Dwight Druick on Artie Gold

Artie Gold in 2004 at the restaurant across the street from where he lived on Sherbrooke Street
West, near Patricia Avenue; this restaurant closed and there is a Second Cup there now

Here's a letter I received from Dwight Druick on November 6, 2011, regarding my essay "Remembering Artie Gold"; the complete essay can be read at
http://www.coraclepress.com/chapbooks/morrissey/remembering-artie-gold.html
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Dear Stephen,


It has been 16 years since I moved from Montreal to make a home in Kingston, Ontario. I had come here to work at Hotel Dieu Hospital in adult psychiatry after having transformed from a musician-songwrtiter (a calling which has gratefully returned without the onus of having to make a living from it) to a psychiatric social worker. During a long period of transition from the stage to McGill - a seemingly endless 7 years - I was a bartender - first at the Rainbow and, then, at Charlie's.

I met Artie in the late 70's at the Rainbow. He would wait for the end of my shift and we would go to Ben's for a 4 AM breakfast of eggs, rye toast, and fried salami. I will never forget watching Artie eat - lingering over each bite with the delight of a child.

Artie and I spent many nights together. We would talk and eat - and we shared some drugs. He would invite me to his tiny apartment on MacKay to see his stash of treasures, the latest of which he would find in the alley ways in the Guy Street area where he lived. I dubbed him 'the urban beachcomber'.

I still have many treasures that Artie gave or sold to me. Scrooge McDuck comics wrapped in plastic and an array of lost and found objects that we both valued. We shared a kind of childlike wonder, marvelling at the great stuff other people would throw away.

This afternoon, I decided to change the place where I have hung one of Artie's drawings that he gave to me. I wanted it to get more light and attention. I turned to Nancy, my wife of 22 years - and a friend of Artie's as well - and said that I was going 'Google' him. That's how I found your tribute to him and learned the very sad news of his passing.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your words and photos. Artie was a truly gentle and brilliant soul. It was a privilege to have been his friend.

I have often thought of him as the years have gone by - and wondered how he was doing. I missed his company. His humour. His smile.

So in memory of a great friend, I will share my favorite Artie story that I tell at least 5 times a year:

I see Artie for the first time in a few days and say 'hi'.

He says "How come you don't ask how I'm doing"?

Chastened, I ask, 'So how are ya doin'?

Artie pauses, shrugs,

"Don't ask".

Thanks Stephen.

Dwight Druick

Redpath Museum (5)

A store window in Westmount

Redpath Museum (4)

Frederick Philip Grove in November

Frederick Philip Grove begins his autobiography, In Search of Myself (1946), with a prologue that was originally a separate essay, also entitled "In Search of Myself". In this essay Grove captures perfectly the essence of a November day in Canada, which is also the essence of November, a month of shadows and cold. Indeed, the month of November begins the Celtic season of Samhain, a time when the spirits of the dead walk and communicate with us. This is my experience of November, always profoundly experienced, and something I tried to communicate in my poem, "November", published in Girouard Avenue (2009).

I would have included the quotation below from Grove's introduction in my poem had I remembered it from when I used to teach the book back in the late 1970s in Canadian Literature. I remember much discussion of Grove's literary deception--his falsifying the events of his life, and also reading D.O. Spettigue's marvelous FPG in which Spettigue exposes the truth of Grove's life--in Louis Dudek's graduate seminar at McGill back in the early 1970s.

Here's the passage I'm referring to from Grove's introduction:

It was a dismal November day, with a raw wind blowing from the north-west and cold, iron-grey clouds flying low--one of those [Ontario] days which, on the lake-shores or in a country of rock and swamp, seem to bring visions of an ageless time after the emergence of the earth from chaos, or a foreboding of the end of a world about to die from entropy.

Gael Monfils at the Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Rafa Nadal at the Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Jo-Wilfred Tsonga at the Roger's Cup, Montreal, August 2011

Redpath Museum (3)

Redpath Museum (2)

Louis Dudek

SM and Louis Dudek at the League of Canadian Poets' AGM, held in Montreal in 1993. I had nominated Louis for a life membership and introduced him to the AGM before he spoke that evening. Louis, fondly and lovingly remembered, someone who helped so many of us as poets, a titan among Canadian poets, respected and loved by all of us who knew him. 

A quiet morning at McGill's Redpath Museum (1)