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Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

Richler, Mordecai. Oh Canada! Oh !: Requiem For A Divided Country. Toronto: Penguin, 1992. Pp. 277 Sandra Campbell

Volume 21, Number 2, March 1993

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1016798ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1016798ar

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Cite this review Campbell, S. (1993). Review of [Richler, Mordecai. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem For A Divided Country. Toronto: Penguin, 1992. Pp. 277]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 21(2), 118–121. https://doi.org/10.7202/1016798ar

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early twentieth century architecture is a black and white drawings and 16 in masons and engineers were able to ac• rapidly shrinking resource that we sus• colour. One of the designers is quire professional credibility as ar• pect may have some value if we can only anonymous and three have no bibliog• chitects in the days before the find it before it vanishes. Most Canadian raphical information. Of the other thir• establishment of current regulations. In cities still have some left despite the teen, only three were immigrants, the nearly every drawing, architectural con• widespread destruction since the 1950s. other ten were all St. John native sons or tent is based on well-known stylistic con• What remains is highly valued because it at least New Brunswegans. None had ventions, though a few are freely projects an image of richness, craftsman• formal, academic training in architec• interpreted. Initial establishment of an ar• ship, pride, care, and worth that speaks ture. Nine of the thirteen became chitectural profession in Canada is seen of civic virtues, and represents the kind professional architects through some to have been deeply indebted to tradition• of community we want to build. form of office apprenticeship. The al forms and styles. At that time these others were able to establish themsel• were the traditions of the community, not These dear old, knobbly relics, from the ves as architects based on credibility just of the profession. Since then, the dawn of Canadian urbanism, possess earned in a related field such as build• profession has lost this grounding in wonderfully enjoyable features that seem ing, engineering, carpentry, or mason• widely-shared formal conventions, and no longer accessible either to our current ry. In other words, as Hughes must somehow seek to regain it. Music construction industry or to our architects emphasizes in his introductory text, of the Eye does not tell us how to do and designers. Recent attempts to apply these men contributed to establishing this, but certainly shows very clearly similar forms in large scale commercial architecture in Canada by setting up that it once did exist. The book is as and civic buildings by conspicuous dis• themselves as architects individually, deeply enjoyable as the architecture, play of historically derived detail emerge proceeding from a craft to a profes• an outstanding exhibition catalogue, as artificial and insincere despite, or per• sion, in exactly the way that the profes• rich in local knowledge. It is a pity that haps because of, their largeness and sion itself had done somewhat earlier in the colour plates could not have been their glitter. This particular brand of Post- Europe. printed at full page size, as the draw• Modernism seems to think that a few ings deserve, and it is to be hoped that paste-on pediments can achieve instant Music of the Eye is a catalogue written more comprehensive publication of historical and cultural continuity. But un• to accompany a travelling exhibition of such material will be possible in the fortunately, architecture has a relentless architectural drawings. Each drawing is future. way of always telling the truth. No matter accompanied by a short essay con• what we do, our buildings always show cerning issues adhering to the graphic, H. STANLEY LOTEN what we really belief, whatever we may its author, and the project. Subjects dis• School of Architecture intend. cussed are various, ranging from pos• Carleton University sible sources of stylistic influence to The designers of the buildings historic sketches of building types, and Richler, Mordecai. Oh Canada! Oh presented in Music of the Eye probably patterns of urban development in St. Quebec!: Requiem For A Divided did not have to wrestle with such thorny John. Some drawings are more or less Country. Toronto: Penguin, 1992. Pp. issues in the self-conscious way we everyday office products, but nearly all 277. must face them today. Perhaps this in• are satisfying merely as drawings, and nocence is one of the qualities that en• some are very fine. It is difficult to "A man without land," goes the refrain of dears their work to us and that we are avoid the inference that quality of draw• 's satirical novel The inclined to envy. However it came ing and quality of architecture may be Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz about, whether by intent or inadver• related. Text references imply that (1959), "is nobody." After reading tence, their work has a ring of authen• many more such drawings have been Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!, we ticity that we would sell our souls for, preserved in various archives and sug• can only conclude that a man who and a capacity to engender love that gest the possibility of a more com• writes on his land is vilified. The book we can scarcely hope to gain. They prehensive publication that would be is a long essay on the state of the na• were the first generation of Canadian very valuable indeed. Hughes' introduc• tion, an amplification of Richler's piece architects. Twenty of their number, ac• tory essay focuses on architectural for in the fall of 1991. tive in St. John from 1822 to 1914, are drawings as one of the means by Richler's astringent account of the represented in this collection by 42 which former builders, carpenters, state of Canada, with its harsh picture

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of Francophone/Anglophone/Allophone The book's strength—and paradoxically to his subject matter. What relevance, for relations in Quebec, has evoked, its great weakness—is its tone. Richler's example, have the Christ Coin scheme of among much else, an angry response visceral prose exudes and evokes pas• Sinclair Stevens fame or the RCMP's from Lise Bissonnette, editor of Le sion, not reason. As a writer, Richler has Fruit Machine to the current national Devoir, and an indignant petition from a always been a moralist, and like many debate? primarily anglophone group of intellec• moralists, he favours the satiric mode. tuals sympathetic to Quebec, headed Satire holds vice or folly up to ridicule, If Richler never uses a neutral adjective by Patricia Smart, a critic of Québécois often through exaggeration, and there is where a loaded one can be found, the literature active with Canadian Forum. no doubt that Richler feels that the cur• book is nevertheless grounded not in The petition denounced Richler for rent state of the country is culpable folly. sensationalism, but in deep-seated pas• arousing partisan animosities in His conclusion is succinct: "Our continu• sion and outrage. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec. In the interests of harmony it ing quarrel [between anglophones and Quebec! \s no light-hearted, nose-tweak• seems that Richler should have francophones]—still unresolved, as I ing look at the current state of a city presented his analysis nicely or not at all write—could yet lead to the dismember• (), a province (Quebec) and a (or eschewed uncharitable references in ment of this incredibly rich but ineptly country (Canada) but a savage cri de his text to the literary quality of Lise governed country" (236). Even the title Oh coeur. Anyone who has followed Bissonnette's prose and that of Canada! Oh Quebec! is a satiric echo Richler's career as an essayist (Shovel• Canadian Forum). Readers of Le Devoir, not only of Canada's national anthem but ling Trouble, Home Sweet Home) for their part, were bemused to en• of Samuel Butler's nineteenth-century knows that the view of his country counter Lise Bissonnette's heated satiric poem about the foolish philistinism presented in this book is part and par• rejoinder to Richler's indictments of and puritanism of Montreal where classi• cel of his lifelong view of the nation, racism against Le Devoir \n the Thirties, cal Greek statuary was banished to a not some splenetic aberration cynical• only to read her stereotype of Richler dusty storeroom for "vulgarity": ly penned for pelf. Richler is angry, and the late Barbara Frum as on-screen but he is not phony. As a young man, evocations of evenings in old Salisbury Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room he scorned Canada to make a literary (Rhodesia). The Discobolus standeth and turneth his career elsewhere, a view point he later face to the wall; softened: The book has sold well in Canada, Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and primarily in Ontario and Quebec. Amid all set at naught, Certainly I...sailed away from Canada the vituperation and mutual recrimination, Beauty crieth in an attic and no man without regrets in 1951. Like many of what can be said of Oh Canada! Oh regardeth: my contemporaries, I was mistakenly Quebec!?Certainly the book is thorough• Oh God! O Montreal!1 charged with scorn for all things ly researched: Richler has read all the Canadian. For the truth is, if we were in• documents of twentieth century There must have been days this winter— deed hemmed in by the boring, the federalism and sovereignty from Pierre weeks even—when Richler envied the inane, and the absurd, we foolishly Vallieres' White Niggers of America (Was Discobolus his hide-out. The affront of blamed it all on Canada, failing to he the object of petitions asking him to the Discobolus was to wear no clothes: grasp that we would suffer from a sur• be more gentil?) to Reed Scowen's A Dif• Richler's was to sneer that the Emperor feit [of these] wherever we eventually ferent Vision: The English in Quebec in wore none. He makes copious use of his settled.2 the 1990s. Richler provides a chronology gift for choosing the absurd or bathetic of the last three decades of Quebec his• detail to ridicule his targets, be they A periodic visitor to Canada between tory, and related federal developments Quebec's language laws or Joe Clark. 1954 and 1972, he twice returned to (Meech, the Spicer Commission and Camille Laurin is described as "a psychi• serve as writer-in-residence before his much else) and his claims about anti- atrist who dies his hair black"; the true return to live here permanently. He Semitism in Quebec—whether by Adrien common denominator between English wrote of the decision to return in Arcand, Abbe Groulx, or Le Devoir of the and French Canadians is "bad taste". The Great Comic Book Heroes And Thirties—are bolstered with quotations, There is no doubt that Richler some• Other Essays: citations and surveys, some of which times makes cheap shots, and goes aroused less anxiety and denial when on about absurdities that fascinate him Doomed always to be a foreigner in published in other media. even if they have little or no relevance England, I was in danger of finding

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Canada foreign too. After thirteen al• Three decades earlier, A.M. Klein's The He is not as savage as Richler nor as most uninterrupted years abroad, I now Rocking Chair (1948) took a gentler but vituperative. It is worth noting that Levine, realized the move I had made with such no less dualistic look at the spirit of too, returned to Canada and is now certainty at the age of twenty-three had place. Klein, a generation older than based in Toronto. exacted a considerable price 3 Richler, paid bittersweet poetic tribute to his province from the spell of Montreal's While Richler's long absence from His best novels—such as The Appren• Mount Royal to the goons of the Duples- Canada gave him a wealth of ex• ticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St. sis era to the compassionate nuns of the perience, it also exacted a price, one Urbain's Horseman show his deep Hotel-Dieu. Klein even wrote a poem evident in this volume. If Richler can engagement with Montreal and with "Montreal" that can be read in either offi• view Canada with the partial detach• Canada, the home of his youth and later cial language—with mixed success in ment of a long-time expatriate, he also adulthood, and its centrality to his each: finds it difficult to reconcile the psyche and creativity. province of his adolescence with that 0 city métropole, isle riverain! of his mid-life. The arrogant WASP Several important Canadian writers of Your ancient pavages and sainted Westmount, the rickets-ridden slums of his generation—Norman Levine (a Mc- routs his youth on the Main—all had Gill graduate) and Montrealer Mavis Traverse my spirit's conjured avenues! changed, changed utterly in his ab• Gallant—also believed that they had to Splendour erablic of your promenades sence, and he is hard-pressed to leave Canada to best develop their Foliates there, and there your maisonry bridge the gap emotionally, if not intel• talent. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! should Of pendant balcon and escalier'd lectually. Throughout the book, one is be viewed in light of the ambivalent march, haunted by the thought that deep love with which some of Richler's Is vivid Normandy!5 within himself, Richler on his return literary peers and contemporaries, wished to strut his stuff for a patriots and expatriates, have Richler's book is thus no orphan. Its most Westmount no longer there, and for a regarded Montreal in particular and memorable antecedent, one Richler ad• Jewish community that is not as it was Canada in general. One thinks of - mires, is Norman Levine's travelogue/- when he left. The anti-Semitism he saw based Mavis Gallant's crisp introduc• memoir Canada Made Me (1957), an as a youth in Ste.-Agathe has left its tion to Home Truths, a collection of account of the bleakness and cultural taint on the political and cultural short stories, several set in her native poverty of 1950s Canada, written by a landscape of Quebec, a taint he under• Montreal. Like Samuel Butler and Mor- self-styled "prodigal son", an Ottawa- standably cannot ignore or overlook or decai Richler, she often seems born, McGill-educated writer struggling discount—and there is no reason he perplexed or exasperated by the with ultimate success to establish himself should. Moreover, "now" is fused with Canadian psyche: in England about a bleak return visit to "then" for the novelist. The fusion has the land of his birth: created fine novels but explosive politi• I often have the feeling with Canadian cal commentary. That is to say, Richler readers that I am on trial. The accusa• 1 didn't want to run away from the is here essayist, not historian, and the tion has nothing to do with style or country as I had originally when I lens of another Montreal, another structure or content or imagination or sailed in that freighter on that hot June Quebec, filters his view of the present. control of subject and form—nothing day in 1949 from Montreal6 The perspective is not false, but it that has any connection with literature produces a very particular and highly- in the usual sense—but with what are Levine's book also provoked outrage, coloured portrait. And the very degree taken to be my concealed intentions. I and covers some of the same subject- of his passion is bound to distract or am suspected of using language to matter as Richler's. Like Richler, Levine alienate many readers of whatever screen a deep and disobliging mean• discusses Le Devoir, recounting an inter• stripe. Richler uses literary devices that ing, or to perpetrate a fraud. ... The view with Andre Laurendeau, then its animate the book: the setting of tone of the questioning suggests editor, as well as vignettes of rich Woody's Bar gives way to happy hour something more antagonistic than Montreal WASPs and Jews and Fran• at Grumpy's watering hole when simple curiosity, and I wonder if cophones. But Levine's bitterness and Woody's goes out of business. The there is still not somewhere a distrust alienation is usually displaced onto vignettes of weekly lunches or cocktail of imagination.4 climate and streetscape and landscape. hour gatherings where Richler and Co.

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ponder the latest social and political ab• pable feeling in that shadowy, crowded majority of Africans to their rural origins, surdities at once enliven the book and chapel that this was so. The mantle sure• or diminished the importance of agricul• suggest its unabashed subjectivity. ly streams from very different shoulders, ture to economic survival and prosperity. Richler speaks only for Richler, and and its gifted wearer must wonder if it is Québécois are they, not we (though not really a hair shirt. A City of Farmers underlines this point by sometimes oui). He largely approves of drawing attention to the widely-neglected Trudeau and Levesque: his list of the SANDRA CAMPBELL fact that agriculture permeates even hapless and the venal is long. Department of English urban society. In a fascinating and long- University of Ottawa overdue study, Prof. Freeman reports the Much of the controversy is generated by results of two investigations of urban Richler's power to both pique vanity and References agriculture in Kenya, focussing on a pinch a nerve. The country is troubled questionnaire administered to a random and Richler has overlaid a largely 1. Samuel Butler, "A Psalm of Montreal" in The sample of urban cultivators in Nairobi. cogent analysis with venom and hurt. Blasted Pine, ed. F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith The study yields a substantial body of in• (Toronto: Macmillan, 1967)62. This is no surprise: Richler has never formation on the urban farmers, their been a respecter of the Law of the 2. Richler, "Home Is Where You Hang Yourself," agricultural practices, their previous oc• Father, whether in family, religion, or Home Sweet Home (Toronto: McClelland and cupations, their other activities and the country. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! is a Stewart, 1984). importance of agriculture in their lives. significant artifact in the current nation• 3. Richler, "Expo 67," The Great Comic Book The information is presented effectively al debate, but it does make one Heroes And Other Essays (Toronto: McClelland and yields important insights into the wonder if Uncle Benjy was not ultimate• and Stewart, 1978) 106. society and economy of a major African ly correct in his deathbed advice to 4. Mavis Gallant, "An Introduction," Home Truths city. The author points out, for example, Duddy Kravitz: (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982) xii. that the majority of urban cultivators are women, and that their position in the city 5. A.M. Klein, "Montreal," The Collected Poems of reflects the burdens imposed upon them You've got to take them to your heart A.M. Klein (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974) no matter what. They're the family 316. in a patriarchal society. He presents remember, and to see only their faults evidence of the extreme poverty of many 6. Norman Levine, "Author's Note," Canada Made urban farmers and shows that urban (like I did) is to look at them like a Me (1958) (rep. Ottawa: Deneau, 1979) 9. stranger7 agriculture is often desperately important 7. Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to their survival. He shows how traditional (Markham: Penguin, 1959)278. As a postscript, there is one vignette land usages have helped to shape a dis• that Richler does not include in this tinctly African approach to land rights Donald B. Freeman. A City of Farmers: book, one meaningful to this reviewer, and social responsibilities. He cata• Informal Urban Agriculture in the Open an Anglophone who grew up in a north• logues the reasons for engaging in urban Spaces of Nairobi, Kenya. Montreal and ern Quebec mining town in the Fifties agriculture, gives a great deal of informa• Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, and Sixties. (Best to declare one's biases tion about the agriculturalists, and details 1991. pp. xxiv, 159. Illustrations. $34.95. on this topic.) At the memorial service for crops and locations. In the process he of• Hugh McLennan in the Birks Chapel at fers much insight into the society of McGill University in the fall of 1990, an The centrality of agriculture to an under• Nairobi and, undoubtedly, many other end-of-an-era feeling was in the post- standing of African society, as well as to African cities. All of this is done well. Meech air, melancholy hovering over the hopes for that continent's economic development, is gradually gaining grow• dark-suited, mostly elderly mourners The least satisfying part of the study is a ing recognition in scholarly literature. redolent of an earlier era in WASP brief, somewhat unfocussed history of Industrialization, which was seen by Montreal. Mordecai Richler was there, the development of the city of Nairobi, many in the 1960s and 70s as the pri• and one eulogist solemnly declared that the purpose of which is apparently to mary instrument of the search for pros• with the death of the author of Two describe how open space currently perity, has clearly failed to realize the Solitudes and Return of the Sphinx, the devoted to urban agriculture escaped hopes for it. Even urbanization, a much mantle of anglophone Montreal writer urban development. The study raises too more durable and genuinely influential had passed to Mordecai Richler. It was a many interesting questions to justify this phenomenon, has not cut the ties of the moving moment, and there was a pal• side trip. Another shortcoming, perhaps

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