For those born on February 6th

When I heard that Gord Downie was born on February 6th I knew he was even more genuinely extraordinary than I originally thought. He also wrote one of my favourite songs , "The Poets", performed by The Tragically Hip. Who else is born on the 6th? Louis Dudek on February 6,1918, poet and McGill professor, who transformed Canadian poetry and also discovered Leonard Cohen and published Cohen's first book of poetry. Also the astrologer Axel Harvey, born in 1940, whose first wife was descended from Aaron Burr, and Aaron Burr was also born on February 6th. Ilona Martonfi, another poet, born on the 6th of February, she has bravely re-visioned her life through poetry and gone deeply into the interior. There is also my cousin, Herb Morrissey, born on February 6th 1938 in the Town of Mount Royal; Herb was a magician and businessman, founder of Morrissey Magic, and a truly unique man, loved and admired and missed by many.

This just in today: when I was growing up we used to spend the summer at a summer cottage in St. Eustache, QC, across the street from my grandmother, my Auntie Mable, and my Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy. They were wonderful years. Next door to our cottage was where the writer Joseph Schull lived, in a cottage where he wrote behind his mother's house. Thinking back on it Joseph Schull was the first writer that I was aware of and I'm thinking of reading a few of his historical novels. He was born in North Dakota but grew up in Canada, he died in Montreal on 19 May 1980. He was born on February 6, 1906. 

Joseph Schull

From Google Street View, Joseph Schull's mother's home on 11th Avenue in St. Eustache, QC, in 2009

Joseph Schull with Helene Gougeon on their honeymoon

Joseph Schull was once a prominent writer, he was a playwright, novelist, historian, and poet; today, he is almost completely forgotten. In the late 1950s Schull and his mother lived in a house next door to us on 11th Avenue in St. Eustache. Our cottage was behind the Goodyear's (or is it spelled Goodier?) house and across the street from my grandmother and aunt and uncle's cottage; those were wonderful summer days in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I remember Joseph Schull from those summer days, he had a small cottage behind his mother's house and I could hear him typing there. A few weeks ago I was reading An Anthology of Canadian Poetry (edited by Ralph Gustafson and published in 1942); Schull has some poems in this book. As well, Schull's extensive literary archives are deposited at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. I remembered Schull from our summers spent in St. Eustache. He is the first person I was conscious of as a writer; he was at the beginning of my journey as a poet.