Our last meeting, 28 January 2013

I made this video almost eight years ago, it shows when all four of us (Susan, John, Paul and myself) from our office at Champlain College in St. Lambert met together for an office reunion. The video is Paul recounting his latest travels, as he used to do every September when we returned to work. Those were the good old days! 

 

 

The synchronicity of dates

It's mid-January 2020 and winter has set in, it's -18 C today. So far, the winter hasn't been all that bad, meaning that while we've had some snow the temperature has hovered around -5 C to + 2 or 3 C. That has now ended... 

In my experience important events happen in clusters of dates, these are meaningful for specific people; there is a synchronicity of dates. For instance, two friends were born on January 15; they are Audrey Keyes (Veeto) who died last October, she was my first friend in life, someone I knew from age four or five. The second friend was Artie Gold who I met in the early 1970s, Artie was my first poet friend. Artie died in February 2007. A third friend, Paul Leblond, was born on January 16; he died suddenly in 2015. My friend Pat McCarty, with whom I traveled the length of California and down into Baha California in April 1976, died eleven years ago, on January 18, 2007. Pat was a truly lovely person and I still miss him. Note added on 31 August, 2022: I've just learned that Pat McCarty's birthday is January 21 (not sure of the year, possibly 1947); this is the same date as my wife's birthday, she was born on 21 January. A final date, January 14, 1965 is when I began keeping a diary, something I have done on a daily basis since then, it has changed my life, it has helped to fulfill my life. All of these significant occurrences are clustered around the mid-January dates. 

And now we turn to winter! Mid-January winter photographs. 

Here are photos taken yesterday, on Greene Avenue in Westmount and then on the drive home along Cote St. Antoine Road.

Pinocchio outside the old Nicholas Hoare Bookstore on Greene Avenue

Walking along Greene Avenue

The Bistro on the Avenue is gone; we had many happy times there over the years, dinners with friends and family and with fellow members of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal

Years ago the old Westmount post office, on the corner of Greene Avenue and Blvd. de Maisonneuve  was closed and then made into boutiques, stores

This is Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Leonard Cohen's family synagogue; it is where
his song "You Want it Darker" was recorded

Murray Hill Park; I suppose the green snow fencing is intended to keep people
from tobogganing down the hill

Fire Station/Caserne 34 between Decarie and Girouard

That's St. Augustine Catholic Church on the right, just after Girouard Avenue;
the church closed and it is now River Side Church 

That's the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, almost at the end of
Sherbrooke Street West, almost home

A.J.M. Smith of Chesterfield Avenue, Westmount

Poems, which are the spiritual blood of a poet,

Renew themselves in an eternal April,

And renew us also who take them into ourselves.

Thus the poet becomes as one of the gods

And in the church of the poem we communicate.

                            —A.J.M Smith, "In Memoriam: E.J.P. 26 April 1964"

                            Poems, New & Collected, p. 142

1.

I've been thinking about A.J.M. Smith's poetry lately, longer than "lately", maybe a few years and I'm still divided re. if I like it or not. Smith grew up on Chesterfield Avenue in Westmount and my friend Paul Leblond also grew up on Chesterfield, across the street from Smith, but that was thirty years later (long after Smith had moved down to the States). This reminds me that Paul's father, Dr. C.P. Leblond, who was head of the anatomy department at McGill, was famous for his discovery of stem cells. Up to a few years ago if you had a doctor educated at McGill they would have been at one time a student of Dr. C.P. Leblond. He didn't retire from McGill until the early 2000s and I remember Paul telling me of his visits, as a child, to his father's office in the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building. His office was two stories and had previously been the office of Dr. Hans Selye, famous for his studies of stress and distress. In 1943 Dr. Selye had commissioned Marian Dale Scott to paint a mural in his office and a few years after that this became Dr. Leblond's office. The mural is entitled "Endocrinology" and is 12' by 16', enormous. At any rate, as we all know, Marian Dale Scott's husband, F.R. Scott was good friends with A.J.M. Smith from the mid-1920s and they formed the Montreal Group of poets who brought modern poetry to Canada.

2.

If I read someone I like, or someone who interests me, then I'll read everything they've written including whatever has been written about them. A.J.M. Smith's Poems, New & Collected (1967) is probably the first book of poems that I ever bought; I still have reservations about his work but (as we say) such is life. It's difficult to find much on Smith's life, for instance did he have any siblings? Maybe this shouldn't matter but I am a nosy Parker, literally since my mother was a Parker, and I have a lot of the old Irish police detective in me that likes to figure things out. Years ago I found a copy of Smith's anthology (he is an excellent anthologist) Seven Centuries of Verse, English and American, From the Early Lyrics to the Present Day (1947). The book's inscription suggests that Smith had at least one possible sister, Dorothy Brown, and that she lived in or near Huntingdon, QC. Maybe this is common knowledge but it was new to me. Smith is pretty closed mouth about his personal life. The Huntingdon High School is now a grade school and where my grandsons are students. Another anthology edited by Smith, this time with M.L Rosenthal of NYU, is Exploring Poetry (1955). If every home should have several good poetry anthologies (which I believe) then these two would fit the bill. Smith and Rosenthal are from a time when poetry really mattered, they aren't writing out of an ideology or an attempt to exploit something that is timeless, they are writing out of love for poetry. For this reason alone I'll continue reading Smith's poems and when I find something by Rosenthal I'll buy it and discuss it here.

3.

I had forgotten about English Poetry in Quebec (McGill University Press, 1965) which I read in high school. The idea for the Foster (Quebec) Poetry Conference originated with A.J.M, Smith and Frank Scott and was organized by John Glassco (who also edited the proceedings, as pictured). It's interesting that the idea for this conference came from three members of the Montreal Group of Poets, they helped bring Modern poetry to Canada back in the 1920s; this ongoing involvement in poetry also emphasizes their literary importance. It's interesting that the Foster Poetry Conference was held in October 1963, just two months after the Vancouver Poetry Conference held at UBC; for different reasons both poetry conferences are important in Canadian literary history and it might be worthwhile to discuss these events together. These older Quebec poets were not stodgy old men, they believed in the importance of poetry; this is especially true in the essays by Smith and Layton, both of whom have a passion, urgency, and intelligence in their discussion of poetry. For background information on the conference read Brian Busby's excellent biography of John Glassco, A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer (2011), it's one of the best literary biographies that I've read. 

4. 

I write the date inside the book that I am reading and I see that I read A.J.M. Smith's On Poetry and Poets (NCL, 1977) in July 1980. The whole book is a fascinating discussion of Canadian poetry. In some ways it reminds me of John Sutherland's Essays, Controversies and Poems (NCL, 1972) but also of Louis Dudek's book reviews, criticism, and commentaries on poetry. In Smith's book there are two essays that need to be mentioned; the first is "The Confessions of a Compulsive Anthologist" written in 1976; this is about as autobiographical as you'll get from A.J.M. Smith and you can see his passion for poetry was present even when he was a high school student reading a poetry anthology under his desk. The second essay was given at the Foster Poetry Conference, it is "The Poet and the Nuclear Crisis" (1965). He concludes this essay by writing "it is the arts and the humanities, and particularly poetry, the most humane of all the arts, that can offer that education in sensibility and virtue that we must submit to if we are to live." That's the kind of passionate statement that leads me to read more of Smith's writing. In fact, passion is something we don't talk about these days, maybe passion sounds naïve and if so, then we need more passion among our poets. So, let's talk about something that people don't talk about anymore and that is passion, and passion includes enthusiasm and a sense of urgency regarding the importance of poetry. It is passion in a poet's work that changes people, it makes the reader realize he or she is in the presence of something greater than what is normally experienced. When I was seventeen years old and an apprentice poet I read Allen Ginsberg's statement that poets should "Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting."  With this one statement Ginsberg changed my life. Where are the poets of passion today? There are no Earle Birneys, no Al Purdys or Dorothy Livesays, no Alden Nowlans or Gwendolyn McEwens. Where are the poets who change the reader's life because that is what real poetry does, it changes one's life. Our most passionate poet, Irving Layton, has become a solitary historical figure, a voice that is no longer listened to.  Smith's passion makes his poetry and criticism worth returning to and reading.

NOTE: The conclusion of this was published on this blog in July 2019 under the title "A Reappraisal of A.J.M. Smith". 

My friend, Paul Leblond, retires from teaching

                      

                                                      Champlain College, St. Lambert Campus

Here is one of my last social engagements, my speech at the retirement party for my friend Paul Leblond hosted at the home of our colleague Susan Woodruff. I loved teaching and I loved socializing at our office, we had a great long run with both! But everything comes to an end. 

RETIREMENT SPEECH FOR PAUL LEBLOND

I taught at Champlain College from November 1976 to January 2012. 

For most of that time I shared an office with Susan, John, and Paul.

I can honestly say I never went to work unhappy that I had to be there. I always loved teaching, the students, and the three people with whom I shared an office.

I met Susan first because she was on the hiring committee when I was interviewed.

                                         View of the Jacques Cartier Bridge from our office window

A week after I was hired and sitting in my tiny first floor office, John (who I'd never met before), came and welcomed me to the college.

A few weeks later I met Paul at a department meeting at the home of Ricky Zurif, our department head. It was evening and Paul came running in when the meeting was almost over, he was breathless and animated,  he'd been to a political demonstration and he had lots to say about the demonstration still going on in the streets.

It was always lively in that office of ours, you could depend on it, we talked constantly, whether about Quebec and Canada, American politics, our students, the administration at the college, teaching, and schedules that had four hours of back-to-back classes! And when John wasn't there (he was "off to meet the kiddies" as he sang leaving the office, to a tune from the Wizard of Oz) Paul (or "Paulium" as John called him) and I continued to talk. And talk. And talk.

Few teachers have more students congregate around them than Paul, these were animated group meetings during which time young people could say anything they wanted, and some of them probably experiencing for the first time an adult taking them seriously and listening to what they had to say. It was a free-for-all for students visiting Paul. Students meeting with Susan all seemed responsible and charming young women who read Jane Austen and would no doubt go on to respectable and responsible careers. Students visiting me were more or less normal people, including one young man who brought along his five foot tall Italian grandmother who wanted to give me a hug. Paul's students were a motley crew who sometimes had outrageous opinions. And when they finally left it was back to work for Paul, he had to organize the half dozen tapes or media he was bringing to class, photocopy and staple elaborately made hand-outs on green, pink, or blue paper, and go over his class preps before he left for class. One semester when Paul's students arrived to talk, this time a particularly loud and large group, I was happy to go off to the library and work there.

                                                                             From a classroom window....

Paul gave so much of himself to his students. He is a genuinely kind and caring person. We often had the same students; I always recommended Paul's or John's or Susan's classes when students asked me for advice about the next semester. There was Patrick who had cerebral palsy and was in a wheel chair. Because of his illness it was difficult to understand what Patrick was saying but he visited Paul at least once a week for several years. We'd hear Patrick coming, his voice down the hall, and then he'd manoeuvre his wheel chair into the office. Patrick relied on Paul's help because no one would help him as Paul did. Paul was kind and caring to this young person, more than most people would have been.

Another memorable student was "Big Robert" who sweated profusely and filled the office with his presence. He was also intelligent and opinionated, but better to have students with passion and interest who actually read books and think for themselves than students sitting bored at the back of the class. Robert went on to earn several graduate degrees including his PhD and he returned to Champlain to teach for a few semesters. Again he visited our office and he was as opinionated as ever.

When students would apply to McGill University's medical school, Paul put in many hours helping each student individually with their applications. His father, Dr. Charles Leblond, was an eminent physician and medical cancer researcher at McGill and I always enjoyed hearing Paul's stories of growing up, including visiting, with his two brothers, the morgue at the McIntyre Medical Building (or some other building at McGill).

And then, every August, Paul would arrive at the office from travelling somewhere exotic in the world and we all listened to his adventures, looked at his photographs, and shared his enthusiasm for countries he'd visited, including over the years India, China, Japan, South America, South Africa, all across Europe, and numerous road trips by car across North America à la Jack Kerouac! There was always some curious bit of trivia he'd marvel over, for instance, do you know how many dozens of flavours of yogurt you'll find in a Paris grocery store? As someone who prefers to stay at home and read a book, or write a poem, it all sounded quite fascinating!

Here is Paul in our office, early May 2011

Paul was always kind and compassionate to his students and I know they responded to this quality in him. They knew he was a good person and they trusted him, they could rely on him, he brought out the best in them. Paul's classes and meetings during his office hours provided students with an environment that gave them the freedom to be themselves, to feel empowered to express themselves freely. No wonder he was considered one of the best teachers at Champlain.

And now, on behalf of Paul's colleague's in the English Department, and especially on behalf of Susan and John and myself, I would like to congratulate Paul for his many years of dedicated service to the students at Champlain College and thank him for being our wonderful office mate, a true friend, and for being himself.

Stephen Morrissey

August 19, 2013

Updated on 22.09.2019, 06.11.2019