A.M. Klein's "Heirloom"

 

Map of Montreal from 1910

1.

Looking through an old notebook from 2010 I found a poem I had written about the poet A.M. Klein. Then I remembered that in my first book of poems, The Trees of Unknowing (1978), I had a poem entitled "Heirloom"; when I was young I had been very impressed with Klein's poem of the same title. I wondered when it was that I wrote "Heirloom", probably sometime in the early 1970s but I thought it was much earlier. Then I also remembered that Sandra Goodwin, Bill Goodwin's widow, had told me that she grew up near where Klein lived; that was before Klein became a recluse due to mental illness and she and the other children in the street would greet Klein by saying "Good morning, Maitre Klein" ("Maitre" being the formal way to address a lawyer or notary in Quebec). Sandra was married to Bill Goodwin who was Irving Layton's nephew and best friend for eighty years; I knew Bill because I taught in the same English Department as him and when he retired he said he had retired so I could hold on to my job. Anyhow, I wondered where Klein had lived, I found two addresses in Lovell's Montreal City Directory, one on Clarke (in the Mile End neighbourhood) and one on Querbes in Outremont. The address on Querbes says his employment was as "Public relations counsellor Seagram's"; the Bronfmans certainly supported Klein, they were wonderful patrons of the arts. I taught Klein's "Heirloom" poem for many years; one day I reread my own "Heirloom" poem, it is almost an embarrassment when compared to Klein's.

2.

That generation of poets, Layton, Dudek, Smith, Scott, Klein, welcomed young poets, after all,  who would want to be a poet? Bill Goodwin was Irving Layton's nephew but they were more like brothers. My mother lived on Montclair Avenue and, on occasion, I used to see Bill walking along Monkland Avenue on his way to Irving Layton's home on Monkland; that was in the 1990s when Irving wasn't well and Bill and several others looked after him, it was before Irving entered Maimonides long term care residence. Bill was very kind to me in so many ways; one day, soon after my son was born in January 1979, he phoned to say that it was too cold to take a baby outside, as my wife and I had planned, and he was right. Whatever Bill taught it included poems by Irving Layton and every year he would have Irving in to the college to give a reading. Some times after the reading I would get a lift downtown with them. Poets, like Irving Layton and Louis Dudek, focused on the young, especially if they were poets, so while Irving was talking in the front seat of the car he'd turn around and include me in the conversation. He was always polite and considerate. He'd ask what I was writing and show some interest, despite his famous enormous ego he was also concerned with mentoring young poets; Layton was a natural teacher. But that's what the older poets were like, it wasn't all prizes and ego, they mentored younger poets; it was a small community and anyone wanting to be a poet was treated with some respect. I mention this as it is an heirloom from those days when poets were few but they were dedicated to the Muse and to the life of being a poet.

 

Is F.R. Scott a Major Poet?

A few months ago I made the comment on Facebook that F.R. Scott is a "minor poet". Right away I knew I had committed some kind of Canadian Literature heresy; what? F.R. Scott is a minor poet? This led me to wonder about the criteria for how we categorize poets as "major" and "minor". T.S. Eliot in his essay, "What is Minor Poetry?", writes that the whole of the body of work by a major poet is greater than that same poet's individual poems. The opposite is true of the minor poet; the minor poet has a few really good poems but the majority of the minor poet's body of work is not equal to the excellence of a few individual poems. Eliot says that we need to read all of a major poet's work. All we need to read of a minor poet are the poems that are anthologized, the rest of the body of work is unimportant for the average reader. It is very difficult to categorize a poet as "major" because the criteria for categorizing poets is different for each poet; someone who is a major poet may not be "major" for the same reasons some other poet is considered "major". There is no single set of criteria for identifying a major poet; however, minor poets are easily identified. Returning to Frank Scott, I read The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott Toronto, McCelland and Stewart, 1981); he is a surprisingly original and compassionate poet and worth reading today. I can't bring myself to say that Scott is a major Canadian poet but (despite Eliot) I would suggest reading all of Scott's work, there isn't a lot of it but it's worth reading.

1981

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. Barbara 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

After reading F.R. Scott's Events and Signals (1954)

It's a different experience to read someone's individual books than it is to read their collected poems. For instance, F.R. Scott's Events and Signals (1954), which I've just read, gives the reader an insight into Scott's thinking that changes one's perception of Scott, it softens and humanizes him; perhaps this side of Scott isn't as evident as in his Collected Poems. In fact, the Frank Scott in this book is quite fascinating and revealing. "Departure" seems to refer to his separation from P.K. Page in the late 1940s. I think we only see now, after Peter Dale Scott's poem in last fall's Pacific Rim Review of Books, that "A L'Ange Avant Gardien" and "Will to Win" refer to the artist and dancer Francoise Sullivan, but if I'm wrong then correct me. And we know that he had also a romantic relationship with the artist Pegi Nichol which perhaps gives us a different perspective on his poem "For Pegi Nichol". There were so many affairs with or without the possibly silent approval of his wife, Marian Dale Scott. "Invert" and "Caring" give an insight into these affairs: it is that Scott was always looking for love but also afraid to leave his marriage with someone he also seemed to love and (of course) lose his social position. Even today we don't look on affairs with approval or kindness; affairs come across as sordid and someone is always betrayed and hurt by them.

Cover of Scott's Events and Signals

Meeting F.R. Scott in 1971

Reading one's old diaries or journals is like meeting a stranger you used to know, that stranger is yourself when younger. Back in November 1971 I was at a reception at Thomson House, part of McGill University, for the English poet Michael Horowitz. I remember this only because I wrote about it in my journal. I met Marian Dale Scott, F.R.Scott.'s wife. She was very nice as was Frank Scott who I met later that evening. Apparently, and I don't remember this at all, Earle Birney was also there. What I can see from this diary entry is that all of these were lovely people who were kind and considerate to this kid they'd never met before. I heard Patrick Anderson read a few days before and Frank Scott said that Anderson regretted not knowing the younger poets. One thing that might interest Brian Busby is that Marian Scott said that her husband and John Glassco would walk on Crescent Avenue and talk about the past, the days of the Montreal Group of poets. Let's see, that was almost fifty years before the Thomson House reception and right now is about fifty years after the same reception. Time flies but you have to write something down or it's all forgotten. 

On Leo Kennedy

On the right is the Kennedy family home on Rushbrooke Avenue in Verdun where they lived in the 1920s.
They had a private tennis court adjacent to their property. 

On Leo Kennedy

Ken Norris told me that in the 1970s he and a Montreal publisher invited Leo Kennedy to publish a book of poems, it would have been Kennedy's first book since The Shrouding (1933). Kennedy arrived at the meeting with a garbage bag full of poems (not an auspicious beginning!) and the meeting failed to produce a book; it would have been only his second book in forty years. One wonders about this meeting. Did Kennedy sabotage an opportunity to publish a second book so late in life? Was it a way to get out of publishing what may have been inferior work? Did he dislike my friend or the publisher and not want to work with them, then why go to the meeting? Or was there some psychological complex that had held him back from writing new poems or publishing them? Still, despite the dearth of new poems by Kennedy he always insisted that he was a poet, he was not shy about his place in Canadian literature, nor should he have been.

When I heard this story about Kennedy I thought that he was a fool to have passed up on a publishing opportunity; however, I've known other poets like him who had lots of talent but who never fulfilled themselves as poets, they stopped publishing for several decades or never published again after some early success. Am I the only one to think of this as a failing on Kennedy's part? Perhaps I am. During the years after The Shrouding Kennedy didn't publish much original poetry but he did publish book reviews and even some poems in Poetry (Chicago). Patricia Morley in As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy's Story (1994), her biography of Kennedy, mentions that these reviews were perceptive and incisive. As well, Kennedy was also interested in socialist ideas that were at odds with his work in an ad agency as a copywriter for consumer goods. Kennedy was one of the early "Mad Men" as depicted in the television show by that name. It seems that his creative energy went into copy writing.

Perhaps the circumstances of Kennedy's personal life need to be considered. After 1935 Kennedy had to make a living to support his family; he had a second marriage and years later he took care of an invalid wife. Indeed, he had a successful career in copy writing and the family moved several times because of his work. He had three sons—one with his first wife and two with his second wife—and he helped raise two grandchildren which is what brought him back to Montreal in the 1970s. Kennedy was no puer aeternus, the Jungian term that describes a man who does not take on full adult responsibilities like gainful employment, maintaining long term and meaningful relationships, supporting his family, and being a fully functioning adult in society. He lived a responsible life of stability and middle class respectability and was well-liked and respected by his colleagues; however, perhaps (solely as conjecture) this middle class life conspired to end his career as a poet even though others have lived middle class lives such as his and they continued being poets. So what gives?

What gives is that after hearing of the "poems in the garbage bag" episode I saw Kennedy in a new light, as a kind of archetypal trickster, a coyote figure in mythology, someone who punctures the appearance of respectability in others. The anecdotes that Morley recounts of Kennedy shooting squirrels and storing them in his freezer, and other stories, suggests to me that Kennedy had a bit of the joker in him; perhaps even his copy writing career is a job suited to the jester, to someone aiming to sell stuff to people who don't want or don't need the stuff up for sale. This is just to suggest an explanation for some of Kennedy's behaviour and perhaps his work as a poet.

Kennedy is someone who had lots of talent as a poet, he is a formalist in his work, in some poems he is counting syllables, he has an incredible vocabulary in his work, and his images, metaphors and similes can be stunning. There is also something "old fashioned" in his work, I am not sure that he is a truly modern poet except that he was active as a poet in the Modern period; he's some kind of an aberration, a solitary voice that is self-invented. Kennedy has a depth of perception that is sometimes greater than the other Montreal Group of poets from McGill University. But I don't think he felt included among the Westmount poets who dominated English language poetry back in the 1930s. F.R. Scott made some cracks about Kennedy coming from working-class Verdun even though Kennedy had as much talent as FRS as a poet; Kennedy was not truly a working class person, his father owned a successful business located in Old Montreal and their home in Verdun was substantial. It is ironic that Scott is the defender of the working class, one of the founders of the CCF, a precursor of the NDP, and yet he is snobbish with Kennedy. Could Kennedy not have been offended by this, or contemptuous of Scott because of this? A response to Scott and his patrician lifestyle and social class might be to become even more eccentric. This, of course, speaks to the considerable class divisions that English-speaking Montreal experienced in the past; the wealthy lived in Westmount and had little or nothing to do with the English in Verdun, NDG, Griffintown, or elsewhere in the city of Montreal.

It's also curious that in 1926 AJM Smith published a poem entitled "The Shrouding", seven years before Kennedy published his book with this same title. Was there some conflict between them because of this? Small things divide poets! A friend published a poem with the same title as one of my poems and I always wondered what that was all about. BTW, his poem was inferior to mine... But I also published a poem entitled "Heirloom" after reading AM Klein's poem "Heirloom"; with its allusion to Klein my poem was to honour the older poet and it was published years (in the mid-1970s) after Klein's death. Was Kennedy making some kind of a comment, positive or negative, about Smith or the poems that Smith was writing by using Smith's poem title for his book?

I also question some aspects of Patricia Morley's biography of Kennedy; she treats Kennedy in a benign way, but you also get the feeling that she thought of him as her personal pet project, she was writing his biography and she was proud to have him captive. She insinuates herself into his life story and becomes a part of Kennedy's biography. She comments that there is no biography of AJM Smith; Anne Compton's A.J.M. Smith, Canadian Metaphysical  (1994) is not a biography but a discussion of his work. Kennedy has a biography and the biography was a big deal for Leo Kennedy as it would be for any poet. It must have made him more impressive with his family and with other poets, it also returned him to public attention. I doubt we would pay him as much attention as we are (for instance this essay) if the biography hadn't been published, it raised interest in Leo Kennedy, poet. Kennedy was serious about the biography but he must have realised how little he had achieved in poetry; indeed, later he has difficulty collecting any archival material when requested to do so. There are no extensive Leo Kennedy Fonds; he came up with very little archival material.

Now, I'm just thinking about Leo Kennedy and trying to figure him out and maybe he's not a trickster at all. One of the things critic do, one of the things some readers do, is try to figure out some explanation of the writer or the writer's work that he or she is currently reading. Another thing is to build on what we read, to develop some of the ideas we read and make them a part of out own insights into life. We find something curious, or something that appeals to us, or something that deepens our feelings and understanding about life, or we find something that speaks to us as human beings and we need to explore that writer or his or her work for ourselves, to apply it to our own understanding of life. That's what I've tried to do here.

Note: Kennedy may have published a second book in 1972 or 1992, Sunset in the States published by Diane Press; this seems to be a summary of some kind of legislation in Michigan, it is not mentioned in Morley's book on Kennedy. Perhaps it is not Kennedy's work but wrongly attributed to him.

18 January 2018

McGill Fortnightly Review

Mark McCawley, the editor of Urban Grafitti, was in favour of online/digital magazines, I was in favour (and still am) of both, but I prefer a hard copy, on paper. This was one of the few things about which Mark and I disagreed. Online periodicals can disappear when the editor discontinues the site/periodical, and what is digital can be revised or altered in the Orwellian future. Hard copies of periodicals, kept in archives, can be researched years from now and I have done this type of research. So, for instance, two of the Montreal Group of poets (Scott and Smith) founded The McGill Fortnightly Review and it was published from 1925 to 1927; a few years later they published The McGilliad. Even today these periodicals are fascinating reading. The full run of both periodicals is available at Special Collections at McGill University or online at https://blogs.library.mcgill.ca/…/mcgill-fortnightly-review/

F.R. Scott, "The Dance is One"

I've just reread F.R. Scott's, The Dance is One (1973). Scott is not a great poet but he's also not a minor poet; as I wrote about Scott's colleague and friend, A.J.M. Smith, he is one of our better poets. Scott's importance lies not only in his body of creative work but also in what he did (he helped bring modernism in poetry to Canada in the 1920s), who he knew (Leon Edel, A.J.M. Smith, John Glassco, Leo Kennedy, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Louis Dudek, and many others, for instance Pierre Eliot Trudeau), what he believed (for instance, an inclusive vision of Canada) and his career as a distinguished law professor at McGill University. 

Louis Dudek told me that Scott controlled every aspect of Sandra Djwa's biography, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott, that always intrigued me but I also feel ambivalent about it because Scott basically censored the book. If you read Professor Djwa's biography of P.K. Page you'll get the other half of the story about Scott's extramarital affairs that he didn't want in his official biography. I was also very impressed with Scott's book of translations St-Denys Garneau & Anne Hebert: Translations/Traductions (1962); additional translations by Scott are in The Dance is One.  

The title of The Dance is One is from his poem "Dancing" and is also the inscription on his and his wife's headstone in Mount Royal Cemetery. By the way, Allan Hustak's biography of Scott's father Canon Frederick G Scott, Faith Under Fire, shows the kind of extraordinary family F.R. came from; Canon Scott was an exceptional person as was his son Frank Scott.

Here is my main reservation regarding Frank Scott as a poet: writing poetry is not a sideline, maybe people can do two things well in life but not in poetry, poetry demands full-time commitment and Scott never gave it full-time commitment, he was also a human rights activist, a lawyer, a law professor, one of the founders of the CCF, and while some of the poetry he wrote is exceptional he also wrote satirical poetry, and other poems, that have a limited interest for readers. I know that Scott was charismatic and people liked him, some loved him, they all thought highly of him. But poets don't have to be nice people, was Robert Frost a nice person? No, but he was a great poet. Here is my main complaint about Frank Scott, he was attached to his social class while promoting social causes, he was making a name for himself as a lawyer and law professor, and while he was doing this he wasn't writing poetry, he was dividing his time and while poetry was important to him it didn't come absolutely first despite what he claimed. None of the Montreal Group of poets wrote large bodies of work except for A.M. Klein.  

Cover of Frank Scott's The Dance is One

Headstone for F.R. Scott and his wife Marian Dale Scott at Mount Royal Cemetery

Cover of Scott's translation of poems by Anne Hebert and St-Denys Garneau

Carolyn Zonailo at the Scotts' family grave site,
Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal, mid-1990s

NOTE: This was up-dated and expanded on 28 July 2019; 02 August 2022.                          

"Laurentian Shield" by F.R. Scott

F.R. Scott was born in Quebec City on August 1st in 1899 but lived most of his life in Montreal. A member of the Montreal Group of poets, Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, Leon Edel, and John Glassco helped bring Modernism to Canada. Desmond Pacey's Ten Canadian Poets (1958) is still a good place for some insight into Scott's importance as a poet.

Here is one of Scott's most famous poems:

LAURENTIAN SHIELD

F. R. Scott
From:   Events and Signals. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954.

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,
This land stares at the sun in a huge silence
Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.
Inarticulate, arctic,
Not written on by history, empty as paper,
It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes
Older than love, and lost in the miles.

This waiting is wanting.
It will choose its language
When it has chosen its technic,
A tongue to shape the vowels of its productivity.

A language of flesh and of roses.

Now there are pre-words,
Cabin syllables,
Nouns of settlement
Slowly forming, with steel syntax,
The long sentence of its exploitation.

The first cry was the hunter, hungry for fur,
And the digger for gold, nomad, no-man, a particle;
Then the bold commands of monopolies, big with machines,
Carving their kingdoms out of the public wealth;
And now the drone of the plane, scouting the ice,
Fills all the emptiness with neighbourhood
And links our future over the vanished pole.

But a deeper note is sounding, heard in the mines,
The scattered camps and the mills, a language of life,
And what will be written in the full culture of occupation
Will come, presently, tomorrow,
From millions whose hands can turn this rock into children.

Retrieved, 14 August 2017: https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/scott_fr/poem2.htm

                                                                                                "The Dance is One"

F.R. Scott's family grave at Mount Royal Cemetary

F.R. Scott Memorial at St. James the Apostle Church in Montreal

On October 12, 2011, F.R. Scott's contribution to Montreal and Canadian poetry was honoured by the unveiling of a memorial plaque dedicated to him at St. James the Apostle Church in Montreal.

F.R. Scott memorial plaque unveiling

The F.R. Scott Memorial, 12 October, 2011, at St. James the Apostle Church, Montreal

A commemorative plaque for F.R. Scott will be unveiled on October 12 at St. James the Apostle church here in Montreal. Scott was a constitutional lawyer, a McGill professor of law, and an important Canadian modernist poet; however, poetry was his first love. He states, “Everything in my life that I did was done with a feeling of making poetry.”

Below is an excerpt from an interview with F.R. Scott published in the Quill & Quire in July 1982. Scott’s answers here deal with the Canadian Constitution, Canada-Quebec relations, and the big multi-national corporations; his answers are prescient and insightful in light of today’s world:

Q&Q: Is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenched in the new Constitution the one you would have wanted?

Scott: The Charter of Rights is certainly not the one I wanted. It was put together in such a hurried fashion. All these power boys running around in smoke-filled rooms. There are many things in it that will cause us tremendous headaches. Of course, I have been in favour of an entrenched bill of rights written into the old Constitution, it was understood that certain laws affecting freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion could not be tampered with beyond the surveillance of the court — on any condition. Now, although it is entrenched really it is only partially entrenched because there’s the clause allowing a province to opt out. Quebec wants to do this.

Q&Q: Do you think the current form of Quebec nationalism is a progressive force?

Scott: I think the Parti Québecois’ position of independence is reactionary. Furthermore, I think it is immoral. It will make everybody worse off. There’s no absolute right to independence. You’ve got to see what harm it will do. To take a functioning federal system and split it into pieces is doing so much harm all around and about that I say it is immoral. Quebec has not been so badly treated. Separatism is just satisfying an amour impropre.

Q&Q: Is it too late to bring Quebec back into the fold?

Scott: Quebec is more subconsciously in the fold than we think. You know, I was a great defender of Quebec’s rights when it came to compulsory conscription. That made me a total isolationist when the war broke out and got me into more trouble than being a socialist. But it has always been my hope and faith that Quebec will come back. It will take a good deal of common sense, which I’ve always felt French-speaking Quebeckers have, and which their English-speaking counterparts increasingly show.

Q&Q: When you entitled your brief to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, “Canada — One or Nine”, were you questioning the ability of Canadians to grasp the potential of their country and does this still worry you?

Scott: This problem is as real to me today as it was in 1938. The spirit of commercialism, the disregard of the community, this attitude is so powerful and has as its most active defenders the big corporations. Only a strong federal state can stand up to these gigantic corporations though even it seems to have a hard time doing so. But at least a strong federal state can evoke a certain national will that says this is our place, these are our resources. To hell with the continental arrangement where the corporations will take 90% and the country will be left with 10%. We must say, we’re going to come into our own slowly. And if we had nothing but little individual nation states, little feudal forts running Canada, we’d be completely swallowed. I think I was ahead of my time in saying we must strengthen the federal system.

F.R. Scott’s “central passion” was poetry

Every poem is a partner with the poet in the dance of creation. Are they two? Are they one? Does he make it, does it make him? Or the two make the one? The rhythms change, the fashions come and go, from metrical stanza and rhyme, from free verse and imagism, from surrealism, concrete verse and anti-poems, from this and that new intensity, the forms emerge, but always it is the dance of life, of the vision standing on the commonplace, of man and womb and woman, of yin and yang, of beginnings and endings without end. (p. 452)

This quotation, by F.R. Scott, is taken from Sandra Djwa’s biography of Scott, A Life of F.R. Scott: A Life of the Imagination (Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver and Toronto, 1989).