Odes to the Outlands Game

U IN THESE TIMES SEPT. 29-OCI 5,1982 seems to consist of two small, mean regional today because gossipy worlds normally well anything nationwide is so easily CANADIAN THEATER separated by the language bar- dominated by American cor- rier: La Sagouine toured for 11 porations. years in French before Leger be- Right now 35 percent of Can- gan peforming it last year in ada's manufactured goods are English. I consider myself very imported. But when it comes to lucky to have stumbled onto her cultural goods—paperback Odes to the outlands guest appearance at Blyth. books, records and feature films The Blyth festival is enthusias- —the figures range from 80 per- time I needed to be nudged my- groups, obviously had a ball tically supported in its rural' cent to 95 percent. Despite the By Barbara Garson self. So I accepted a ride to with the 'wonderful fiddle community. But the company it- artistic prowess of the National Blyth, home of a smaller festival music, the local jokes, and the self is drawn from English Can- Film Board, Canadian television This season Canada's only na- in the region. large lively cast that spilled off ada's rootless cosmopolitan is a complete rout, with Charlie's tional theater is presenting plays "Population 1,000," said the the stage. theater professionals. They are Angels and Three's Company by a German, a Hawaiian, two sign as we entered town. "Blyth The evening show, La Sa- ideologically committed to pro- easily overrunning the poorly Irish and four dead Englishmen. Summer Festival. ALL CANA- gouine, consisted of five pol- viding entertaiment for their financed Canadian shows. Faced No wonder some living Cana- DIAN PLAYS." "So you've ished monologues delivered by southern Ontario audience: pro- with such powerful capitalist dians resent it. But these nation- come from Stratford," the the superb actress Viola Leger. vincialism in the most self- armies to the south, Canadian alist grumbles are not audible, at players greeted us. Then, with La Sagouine, a 72-year-old Aca- conscious sense. theater troupes fight guerrilla least during the season, in the derision, anger and shame, dian scrubwoman, is presented In Canada, nationalism al- actions in localities like Blyth. Towne of Stratford itself. So for "Canada's national theater de- as rich with a peasant wit that most always means regionalism. Quite naturally they denounce the first two days I glided peace- voted to a dead Englishman." verges, just once in a while, on This is partly because the re- dead Bardism and call for subsi- fully from play to play along The productions at Blyth went the precious. About her employ- gions were settled by separate dies to companies doing Cana- with the swans and paddleboats on to develop the theme of their ers she says "We wear the old and thrivingly unhomogenized dian plays. on the Canadian Avon. highway sign. clothes they give us for the sake groups. But to cultural nation- Right now Canadian artists Arms and the Man was as airy Country Hearts by Ted of Jesus Christ. It's a lucky thing alists, "Canadian" still has to can still feel they are fighting and delicious as an Amaretto Johns, with music by John imperialism when they try to mousse. Julius Ceasar featured a Roby, seemed to be set in the preserve regional culture against Method Acting mob that gave tavern across the road from the television culture; that they are Anthony something to play theater, or at least it had the fighting foreign domination against. But Brutus and the rest same pickled eggs in a jar, the when they fight to get a local were still so boring that I'm now same signs tacked on the wall, magazine on the newsstand next convinced that the play is Shake- the same southern Ontario pall. to Cosmopolitan. But as Cana- speare's noblest dud of them all. In this loosely written musical dian capitalists grow stronger All's Well That Ends Well, dir- the tavern proprietor decides to they are proving themselves ected by Richard Cottrell on the "get with it" by importing a capable of creating their own small Third Stage, was clear, sin- country and western band called national media to peddle their cere and unadorned. It was my Sam Slick and the Slowpokes. own meaningless pap. And soon favorite play at the festival and The Slowpokes will bring a big- Canadians will be up against it the only one that stayed with me town (Toronto) flavor, which is the way we are here, where Cos- afterwards. Finally, I saw a Tem- of course watered-down Ameri- mopolitan and Three's Com- pest that began with "ohhs" and can. But as it turns out, the mis- This is pany are foreign in a much *' "ahhs" (my own included) as fits washed up at the tavern for us they got some religion." more profound sense. • the winds swirled silky waves. have the talent among them- As an Acadian confronted by provincialism Barbara Garson is the New But it soon became so figurative- selves to create a glorious local the census taker ("It's worse York-based author of MacBird ly as well as literally overblown group eventually called the than confession") Ca Sagouine and All the Livelong Day: The that some women in the aud- Country Hearts. Though the is stumped by limited choice of in the most Meaning and Demeaning of ience nudged their nodding hus- play became soap-operatic in nationalities: Canadian, English, Routine Work (Penguin Books). bands as we approached famous the second act, the matinee au- French Canadian, Quebecois. self-conscious She also writes for The Village lines. ("Harry, wake up! Here dience, a sea of white-haired Nothing fits. Voice, where a version of this comes a sea change.") By this elders bused in by church Indigenous Canadian theater sense. piece first appeared. to play.) They also added the before they produced it, the dozens of reporters and writers Ralph Anspach and his "brain- Community Chest, the $200 bon- game would be in the public do- who have published articles and child." There is also a picture of us for passing GO, and the "Get main, beyond their exclusive comments on the game over the reality; what Anspach's research Game Out of Jail Free" cards. control. years. This includes coverage in shows is that while Charles Dar- None of these people were in- This cover-up was so success- the most prestigious periodicals row did not "invent" Monopoly, Continued from page 16 terested in trying to sell the game, ful that Anspach found only one in the publishing industry, in- neither did any other one person. die of each row; a waterworks even though almost everyone article that penetrated it. In the cluding The New Yorker, the Lizzie Magie Phillips started it. and electric company in the same who learned to play it became Jan. 27, 1936 Washington Star, New York Times and others. But the game evolved from the places; and ascending rents and fascinated with it. "We weren't there is an unsigned article about But this hidden history has playing and tinkering of hun- property values around the business people," Ruth Hoskins Lizzie Magie Phillips, then a now, thanks to the work of An- dreds of other people over three board. said primly 40 years later. "We gray-haired matron living in Ar- spach, been recovered and made decades. Maybe that is how the The parallels are obvious. But were schoolteachers. It was a lington, Va., and her games. The public. In late August, the U.S. game came to evoke the commer- there are differences too: the good game the way it was." An- article, besides identifying her as Court of Appeals for the Ninth cial spirit of our culture so well; it properties have no names; there other early player, remembering the originator of Monopoly, Circuit in San Francisco accepted is not only in the public domain, is no Chance or Community the anti-capitalist origins of the features a photo of her holding Anspach's evidence and ruled it may even be said to embody Chest; the name is not the same. game, said it was a point of hon- the boards from two of her ear- that Parker Brothers has no right our public domain. But even so, Charles Darrow or among early devotees not to lier editions of the game, one of to exclusive control of the term But I still say Boardwalk and doesn't merit much credit for think of commercializing it. which clearly has the word Mon- Monopoly. Thus the professor Park Place are worth more than the game's evolution. Lizzie But if they didn't want to sell opoly on it in large letters. She can sell his Anti-Monopoly whe- any other two monopolies and all Magie made some copies of her it, Ruth Hoskins and her friends was still a follower of Henry ther the company likes it or not. four railroads put together. • game and dozens of people, did enjoy sharing Monopoly. George, the article noted, and Parker Brothers and its cor- mostly Quakers in the mid-At- Ralph Anspach's research has es- did not regret losing the for- porate parent, the General Mills Chuck Fager writes regularly lantic states, played, enjoyed tablished that about a year later tune from the game that Parker Fun Group, has said it will carry for several weekly publications, and modified the game in the members of Hoskins' circle Brothers and Darrow were reap- its case to the U.S.

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