T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label Darrell Morrisey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darrell Morrisey. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Visiting Thomas Sydney Morrisey's grave on 12 March 2012

Thomas Sydney Morrisey (1890-1975) is the brother of Darrell Morrisey, one of the forgotten Beaver Hall artists, and the son of Thomas Lewis Morrisey. T.S. is buried with his wife, Beatrice Hilda Morrisey (1891-1967). T.S. Morrisey's mother is buried near where her son and daughter-in-law are buried. The location is Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal. 


The grave of Thomas Sydney Morrissey at Mount Royal
Cemetery in Montreal, this visit on March 2012, T.S. Morrisey 















 

Saturday, October 15, 2022

Louis Dudek in Paradise

I began writing this poem back in 2001 and completed it in 2012, and just found it in my archives. 

A winter afternoon at Mount Royal Cemetery



1)  Homage to Louis Dudek

A cold wind sweeps down
from Mount Royal
to the city below;
this bitter winter
ending with a death.
When a poet dies
a light goes out,
a bit of brilliance
is extinguished,
although poets know
no death is greater than another,
the homeless man surrounded
by plastic garbage bags,
or the former prime minister,
his body carried by a train
slowing at each station.

At the funeral, I listen to Louis' poems
being read, each reader celebrating Louis' life
with anecdotes and poems, a life
dedicated to poetry and teaching.
Louis has moved from temporal
to eternal, from flesh to word;
no more poems will be written by him,
no more meetings in restaurants
to discuss books and art and ideas.

A final grief, a final salute:
the old poet is dead,
the books are written,
the poems recited,
discussions into the evening
come to an end
and we prepare to go home.
We linger at the door
and say "Louis' life
was lived for love of others,
his poems were written out of love."
Outside the March day has turned to night,
we return to our usual lives
feeling diminished by his death
and the world seems
a lesser place.


2) that was then, this is now

The older poets
had a sense of their mission,
it was a lineage of poets,

not a competition
but a place in making
a national literature, the importance

of this in nation building;
now, the nation
is built, but we’ve

lost the propriety of things;
no one was concerned
with “award winning poets”

that was never why we wrote,
it was the obsession with writing poems,
the excitement of discovering a new poet,

and with being a community of poets;
the older poets welcomed the young;
that was when

in the whole country
we had ten or fifteen poets,
not fifteen poets times three hundred,  

not everyone writing their poems
and few reading what was written;
to be a poet was to be the exception,

not a commonplace, it was earned by writing,
not one or two poems, but a lifetime
of work, of building a body of work,

because the words came to you, not just
the mundane, but a vision in the work
an obsession for writing and love

for poetry; eccentricity (which is never
politically correct) was not despised,
it was expected; the tyranny of conformity 

had no place among poets,
it was the writing that mattered;
the courtesy of older poets to the young,

as that day, at McGill’s Arts Building,
I was a graduate student that year
in Dudek’s seminar, discussing Pound,

Yeats, Joyce and Ford Madox Ford,
that year in Louis’s office, when being
with an older poet was a privilege—



The Morrice family monument at 
Mount Royal Cemetery, including
a plaque for James Wilson Morrice



3) James Wilson Morrice

James Wilson Morrice
had to go to Paris
to be an artist

(as years later
John Glassco followed)

leaving the family mansion
(now torn down) on Redpath Street, 
a block from

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,
where his paintings
are on permanent display— 

William Van Horn, president of the CPR,
who collected art as a hobby, told Morrice’s father
to let him study art abroad after seeing

some of the son’s paintings;
at Mount Royal Cemetery
on one side of the Morrice family’s monument,

James Wilson Morrice’s name and dates (1865-1924)
and place of burial, in Tunis; this is the man Louis Dudek said
“painted grey snow”: “he is a Canadian on his travels.

His destination is one he never reaches,
though others may reach it after him — it is Canada.”
That destination is paradise, to live with summer

year round, not in Montreal, the “Metropolis”, that Morrice rarely
visited after he left, where winter is six months of the year,
the other six divided between summer, fall and spring—

Meanwhile, the Beaver Hall artists, their studio space and gallery
located a block east of St. Patrick’s Church,
held two exhibitions, in 1921 and 1922.

And what about that forgotten Beaver Hall artist,
Darrell Morrisey? She was erased as an artist,
her work discarded by her family after her death, at age 33,

in 1930, it soon became as though she never existed;
and Morrice, the warm ocean breeze and sleeping
on a rooftop in Tunis under the stars—the choreography

of his life, and our life-long work as poets,
the vision of art, the act of creation,
the company of poets—


4) in the company of artists and poets

In the company of artists and poets:
John Cage chatting with Arnold Shöenberg

while Glenn Gould eats supper
with Bach; there’s Jackson Pollock listening

as Artie Gold reads his poem about Bucks County,
and later someone plays Charles Ives’ 2nd Piano Concerto;

Jack Shadbolt meets Emily Carr meeting Nellie McClung
(the granddaughter poet of the better known Nellie),

and HD talks with Virginia Woolf who celebrates
her birthday with James Joyce; Yeats and Jeffers

are in their towers; Jack Kerouac and John Lennon
discuss religion and listen to “Imagine” (which Kerouac hates);

Van Gogh argues with Gauguin; Strindberg and Arthur Miller,
watch Marilyn Monroe holding down her skirt around her knees;

Charlie Chaplin’s silhouette walking into the sunset;
we’re in the eternal, art and music, we’re in Paradise,

where artists and poets create our age,
hard cover books on shelves, abstract paintings on walls,

and just last week lying awake in bed at 5 a.m.,
some kid at a university radio station (in Edmonton) 

playing jazz, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, 
and John Coltrane, with no idea where this music came from,

only knowing that he likes what he’s listening to,
this art, that it speaks to him—


5) all art is vision (or it's just a repetition of the past)

All art is vision—
in the great museums and concert halls,
what returns us to Spirit is art,

poems sustaining us
over a lifetime,
paintings by the Great Masters

drawings on Lascaux’s
cave walls, hieroglyphics
and Inuit art,

sculpture and pottery,
movies and dance—
all the great art of civilization

returns us to God—
all art is vision
all poetry requires vision
to express the poet’s psyche,
if the soul
is filled with lies 

how can the poetry
not also lie? if the poet
censors the poem,

what is created
but a censored poem?
We try to live  

true to our vision, our journey
of truth, our journey
in Paradise—

--------------------------

Note: "Homage to Louis Dudek", a section of this poem, was first published in Eternal Conversation, a tribute to Louis Dudek. 

The politically correct CBC is destroying Canadian culture; it's time to Defund the CBC. 

Friday, April 22, 2022

Books on the Beaver Hall Artists

Back to the Beaver Hall artists. I highly recommend a film, available on YouTube, "By Woman's Hand"; made by the National Film Board of Canada in 1994; the film gives some of the history of Prudence Heward and two other members of the Beaver Hall group who were also Heward's friends, Anne Savage and Sarah Robertson. At 13:51 there is a photograph of William Brymner and a class of art students, some of them are future prominent members of the Beaver Hall group; included in the photograph is Darrell Morrisey, an artist I have researched since 2010.

Books that might interest you.

 

Catalogue for the 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit,
published by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2016

The Women of Beaver Hall, Canadian Modernist Painters by Evelyn Walters,
Dundern Press, 2005


The Beaver Hall Group and its Legacy by Evelyn Walters,
Dundurn Press, 2017




Painting Friends, The Beaver Hall Women Painters
by Barbara Meadowcroft, Vehicule Press, 1999


Periodical from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, issue 15, 2016

Monday, March 7, 2022

More on Darrell Morrisey

It isn't much but at least Darrell Morrisey (one of the "forgotten" Beaver Hall artists) now has some recognition; people know that she existed and that she was an artist. To this end, I wrote an essay on her and she was included in the Museum's 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit--in fact, this was a major exhibition at the Museum--and she was included in the catalogue published for the exhibition. Not much, but better than nothing. . .


From the MMFA's 2015 exhibition of the Beaver Hall artists

Bottom left, one of two extant paintings by Darrell Morrisey






Tuesday, March 1, 2022

The Beaver Hall Artists

I began this journey, writing about Phillips Square, because the Art Association of Montreal was located on the north-east corner of the Square; I always thought that members of the Beaver Hall group of artists could easily have walked up Beaver Hall Hill to the AAA where some of them attended art classes or looked at art. The Beaver Hall group of artists are considered to be the Montreal-based equivalent of the Group of Seven artists; in fact, A.Y. Jackson was a member of both groups. That is why I began collecting photographs of Phillips Square and the original building that housed the AAM, and I began looking for historical photographs of the Beaver Hall artists' studio on Beaver Hall Hill. I was curious about the Beaver Hall artists and how they are an important part of the history of Montreal; perhaps more importantly, I like their art very much. 

Someone I wrote about, Darrell Morrisey (no relation), has a kind of curious importance; Darrell is one of several Beaver Hall artists who have been forgotten by history. In Darrell's case, we really don't know what happened to her art, whether she gave up being an artist, or someone discarded her paintings after her early death in 1930, or whether she was not prolific and her remaining paintings have disappeared over time. In 2012 I wrote an essay about Darrell Morrisey and since then she was included in the Beaver Hall artist exhibition held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2015, she was included in their exhibition catalogue, and two of her paintings (on two sides of the same panel) and several drawings were discovered after I published my essay. She is not among the best of the Beaver Hall artists but she is an interesting story of endurance, family history, and one woman's effort to be independent. 


This old map of Montreal shows Beaver Hall Hill, St. Patrick`s Church
on an adjacent street to Beaver Hall Hill, and other locations



The arrow indicates the Beaver Hall artists`studio


The arrow indicates a building where the 
Beaver Hall artists' studio was located


This is a Google Street View of the previous image, as of October 2021, 
the relentless construction of condos and office buildings has destroyed
whatever was left of the original Beaver Hall Hill; the Beaver Hall artists' studios
were in a building to the right of the remaining building above




From Lowell's Montreal City Directory, the address of the Beaver Hall 
Group of Artists, 305 Beaver Hall Hill


Looking south on Beaver Hall Hill towards Victoria Square, 1950s


Monday, June 4, 2018

Barbara Whitley, RIP

An article about Barbara Whitley in the Montreal Gazette of 04 June 2018. 

My interest in Miss Whitley is because she knew the Morrisey family; Darrell Morrisey is one of the "lost" Beaver Hall artists. I met Miss Whitley at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, on Ste. Catherine Street in downtown Montreal, when the memorial to F.R. Scott was unveiled there. By chance I asked her if she knew the Morrisey family (no relation to me) and she had known them; she had known Darrell's brother T.S. Morrisey but not Darrell who died in 1930. 

Here is my essay on Darrell Morrisey:
https://archive.org/details/DARRELLMORRISEYAForgottenBeaverHallArtistByStephenMorrissey


St. James the Apostle Anglican Church, 1890



Life Stories: Barbara Whitley had an eye 
for penmanship and philanthropy

Whitley spent decades as a volunteer with the Montreal General Hospital, one of many places she touched



Barbara Whitley felt that writing was sacred.
With an eye for detail, she adored the graceful and elegant italic penmanship style she grew up learning. Whitley, who died in May at the age of 100, went to school at The Study, a private all-girls school in Westmount, graduating in 1936. Even after her studies, Whitley remained deeply involved in the school as a volunteer.
In a world increasingly reliant on technology, Whitley wanted to preserve the art of penmanship. At one point she approached the school’s headmistress, Katharine Lamont, about rewarding students for outstanding penmanship. Two years later, the Barbara Whitley Handwriting Prize was created.
“She decided to donate this prize to the school one day on a whim, thinking that the art of handwriting was lost,” said Pattie Edwards, director of Alumnae Relations at The Study. “She didn’t think it would become a tradition, but we’ve been carrying on that tradition for a very long time.”
In 1973, Whitley helped create The Study School Foundation to help enhance the education of its students. Decades later, its endowment stands at more than $5 million.
“She was a really amazing, amazing woman,” Edwards said.
Whitley completed her undergraduate studies at McGill University. McGill’s Schulich School of Music held a special place in Whitley’s heart, and in the early 2000s she financially supported the creation of the Gertrude Whitley Performance Library, named in memory of her mother. The library now has more than 5,500 ensemble scores and parts in its collection. It also provides all the music material to the McGill Symphony Orchestra, the University Chorus and the Jazz Orchestra. She also gave frequent gifts to the MUHC and other parts of the school.
In her youth, Whitley was a stage actor and worked with famed humorist Stephen Leacock. She even joined him on his radio broadcasts. Whitley was heavily involved in the Centaur Theatre and Geordie Productions. One of her final stage roles was as a poisonous sister in the production of the thriller Arsenic and Old Lace.
“She was a really great artist,” Edwards said.
For Whitley, giving back to the community was almost instinctual. Her father, Ernest, had experienced eye problems when she was growing up. Later on, she supported causes related to vision and service dogs.
“Eye health was very close to her heart,” Edwards said. “She was just one of those people who just believed that if something needed to be done, she would do it. And she would get it done, and make it beautiful and special.”
Whitley was also known to help individuals, rarely taking credit for the work she did. Eventually, her trophy shelf became filled with honours from the Governor General (Caring Canadian Award in 2004), Queen Elizabeth (Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013) and MUHC (Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016).
“When I sent out the notice for her death, there were a number of people writing back to tell me about how they spent time with Miss Whitley, about how Miss Whitley got her their first job, about how Miss Whitley touched their lives in some way or another,” Edwards said.
Beyond her philanthropy, Whitley was a riveting storyteller. She’d often hold court in her Westmount apartment, telling tales of Montreal’s good old days.
“Stories about the history that we didn’t know existed,” Edwards said. “The community, Montreal, people in fundraising, and everybody’s brother, sister, cousin. She knew everybody. You could listen to her talk all day long.”
A month before she died, Whitley celebrated her 100th birthday. It was a grand occasion, taking place at the Atwater Club, and dozens of relatives from Ontario made the trip to toast Whitley. It would be the last time many of them saw her, but she won’t soon be forgotten.
“Our slogan at the school is, ‘The world needs great women,’ ” Edwards said.
“She really was a formidable woman.”
Barbara Whitley
Born: April 8, 1918
Died: May 18, 2018





Saturday, May 26, 2018

Barbara Whitley, 1918-2018

The Pond at Westmount Park, 1916, Notman photograph



I met Barbara Jane Whitley by chance, it was in October 2011 at the memorial service for F.R. Scott at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church in downtown Montreal. I was researching one of the "lost" Beaver Hall artists, Darrell Morrisey (no relation), and although Miss Whitley never met Darrell she had been a friend of other members of Darrell's family. Now Barbara Whitley is gone and gone as well are her memories of Stephen Leacock and other writers and artists of a long passed era. Barba
ra Whitley was two years younger than my mother, and it was my mother who told me that a Colonel Morrisey had phoned her in 1940 asking if we were related to their family and also looking for family history information. None of the dots were connected until Evelyn Walters contacted me in 2010 regarding Darrell, who I had never heard of, but I realized that Colonel Morrisey was the older brother of Darrell. Sounds complicated but it really isn't. A lot of coincidences came together; it was a celebration of art, history, and synchronicity! The essay, "Darrell Morrisey, A forgotten Beaver Hall artist", is online at archive dot org. 

Updated on 31 August 2022: It was October 2011 when I was at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church for the F.R. Scott event; not sure if I had seen T.S. Morrisey's name on a plaque at the church at this point, which is when I met, by chance, Barbara Whitley; just on a hunch I asked her if she knew T.S. Morrisey who was also, at one time, a parishioner at this church and she replied that she had known him. I asked her about his younger sister, Darrell, but she didn't remember ever meeting her. She suggested going to Knolton to find, if possible, the lost painting by Darrell; Miss Whitley's attitude re. Darrell was pragmatic, if her paintings were all "lost" then maybe she wasn't that good an artist. 



Here is the obituary as published in the Montreal Gazette:



BARBARA JANE WHITLEY

1918-2018


Following a life of extraordinary involvement, generosity and devotion to her family and community, Barbara Jane Whitley quietly passed away at home on Friday, May 18th, in her 101st year.

Barbara, the only child of Ernest Whitley and Gertrude McGill, was a lifelong Montrealer. She attended The Study and went on to earn a degree at McGill University. Here she attracted the attention of famed humourist Stephen Leacock, who invited her to join him on his popular radio broadcasts. This experience ignited her lifelong love for theatre and her talent as a thespian. This passion carried on though her decades-long involvement with the Centaur Theatre and with Geordie Productions. Who could forget one of her final roles, as one of the poisonous sisters in ?Arsenic and Old Lace?? All who were fortunate enough to have known Barbara will also remember her as a captivating story teller and great orator.

Barbara's enduring legacy is her steadfast support of numerous Montreal institutions, both as a volunteer and as a philanthropist. Her community involvement began in the Second World War, when she served with the Canadian Red Cross. She then took on leadership roles within the Women?s Canadian Club and the Junior League.

As a philanthropist, Barbara supported numerous causes, including St. James the Apostle Church and McGill University. In honor of her father, she established the Whitearn Foundation, which supports research of diseases of the eye. She was a devoted ?old girl? and loyal supporter of The Study, co-establishing the school?s Foundation in 1973. 

Barbara's most notable contribution was her 70 plus years of service to the Montreal General Hospital, where she served as president of the Auxiliary and was the first woman ever to serve on the hospital's executive committee. In recognition of her incredible service, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the MUHC in 2016. 

Barbara never sought recognition for her generosity. However, her long list of honors and awards cannot be overlooked. Most notably, in 1992 she received an honorary doctorate from McGill University, in 2004 the Governor General's Caring Canadian Award, and in 2013 the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her outstanding contribution to the community.

Barbara left a lasting impression on all who came to know her. She will be deeply missed by her adoring family and friends, many of whom gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday on April 8. Her family extends a special thank you to Dr. David Mulder, for his care and friendship.

"The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward." (Carol Ryrie Brink)

Funeral services will be held at Mount Royal Cemetery Complex (1297 Chemin de la Foret) entrance only possible through the Outremont Gate due to closing of Camillien-Houde) on Saturday June 9th at 11 am. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in memory of Barbara Whitley to the Montreal General Hospital Foundation. Donate online: http://www.mghfoundation.com/en/donate-now/give-in-honour, call (514) 934-8230 or mail your donation to the MGH Foundation, 1650 Cedar Avenue, E6-129, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1A4.


Barbara Whitley

Published in the Montereal Gazette:.http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/montrealgazette/obituary.aspx?n=barbara-jane-whitley&pid=189093990