"Fire Insurance, an index to prosperity", by T.L. Morrisey

 

Upper and lower photographs are of T.L. Morrisey's office at 260 St. James Street;
Notman photograph, McCord Museum, 1894

This essay by T.L. Morrisey is taken from:

Canada's Future, What She Offers After the War

A Symposium of Official Opinions

Edited By E. A. Victor

Copyright Canada, 1916

Published by:

The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd

Toronto, MacMillan and Co., Limited

Thomas Louis Morrisey, around 1917

By T. L. Morrisey

Author's biography: Thomas Louis Morrisey: born I860; president, All Canada
Fire Insurance Federation: past-president, Montreal Insurance Institute; past-president, Canadian Fire Underwriters Association. One of the leaders in the insurance world. He is the father of T.S. Morrisey and the Beaver Hall artist, Darrell Morrisey.

                                            -o-

It would, indeed, be difficult to find a truer index to the material growth of Canada than the steady increase in the volume of fire insurance reported to the Department of Finance at Ottawa.

Insurance on property presupposes property; therefore, the amount at risk held by the fire insurance companies operating within the territory may be taken as a reasonably safe guide in estimating the wealth of the community.

The Dominion of Canada came into being in the year 1867, and although the Fathers of Confederation overlooked specifically mentioning insurance as coming within the pur¬ view of the legislative powers of Parliament, nevertheless, the legislators of that day, sitting at Ottawa, appear to have had little doubt on the subject, since one of their earliest acts— Act 31, Vic., Cap. 48—related to insurance.

The first return to Parliament, under this Act, was presented at the second session of the first Parliament, covering the year 1868.

A perusal of this report now, in the light of later developments, proves very interesting reading.

The total amount of fire insurance in force on December 31st, 1868, was $203,653,894, a sum, no doubt, considered by our sturdy forebears not to be despised. Possibly when we picture to ourselves what Canada was then—four provinces not yet connected up; the conditions of life, simple, as com¬ pared with the complex social existence of to-day, the then chief sources of wealth being the four basic industries, agriculture, fishing, mining, and lumbering, the latter including the cognate industry, wooden shipbuilding—the great indus¬ trial development that has since taken place being still hidden m the womb of the future—we, too, can perceive why the modest figures of 1868, taken as an earnest of what was to come, amply justified the satisfaction of our forefathers.

The gradual expansion, and industrial development, of the country is reflected in the returns for succeeding years.

For the purpose of comparison, the amount at risk as at 31st December, 1868, and the corresponding figures for 1874, and at each quinquennium thereafter, are here given. These figures speak more eloquently than words:—

1868.$203,653,894

1874.$321,132,413

1879. $407,357,985

1884.$605,507,789

1889.$694,538,378

1894. $836,067,202

1904. $1,215,013,931

1909.$1,863,276,504

l914.$3,456,019,009

The population of Canada in 1868 was probably around 3,250,000 (census, 1871, 3,485,761). To-day it is, roughly, 8,000,000 (census, 1911, 7,206,643). Thus, while the popula¬tion has increased less than two and a half times, the fire insurance on property, as reported to the department at Ottawa, increased seventeen times.

It must be borne in mind that the figures quoted, being merely for the purpose of comparison, are, of necessity, limited to the amount carried by companies licensed by the Dominion Government, since no others are available for the earlier period. The control of insurance, unlike banking, has never been assumed solely by the Dominion. The provinces have also granted charters and licensed companies to carry on the business of insurance within their respective borders, and the volume of business so written by such companies, as com¬ piled from latest available reports (Ontario, 1913) reaches the very respectable total of $753,078,617.

This is not all. Under the Insurance Act of Canada, paradosical as it may seem, insurance with unlicensed com¬ panies—having no legal status in the country—is permitted; persons placing insurance with such companies are merely required to make a return of same to the superintendent of insurance.

The insurance placed with unlicensed companies, as re¬ ported for 1914, amounted to $219,743,335, which, while a sensible reduction from that reported for the preceding year, is still considerably in excess of the amount at risk of all companies in 1868.

Taking the amounts for the three classes of companies, we find:—

Dominion companies. $3,456,019,009

Provincial companies .  $753,078,617

Unlicensed companies.  $219,843,335

Grand total .  $4,428,840,961

Here we have a rough-and-ready method of arriving at the value of all our buildings, and movable property; dwellings and their contents; churches, schools, colleges; warehouses and stocks of merchandise; factories and machinery; farm buildings, implements, and live stock; grain and lumber; steamboats plying on inland waters; railway property, other than right-of-way; in short, property in every conceivable form liable to destruction by fire.

Having regard to the uninsured property, and property, though insured, under-insured, a fair estimate would be to place the insurance carried at 50 per cent, of the actual value, which would yield a sum of $8,857,681,922, or well over $1,000, for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The people of Canada are, likewise, forehanded; they have money in the bank, the amount standing to their credit in savings account as at 31st July, 1915, being no less than $683,761,432. They carry life insurance to the extent of $1,216,955,432, upon which they paid premiums (1914) of $41,129,724.

Our wealth does not stop here. We have thirty thousand miles of railway; highways and bridges; municipal improvements, such as pavements, water, sewerage, and lighting systems, all contributing to the comforts of modern life. Our interest in these may be only an equity, as the bondholders, and m the position of mortagagees, but the benefits accrue to us.

 Our wealth does not stop here. We have thirty thousand miles of railway; highways and bridges; municipal improvements, such as pavements, water, sewerage, and lighting systems, all contributing to the comforts of modern life. Our interest in these may be only an equity, as the bondholders stand in the position of mortagagees, but the benefits accrue to us.

 Then, to cap all, we have a very nice little parcel of real estate, its "metes and bounds" being as follows: on the north, the Arctic ; on the east, the Atlantic ; on the south, the 49th parallel of latitude ; and on the west, the Pacific, comprising, in all, three and three-quarter million square miles, more or less, some of which has sold as high as $128 per square foot.

 Upon this estate is to be found a great diversity of natural resources: coal in abundance, east and west; minerals, base and precious ; orchard and argicultural lands suitable for all kinds of farming and producing the finest wheat in the world; the largest forest reserves; fur-bearing animals; shores teeming with fish; rivers and lakes navigable to the heart of the continent ; rivers not navigable, but possessing value as water-power, or hydro-electric, estimated at 20,000,000 horsepower, of which not 10 per cent, has been developed.

 Climate is sometimes urged against us, but even this has its compensations; for, if it is cold in winter, may we not reckon amongst our most valued assets the longest hours of sunshine in summer? Old Sol, with an utter disregard of labour union maxims, does not hesitate to work overtime in the ripening of our crops.

 To the climate may we not also attribute, in no small degree, the most valued asset of all the strong, hardy, self-reliant, virile race engaged in the world task of building a nation on this northern half of the North American continent ?

The sons of Canada have proved their mettle upon every occasion that has arisen. The same spirit that prevailed in 1885, when the Rebellion in the North-West threatened their country, and again in 1899-1900, when they answered the call of Empire half way around the world to South Africa, is the spirit that asserted itself immediately the long-talked of German peril crystallized itself into German attack upon their national life. The response of Canada was quick, and befitting the proud position she occupies amongst the free and self-governing communities forming that glorious Empire which stands for everything that makes for the uplift of mankind.

In the never-to-be-forgotten April days of the eventful year, 1915, when the torture of suspense spread like a pall over the country to its remotest corner, to be followed by the thrill of pride and exultation, as the story of the glorious deeds of the Canadians at Ypres and St. Julien gradually unfolded, a nation was born! There, upon the classic battle-ground of Europe, that witnessed the military operations of the mighty Caesar and his legions, and, down through the centuries, the struggles of various peoples for mastery ! There, against the onslaughts of the greatest military organization the world has ever known, employing methods entirely novel in warfare, and, be it said to the everlasting disgrace of Germany, as despicable as novel, these new-found warriors of the twentieth century held fast, and, in the words of their illustrious commander-in-chief, "saved the situation".

 May it not well be asked, where is there another eight million people as highly favoured as this eight million, another community possessed of the same per capita wealth, potential as well as in being? Should we not justly be proud of our heritage our "place in the sun" and forever be prepared to defend it to our last dollar, and our last man ? 

Two newly discovered paintings by Darrell Morrisey

A newly discovered painting by Darrell Morrisey

A second painting, seen above,  is on the reverse side of the painting,
"L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce",1927 - 1930, by Darrell Morrisey

Label of framer on this painting

L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, located at 5333 Avenue Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montreal;
photo from 1890

Photographs of L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâc, from the church website

In September I received an email saying that a Darrell Morrisey painting had been discovered; Mr. Charles Lecour writes, "I bought it a few weeks ago from an antique dealer from Lachute who offered it online. I was immediately taken by the painting but at the time didn’t find anything about the signature or in my books."   Mr. Lecour, formerly of Montreal, now lives in Sherbrooke, about 150 km east of Montreal. Darrell Morrisey was a member of the important Beaver Hall group of artists; unfortunately, Darrell died young—at age thirty-three years— and she was soon forgotten as an artist.

Here is Mr. Lecour's description of the painting: 

The front is a simple countryside landscape with the tree and the hay wagon . Signed D Morrisey, and measure 13 1/2 x 11 1/4 in. framed. The other side of the board shows a religious building to be identified, unfortunately someone wrote some numbers, but it looks written in pencil. It bears a label for Maison Morency Frères , when they were on Ste-Catherine at their beginning (opened 1906) , they had two other locations afterward , the most famous address was when they were on St-Denis street near De Maisonneuve. (15 September 2024)

At first I wondered where this landscape had been painted, there are no recognizable geographical features in the painting but there is the hay wagon. Darrell visited France several times and in Quebec she often painted rural country scenes, but I wondered about the hay wagon, it is a minor point but all I had to go on. Were hay wagons similar to the one shown in her painting used in Quebec? The answer is that this type of hay wagon was used in both Quebec and in France, so it could have been painted in either place.  Personally, I would place this landscape in Quebec. 

It is Darrell's painting of the church that interests me more than the landscape, it is the painting that I would hang in my living room if I owned this painting. At first I wondered if it was a painting of a church in Spain, it didn’t look like a traditional Quebec church. I did a reverse image search on the painting and one of the many images that came up was of L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce here in Montreal. Well, this was a happy coincidence and quite an auspicious discovery, from 1976 to 1979 I lived on Northcliffe Avenue just two block east of this church; I spent many hours waiting for a bus, to the Vendome Metro station, standing across the street from L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce; unfortunately, I didn’t pay enough attention to the church. And now, here it was in Darrell Morrisey’s painting. 

Construction of L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce began in 1851 and the church was inaugurated on 18 September 1853, exactly 153 years ago. The architect of the church was John Ostell, an English architect who had married a Roman Catholic woman and converted to Catholicism; he also designed the two towers on the prestigious and historical Notre Dame Basilica facing Place d'Armes. There is a crypt beneath the church and Jacques Viger, the first mayor of Montreal, is buried there. Guido Nincheri designed stained glass windows for L'église Notre-Dame-de-Grâce; for some time there has been a growing interest in Nincheri's work, his studio is in Montreal's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district; stained glass windows by Nincheri can be seen at St. Michael the Archangel Church in Mile End in Montreal, at L'église Saint-Léon de Westmount, and at many other churches. Mélanie Grondin's The Art and Passion of Guido Nincheri (Vehicule Press, 2017) is an excellent biography of Nincheri's life.

But there is more. I noticed that the bell tower on the right side of the church is not present in old photographs of the church. The bell tower is a relatively new addition to the church, it was constructed in 1927, and this helps us date the painting; Darrell must have painted the church between 1927 and the date of her passing in 1930. 

We can even narrow down when the painting was done to just one year as her presence in Montreal was infrequent between 1927 and 1930. In the fall of 1926 Darrell and her parents traveled to the UK, they had planned a tour of Britain and France now that T.L. Morrisey, Darrell's father, had retired from the insurance business; however, shortly after arriving in the UK, T.L. Morrisey died. Then, Darrell and her mother returned to Canada and sold Hazelbrae, the family home on Church Hill Avenue. During 1927 and 1928 Darrell was busy with her art, it was a time of creativity and being active in the art community. In 1927 she exhibited in the  RCA members exhibition; a year later, in 1928, she exhibited her paintings with the Art Association of Montreal (later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). She even illustrated an advertisement for a cook book, Les Secrets de la bonne Cuisine (the advertisement was published in LaPresse, 22 October 1928), by Soeur Sainte-Marie Edith.

On 18 August 1928, Darrell and her mother traveled to England on the Duchess of Bedford. On a ship's passenger list Darrell lists her occupation as “artist”. After Darrell's mother returned to Montreal Darrell stayed on in London, she was a resident there for almost two years, from August 1928 to 6 July 1930 when she returned to Montreal. We don’t fully know what happened during those two years. Then, Darrell returned to Montreal for an unusually short visit, from July to September 1930, and she returned to the UK on 11 September;  she traveled alone and listed her profession as "none". A month later, Darrell Morrisey died, on 22 October 1930, at London, England, where she had been living at 18 Weech Road in Hampstead. It is an anticlimax to this narrative to say that the painting must have been painted between January 1927 and August 1928, probably the summer of 1927 or the summer, to August, of 1928.                                                      

And now, I must thank Mr. Charles Lecour for contacting me about this painting; I hope he enjoys it as much as I have enjoyed seeing it and researching and writing about the painting of an artist who was unknown and forgotten just fifteen years ago, and whose charisma can still be felt almost a hundred years after her passing.

For more information on Darrell Morrisey: 

https://archive.org/details/DARRELLMORRISEYAForgottenBeaverHallArtistByStephenMorrissey/mode/2up

https://stephenmorrisseyblog.blogspot.com/search?q=darrell+morrisey

June 2024 visit to Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal

Where my parents are buried, "between Chaston and Green"

When Cote des Neiges Cemetery and Mount Royal Cemetery were founded in the mid 1800s, Cote des Neiges was a Catholic cemetery and Mount Royal Protestant; this has mostly stopped being the case. 

It was a hot day, it was +34C

A new headstone for my mother's brother who died in  1914

Headstone for Thomas Sydney Morrisey and his wife Hilda Coristine Morrisey; Syd 
is the brother of Darrell Morrisey, one of the "forgotten Beaver Hall artists 

 

A newly discovered painting by Darrell Morrisey

"Sunset Landscape" by Darrell Morrisey, dated May 1917

In March of this year I was contacted by Gretchen Shoring of ARTI, a company selling antique paintings located in London, UK, about a painting possibly by Canadian artist Darrell Morrisey. Darrell was a "forgotten" member of Montreal's Beaver Hall group of artists; while some members of the group have become famous, Darrell and several others have mostly disappeared from public view.            

"Sunset Landscape" is not signed on the front of the painting, but Darrell's signature is on the reverse, written in pencil in cursive; on the previously discovered painting (see below) by Darrell, her name is printed in block letters at the lower left of the painting; in both cases she has written her name, "D. Morrisey". Duggleby Stephenson, the auction house based in Yorkshire, UK, which first acquired this painting, describes it as follows:

Description: Darrell Morrisey (Canadian 1897-1930): Sunset Landscape, oil on board signed with initials, inscribed and dated 1917 verso 13cm x 19cm

Here is a suggestion of what might be the provenance of "Sunset Landscape". The painting might have been a gift by Darrell to someone she knew, I suggest it was given to Charles Darrell (or a member of his family), after whom Darrell was named, as he was both Darrell’s godfather and a close friend of  T.L. Morrisey, Darrell's father. In 1913, when Darrell was about fifteen years old, she left Montreal for the UK, accompanied by Charles Darrell to his family home in Chiselhurst, Kent, where she would board at Tudor Hall School. Charles Darrell and his wife, Emily Harries Jones, had four daughters, all older than Darrell, and Darrell could easily have been included in family gatherings. Charles Darrell was born and raised in Yorkshire, where Duggleby Stephenson is located; is it not possible that a descendant of Charles Darrell returned to Yorkshire and, many years later, in 2023 or 2024, decided to sell the painting? Someone identified the artist, Darrell Morrisey, who was a family friend, on a note attached to the reverse of the painting. I think this is a possible scenario. But, obviously, I am just speculating and I could be totally wrong.

Finally, I like this painting very much; it demands our attention. To me, the painting has a charisma (assuming a painting can have charisma; Darrell definitively had charisma). Of course, what we need are more paintings by Darrell, and we may find a few more, but for now we have her life story that is still unfolding, and we have these paintings by her.    

Here is a link to my 2012 essay on Darrell Morrisey: Darrell Morrisey, a forgotten Beaver Hall artist.  

In our living room: on left, a painting by Mary Harman, used as the cover image for
my selected poems, Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems, 1978-1998 (1998); on the right
is a watercolour by J.F.B. Livesay, the father of Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay; 
the painting by Darrell Morrisey is below the Livesay.

"Sunset Landscape", by Darrell Morrisey, 1917

                                            Reverse side of "Sunset Landscape” with Darrell's signature
                                and a sticker identifying Darrell and her brother, Thomas Sydney Morrisey  



Two paintings by Darrell Morrisey

Painting by Darrell Morrisey discovered in 2014

Newly discovered painting by Darrell Morrisey, 2024

T.L. Morrisey, excerpt from an essay he wrote

 

                From left: Darrell Morrisey; her father T.L Morrisey; her brother Thomas Sydney Morrisey;
                and her mother Clara Morrisey; outside their home "Hazelbrae", at 85 Churchill Avenue,
                                                                            Westmount, Quebec.



Canada's Future, what she offers after the war, a symposium of official opinion (1916) (ed. E.A. Vickers) is an early but important collection of statements, a symposium, on the future of Canada; included among the contributors is the father of Darrell Morrisey (pictured above), Darrell is a forgotten member of Montreal's important Beaver Hall Group of artists.

Here is an excerpt from T.L. Morrisey's contribution to this book. T.L.'s son, Thomas Sydney Morrisey, went on to have a prominent role in business and he  distinguished himself as a war hero in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Siberia. Darrell Morrisey, in 1916, was only 17 years old and still in school. T.L., himself, was born into a middle class family in Halifax, Nova Scotia; he became very wealthy in the insurance business in Montreal. T.L. died in 1926 not long after his retirement; he and his wife, and Darrell, had recently arrived in the UK planning to spend the winter months in England and France when he died:

In the never-to-be-forgotten April days of the eventful year, 1915, when the torture of suspense spread like a pall over the country to its remotest corner, to be followed by the thrill of pride and exultation, as the story of the glorious deeds of the Canadians at Ypres and St. Julien gradually unfolded, a nation was born! There, upon the classic battle-ground of Europe, that witnessed the military operations of the mighty Caesar and his legions, and, down through the centuries, the struggles of various peoples for mastery! There, against the onslaughts of the greatest military organization the world has ever known, employing methods entirely novel in warfare, and, be it said to the everlasting disgrace of Germany, as despicable as novel, these new-found warriors of the twentieth century held fast, and, in the words of their illustrious commander-in-chief, "saved the situation".

May it not well be asked, where is there another 'eight million people as highly favoured as this eight million, another community possessed of the same per capita wealth, potential as well as in being? Should we not justly be proud of our heritage— our “place in the sun” — and forever be prepared to defend it to our last dollar, and our last man ?

                            

                                                       --T. L. Morrisey

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 

 

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’ 2^nd 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.