” immigration. ~articolarly to Alberta. for the n&t gti he tells a complex siory with confidence and occasional flair. It has been far too easy to dismiss the culture of immigrant groups as ethnic

time th%& doomed to diipp&& a generation or two; this kind of attitude distorts un&rsranding of the true pat- terns of Prairie life even toqay. The region often surprises outsiders by its sheer diversity of culture. It is less than half a century since a federal ceosos revealed that more then 90 per cent of Ukrainians and about 70 per cent of Germans still spoke their own language in the homes of central Saskstchew”. The only instance where the author seems less than just to any class or group concems his treatment of French Cana- @ns and the F~ch language in the West. “Fainter hearts would bedeterred from western migration,” he suggests, “by Quebec newspaper au&s on ‘On- tario fanaticism’ which allegedly resulted in assaults on French rights dur- ing the 186%70 troubles, the 1874-5

-.i-i_._:J-,-- -.-.-r_y-*>_~.A: . . c..*.-- . _.-_.-r-_.,_~-__-. i .-.. _ .-.-.=. i.__ __ ._._ -. -7z.-.-.:n debates concerning Riel’s amnesty, the his personal love of the subject, are con- ing a Marx Brothersmovie on television. 1879 Norquay ministerial crisis, the 1885 stantly shown. Without ever indulging in drifts into the studio lot during a com- Territorial uprising, and the Manitoba mystification. he shows that the Prairies mercialto teach the brothers“how to be school and language legislation of have experienced a much more cam- funny.” Rivard too often forces his im- lS90.” That ambiguous word “alleged- plicated, less straightforward history agery into metaphysical metaphors that ly” casts doubt on the unquestionable than we are normally led to believe. 0 offer little insight into human nature. In prejudices to which French Canadians one poem, clouds, comets, sky, and ha& long been subject on the Prairies. moon are personitied as a scene of Even after their religion had ceased to be dancers and fiddlers at a wuntry hot+ anathema to a majority ofwestern so& down. In another, the falling raindrops ty, their kmguage eontlnued to be a axe compared first to “an orchestra of cmalvst~~-~~ for bitterness~~~~~ lind fear. Futher- tin cans,” then to a sage “spitting care more. Ftiesen phrases hi sentence in a All in fully, of course clearing its throat way that seems to blame the cowardice beforehand.” and finally to a “hobbling of Quebec people and the rhetoric of V-E family . . . cripple in a trance.” Such meta- Quebec journalists for the refusal to phors s.uBgestlhat Rlvard identifies with move to a region where French Cana- By David Latham his portrait of a belwgmed Dome: dians could expect to face hostility. Fielding, by Dennis Cooley, Thistle- John Donne - n bnsebnllCOP In the early part of this century, he down Press, 86 pages, 516.00 cloth and o poem-//led mil. observes, “a powerful new regional im- he erm’l make If 10 firs1 base (ISBN 0 920066 74 7) and 57.95 paper transcendedearlier definitions with a smull mrrgazfneeditor. age. . . (ISBN 0 920066 71 2). of the national mission: the promise of The title of Dennis Co&y’s book Ambergris Moon, by Brenda Niskala, mududs us that technology is only catcb- the west became the promise of Thistledown Press, 79 pages, 516.00 Canada.” (Of English Canada, that is; ing up with what is now old poetic cloth QSBN 0 9XIO6672 0) and 57.95 the mission and the promise were dif- theory. Fielding alludes to the “open paper QSBN 0 920066 69 0). ferent in Quebec.) Readersfrom outside field composition” preachedby Charles the Prairies may be surpn’sedto dieover Kiss Me Down to Sire. bv Ken Blvard. Olsm in 1950 and later pracdsed by Thistledown Pms$ 77. & a6.00 the grandiose hopes with wvhi&English Robert Duucan in 7% Opening o/fhe cloth IISBN 0 920066 70 4) and 57.95 Canadiins once saw the West. “It would F&/d. What Duncan demonstrates in become the centm of gravity of all paper ~ISBN0 92qod4 63 111 technique - that an image must beget Canada: and, if it ruled Canada, and THB SIM~LAR,~ among these three pt another image - and in theme - of Canada led the empire (as it soon books of poetry by three new poets fmm separation and regeneration - is just as wmld), then, as anyone could see. the Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba much evident in the work of Niskalaand west would lead the world.” A detailed has more to do with video and the Rivard as it is in Co&y. Thematically, study of these dreams and delusions has microchip than with their authors’ the love that aU three write about is not not. to my knowledge. been written. It mabie environment. Forty years ago one of romantic passion but rather oue rvould be interesting to know when and E.J. Pratt explained how p&y was z& of family pride and family bondage. rhy the dreams began to fade, and what commodating the environment of the iu- Co&y and Niskala honour their replaced them. A tradition of dusttial world: “Dynamos, lathes. drills parents, while Bivard celebrates the righteousness, infused with the odd mes- and turbines are just as much material awakening new experiences of his young sianic illusion, runs through Prairie for poetry as lilies and carnations and daughter. politics even today. cuckoos, and they are humming their writiug a long open-sequence elegy on The virtues of The Canadian Pmlries way into the measures of verse with the the death of his father. Co&y createsa far outweigh its deficieucicr, and there we ease and intimacy as the former tiikl (suu. wind, sumv, and sky) for a appearto be remarkablyfew errorsfor a reaping hook, the wheel, and the collage of images. The organizing prin- worlc of its weight and scope. I cau’t plough.” Now, as an accommodation of ciple is the dream framework. After help regretting the ponderous style. with the world of the microchip, surrealist leaving his father on the farm to drive a plethora of passive verbs, into which imagery is the staple of even the most his young family back tu Winnipeg, the Friesen occtionally lurches (“. . . as conventional contemporary poet. son appears in a jetliner on au airport novelist Margmt Laurmci?s creatiou in Surnalist imagery is less an escape runway daydrramingabout his return to The Divinem would have put it . . .‘I)_ from the brazen, world than a hi dyiug father. Images of his father as More seriously, Friesen suffers from the reconstruction of it. Brenda Niskala a baseball-batswinger, running through urge to arbitrate all the important writes of a woman who sees the huge the open field, are juxtaposed with those academic disputes in Prairie history, and eyes of familiar cows gazing across the of hi as a coaLmining pick swinger, to pmnmmce a judicious verdict each pasture.;with a blink of her own eyes she diggia on his kneu iu a narrow tunnel. time. He suggests, illogically, that “The sees a man with an empty coffee cup The epilogue cm&da with a dream of number of scholars on each side of the watching her from across the breakfast his father as a young man in bed along- bsue suggests that we should call it a table. When she dreams of eszauim side hii father as au old mau dying. But tie.” There is something amiss with his from the rcspousibilitiesof the oft& or when the poet awakes, he finds himself choice of emphasis when the historian the lecturehall to the nostalgic imagesof in bed beside his wife, Diane. This allu- V.C. Fowke appears on nine times as the farm, the images remain ones of sion to the goddess of dawn compIetes many pages as Tommy Douglas. A few hardshiu. When she dreamsof herself as the arehetypal pmgression from the more character studies of the region’s a swn”swayinp in the music lake,” a death in February, through a thaw in most important public men, such as “walrus flaps away from the mirror.” March. to a recognition of renewal in Douglas and John Dllfenbaker, would Ken Bivard constructs a fantasy world April. Co&y’s word play - “not have leavened the prose considerably. by projecting life into the imaginary now/not know” and “carbon phases/ Such dravfbacks notwithstanding, wprlas of paintings, dreams, cloud for- your phrases” - epitomizes Robert Friesen has produced an important as mations, and caleudar scenes that Duucau’s demand that poetry mustyoke well as a useful book. His own curiosity, Yuight come alive.” His father, watch- the personal with the cosmic. Brenda Niskala explore the progress tblnkable, of course, that any would be of a youth growins up among tough commissioned).’ farmers. hardened by parents who had Following the wa the Nisel communi- no time from work io jndulp in loving ty erected a memorial to its war dead mlatioasbips. Thus a child’s “first that still stands today in Vancouver’s lesson in strength” is how a daughter’s Stanley Park, but the infer-war years need to be mothered can auger her brought Little cl% in the way of recogni- mother. A much later lesson ls leanted tion of their heroism. Only in 1931 did when she must cam for her now-feeble the B.C. Legislature - by a ma@” of. mother who has sacrlticed so much of By Roy MacLamn one vote - ape” the way for the her life to save her daughter from the veterans to have the right to vote. All suffetinplthat rxovida such strensdh.As We Went to War: The Story of the other Japanese Canadians remained she off& h& mother assum& the JapaneseCausdlans Who ServedDmlq disenfranchisedas a result of the coulin- dau&ter s&m& “here not feel- the Flml aud Second World Wars, by uing bigotry and pmjudlce then so pmv- ing strong: She is tom between her Roy Ito, Canada’s Wiugs, 330 pag&, skit in the pm&& pzzrsonal inadequacy .to be stmug and 319.95 cloth (ISBN 0 920002 30 7). The inter-war yems were not reassur- her mother’s exemplary indifference 10 lng for the Japanese Canadians. As sentiment. m snmY of Japanese Canadians in th; Japan moved fmm being an ally of Brl- Niskala’s poems document a struggle Canadian army duriug the two world rain to a potential euwny, their plight between what she associates with family wars ranges the fuU spectrum fmm the became eve” less happy. From Sep- relationships - diiacticism. mspon- heroic to the ludicrous. The ludicrous- tember, 1939. the Nllei repeatedly slbility, guilt. and respect - and what ness ariser fmm the reaction of the volunteered for service in the Canadian she associates with sexual relationships Establishment, especlslly in British Co- Army. but as Ito graphically portrays - distraction, selfishness, defensive lumbia, to the repeated efforts in both through anecdotes and lively vignettes ness. and alienation. As a “catluualcer’s wars of the Niiei to enlist. In the Fvst their commitment to Canada was coa- apprentice” she is tom beh&en looking World War “no yellow men need ap- sistently denied and shunned. A few, a backwardand looking forward,between ply” might have been the banner over very few, made it into the army, but only the preservation of tradition she’s in- ~&&itlng offices until the incessant de- by tmvelling ss far away fmm their herited fmm her family and the lnvita- mand for camton fodder was no longer native British Columbia as their ingemd- lion to revolution she receives fmm her to be denled. In the Second World War ty and limited resources would allow. IoVer: it was only the value placed by British Jack Nalmmoto travelled in box ems and Australians on the unique services from Vancouver to Quebec City in 1940 which the Nli could perform that final- before his repeated efforrr to vohmteer Iy led Ottawa to mconslder its bull- at every stop en route were finally beaded rejection of such loyal Cana- accepted by the Royal Canadian Buaineem Nakamoto and a fewothers the other-cud of the spcctmm iucludm whi later served with distinction in that of the Japanese Canadians who fought and died at Vimy Ridge and King;ndorscd the r&ommendations of beyond, and who, during the Second his B.C. colleagues (and a committee of World War. survived in the uncertain public servants) that Japanese Canadian OdgInaUy from Montreal, Albertan and volatile world of Malaya, French volumeem uot be accented into the Ken Rivardbetrays “one of the concern Iudo-China. Burma, and the Dumb Rast armed forces. After Peari Iiarbour their for familymats that so haunt Niskala IlldIeS. eacltion was if anything even more pm- and Cooley. The eclectic naturc of Roy Ito’s We Wenl lo War lea= oue nounced, despite the f&t that Japanese Rivard’scollection - ordinary observa- tom between laughing aud crying. The Americans were being mmUed in their lions about children, mundane anecdotes from the First World War am own units in the U.S. Army. experiences of blue-collar workers, mauy. most underllniug the persistent AU lu all, it is not a pretty story that metaphysica~metaphorsthat project a attempts of the Niml to be ac&pted into Ito tells. With the expulsion of Japanese t?mtmy world, mental and emotional an army that dmpuateLv “e&d me” Canadians from the PaciTE Coast and correlatives for the Albertan landscape but was opposed to gmutiw those of their concentration in camps in the - suggmts that Rivard has not yet Asia” background a place’of equality in imuior. across the Prairies, and in Nor- found his forte. His poems about the thern ontmio, the prospects for any to worlib~ c&s and tenement low-life of equality in &t-w, &Id. successUdly volunieer disappeared eu- smack of the cub reporteror the brighl Not&a daunted. the Jaoanese Cam+ tirely. The fact that eventually a few wllege lid keeping nom for a journal dians f&med th;mselves-into amateur Japanese Canadians were permitted to during a summer job. If he meaus to military units in Vaucouver in 1915, pay- write more in tbii working-class vein, ing for their own training expenses. The &sure from A&alia and %ltal”. then he must develop a mom endearing Colonel Blimps of the day would, Within the total resources of the British persona, as Tom Waymanhas done. But ho-, have “one of it. Only when the Commouwealtb those who could speak Rivardmay be better advisedto explore, Blutbcrd of the Western Front demanded Japanese - or who could be readily as he does in “Firn Chapter of Its any two-legged creature able to walk taught Japanese - were few. Iucasaut Blood.” his interest in decodlna the were Japanese Canadians in any demands from London and Canberra iu- pmiri~ landscape: numbers reluctantly accepted. Ito IT- duced a still reluctaut Ottawa to open counts from personal recoUections, the way for a few Japanese Canadians to diaries. letters. and off&I records the .enter the army for special duty BP Flat&i’s odys& of the Japanese Caua- tmuslators. pmpagandists, sabotage disns. FiRy-four were killed and several ageuts, and gueniUa instructors and, awarded the Military Medal (it was uu- later, for general service. Before any saw combat, however, the lifelong “passionate, implacable. slon in George MacDonald Fmser’s alomic bombs on Hiroshima and Naga- hatred” for hi father. For a Victorian, Flmhmun series’- cievdy absorbed saki brought the war to a halt. Post-war Joseph Logan Thompson was not that Seton’s 100,000-member Woodcrafilo- service in the uncertain world of the bad an old duffer, Keller implies. But to diaos into hi own Boy Scouts is ffie Southeast Asia Command nevertheless Seton he was “the most selfish person in comic hiihiight of Keller’s book. carried its own unique dangers as anti- history,” sharing the writer’s enmity Absurd, self-deluding, brilliantly colonial movements attempted to fore with General George Custer (unkind to observant, a genius with his bands, slaii the return of the metropolitan Indians) and St. Paul (keeping women tirelessly active (he once canoed %;~OO powrs. Here, amidst the disintegration down). miles in the Arctic and was still Iecttiog of colonial empires, Canadian Japanese Keller says that it was ‘Seton’s at the time of his death, aged 86), served with distinction, as their fathers maniacal ambition to succeed where his Seton’s life was a continuous &of&t had done in the First World War. Yet father had failed. To’ that end. he between freedom and captivity, tin- even these vetemus, some of whom studied art in Toronto, London, and formity and eccentricity. At first’ as returned home as late as 1947. eb Paris, homesteaded in Maoiiba, and ttiggwhappy as any other Victoria” after moving to tbti United States outdoorsman, he became-an ardent too- disenfranchisement of pre-war sod wx- became rich on the lecture circuit pro- servationist. But perhaps his tiost rime Canada. It was only in 1949 that motiog books like Wild Animal I How lasting memorial lies in the tattered, dus- Japanese canadiaos were flaauy granted Known, in the $roceas becoming “the ty volumes in co”“tless basemuds and the right to vole - and the commitmat most widely read animal story writer of attics - quick pen-and-ink sketches of a to Canada that the Nisei had all time.” As a young man, he ineffw sandhill stag, head erect. and of a wolf demonstrated from Flanders to Siiga- tu& claimed descent fmm a 16th- hunkered down in snow. Cl pore was given full recognition. century Scottish peer. Robert, 6tb Lord A veteran himself. Ito tells his story Seton, and after several name changes, meii. Occasionally a little discursive, he ended up calling himself Chief .Biack nevertheless follows his theme of the Wolf, founder and leader of the Wood- commitment of Japanese canadiaos to craft Indians youth movement. In this their home with perseverance and comprehension. His handling of a fascinating Keller does On t-he disgraceful story is muted and sensitive. not explore - with the Englishman Ar- His book is a fine account of the chic Beianey’s masquerade as Grey Owl. courage, patience, and rare commitment For a restless ‘workaholic, Seton was 1. of brave people who have served Canada in some ways a slow starter. He only l3y Brad Adams well. 0 gained prosperity at age 36 after he mar- ried a well-off American society lady. 1943: The Canadians in Nomiandy, Grace Gallatin, who became a writer by Reginald H. Roy; Macmillan, il- and naturalist herself. At age 71 he lustrated, 420 pages, 529.95 cloth became a U.S. citizen and wmxried at (fSBN 0 7715 9796 7). 15. this time to his long-time adoring Bloody Victory: Canadlanr and, the secretary, a New York Jew named Julie D-Day Campaign of 1944, by J.L. Moss Buttree, n& Moses. Standing Graoatstein and Dcsmond Morton, four-feet six to &ton’s six feet, she and Lester & orpe” Dena*, illustr24~ 240 Seton adopted a daughter, Dee, when pages, 524.95 cloth (lSBN 0 88619,0460). the author was lg. Dee was take” on the Ey Fmser Bathsrland lecture stage “dressed in a diaper, a wide W,TH THIS volume, Reginald Roy ribbon. and a \w-bonnet.” Today she follows firmly in a tradition of wrltii;B Ekwli Wolf: Th; Life of Ernest maintains Seto” Village in New Mexico, best exemplified by C.P. St&y, Thompson &to”, by Betty Keller. once the location for her father’s experi- Canada’s most eminent militnry h[s- Douglas 4 h~IcIntyre,240 pages, 519.95 ment in teaching the Navaho way of life, torlaa. Harnessing enormous r&arch cloth (ISBN 0 85594 439 X). but now a U.S. historical site. and orgsniaational disclpli”e to st!oag In many respects, Seton’s life was a narrative form, theirs is ao appealing - FIX THOSElike myself for whom the if demanding - style of history. _ln drawings of Ernest Thompson Seto” tionsto becomea&eat artist, naturalist, exactingdetail, Roy retraces the pmmss were central to their childhood’s and leader of North American youth. of the Canadian divlsioas fmm th

L- __,.-_,_ - ___-_. - ‘&.:_ c,- ~ ..:. .-?. .------.y-i-::.---. y7,. ~C-E~_v..~-.. ,_ --.-..-.: _... An index to the contents of the periodical Canadian Literature Nos. I - 102, cross-indexed by major themes. Compiled by Glenn Clever. 1984, 220 pp. cl. $29.95. Bibliographieson Avison, Newlove, Ondaatje, Page,

ECWPRESS 387 COXWELLAVE. TORONTO M4L3B5 (416)894-334

I. Bernard Cohen ’ In this magnificentinquiry into the historyof science,I. Bernard Cohentraces five centuriesof scientific endeavorIn the pmcess. he uncoversthe w-y natureof seientilic mvolution8, outliningthe stagesby which theyoccur, their time scale, and Photographic riches the creativefactors involved in producinga revw from Atlantic Communities lutionaryidea. 1870 - 1920 Bclknap

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r pity that operation maps. r&awn from wonta under the prerrure of war. The thii simplistic pcist-exilic expos& em- Stacey’s official history. arc not fresher authors prctidc bouncy, btfomtative, phasizing the careless. ambiiuotts, and and larger and - in the case of two end- and often witty captions that entice the conttivedly archaic language.. A flat tire maps - more sensibly placed. reader to linger and look agal”. Both rolling down a gravel mad could be tnis- In his conclusion Roy offers some teat and pictures pruent a” unusual feel taken for a loud reading of this book. baJaneed, if gentlemanly, judgements of of freshness. Bloody Vicmy will bring “Who brings the bloody bacon the Canadian achiewntent in the sum- back the experience of war for veterans home?” cavils Adam cavalierly. “Taxer mer of 1944. Although tightly ignoting and rekindle their well-earned sense of wring the liver out,” he snorts when ac- more strident and ill-btfomted con- pride. As well, it serves as an easy intm- cused of ncglcctlng the pruning. “Do tmwsles. he fmds that there were ductlo” for younger readers who need to you not hear eternity’s fine cqtdpage/ delays, some inadequacies, and a few know that, as the authors say, “the Nor- hurrying near?” ha rebukes as Eve puffs bad mistakes. But he reminds us how mandy cantpalgn of 1944 ranks among alight yet another careinogenlc butt. crowded. heated, and “arrow was the the decisive battles of the hventlcth cm- There’s a new slogan for the Lung Canadian fmnt in Norntandy, and that tury and perhaps of Western Civiliaa- Society. gzenhom Canucks were mggcd by some tlo”.” 0 Bve dithers gnd shrills, evoking vibra- of the most hardened and viclotts of tion of this review&s uvula and soft Hitler’s divisions in Europe. Roy’s book palate - that is, a resounding snore. serves ill a” exhaustive and authoritative “When I regained consciousness,” (to record of how the Canadians learned quote Sagcant Rcnfrew), I found on quickly, overcan~e these obstacles. and page 30 a “padlocked shark.” Is this the got the job done. Canadian Bank ManagcYa “ew hold-up In contrast, Blo& Victmy is a deturent? popular. commemOrative account of the While 6ve, at one end of the book Canadian D-Day landings on June 6, “pauses on the hrbtWof memoty,/and 1944, and of the grinding inland push in of other places” (like Quixote, she’s off the months that followed. Although this in all directions at once), Adam, at the is mainly a pictorial album, J.L. Granat- By Kathleen Moore other, complains of those who stein and Desmond Morton provide a r~& old res,amenls and swen, crisp. vlgomtts text. Readers familiar Adam and Eve I” Middle Age, by IoJind SaIvadon in report v:ith the reputation of there gifted and Rona Murray, Sono Nls Press, 41 pages, ofdevil’s numbem on upapal he1 prolifE historians will not be disap- illustrated, $7.95 paper (ISBN 0 919203 signUy/ng the annrlelrrit. . . . pointed: they neatly compress the back- 52 3). Devil’s numbets on a papal hat? Sounds ground of Canada’s contribution to the Sheba and Solomon, by Karen Mtd- like Sunday Bingo in the e&opal base- war; they battdle with ease and authority hallen, Blcftheria Press, 44 pages, 58.95 ment. the thrust and strategy of battle; and paper, no ISBN. Bemoaning her matronly investment they succinctly analyse the Canadian 80 in the upbringing of her Eden* off- complishmcnt in Normandy. Most .im- A TREK~ta~ for Murray’s book. It must spti”g. Eve whines, “. .‘.and having portant, they catch the Uvepand courage have been the Tree of Knowledge, for pcelcd nty hare bones barc./havbtg of ordinary soldiers, and what it mea”t the Tree of Life (conferring bnmortality) stripped skll from onion skin. . . .” and felt like to he there. languishes untongucd amid these clich6d +rety bate bones needn’t be “peeled”; This breezy history is the perfect leaves and debilitated didactics. Makbtg and the next line is neither metaphor “or complement to the folios of full-page Eve speak. Murray batrays ha own simile but sheet absurdity, u”less we photogmphs and art work. Some qf technique: “So I sttum./i”differe”t to suppose her to be making chlcke” soup. these are old favourites, but most are stress and rhyme,/for fun. . . .I’ Maybe Ah, but “Lives roll out thanselves/ new treasures, and highllgltt the tiny hat fun, but not the reader%. Clubfoot like spendthrift film/and always have,” detail of army life and of men and iambs and tyrannical trochcea pervade. while the “machine of” Eve “reaches

sdtted by Geoiirey Hancock

The current extraordinaryissues, #4B and #49 featureTHE ART OF THE NOVELLA with long A SEARCH FOR THE SEW ON THR ftciion by MICHA~auuoc~ ERNESTH-EN. CANADIAN STAGE MARKFFMKIN. and two manuscripts by KU\IHFRASER. Each story is prefacedby a discussion on by Susan Shm~Bhkbum the narrativestratagles required of a novella. The other side of Daviaa’ career - his passion 0”811WQ,~I:EBMlwch for the theatte and use of the staga to dramatize Next:CFM’s 15th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE bis tastes and ,cotuama, his wit and his wisdom. wDB,oYI~~~r1o1vI.YTxII.3wpl*~hTy~mw.on~112OD. $27.95 Boxgrl6 St&x F.Toronto M4Y2N9 SukswtFmon:s24l4 issues The Universityof British Cobunbta Ras XX-6344Memorial Road Vancouver, &itiih Columbia V6T1W5

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out,/v~ithdraws./batte”s its hatches Babylonian Ishtar. How did the Queen experienced lover and guardian of her doa”.ibattens upon. . . ./Success or feel about this? Did she clash with the land’s fertility, still sleeps between the failure all one.” They certainly atz, if priests of her own retinue? Did she seek unplumbed lines of mythic innuendo, 0 you can get stuff like this into print. sympathy and support from Solomon? “I wish 1 may, I wish I might/corn- Did she promote a goddess cult to this plete the poems/l write tonight,” sighs northern Soleb”ao. taking full advan- Eve-Mlurray. I wish I didn’t have to tage of his evident receptiveness? Mol- complete this book, sighs the reviewer, hsllen tosses all this potential out the boggled while reading of Eve’s raped window with her one reference to Sheba daughter. “. . . the small hairs/scarcely ln the religious aspect of her role as warm behzeo her thighs/a little cyg- Queen: I’. . .I am Sheba your eternal net, coasting unafraid.” The girl’s just priestess. . . .I’ had her arms chopped off, yet the Prank eroticism.is alsO absent from “s”tsJ h&s” - that are, no doubt, Mulhallen’s book. What P probably not By James Garratt pudendum follicles - are a fearless baby widely r4iae.d, is tbat the Song of Songs swan: trosthtg, of course, that we have (from which Mulhalle” filches het best Big Bear: The End of Freedom, by not imputed meaning not explicit in the lines) emtlcally praises the mnn at great ‘Hugh A. Dempsey, Douglas & Mdn- lines. Who knows? Accordllg to Eve, length in the bride’s voice. I have found tyre, 227 pages. $24.95 cloth (ISBN 0 “Only the heron/on the kelp head disappointingly little erotic indulgence 8032 1668 8). knows/ -amanuensis/without motion; aog delight in women’s poetry about THE IMAGErepmduced on tbe dust- iwater sift/calligraphy” - in other me” - their bodies, their looks, their jacket of Hugh Dempsey’s book is fmm words. a scribal seabird is motionlessly~ sensuality. (AM Sexton’s writing is a” one of the most poignant photographs in taking down exact dictation from a ‘exception that comes quickly to mind.) the Public Archives of Canada. It h of a “water sift.” Mulhallen has not challenged this bland Cree chief, Bll Bear (182588). shortly tradition. She approaches the sexual and As Adam “opens the dialogue” he after his arrest for his presumed mle in observes: the sensual obliquely or with cumber- the failed Riel Rebellion. His weather- Cheatsflourish in their enterprise. some restraint. We are left to imagine beaten face gazes undaunted. though lwast I’m-amca”W~, wredwdpors, everything for ourselves, with little help not without sadness, at bis captors. chnsetzn empty line, then plume? from lines like ” . . .here got the Queen Although he had never been a” oppor- rhemsdws like snwing rurkey-cocks. of She+ with child. . .I’; “The tutit, a hint.of desperate opportunism This book would make a wondefil voice the touch the texture/ is now present in his eyes. I” his left gift for your favourite cabbagepatch whitih renews”; “bright horse/ hand he holds a pipe, a talisman from doll, both being stuffed with fluff, bright rider.” We may strain ourselves his recent past. We see the chains of im- turkey-plume or otherwise. to find consummation in “prepotent prisonment trailing fmm his right arm. Sbcba and Solomon mists three great velvet/to velvet,” where the sublime The image gains in pthos nv we read of opportonities. All, or any one of them, union of this exquisitely dynamic couple the events that bmoght Big Bear to the could have inspired a fresh reflection on is veiled by the insinuation that they still end of freedom. the legendary relatlooship. MuIbal1e.n retain their myal robes. Bii Bear was a chief of the Plains CA has passed up the rare chance to explore The book lacks imagination: the char- who, once entirely a woodland people. the political, sexual, and spiritual levels acters for whom it is named are flat and had migrated to the prairies “in the early of a” encounter between wo- and unknown to us by the final page. The 1700s. when, amted with guns and tools ma”, both as equals and powers in their language is cliched and sparse rather from the t+rs on Hudson Bay, they own realms. than spare. (It’s a thii book.) The di* had become middlemen in the great Historical speculation suggests that tion is often ambiguous (“Thou art bent European fur hunt.” This migration hod such a queen as Sheba undertake” on thy horizon”: “Where till I fbtd bmoght the Cree into intensified conflict the l,ZOO-mile trek from southwest you?/Wii you”), and sometimes just with the plains-dwellllg Blackfoot Arabia to visit her northern colleague, bad: “Solomon, who are you?/1 ctm see tribes, and in the years 1824-26a major she would have bee” motivated primari- war raged between them. The warring ly by commercial interests. threatened nations finally forged a treaty, but the by Solomon’s hegentonial expansions. litany of tragedy brought upon thwn by The rumows of Solomon’s wisdom, white settlers was just beginning. magical powers, and prowess with In 1837 a smallpox epidemic broke women no doubt spiced the prospect of out. The disease had been carried into the economic parley. Mulhal@‘s cycle India” territory on a” American Fur neglects this potent debate, and the Company boat. Its effects were devas- intosicatitingpossibilities inherent in the tating, killicillingas many as two-thllds of negotiations preceding and probably only your ckumnish shell.” And some- the Blackfoot. consummated by the mythiil affair. how, a Celtic archaism and a” extinct The love-relation was no doubt also pachyderm materialize in the midst of Immediately after the smallpox epidemic.Bii Bear had a vision. . . . in enlivened by the immemorial spiritual the son-drenched judean landscape: this vision he saw “tbc mmiDg of the struggle: the power of the god versus the “sweep on wing,/ken the mant- white man, his purcbasv of the land, the power of the goddess. The biblical pro- moth’s sormwings/With the whlll/No bounteous presents from the Great phets continually rail against pagan mere swirl. . . .” The voice and view- Mother,” 1i.e. the Queen1 and as it IW ftdtbs. partlcolarly those featuring the point are inconsistent; but most of all, sarcastically described in later years. love-goddess, to whose worship for the ‘love affair” tooted on the back “the generosity of the new-coming race Solomon seems to have been naturally cover ls substituted Sheba-Mulhallen’s to his.” predisposed. Also, the Sabeans of high-school&h ruminations: “Is finding Bii Bear himself caught the disease,and Shebn’s day (her subjects) had adopted someone the same/as falling in low7” “it was hi lkst real gift” from the white the god Attar, male munterpart of Sheba, the Queen, the priestess, the ma”. _,.(_._ii~__.i_~__ -.- __~._~=,Ixi I. _.__..__, _. _I~.___.~i I_.--.--.____--.-.

Dempsey proceeds to document SUP To the author, Torrijos had “rhc ceding “gifts” from the white men, and dmrisma which comes fmm hope” and to reveal Big Bear’s valiant effort to a “romantic dream” of social demo- stem the tide of tragedy engulfing his cracy in Central America that would be people. Ahvws he sought spirirual “no menace to the United States. but guidance in his struggle to retain their completely independent.” A mmantlc freedom. His intense rdlgiow faith gave the handsome Torrijos certaioly was. him the willpower to resist the tempta- AltlKlUghmarriedu,~Ameriean tions offered by the Canadian govern- Jewish woman for 25 years. he thought me”,, who swindled away the lands of Sy Fraser Suthherland nothing of jetting off to Bogota to keep other tribes. The government, however, a date with one of his many women. ws quite determined to give its gift of a Getting to Know the GeneraIt The Chivalrously, he also conceived a better life to the Indians: Story of m holvemenl. by Graham derring-do plot, never executed, to spirit Those rho were on *uva would be Greene, Lester & Orpen Dwmys, 206 Isabel Paon fmm her Argentlnian ennwryed to plant crqx: those who P%ES, $16.95 cloth (ISBN 0 88619 076 house-wrest. had signedtreaties but srill lived by the 2). Without our giving the U.S. State huntwouldpras littlcrupportaspoui- Department too much credit for sagacity blc. so that slanation wouldultimately mm wmum greatest liviog novdlst in or laudable motives. it’s hardly surpris- drive them home. Starvation would En&lh has given us an enchanting little ing that the Americans wcre suspicious force le non-mreatychiefs to s&n. . . . book that is either an unreliable memoir of the General. Afta he’d deposed the Dempsey show how the government or a fragmentary novel - or both. The dynastic Atins family in a 1968 coup, he used starvation as a deliberate strategy plot is pure Be&&s Oflera, with Greene expelled 400 members of the U.S. Peace to civilize the Indians. The govemment es winsome, sweet-voiced and extremely Corps, frequently chatted with his knew it had received a great windfall naive Polly Peachum. The dashing Cap- amigo Fldd Castro, maintaioed stmng when, in the late IBOOs,the buffalo were tain MaeHeath who romancea him in links with rebels in Bl Salvador and exterminated. With the Indians'primary 197680 is genem”s. qulxo& and Samoza-run Nicaragua, and organized food source thus eliminated, the govern- likable General Oman Torrijos. the .his own band of irregularscalled “The ment could afford to ignore their com- Panamanian “Chief of the Wild Pigs.” (You knew you’d gained the plaints. BevoIutlon.” As in any good operetta, good g&s of a Wild Pi when he asked This policy reached the breaking point tbe5z is also a comic servant, one you to “Come and shit with me.“) on the momlmz of Ami12.1885. On that Clmdm, a sergeant in the General’s Yet the General was no orthodox da, in the vi&e ofFm;Lake., Alta., secmity guard and Greene’s “guide, Marxist but a “populist” evidently Suddenly three shots rang out. and philosopher and friend.” Chuchu is adomd by most cl&ens of Panama, a moments later Man Who Speaks Our a gmnl and kind man with e hemae LmlgKige , . . burstrhrouph the door to wisdom much greater than my own. I St& created in 1903 toensure its own announceexcttedly that the white pm- lbtnk my deep affection for him began profitable use of the canal. Despite pm- pie wrc being killed. Bit Bear jumped . . . whenhe wiuitoo drunk to drive with tecting left-leaa Latin American 10 his fea and rushedoutside, shouting, safety. lie broke thmush the lilts and political refugees, he retained members “stop! slop! Don’t do ill Don’t do %I” ranintoapar!&car.... of the ol$reglme on staff, and gave But his words fell upon deaf ears. for Qmchu, who has a “rather vague special pnvdeges to National Guard of- the slaughterhad already byun. number of children by several women” fmers. defending the latter set: “If I On September II, at the subsequent took Greene at the General’s behest don’t pay them, the CIA will.” Pm- trial of Big Bear, “Seven witnesses testi- “wherever I wanted, whether in bably both of them did. Panama, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brratio, sentimental. death-haunted, whether the trips entailed a plane, a Torrijas captivates Greene, and not just hellcopter or a car.” The Ni&mgwn- because he’d bankrolled the writer’s born Marxist is in, fact depicted more jaunts and freely poured the Jobmde vividly than the elusive General. He ex- Walker Black Label. As the fictional ports bulletr to revolutionary neigh- general in On the Way Back tc4l.s a bouts and mismanagea s complicated female American reporter, “You cdl us Latin Americans because you won’t in the hovel Green; wes-writing at the look deep mom& inside yourself - time: he takes B keen interest in his fw where you would find us too.” The tied. . . . Of these, six spoke in Big tiond pm-. On the Way Back never General whom Greene gets to know ls Be&s favour.” Even so, “The jury got ftihed - or possibly Getting to some coL%e&d part OPhimself. took only fifteen minutes to decide on a Know the Geneml is it. . Was Greene “used” by Torrijos and verdict of guilty, with a recommenda- A “sense of fun” prompted Greene to his gwnilla friends in Bl Salvador and tion for mercy.” Big Bear’s fiwdom take up Torrljos’s invitalion to visit Nicaragua? He anticipates the charge. thus came to an end. The flower of Panama. The General also displayed “I have never hesitated to be ‘used’ in a civilization could bloom. humour. Greene winningly admits, cause I believed in. even if my choice The fact is. Big Bear was right in almost when he appointed the novelist to be an mlgbt be only for a lesserevil. We can cvwthing be claimedand everytbtw he official dde.gate- Gabriel Garcia Mar- never foresee the future with any BE- tried to do. Fmm t&76 until the rebel- quez, a mutual friend. was another - to cmacy.” To that end, he consistently lion. he KLSunyielding in his ettempts the signing of the 1977 treaty that gave defends the Sandlnistas. After the latter to west from the governmenta bettu Panama sovereignty over the nmch- dcsl for his people. The fact that he seized power and removed the h%skito falled did not retlect badly on his own disputed Canal Zone. But the comedy Indians from a war zone on the Atlantic ~f;ltnesr, but on the gownmat’s in- ended tra&ally: Torrljos WBSkilled in coastz tlcsibilityand insensitivityto the needs 1980 wha’his small plaae crashed lo the Tom& Borg& the Minister of the Iw of a people from a different culture. 0 Pmlamaldan “ountains. talor. himselfadmltted to me that tbc Sandinistar had behaved clumsily. They evidence for new suspicion is two Canadian plane and Canadian apats had not explained properly to the In- documents harshly crirical of the examined the wrc&ay. I would much dians. he said, the reasnn for removing General, one “apparendy a minority like to read their repott. I am told that the,,, to campr outside the zone. repod” (minority of what?) “dated 11 they Found no sign of engine tmuble Iiowwer, [an] American nun had June 1980 addressed to the State Depart- which leaves “I with the alternative, a virited the camps and she denied the pilot’s error or a bomb. tr”th of their ill-treatment. She found ment in Washington.” the other issued them well housed and well fed and bet- about the same time by something that Earlier. Greene admilted that the ter cared for medically than they had calls i&elf the Council of Inter-American General’s plane watt down in very nasty ever been before. Security. weather, which surely disposes the We need not equae the Smtdinistas So it is that I begIn to vmnderwhetber evidence in favour of an accident. Still. with Stalinins to detect mt ugly echo the runtour current in Panama of a if “the Canadian experts” read thii bomb concealed in a tape recorda here of the Sovier ‘30% “We will pen review, would they please write Graham which was carried unwittingly by ” you in a camp for your own good.” recudty guard in Omar Tordjor’s plane Greene c/o Lester & Orpen Dennys and As for Tonijos’s death, the novelist is to be totally discounted. I camwt but give him something substantial instead hints darkly in a postscript that “I have, remember tlte explosive EverReady of thii muddle of hearsay? Then again, been perhaps unduly sceplical of any tomb and Walt Disney picnic box which it is. worth remembering that a -1 paa played by the CIA . . . .I’ His I swv in Managua. The plane w= P novelisr never stops being a novelist. 0

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A diminutive time-bomb perpetually about to explode, John Griereon brought to hle public career much more than a mere interest in film

John Gtiemon and the NslIonnl Film had used to portray ptimidve so&ties titles provide a satisfaclory survey of the Board: The Polidfs of Wardme Pro- and apply it to the indus~rialired world paE;mdn, by Gary Evans, University of - or, as he used to etioy saying, “We GaryEVans, who was one year old-“‘hen Toronto Press. 347 page.%524.95 cloth LoIdBob we could find enough savages Griuson left Canada hut came to knmv (ISBN 0 8020 2519 6). in Whitehall.” (This sentence, with its him weIl during the last Lwo years of his John Grlerson and Lhe NFB, ECW impartial lactlessness toward Eskiplos, life when he had returned as a visiting Press, 163 pages, 514.00 paper (ISBN 0 Polynesians, and bureaucraB, was so professor at McGill, gives B conscien- 920:02 80 ?Q. chamcieristic that I’m surprised not to tious hismry. This is nicely sup- find it in either of these hooks.) plemented by the other book, which AN UNLIKELY THINO happened to Documentary, then, “‘as sdll a young conraiw Ihe pmceedittgs of a Ioh Ctutada in Ihe fall of 1939: not fhe out- form what irs creator arrived in GLtwa. Grierson conference held at McGill in break of wat - that had been all too It was chiefly produced in Britain by 1981. In it we hear from many of Grier- likely - but John Grierson, s Grierson’s former organization, the son’s associates, including some who phenomenon smaller in size but m”re mB. later tbc GPO Fii Unit. which in were in the NFB in his time: Lou Apple- immediately explosive. His appoinl- the war moved to the Ministry of Infor- baum, Jim Beveridge, Tom Dali, and mat, to the newly created post of mation under the “ame of the Crown Marganl An” Elton. goverttment film commissioner, was Film Unit. Its nearest rival was Henry II should be understood thai these perhaps the mosL “ncharacteristic Ihat Luce’s The MoFh of Time. which books are not just, or even primarily. the hIackenrie King government ever ~;eU~~techntques of documentary for people with a specialized interest in made. Its impact was great; just how film: Grierson is a much larger subject enduring it was is shown by the publica- The act establishing the National Film than that. The son of Lwo Scorch tion of two books on the subject 45 years Board had been devised by Gtierson as a Presbyterian teac&rs, tid the pupil of later. visiting cottsultani. When the minister of Wallet L.ippman, he gave his life la In 1939 it was only 10 years since wade and commerce introduced it in the public education. In a sense his whole Or&on had made for the British spring of 1939, he pictured the Board as career w*s an effoorr to answer gwemmau Empire Marketing Board a coordiiting. not a pmducittg body, Lippman’s gloomy prognosis thal the his iibn of the herring fshery, Dr#@zrs, with “only one paid man in the world was becomtig too complex for which is regarded as the foundation of organlzatiott,” and not in competition sensible decision-making by ordinary documentary as a genre. There had been with private business. Famous last people, so that democratic control was precursors. of course: among them words. B”L perhaps it would have turned ultimately imposslhle. Film was Grler- Cawlcanti’s Rien pue /es heurcs (1926) out Uds way if it hadn’t been for the ouL- son’s usual medium, and he had an and Robert Flaherty’s Nunook of the break of war, end if Gtierson hadn’t extraordinary feeling for its aesthedc, Norfh (1922) and Molrnlr (1926j. The been called back Lo take the job - for but he never confused the medium wifh term documentaire had been used BElhe six months, it was mid - until a Catta- French for ‘Vravelogw,” but it was diatt could be found. When he actually McLuhan ever meet? Thai kdd have Grierson. not yet himself a film-maker, left, six years later. NFB had nearly 800 been a speclacle wvmtb watching.) In who applied “documentary,” in a employees, producing ahour 2.50 fdms a Ottawa he had his great opportiudty: review, to ~&ma. What he did with year. not only as head of the Fii Board, hut Drfiemws to take the method Flaheriy Th6se two books with nearly identical fmm January, 1943, to January, 1944 ~_.. .^_ .~._I.. .~_=.__ _.__._. r-~.--~-.1.1.-.-_--- _~._. ~.l____. __ __..~_~...L_. _._._-... -... ~_~.

as genml manager of the Wartime In- Players fmm working against him. Un- formation Board, he dominated the in- fortlmately colo”el cooper was a formation apparatus of the country. dedicated anti-Klne Torv and B friend of This ps.rt of his career makes s the dissident Liberal p&ier of Ontario, fascinating study in its central problun: Mitchell Hepburn. The consequences the question whether government- were appalling, and it was B miracle that sponsored prop;yanda can be - as the Grlerso” wasn’t blow” out of the water Nazis said it was - also public enlight- then and there. Again, late in the wr, he enment. (Evans is perhaps inflating wrote to Mackende King to urge him to things a little when he says that “the dllnxiss his minister of labour and take By Iwichiei Horn Second World War was 81 least on one the portfolio himself. Walter Tornbull. level B chess gyne between the Goebbeb King’s principal secretary, wisely filed Seeking n Bslance: University of snd Grie~so” teams,” but one sees \vhat the letter before the old man could see it. Sa&atchewa”. 1907-1982, by Michael he meaos.) Wartime was a time of My own favoorite memory of Grier- Hwden, University of British Columbia unusually broad co”se”s”s. when perty so” ls of B winter evening when two of us .Pnss, illustrated, 379 pages, 924.95 diffcrcnees were minimired, sod as long were workiog late. Grlerson burst in, cloth (ISBN 0 7748 0194 8). as Grierso” and his disclpler remained, homburg on the back of his head. his as he loved to say, “one inch to the left face shining with triumph and alcohol. tiic~aa~ HAYDEN’S STUDY of the of the pyry in power,” they could deal He had bee” before the Treasury Board University of Saskatchewan will be cith social issues with less danger of that afternoon, defending his NFB welcomed by those interested in the I mlsiw party hackles than a any other anployees against the charge that their history of the province as well as in the time. sppearanee and manners were discredit- history of higher education; This tine I” all this. Grierson’s personality was able to the public service.. He had book is, he tells us, institutional rather a powerful asset among his employees, answered, he s&J. “Yes, I know they than social or intelleaual history. Yet we vzhom it turned into disciples; it was leave a black ring round the bathtub. learn a good deal of social and political oko, among the politicians and man- But take shit, gentlunen. You know history in reading it. darins who employed him, a disaster what shit is, gentlemen? It’s “arty stuff, I” its early days tbe university had perpetually about to happen. For the dirmty stuff. But if ye ain’t got it, ya much independence. It was state- former aspect, see Grabam Mclnnes’s ain’t healthy.” I silently doubted supported but not statscontrolled. description, quoted by Evans from a” whether he had made many friends that Hayden tmces the gradual erosion of unpublished typescript. of his fust inter- day. independence since the 1930s. riev: with Or&on: “He ws wound up The slurs thst clung to him after the culminating in the University Aa of tighter than a !vatch sod gave a t-e”- Gouzenko affair were of course absurd. 1974, and writes that this biU has placed dous sense of controlled strength, of Inevitably, many of the people he the university in constant danger of bounding energy and burstiog vitality attraaed to NFB and WIB were government interference. This book is barely held in check by the diminutive socialists, and inevitably a few of these not only a history of the university but a body.” That’s exactly horn he struck me weos Stalinists - they wae on our side defence of institutional autonomy and xhcn he interviewd me for ” very junior at the time. if you remember. Grierso” scadmic fiwdom. job in WIB. himself was far too edeaic in his views Hayden focuses on the four presidents Not everyone became a disciple. of e.vex to have bee” a Communist. And from 1909 to 1974. The 0rlginal univer- course. He found thii rare phenomenon Orlemon as a spy ls unthinkable. That sity Act gave the president a great deal b”ftIllg when it occurred. Once, speak- pmfersio” requires concealment and of power, whieh became amply clear ing to me of Stuart Legg, most dedicated dllerrtion. skills utterly beyond his during the crisis of 1919, when the first of his dlreaors, he contmsted him with reach. and most successful, Walter Murray. W.H. Aode”, who had vorked with him It’s curious that the publishers of both had little difftity in tiding theinstitu- o” two films in the 19305 but had left these books chose the sanw picture pf tie” of four senior faculty mnnbers who him. “Aude” said, ‘But I’ve got to go. Grlerso” to adorn the jacket of the one had attacked his leadership. Murray’s They’re applauding The Dog Eeneafh influence - he served until 1937. - r/x Skin in the West End.’ And he helps to explain why even during the vent.” And he looked at me with Depression neither faculty “or students . genuine incredulity that Aude” could seemed very radical. The faculty, have felt B higher imperative. Hayden notes, “have never bee” famous As for his relations with his masters, or infamous for their radical views.” Ew”s speaks of him as moving “adroit- ,I” order to gain continued public sop- ly through the corridors of politics and port for the tinivealty, Murray and bis pov:er.” I thinl; a more accurate adverb soccesso~~ stressed service to the corn- vould be “luckily.” He barged thmugh munity and the state. Such research as those mine-strew” corridors with a co”- took place - and in agricultore it ws of fidence in his star that perhaps derived key importance from the beginning - from his thEe years on B minesweeper in tended to be applied rather than the other xx. Evans gives some hair- theoretical. The humanities and social raisins examples. When he went away, sclenccr “ever ranked high, and stood soon after his appointment. to fulfil lowest under J.S. Thomson, president some previous mmmitnxnts in Australia from 1937 to 1949. His successor, the and New Zealand, he chose as his tern- and the cover of the other, since it hap biologist W.P. Thompson, wa$ take” porary replace”le”t Colonel coope.r* the pe”s to look entirely unlike him. I think aback when federal funds .became a&- head of the Motion Piaure Distributors’ it’s a piaure of Hider, trying out B new able in the late 1950s to build the long- Association. He thought this was B moustache before escaping to Argon- delayed Arts Building. Eve” though arts clever ldm as it v:ould prevent Famous tbla.0 professors were three to four in one ofIicc. Thompson saw no urgent need sion within the twocampus institution laborious. but the story he tells is fascl- for such a building. had reached the point Lhat externally nating. Nor only presidents but also Thompson was followed by John imposed change seemed neccrsary. faculty and students get plenty of atten- Spinks, whose tenure (1959’74) was “a Hayden deplores the form that change tion. There are some curious holes in the time of crisis.” Separatist lendencles in took, however, and he is particularly bibliography.. possibly the result of Regina College Led to independence in critical of the government’s dismissal of Hayden’s background m a historian of 1974. Student unrest in the late 1960s Spinks. Europe, ratha than of Canada. Hi and early 1970spmwd disruptive; so dld The balance between study and sexvice failure to discuss ehangcs in the terms of Liberal Premier Ross Thatcher’s attempt has been lost, Hayden concludes, ju@ as academic tenure at Saskatchewan is to influence spending within the univer- the institution’s unity and independence disappointing. Some readers rviU find sity. Faculty members became inaea~- have. He takes rather a dark view of the Hayden’s conclusions too ah-mist. ingly critical of the administradon and future. As for the paa, he has chmn- Nevertheless, this is a useful book that is governing hoard. When the New Demo- i&d and analysedits accnnplishments also, given its length and the many pages cratic Party gained oftice in 1971disscn- and failureswith care. His style is a bit of photographs, reasonably priced. 0

Whether Newfoundland or Yorkville, the ‘authentic’ settings of two, new novels do llttlf * to overcome their slender plots By Alberta Manguel

ILLIMI GOIJOHT Mead’s House &to the world. coming to seek enwloy- curiousiy,the aulhor has chosen to (Breakvza‘er, 138 page& $9.95 ment in the house ‘ha‘ till one day be give his character a Gothlw~ovcl setting: paper) is a one-character novel. her own, as the title raninds us. 6vcry- not in the plot but in the devices of the * gore. There arc, for instance, theslmng n Rlaud, a spirited Newfoundland thing has to be learnt once again: new womul, is traced from youth to co”vcntlons, new codes of manners. family clans - fust Maud’s own family. later middle age in a stmggle to Maud most learn what door to use then that of her employer. Maud’s fmd both her position in society (kit&e” or front), where to eat (not with leaving home as a young girl brhw to and her identity as a person. The the family but in her mom), what the mind that early Victorian world of other people la rhe book act as people of the house require. Maud has strone conventions. “If you aoes.” her mirrors that reflect Maud’s courage, Maud is strong: several irate fatha says to her, ““e&r s& foot thoughts and actions, wit”esse.sto rrmlnden i” the novel make it clear that back home aaai”.” The Skirner. the old II her changes and ha growth. she is equal to any ma” - that she can paularc M&d has gone id w&k for, We come across Maud at the age of wield a hammer or shake hands with exerts his powvcron hll two sons and hi JO: flashbacks illuminate her early days. vlaour. mend furniture or apply paint to daughter-in-law, but not on Maud. memories of her fuat dating cx&si& th; wails. Maud has ‘he courage of the Gothic heroine and quickly secures her .own ground. Early in the novel Maud finds out that the sister-in-law, Bassie. had also “‘8one into service” a&l the” &ed 6m;o”e of the Skipper’s sons. Maad will follow ASIF brinyfurther proof were needed, West Wm Lost. by Geoffrey Urscll B&e’s footsteps (eve” though the the flourishing state of Western (Macmillan); and The Sdvation of villagers don’t know what to caU her - Canadian writing was amply dunon- Yasch Siemens, by Armin Wiebe they ca”“ call her Em’s “Mlssus,” as sbated in 1984’s crop of fmt ntwels. (TlX”.%to”C). that title corresponds to Bcssle, llow Three of the six tidi.sts for the ninth This year’s short lisl was prepared dead). But death interrupts Maud’s care- annual Books in Canada Award for jointly by writer-translator Paul fully constructed life: the accidental First Novels - which offers a prize Wilson and editor-critic Albert0 death of Em, whose memory will haunt of $1,000 for the best fm‘ novel Ma”@, both of whom have con- her from then onwuds. published in Ellgllsh in Canada dur- tributed columns about first novels to I am ‘old that Gough’s re-cxeatlo” of ing calendar year 1984 - are books Books in Canada du& the past Newfoundland language is correct; I am set in the Prairies. (And two - one year. The other judges arc: Dan not ccrtai” that it safflces to lend true set in the Prairies, the other not - Mozcfsky, manager of Prosper0 Lifeto the character. The Gothic devices are. for whatever reason, by and Books in Ottawa: Leslie Peterson. work but also make the sum plot for@ about Mennonites.) currently on a year’s leave from ha seeable. The flarhbacks add a little The six titles on the short list are: post as book review editor of the suspense, as lhe reader follows I$aud’s Corrnfry of the Hecartr, by Sharon Vancouver Sun; and novdit~ Leon mrmorics piecing together her life. Butala (Fifth House.); Precious, by Rooke, writer-in-residence at the Cettah~ passages and descriptions of ’ Douglas H. Glover (seal); Dazzled, University of Toronto, and Cam1 people and events as seen thmush by John Gray (Irwin); I Hcar the Shields of Winnipeg. Their verdict Maud’s eyes arc written with strong Reaper’s Song, by Sara Stambaogh and comments will be announecd in a dramatic sense: (Raincoast); Perduez Or How the forthcoming issue. 0 For Vincethe world has skvped and is watchinghim. He kaowsthe curuinr are back from all the windows around the point. lie knowsthat old womenare callingold men to comr and take a Iwk. He Is PWBR of his differat-looking suit, the slopeof hisshoulden. theaeuff of dirt to the side of the trw~rs. the suiteax hugeas a bouldernear him, and Maud blocking the way into the door. The pastorgone, he has hurt his hand. Historical Paintings & Prints and the only way out doesn’t off= much dllnity. Arctic Art and Artifacts - Ehrly But there lacks a vasta vision u) passages like thiid: a larger story that Nautical & Scien&c Instruments Gough hat chosen not to tell. One Marine Paintings - Scrimshaw wishes to know more about Mad and hrr people, more of their hlbxy. more Traditional 8i Contemporary of their hmdscape. Perhaps Maud’s Landscapes, Sculpture and House is only a beginning. wiT&ie If Mud’s House remains discreet, unobtrusive, Yorkville DlarIes, by Don 0GauerY L4IYIDNms JN AJxJl- Lyons (Elephant Press, 206 pages, S5.95 psper). sprawls tdl wer the place. Arits EXPL(PRATIORI I8 BlrchAwvcnuu,T&mo.~I4V lWt.Tcl.(416)921-515 title cot~ectly states, these ax the diaries of a Yorkville character. a l&‘ear-old WmSE AcmssYobnCe Stwct fmm theSumm~ddll Suhwnr Station kid vzho ramts Toronto between Bay Street and Avenue Road. The blurb compares Lyotts to Samyan and Jimmy Breslin; there is little indication of either in the page-after-page teenage anecdotes that deal in a quite conventional way with drugs. sex and of course, violence. Yor;‘;villeDiaries is set in the l%Os, that Disneyland time of joy and etdigbt- enment. The characters activities can be summed up in a paragraph, such as the one dated “Ott 1965”: School’sbeen back six weeksand I’ve Sate sis tima. \Vhat I do is head down to the Villrye, drop my books offat the Supertcrrand hang out with Ltury and Stormin or roll in sweet Sue’s arms. Around three in the afternoon I collecl my books (what a joke!) and head for the Dutch Sisterswhere I put in a few hours. Back and forth tbrouglt the world of Yorkville, the characters spend their time visiting new bang-outs. meeting “chicks” tmd vying lo decide who is gay and rho is straight. Bikers get a share of the story (one girl hides not one but two knives, one in her bra, the other in her pocket) and the book ends with a biker’s jaw being wired up In hospital. The characters are caricatttt’es:Here is a dialogue with a French girl, Elvira: During toni~ht’ht’smeal 1 arked Elvlra. who liwt acts the hall fmm us in this tiny mom. if sheWY F.L.Q. It wa one of my brighter moments. “Non. NM, I am being from Thlers, France. Where is F.L.Q. pIeare?” “R’S not really a geagmphll place. It’s more like a stateof mind.” “Out! outl In United Statu you say? I comprehend.” N&her the humour of ils prose nor the intricacies of its plot sustain the reader’s Ytetttion: Yorhviik Diaries reads like P watered-down script for Animal House. 0 ‘I don’t b&eve in an artificial separation bst.weeninteresting people.and or$i?av people. 1 don’t belleve there IS any such dlfferenbabon 5~ &?or~3 Gal8 HARLESRITCHIE. distinguished this in this obsess& way without think- BiC: Did you write every day7 One sup Canadian diplomat and diarlst, ing they’d be published, certainly not poses not. was born in Halifax in 1906. He consciously. God knows what goes on in Ritchie: No. nof even’ day. Somerimes attended Oxford and Harvard. your subconscious. I lhink the first time three or fo& days laier. ?uy seldom, then joined the department of ea- the subject really came up was when I ternal affalairsin 1934. He has sew read the war diaries to 6Uzabetb Bowen in the morning. som& ed as ambassador to Bonn, in the year before she died, 1972. She en- times in an interval of work ln the morn- permanent ambassador of Canada couraged me. She said, “You should ing. When 1 wrote at night it WBPnotice to the United Natlons, amhassk- publish these diaries,” the war ones. She ably quite different. I’d had a drink or dor to Washington. and bll com- never saw tbe others. I think that was the two by the time I wrote the rdghr ones missioner to London. The Sian first time I really thought that perhaps and they were, if possible, worse than 9 Yews, his war diaries (193745) I’d take a shot at& the day ones. were. published in 1974. Since then his BiC: Had you never rwd your diaries to BlC: So it wasn’t so much o d&ciplinc publisher, Macmillan. hag issued three her before? os. . . . more dkuics - An Appetite forLife Bltchie: No, never. Bltchle: As an addlction. (1977). D@lomatic Passport (1981). and BlC: There’s oo interesting tens;on in BiC: Did you ed other diorivLv7 Storm Signals (1983) - covering the your books between ando& and dirrre- Ritchie: Yes, I did. Any diaries I could years before and after his diplomatic lion. You write explicit& that nothing to gel hold of. I rather like diada by career and including his lifelong friend- do with mclai secrets was included. obscure people. Not the Pcpys of this ship with the novelist Eliibeth Bowa. Obvious& (I lot of your p&we fife world or evca the Vi&da Woolfs. I’m Now retired, he divides his time between wawz’t included either. Was it edited out fascinated by tbe odd diaries that were London, Chester, N.S., and Ouawa, befon publication, or did you simply kept by people who didn’t auain great where he was intcwicwd by George choose not to write about such things? fame. For instance, I remember reading Gak: RitchIe: Well, some thii were left 0”t. a diary by some woman - I’ve forgot- but compared to what was MI in, very ten who - an American who married an ‘ Eoo!~ in Canada: How conscious were little. I think it’s a way candid case Englishman in about 1830 and went to you when you wwmwriting your diaries history, but ir isn’t a true confessional, Italy, and there she mcr an’ old gIr1 that tlxy might someday be published? so to speak. 1 would IX it very difficult who’d known Bymn. This old woman Ctorles Rltchie: When I was actually to write about intimate emotional rcla- said to her, “I can still hear the sound of writing them I warn’‘’ conscious that tionships or conversations. I didn’t write his foot dragging on the marble stakcasc they’d be published at all. It seems all that down. as he came up these stairs.” Things like rather hard to believe that snybody BiC: So you didn’t trccrtyour dimy ox o that arc fascinating. would be foolish enough Lo go on doing kind ofcoq/?dant. Bif2 Was Elizabeth Bowen a Mvng Rltehie: It was more like this. I think litem~ ii&enn7 that perhaps then was some therapy in Rltchie: She wasn? a literary Influence it. IL par things at a slight distance fmm in the scnsc that I new asplred to write me, to write them down. This became a like her. Having no capaclty as a story- sort of addition. a habit. IL some&&s teller or novellsr myself, I don’t tbb& took the pain or the heat oat of a sirua-_ that my style was evex affected by know- lion. I don’t mean I only did it for that ing her. But she certainly was a great purpose, but I think this had some part influence. ln it. Bur the prime motive, I think. was BiC: Could you soy in what wqys7 to pin down a moment, a scenc;and had Bltchle: Well, humanly speaklug. And I been able to do so. a personality. You quite apart from my devotion to her. she knpw,my mother.who had a great in- was the most terrifically good company. fluence on me, war a mawcllow mimic. She wasn’t like the real Bloomsburys If she were In this mom she could bring who grew up in a tiny liltle co&ie the dead to life. The voice was caacfly shdtucd from the world in a sort of right. The gestures wcrc exactly right - goldf& pool whcrc they all lived a bad mimic is the worst thing in the together. She hadn’t had that kid of world. I think in my wrldng I wanted to life at all. She’d Lived quite a lot ln the do rather the same thing she was doing: country in Ireland, and she hadn’t got a to brbu that person or Lhalszene or that formal educatioa. Tbwe was much more moment to life, ln movcment. Of of ordinary life in her. She ti”t a course, it’s a very dlffIlr thing to do. hyperscnsltive, hypersopbllticated pro- But lbls was the impulse. duct of the English upper middle claws

.- .-.-.-_.. ..- - . . . . I.<______, ._ _._,..IY__ T--?-uI.: .5- a.7 ..*--,l; T.--T,. 5.?i:.i.,.~--;-,-~.-~,_~~~~~ i...‘-.‘E_.:-;. -.-- of the Strttchey-Bloomsbury conneaion. position. Perhaps one piece would be a Ut’GN TIM ROCK- Paul UNelll I think that gives B tremendous swour lo scene of lhe Bay of Naples and the oth,er her witing. It makes it different. Also would be a photograph of their grantd- r very funny. Extremely comic. father. Eit2 Did you haw any interest yourse~ BiC: A mllnge. in writing fiction? Rttchie: A collage, yes. That’s what I’,m sS0.00deluxe editton rmhk uku,I ttied. I’VEooeasiona~~y really seeking after, rather than a scrtIP tried short stories. I began once B novel, screen. but I soon put it aside. I realized this BIG: There’s sotnething oj the coUect~w wasn’t r thing I could do, and if I in :hal, kn’t lhen?? couldn’t do it well I didn’t want to go Riffhie: Yes, trying to pin the thirIB aheadwith it. It just died on me. I real- down before it slides away, trying tog a ized the scrap b&et WBSretily the only the word for it and nail it down. Yes, I ; place for it. It was a different thing fmm suppose that’s tight. There is a part, 3f tbe diary. It sprang from different the collector in it. motives: the story. the plot. It WBSwhat BIG: Did you ever think of/awing urle 1F- I v.w after. but I hadn’t got it. noI flairs to lake up writing fill-time ‘7 BlCz And yet you have so mmy of (I Rllchie: No, no. I was very lucky. Bxte r- novelist’s sensibilities, the keen eye for nal affairs gave me a good oppommi~ cbamcter and for detail. . . . And then there was the famous-name PWhle: Well, 1 found a form, I stunt- depamnettt. There are a great mar bled on B form in which I could put scattered around. though I trust III anecdotes. personalities, nzflections, dropped, through my books. They? xencs, and so on, together. There used wry good copy, and they helped tt to be thosescrap screens. I don’t know if hooks to be published. But fund; you wet saw one. People cut out things mentally I’m just as interested in II and put them nest to each other in juxta- cousin Susie in Halifax as I am in, well.

FEW nG”tt~s of speech are so 0 Bondugefor Beghem, by Jan Truss pointedly foolish as the oxymoron. 0 Figure Eight. by Ann glades that bittaswea expression that con- Hostoumble metttiotts: joins two seemingly contradictory 0 Nirwna, by MickaetBtlss ideas, such as “jumbo shrimp; 0 ;‘,&tde to Anatomy, by A.R.M. “militaq intelligence,” or “Pro- gressive Conservative.” That was the 0 U&htly skin Problems and Their premise of probably our most suc- %=atmenl, by Harry Boyle cessful CttnWit - No. 29 - way - Dean Jobb, Halifax bsck in 1975. To celebrate CattWit’s 100th ittstalment (Dcsr God, con it q A Bzremenl Full @ Relatives, by really have been 10 Jws?), \\&e W.P. Klnseiia 0 My fxpcrences with the Fat L&y, by repeating our great oxymoron contest Irving Layton for a v;hole new genetatiott of con- - Michael P.J. Kennedy testants. And - as we did Io 1978 - Vansmy, Sask. we’ll double the prbx to B whopping 350 for the best colIeaion of sly oxy- q Obscenity,P.-&a&y. madParilame~ morons received before April I. tory Pmcedum, by Sir Charles G.D. Address CanWit No. 100, Books in Roberts Canada. 366 Adelaide Street East, - Tara Daniels-Draper. Toronto Toronto M5A 3X9. 0 A tfktw o/Pm~kytncftcs. by Carol Shields E&t& of CnnWit No. 98 W.M. McLaughlin, Windsor, N.S. OUR RE00ESr for punning titles for books by real writers pmvoked an 0 The WoUat Ike LSwr, by DavidGurr avaknche of entrier, a number of - Rosalie I. Tennison shich linked Charles Lyncli with Carman, Man. capital punishment. Brian Fawat with plumbing, and Roth Carrier 0 Skakevmwe’sBird, by Leon Rooke with hauling stottes. The winner is - Barbam Wade, Toronto Josn Mffirath of Toronto for a list that includes: 0 A Walk b the Countv, by John Run for II, by Carol Bolt Me&f tlYGAin’t You Rtch?. by - June K. Thicke, Ladysmith, B.C. smart 0 The Happy Motor Mechanic, by Bliss Carman 0 L’Auw by Jane1Lunn - David J. Paul. Lucan. Oat”

_. _.. _ _ ._._ -.. ----r,. .-<_- .,,. --s L. _,- L.... -<. _ -.. --J,;r,+. ;-,-:--+.r_r -:-.i..- --?I~ C. was going to say President Kennedy. attempted Russian invasion of Poland. That’s not a very good example, but I What that had to do with mei Ilviy in don’t believe in an artificial separation Halifax and going to Mnity Colle.6e betweu interesting people and ordinary School in Port Hope, I really cattoot people. I don’t believe there is any such imsgine. But it did interest me. differentiation. BiC: You’re sdU/lnding diaries. Bit: But _vou wanted to keep the so- Rftchie: WeiI, I found this little volume. called in&wsIing people a part of your It’s chikliih, really. There are quite a lot II@?? of them down in the cellar. But I can RiteMe: Yes. I did. Perhaps when I was never find the one I want. youni~ I thought interesting people were BIG: Are you still writing them? a different category. RItchie: Sporadically. I can 6x for weeks without writing. and then suddenly something sparks and I begin agaln. I Rftchie: Very much so. And from a very new., quite know what sets me off. 0 early age. Very curious, I have a diary I found the other day that I wrote when I was 13. There’s quite a lot about foreign policy in that. Quite a lot about the

rt-tu mt.towt~~ Canadian books wete reviewed bt the previous iyue of Books in Canada. Our recommendations don’t nece.wtiIy reflect the re.vIews: Classlfled rates: $8 per llns (40 characters to the line). Deadllne: first of FICTION the month for issue dated following Lsdies of the House. by Sandra Birdsell, month. Address: Books in Canada Class- Turnstone Press. Never the superior Ified. 366 Adelaide Street East, Toronto Author, Bit%9 replaar moral judpments MA 3x9. Phone: (416) 366-5425. with the patience. thoughtfuhuss. and AWARDVJINNING CHILDREN’S CAS. concernof a aood-naturedgod who loves his children but neverthelessmust remain SEfTES - stories. So"QS. Ideal for travel, quiet times. gifts. Free catalogus. silent. Her down-to-earthimages produce IO storks of remarkablerichness. “A Gentle Wind”. BOX 361-B. Svdenham.. Ont. IQIH 2To. NON-pICl!ION THE BEAST UNVEILED. The definitive solution to 666 found in Sumerian patty, by Robot Bothwell. University of astronomy, basis of major rellglons. 12” Toronto Press. hiore than a corporate x 12”. $12.60 paper. $25&l hardcover, history- of which it is an excellentaam $43.20 collectors edition. Not available pie - this is a Brst-rateexamination of the In stores. Cheque or money order to mle and mana6eou.ntof awn cotpota- Tessaract Press. P.O. Box 582. Vlctorla tioss. Bothwell’sobservations should be lo Statlon, Westmount, P.Q. H32 2YB. the minds of thosein Ottawa now contem- plating our economicfuture. CANADIANA 5 POLAR 600X8. Out.of- print. Reasonable prims. CatalOQUe $1.00 to new customers. Thunderblrd Books, P.O. Box212QZ. Sidney, B.C. VSL 356.

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_. ._ AND THE WINNER IS . . . The ninth annual Books in Canada Award for First Novels

POWER PLAYER A profile of award-winning playwright George F. Walker By Timothy Wynne-Jones

DRAMATIC READINGS Reviews and notices of the year’s theatre publications

Reviews of new books by J.T. Morley, Marie-Claire Blais, Heather Robertson, Neil Bissoondath, Glenn Gould, and much more

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