Memorial Address

by Hugh MacLennan

Hugh MacLennan delivered this ad- upset her profoundly to have to take off After La VCrendrye, there appeared on dress to the Writers' Union of Canada the gloves and fight them in the courts, the plains in increasing numbers the AGM in Kingston, 29 May 1987. The and though she won the battle, she must MCtis, most of them children of French following is an excerpt from the Address, have suffered some psychological dam- fathers and Indian mothers. Colbert, the which is too long to print here in its age from it, and it is quite possible that if great finance minister of Louis XIV, laid entirety.Readerswho want to read thefull this outrage had not occured, she would it down that French settlers in America text can write to The Writers' Develop- still be alive. should mate with the native peoples, and ment Trust,24 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto, In the last months of Margaret's life, this surely explains the astonishing endur- Ontario M5T 2P3. CWSIcf gratefully when I knew she had terminal cancer, I ance of the original voyageurs. Later on acknowledges The Writers' Development telephoned her every second week and the Scottish Highlanders of the Northwest Trustfor giving us permission to Publish always found her calm, alittle more husky Company and the Hudson's Bay Com- the Address. of voice than when I first met her, but pany followed to some extent the same acceptant and even tranquil. She knew she practice, though most of them had legiti- It is a very great honour you have done had done her work and that it was good; mate wives at home in . This me in asking me to give the first of the she had rounded it off; she had gone out fundamental part of the Canadian story Margaret Laurence Lec tures. Profoundly, from the prairie small town into the great was glossed over until very recently, but I wish it were not so. It seems a grim jest outer world, including the Horn of Africa only a few days ago, at PercC in the G@, of God that she should be gone and I and southern England. Then, as naturally President Mitterand of France alluded to should be here, for I was born some eight- and inevitably as a Pacific salmon swiim- it openly, saying that many French-Cana- een years before she came into the world. ing back to its original spawning bed, she dian expressions were derived from the I came from the extreme eastern tip of returned and tackled the little Manitoba Indian languages. Canada before Newfoundland joined us. town where she had grown up. She re- In modem times, when at last a true Margaret was born in the dead centre created it under the name of Manawaka developed, Manitoba some two thousand miles to the west. and in so doing, like Ulysses when he gave us in the finest of Both of us were of Scottish origin though returned to Ithaca, she slew quite a few 1 French-Canadian novelists, and she was a her surname, Wemyss, indicates that she demons. MCtis from Saint-Boniface. Later on was a scion of a prominent family from The south-eastem corner of Manitoba Margaret Laurence gave us that County Angus. Both of us were born in is one of the most historic regions on this wonderful Mttis character. Jules Ton- dying small towns. Both of us went entire country, and its history is much nere. The great achievement of these two abroad before we began to write. Both of better known in than in Ontario. women writers was to tell hundreds of us, in trying to discover ourselves, had This is because of the early voyageurs thousands of Canadians who they were. first to discover some of the historical and who,over a century and a half, explored in I shall never forget a reading Margaret psychological truths of the huge nation canoes the whole nation from Montreal to gave in McGill during the period I used to into which we were born. the Pacific and the Mackenzie delta, as call "our time of troubles," when Spock- Though I met Margaret very seldom well as the Mississippi valley down to marked student politicians, many of them during her lifetime, it was always like New Orleans. La VCrendrye, born in Americans, were raging against the meeting someone whose professionalism Trois-Rivibres in 1685 - which hap- American Empire which was commiting I sensed so naturally that I took it for pened to be also the birth-year of Handel suicide in Viet Nam and involving much granted, as she, I believe, took me for and Sebastian Bach - returning from of the world in the general catastrophe. granted. She had the inner generosity of a service in the War of the Spanish Succes- Margaret came into the campus like a person whose life had been very difficult, sion, set out for the west with a party of wave of peace. She had an enormous and her work was at once a deliverance fifty men, including three of his own sons. audience of many ages, and though the from her self anda triumph within herself. He established Fort Rouge on the banks of acoustics were bad in the hall, she held Toward the end, when apparently the the Red River and continued west, per- them entirely with her. Wavesofaffection whole nation held her in honour. she had haps to a sight of the Rockies. Later, after seemed to surge around her, and no won- to go to law to prevent a handful of self- the English Conquest of New France, the der. For here was a woman of profound righteous hypocrites from banning her name was changed toFort Garry and now, understanding of the human condition. books from the schools of Ontario. It of course, it is Winnipeg. Academics have been uained for a long

VOLUME 8, NUMBER 3 25 I large extent founded on the theories of I 3 I eighteenth century philosophers, espe- cially Locke and, to a lesser extent, ~ousseau.Locke has a great deal to an- swer for. This childless philosopher as- serted that the infant new to earth and sky is born with a mind which is a tabula rasa -a blank sheet of paper to be written on by the hand of experience. Every woman who has minded a baby understands that this is total nonsense, but sensible women were not listened to in the Age of Reason. Perhaps at last men are beginning to listen to them, the young ones at least. Writers like Margaret Laurence understood in their bones the truth of a sentence written THE BUTTERFLY CHAIR is one of these rare novels that provides delight and surprise and sometimes a shock on every page. The by a great Frenchman long before the Age haunting story about the hurt and pain a young woman feels for of Reason, which has triumphed in our years after witnessing, as a child, the murder/suicide of her mother time in the H-bomb and the Cold War. "I1 and father, and her courageous search for some understanding of est bon," wrote Malherbe, "et plus sou- the act and the man respons~ble. vent qu'on ne le pense, de savoir de n'avoir pas de l'esprit." The French- Now at Bookstores Canadians and the Mttis knew this truth l in their bones, and that is how they man- aged to survive and stay sane for two &RANDOMOF CANADA LIMITEDHOUSE centuries after the American Revolution. I shall now Ieave Margaret Laurence in peace, and speak a little of my own expe- rience as a writer in this country.. . WOMEN'S WRITINGS goose lane editions

Everything Happens Travelling To Find Whispers From The Past: At Once A Remedy Selections from the Writings

YVONNE TRAINER CLAIRE HARRIS of New Brunswick Women

Since Yvonne Trainer's first book, This third collection from Claire ELIZABETH McGAHAN, Ed. I Customers (Fiddlehead, 1983), her Harris is charged with imaginative work continues to appear in literary excitement. Harris can invoke the Elizabeth W. McGahan brings to light magazines and on CBC Radio, while drama of ideas and the ironies of the unspoken words of New Bruns- her growing audience enjoyed over immediate events with both intellec- wick women in this composite of 19th seventy readings in 1986 alone. With tual confidence and human and 20th century letters, personal Everything Happens At Once, Trainer compassion. diaries, Minutes of various societies, displays the clarity and strength of travelogues and other writings. what G.P. Greenwood has called "a Writers Guild of Alberta Award for The selections in this volume reveal compelling and distinctive voice." Excellence 1987 ~n~retentiouslythe fundamental div- isions in society, the social issues and ISBN 0-86492-078-4 $7.95 paper ISBN 0-86492-074-1 $7.95 paper historical events, the female experience 1986 72pp. 5% X 8l/2" 1986 72pp. 5% X 8'/2" of the last two centuries, the concern$ of women everywhere. GOOSE LANE EDITIONS LTD. 1 248 Brunswick Street ISBN 0-86492-090-3 $9.95 paper 1986 192 pp. 5%X 81/2" illustrated I Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 1G9 L

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME 26