Scottish Studies Society Newsletter
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THE SCOTS CANADIAN Issue XLII Newsletter of the Scottish Studies Society: ISSN No. 1491-2759 Spring 2016 Alice Munro named Scot of the Year as 2016 marks the Foundation’s 30th Anniversary It was back in 1986 that the Scottish Studies university of British Columbia Foundation was first established as a and at the University of registered Canadian charity and thanks to the Queensland. support from our members and other donors She married Gerald Fremlin in we are still at work supporting the Scots- 1976 and moved to his Canadian community at the academic level. hometown of Clinton, Ontario, We are delighted that Alice Munro will be not far from Wingham. Gerald helping us to celebrate our 30th anniversary died in April, 2013. Alice has by agreeing to be our Scot of the Year, recently announced her especially shortly after her receiving the retirement from writing and prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature on continues to live in Clinton. December 10, 2013. We are in the process Many of Alice's stories are set of organizing a special event for this special in Huron County, Ontario. Her anniversary and will keep you posted once strong regional focus is one of plans are firmed up. the features of her fiction. Alice Munro: the first Canadian to I’m sure all of you know that Alice is a Another is her frequent use of the receive the Nobel Prize in Literature Canadian short story writer and that her work omniscient narrator who serves has revolutionized the structure of short to make sense of the world. Many compare other in ways that simply and effortlessly stories, especially in its ability to move Alice's small-town settings to writers from evoke life. forward and backward in time. the rural South of the United States. As in Many critics have asserted that Munro's Alice was born on July 10, 1931 and the works of William Faulkner and Flannery stories often have the emotional and literary raised on a farm outside of Wingham, O'Connor, her characters often confront depth of novels. Some have asked whether Ontario. Her father, Robert Eric Laidlaw, deep-rooted customs and traditions, but the Munro actually writes short stories or novels. was a fox and mink farmer, and her mother, reaction of Alice's characters is generally less Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica, gave a Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney), was a intense than their Southern counterparts. Her simple answer: "Who cares? In most Munro schoolteacher. Her Scots ancestry can be male characters tend to capture the essence of stories there is as much as in many novels." traced back to the Scottish Borders. the everyman, while her female characters Alice is noted for her longtime association Alice began writing as a teenager, are more complex. Much of her work with editor and publisher Douglas Gibson. publishing her first story, The Dimensions of exemplifies the literary genre known as Douglas received our Scot of the Year Award a Shadow, in 1950 while studying English Southern Ontario Gothic. in 2005 and is also a former Foundation and journalism at the University of Western A frequent theme of her work, particularly board member. When Douglas left Ontario under a two-year scholarship. During evident in her early stories, has been the Macmillan of Canada in 1986 to launch his this period she worked as a waitress, a dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming own Douglas Gibson Books imprint at tobacco picker, and a library clerk. to terms with her family and the small town McClelland and Stewart, Munro returned the In 1951, she left the university, where she she grew up in. In recent work such as advance that Macmillan had already paid her had been majoring in English since 1949, to Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, for The Progress of Love so that she could marry fellow student James Munro. They Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she follow Douglas to the new company and they then moved to Dundarave, West Vancouver, has shifted her focus to the travails of middle have retained their professional association for where James had obtained a job in a age, of women alone, and of the elderly. It is ever since. When Douglas published his department store. In 1963, the couple moved a mark of her style for characters to book Stories about Storytellers in 2011, to Victoria, where they opened Munro's experience a revelation that sheds light on, Alice wrote the introduction and his latest Books, which is still in operation. and gives meaning to, an apparently ordinary book Across Canada by Story has a chapter Her first book of short stories was event. entitled Alice Munro Country. published in 1968 and since then she has Alice's prose reveals the ambiguities of To this day Douglas often makes public published fifteen more. Her work frequently life: "ironic and serious at the same time," appearances on Alice's behalf when her appears in magazines including The New "mottoes of godliness and honour and health prevents her from appearing Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris flaming bigotry," "special, useless personally. Review. She divorced in 1972 and moved knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy back to Ontario to take up a post as writer-in- outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the residence at the University of Western joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next Ontario, a position she later held at the to the ordinary, with each undercutting the chapbooks and From the Chair identified some favourites. The website is just wonderful, I am grateful to the Editor for this showcasing our opportunity to update members of the impressive Foundation on developments here at the assemblage of these Guelph Centre for Scottish Studies. endlessly interesting In September, we announced our little publications aspiration to establish a Genealogical and which have so much Family History Institute to enable the Centre to say about what better to promote, support and advance mattered to Scots, research and research-based teaching about what entertained Scottish Canadian history and families. In them, and what the month of December, we had the provoked them, in opportunity to participate in a University the eighteenth and crowdfunding experiment, in which we At the University of Guelph’s 2015 Fall Colloquium Left to right: nineteenth centuries invited potential donors to support our desire Prof. James Fraser, Michael Newton, Lewis MacKinnon, Allan when so many of our to work towards establishing a new Kennedy, Prof. Ewen Cameron Scottish ancestors repository for the storage of genealogical emigrated to Canada. being undertaken at Guelph by graduate data collected by people researching Scottish In the fall, I had the opportunity to lead the students in the Centre for Scottish Studies. Canadian families. The appeal ran “Topics in Scottish History” masters-level Fuller details will be provided as soon as throughout December; and, thanks to the course at Guelph. No doubt because the they have been finalized. As has become tremendous generosity of some twenty website has made them so accessible, a traditional in recent years, this event will be donors, we were successful in raising over number of the students chose to analyze a hosted once again by our friends at Knox $1600 before Hogmanay, funds which we chapbook as one of the components of the College, University of Toronto. We hope to will now invest in our Repository Project. course. The examples they chose engaged in see many members there: please consider I have been impressed by the fundraising religious argument, discussed magic and coming along to hear the fruits of the success achieved by this brief appeal, but it witches, related episodes of Scottish history, research projects of students who, in many scarcely rivals the steady and invaluable or told stories from Scottish and international cases, have received the invaluable support support that the Centre enjoys each year from literature, subjects that represent the tip of of Foundation generosity. the Foundation. It is our hope that the the iceberg where chapbooks are concerned. In closing, I would observe that this is the awareness raised by the crowdfunding appeal It is to the Foundation, as well as to the Jane time of year when we begin hearing from will encourage people who support our aims Grier Family Fund, that all of us interested in prospective new graduate students seeking to seek membership in the Foundation. Scottish history owe the digitization of our admission to the Scottish Studies As we approach the first anniversary of the chapbook collection and its presentation in programme, and happily, we have received a launch of the Scottish Chapbooks website this magnificent format on the Web, where number of applications and approaches (http://scottishchapbooks.org), I hope by now users of all sorts, from all over the world, can already. Enthusiasm for undertaking Scottish that all members have had the opportunity to appreciate it. I hope that members feel the Studies research at Guelph shows no signs of browse through the collection of digitized full measure of the pride to which they are abating, and to those who have done so much entitled for having made the website to make that research possible, we send our possible, and can take time from their busy warmest hopes for peace, health and lives to enjoy the chapbooks that they have happiness in 2016, and our profoundest, given to the world. enduring and ongoing gratitude. Of course, the Scottish Chapbooks website is only the beginning of the ambitious Dr. James Fraser digitization plan that the Foundation is Chair of Scottish Studies currently supporting, and as other parts of University of Guelph our archival collection receive similar THE SCOTTISH STUDIES attention, the final results will represent a singular, FOUNDATION monumental achievement P.O.