The garden on 22 May 2026

 

Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone

                                    Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone, residents

                                  in background; photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1952; private collection

The co-founders of The Neuro are Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone. Of course, we've all heard of Wilder Penfield, he's famous! There is a street named after him in Montreal and years ago we received in the mail a short book by Penfield on the subject of the family; it was Man and his Family (1967), based on Penfield's Josiah Wood Lectures; Josiah Wood was my step-father's grandfather. I have only recently heard of Dr. William Cone, this was in a newspaper article (by Allison Hanes; published in the Montreal Gazette on 28 February 2026).  If you were to visit The Neuro today, you would probably not see any evidence for the existence of Dr. William Cone, except his image in the mural by Mary Harris Filer, and yet Cone was the co-founder of The Neuro. About Filer’s mural, Allison Hanes writes,

The work shows Penfield and Cone back to back at the bedside of a young woman, surrounded by a group of nurses, colleagues, contemporaries and some of the greats from the history of neurology. While Penfield, arms extended, looks toward the horizon, Cone’s sorrowful gaze is fixed on the patient — a perfect synopsis of their medical styles.

I plan to read The Mind Mappers: Friendship, Betrayal and the Obsessive Quest to Chart the Brain, by Eric Andrew-Gee (Random House Canada, 2025); published only last year, this sounds like an excellent book and will explain and describe something of the relationship of Wilder Penfield and William Cone; Cone deserves our attention, he dedicated his life to neurology and is also an eminent and distinguished physician. The William Cone Fonds are archived at the Osler Library at McGill University.

I can understand how Dr. William Cone felt betrayed by Penfield when he was passed over as head of The Neuro when Penfield retired; that is, Cone co-founded The Neuro and he was passed over by Penfield, the other co-founder of The Neuro and Cone's long-time friend. It was perhaps a correct decision but Cone’s feeling of betrayal were overwhelming; this betrayal, it is suggested, led to Cone`s suicide in his office at The Neuro. 

Perhaps the images of mental illness, the suffering endured by people as depicted in Filer`s mural, describe Cone's mental and emotional state at that time in his life. Dr. Cone’s suffering has more to do with psychology than with neurology; in Jungian terms, Cone was confronted by his shadow, by the unresolved dark side, the repressed side, of his psyche; he couldn’t deal with the personal injustice of betrayal by a longtime friend and colleague. At first I thought that Wilder Penfield didn't think Cone was up to the job of running an institution that Cone co-founded, but now I wonder if it was another case of someone not aware of their own shadow, this time Dr. Penfield's shadow. Whatever the reason, in a way it led to Dr. Cone's death.

Dr.Penfield was succeeded at The Neuro by Dr. Theodore Rasmussen. One day I will explain something of our family’s experience at The Neuro.

Dr. William Cone


Cone's obituary

This portrait of Wilder Penfield, painted by Lynn Buckham in 1972, is
on permanent exhibit on the first floor of The Neuro; behind Penfield
is the statue at the The Neuro's entrance

                                     

                                             Wilder Penfield's name inscribed on the wall at the 

                                                            entrance to The Neuro with the names of other 

                                                            important neurologists; Cone's name is absent

                                                                                                                                        

Dr. Penfield’s Josiah Wood lectures 

                                         

                                                       

Note: The statue at The Neuro's entrance is "a marble sculpture titled La Nature se dévoilant devant la Science ("Nature unveiling herself before science"). Installed in 1934, it is a copy of the original sculpture from 1899 by Ernest Barrias, chosen by founder Dr. Wilder Penfield to symbolize the ideal of neurological research."

The garden on 17 May 2026

Winter began early last year, around the beginning of November, so there wasn't much chance to rake and bag leaves, or tidy up, or put away garden furniture, or do whatever else one does at the end of fall. Years ago a friend, who had an incredible garden, told me that he rakes the fall leaves onto his flower beds. Of course, gardeners tend to be neat people and don't like the look of last year's leaves in the garden the following spring; I never had a chance to rake and bag last fall's leaves but I did rake some leaves onto the garden beds. Now, it's been a long and cool spring and the dead leaves are still there, and I've decided to let them decompose where they've fallen or been raked. It was a terrible winter, it was relentlessly cold, no January thaw and below average winter temperatures. Perhaps partly because of this leaf mulch the garden survived, although most of my lavender has died, other bushes are only half alive, including rose bushes. Most of my hostas survived but they are very slow in making an appearance even by mid-May, and some hostas are indeed slowly pushing through the bed of leaves. 

One last thing, after six or seven years of working on my Canadian cottage garden, it has finally become truly established and I doubt I need to buy many plants this year, I can just leave most of it as it is. The garden is established and it doesn't need my input as when I was planning this garden. Ideas for the garden come at unexpected time, for instance, when watching a mystery on TV or while watching Escape to the Country, or just out of thin air. Last year I decided to let part of the garden go "wild", not cut the grass there, just leave it; so, it's been from planning to abandoning (not interfering).The garden is an invitation to urban wildlife, birds, and insects, and any plant that self-seed; it is an invitation to visit or live where they'll be left alone and admired. Like the rabbit who visited the other day or yesterday's visit by a cardinal and sparrow, both at the birdbath, and then a robin who had waited his turn before having a drink of clean water I'd left for them. Here are some photographs taken on May 17th; photos mostly of hostas that are pushing through last fall's leaves.

Update: It was +29 C yesterday, very hot. In the morning I went to our garden centre and I spent about $175.00, too much (just a few years ago that was a lot of money); everything is expensive. I bought a small bag of grass seed, some annuals for a flower box and two or three containers, and two pricey hanging planters.   

At The Neuro, 30 April 2026

This is the first time I've visited the Montreal Neurological Institute since October or November 1969; the entrance, on University Street, is the same today as it was in 1969 or when The Neuro opened in 1934, it is the same Art Deco design. The Neuro is a world class institution, founded by Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. William Cone; a website reads, "The seamless integration of research, patient care, and training of the world’s top minds makes The Neuro uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on the understanding and treatment of nervous system disorders." 

 

The garden on 9 May 2026

It was a long and cold winter, a nightmare of a winter, and now spring weather is still cool. Usually by this time I have installed our air conditioner and it is hot outside, that's how the seasons work here, one day it's winter, the next day it's summer, but this year I am still putting on the furnace when I get up (it's only +5 C and overcast on 13 May 2026).The other day I looked out of the dining room window and there was the rabbit that visited us this winter, he was sitting in the garden and having a nice quiet time. Then a cardinal flew by and landed a few feet away from him, it scared the rabbit who ran away. There is a lot of life out there but you have to make your garden a place where birds, insects, and animals want to visit. As a Canadian writer said, "if you build it they will come." That was W.P. Kinsella. The crows are often flying overhead, sometimes they are eyeing squirrels that would make a nice meal for them. A few days ago I went out to put clean water in the bird bath--birds don't like dirty water--and everyday I leave a few unshelled peanuts in the bird bath for the crows--but this day I found something else in the bird bath, it was a squirrel's paw. Well, that's life around here, last year I saw a crow fly away carrying a dead squirrel. I am no friend of squirrels, they made life hell for a few years, there is no bird feeder here because the squirrels ate the bird food I would leave, and then the squirrels entered the attic and wanted to live there; squirrels can be squatters. The noise they made was terrible. At great expense I had their entrances closed up and that was the end of squirrels in the attic, although for a few years they would return to try to enter what had been their home, but without luck.

Squirrel paw found in the bird bath

 

 

Ian Ferrier, poet, at the Visual Arts Centre, 8 May 2012

 

These are photographs I took of Ian Ferrier reading
his work at the Visual Arts Centre in Westmount; 
in the background is the organizer of the reading
Ilona Martonfi

John McAuley, poet, some photos

 

John McAuley and Claudia Lapp, at Bleu Met Literary Festival, April 2018

John McAuley reading at Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University, 26 April 2018

Waiting to read at Rare Books and Special Collections, 26 April 2018
from left to right, Endre Farkas, Tom Konvyes, Claudia Lapp, Stephen Morrissey

John McAuley, sound check before reading at Rare Books and Special Collections, 26 April 2018

John McAuley and Tom Konyves, 26 April 2018

John McAuley reading at the Yellow Door, May 2013

Remembering John McAuley, 1947 - 2026

Note: This essay, "Remembering John McAuley, 1947 - 2026", was first published at Periodicities; thank you rob mclennan for publishing this. Here is the text below.

                      

                        Work for true poems true to you.

                        The rest are Styrofoam and glue.

                                    —John McAuley, "Four Tweets to a Young Poet"

 

 

John McAuley and I were the only members of the Vehicule Poets born in Montreal. John grew up on the West Island and lived most of his life in downtown Montreal, for many years in an apartment at 2151 Lincoln Avenue, just a few blocks from Concordia University where he had been a student and then a faculty member of the English Department from 1978-2018. One evening in the early 2000s my wife, Carolyn Zonailo, and I met John and his wife Ritva for dinner at the Alexis Nihon Plaza, a few blocks from where John and Ritva lived, it was the only time we met Ritva.

 

Before marrying Ritva, before the apartment on Lincoln, in the 1970s, John was married to Diana Brewer, Marie and Griffith Brewer's daughter. John and Diana (or "Lulu") lived at 1206 Seymour Avenue in the Shaughnessy Village, just south of Ste. Catherine Street West; it is a mostly residential downtown neighbourhood and they lived in a Victorian grey stone building (with lots of old books and needing some work) which I believe was the Brewer's family home going back several generations; it is a ten minute walk to Concordia University.

 

Artie Gold loved John's poetry, no Trump-like nickname for John that Artie had for one or two other members of the Vehicule Poets. There is John's poem, "Nine Lives for Artie Gold", written just after Artie died in 2007, and published in John's last book, All I can Say for Sure (2013). Ken Norris reminds me that "Artie once said that John might wind up being the best of all of us", of all of the Vehicule Poets. John writes of Artie,

 

                                    Those who know his books

                                    will delight at absurdities

                                    shadowed by the casual order of things.

All I can Say For Sure might be the best book John published but it received no prizes, few reviews, and little praise; however, here is what Bert Almon, a reviewer for the Montreal Review of Books (spring 2014), wrote about John's book:

 

            John McAuley, one of the Vehicule Poets who were so influential in Montreal circa            1975–80, published four books from 1977–79. His new collection, All I Can Say for             Sure, is so good that the long silence must be regretted.

 

A reviewer for the online Montreal Rampage, wrote the following:

 

            While McAuley’s writing is poetry by form, it seems like musical prose when read aloud. It is difficult to say why a piece of writing works. To use a cliché, but one entirely appropriate, you know good writing when you see it. Or, as McAuley states in “Poetry Reading”, “the gut always knows first”—but take it in a happier sense this time. Here, the writing just works. It comes off the page: it is the words in an order and a flow only a long time poet would be able to write. I could “hear” many of the works in my mind.

 

John and Artie had been in George Bowering's creative writing class together at Sir George Williams University (present-day Concordia University) in the early 1970s. Sometimes I hear Artie's voice in John's work, it isn't just a similarity to Artie's work, John had an equivalent ability to surprise the reader with insightful metaphors; what they shared, and GB acknowledged, is the rare gift for writing real poems. John writes, "The elderly learn the despair of outlasting everything in their closets", "Ancestral dreams in the one dark mole/ on your neck", and "Tranquil poetry arrives/ like unexpected snowflakes/ on your brother-in-law's roof next door."

 

John is similar in some ways to Leo Kennedy, one of the Montreal Group of poets who brought Modernism to Canadian poetry in the 1920s and 1930s; Kennedy came from an immigrant Irish family and he felt he was always an outsider. John may have identified with Kennedy but, unlike Kennedy, John never stopped being involved with poetry, and unlike Leo Kennedy John lived up to his early promise as a poet. In "To Leo Kennedy 1983" John writes,

 

                                    Half a century ago and one book published.

                                    . . . . .

                                    Tragic success in finding your music

                                    too easy too early,

                                    faultless memory for the cost of each line.

 

Leo Kennedy published one book of poems and while he was perhaps the most original of the Montreal Group of poets, or perhaps the most idiosyncratic, he was not the best of the Montreal Group. I like Kennedy's book, The Shrouding (1933), but it isn't a book I have returned to after my initial enthusiasm for it; it isn't a book that I have reread as I have with the other Montreal Group poets. John has a long gap in publishing, from around 1980 to 2013; but Claudia Lapp also published few books; I didn't publish any books from 1998 to 2009, an eleven year period. In 2013 I offered to publish a chapbook for John, with Coracle Press, but Ritva vetoed it, she said John didn`t have the work needed for a chapbook; John seemed to be always busy correcting student papers, preparing classes, but not writing new poem.

 

John and I, and Bob Galvin, organized the 1976-77 poetry series at Vehicule Art Gallery.  Several years before this, in 1973, I had organized a reading at Vehicule Art Gallery with Guy Birchard, and with Artie Gold's suggestions for readers; it was Guy who introduced me to Artie in early 1973 and I often visited Artie's Lorne Crescent flat. A few years later, organizing poetry readings at Vehicule Art, I brought in bpNichol and later The Four Horsemen, they read at the college where I was teaching, and then read at Vehicule Art; I had been corresponding with Clayton Eshleman and brought him in to read at the college and then at Vehicule Art. I remember Robert Kelly's reading and Kenneth Koch's reading. Claudia Lapp knew Anne Waldman from her years at Bennington College in Vermont and that's how Anne Waldman came to read at Vehicule.

 

In 2013 I suggested to John that he read at the Yellow Door Coffee House, the excellent reading series run by Ilona Martonfi who has done so much for Montreal poetry; the Yellow Door is located just around the corner from Artie Gold's old flat on Lorne Crescent. At the reading I made a short video of John reading his Leo Kennedy poem. The Montreal Review of Books published a poem by John as its Poem of the Month in May 2014. It is not as though John disappeared from the poetry scene, he was present but less than in the 1970s. While Leo Kennedy disappeared from poetry and moved from Montreal, John kept writing and teaching; and Ritva was an excellent editor of his work as can be seen in the poems in All I Can Say for Sure.

 

Tom Konyves posted videos on YouTube of the readings we did that evening in April 2018 at McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections, organized by Chris Lyon, the former director of that department; it was an evening celebrating the Vehicule Poets including readings by John McAuley, Claudia Lapp, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, and myself; Artie Gold's and Ken Norris's poems were read by other readers. An interactive screen displayed poems; exhibition cases contained books, letters, newsletters, and photographs of each poet; it was a great evening and well attended. It was great seeing John who was warmly welcomed, especially by Tom and Claudia, John was obviously emotionally distraught because Ritva was seriously ill.

 

The main collection of literary papers of the individual Vehicule Poets are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections on the fourth floor of McGill's McLennan Library; these include all of the literary archives of Artie Gold, Ken Norris, Endre Farkas, and myself. I agree with Ken Norris in the hope that someone who has access to John McAuley's literary papers donates them to the university, it would be a generous and important gift for present and future literary scholars; it would preserve something of John's literary and personal legacy. If you watch Tom`s video from that evening, you'll see that despite everything John was dealing with, Ritva's illness, John's reading at McGill University was a great reading, the poems he read were a showcase of his talent as a poet. Tom's video is the main visual document of John's public poetry readings. John was self-deprecating about public readings; in his poem "Poetry Reading"; he writes,

 

                        Years without a reading, no publishing, not much writing

                        as if the word really had gone out from Parnassus

 

And then he continues,

 

                        Some readers will even think he is dead or the next thing to it.

                        No one will want to talk to him nor he to them. . .

                        . . .

                        By the end of the reading, pale and shaken

                                    I can only murmur,

                        "What's wrong with being second or third rate?"

 

I want to show John's extensive involvement with poetry in those early days, and his lesser but still significant involvement that followed; I want to show that John participated in creating an open and inclusive poetry scene at a time when English language poetry was in decline in Montreal. John was never solely a traditional poet, he also has a substantial body of concrete and visual poetry. Looking back on things, John participated in the writing and performance of “Drummer Boy Raga”, on 16 April 1977 at Powerhouse Gallery; it was a group reading promoted by Tom Konyves. John's work was included in the anthology, published by Vehicule Press, Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies (1978). John's Maker Press published books and he edited and published a literary magazine, "Maker"; he edited and published our first anthology, The Vehicule Poets (1979). John participated in our collective interview with Louis Dudek and published the interview with his Maker Press, A Real Good Goosin', Talking Poetics, Louis Dudek and The Vehicule Poets (1980). Of course, John's work is included in Vehicule Days, An Unorthodox History of Montreal's Vehicule Poets (1993). John also read at our 2004 reading, C=a=b=a=r=e=t ==V=e=h=i=c=u=le, presented at La Cinquieme Salle of Place des Arts on 8 April 2004, and he was in the anthology of The Vehicule Poets_Now (2004). And John's work was included in Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century (2007), edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift and published by Vehicule Press. In addition to the Yellow Door reading in 2013, John also read at Argo Book Shop when DC Books launched his 2013 title, All I Can Say for Sure. He read at both the Bleu Met literary festival reading in April 2018 and the Vehicule Poets' reading at Archives and Special Collections at McGill University, also in April 2018.

 

John and I used to correspond, beginning in 1974 and ending in 2018, up to 2014 our correspondence is archived in my literary papers at McGill University: there are five letters to John McAuley, in 1976 and 1979-1980; seven letters from John, 1974 to 1976; one letter in 1980; and then years of silence until two letters in 2003, a few letters between 2004 and 2006, and silence until 2010; writing this I reread his emails to me from 2013 to 2018. When John didn't respond to emails from Ken Norris or Endre Farkas I was asked to contact John, which I tried to do. Reading these more recent letters, 2013 to 2018, I even discovered an unpublished review John had written of my book Girouard Avenue (2009); he had been at the book launch for Girouard Avenue, at The Word Bookstore, and after the book launch we had walked along Milton Street, talking about the old days at Vehicule Art Gallery.

 

I tried to keep in touch with John but, after the Bleu Met reading, in late April 2018, it was with little success; after 2018 John's life was filled with care giving for Ritva. After the event at Bleu Met John and I sat in my car and he told me of Ritva's health situation and that he was her primary care giver; I commiserated with John, I know that care giving is constant solitary work, exhaustion, and worry. I never expected this would be the last time John and I would meet or speak together; I sent him letters and books but they were either returned by the post office or never acknowledged by him, if they were ever received. Ritva died in 2021 and then John's health began to decline.

 

Memories fade, some are authentic but many memories are forgotten or unreliable, and some things that we remember, in fact, never happened, they are invented by time. Writing this memorial has been a return to the past, a time to remember those years of publishing books and poetry magazines, of public readings, of knowing John McAuley, but it is also about the excitement of being young poets and committed and passionate about poetry. Other than being a highly talented poet, a dedicated teacher, a faithful and loving husband to Ritva, a loyal friend, my memory of John is that he was a good decent human being and that means everything.

 

                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        Montreal • 20 April 2026

                s.e.morrissey@gmail.com

 

 

The Grief Room

 

                        Grief with a glass that ran

                                     —Swinburne 

Grief is a room that was built on to the side of consciousness, an attached dwelling, a room that may seem abandoned but it stays as part of one's psychic construction; unless you have experienced grief you don’t have this room. If you know grief you will never "get over" grief; once the room is constructed it is there permanently. Grief is the child of time, as sand falls through an hourglass grief is present, it accompanies each grain of sand on its journey. What will you do with your Grief Room? Will you inhabit it? Will you renovate it? Will you try to demolish the Grief Room? Or board up the entrance to this room? Or try to forget it exists? It may fall into disrepair, cobwebs on the walls, dust dust dust of the dead on the floors and under the single bed of dead desire. The abandoned Grief Room will not be ignored, it is inhabited by ghosts who play loud music, weep and wail, laugh uncontrollably, and talk their insane talk throughout the night and into the morning. 

Sunday, 12 April 2026