Montreal Botanical Gardens, Chinese Exhibit

Dear Sonja

Sonja Skarstedt

Sonja Skarstedt

1986

Sonja Skarstedt, after a long battle with cancer, died on Friday, July 31, 2009. Sonja was a dear friend to many of us, with a terrific sense of humour and a great spirit to live and create. Geof Isherwood, her husband and life partner--they were always together--informs me there will be a memorial gathering on Sonja's birthday, next October 2. We have lost someone who contributed so much to poetry in Montreal, with her magazine Zymergy, published between 1987-1990, and later with Empyreal Press, she was a tireless and generous worker for many of us whom she published and many more that she supported in other ways. She was also a great support and friend of Louis Dudek in his final years and published his last books for him. What a loss we have all suffered, especially Geof and his family. Sonja was only 48 years old and had such a youthful spirit. I remember Geof and Sonja driving out to Huntingdon to visit back in 1989 or 1990, a time when I especially appreciated their visit, and the years during the 1990s when we worked on books she published for us. Two years ago I published her chapbook, Abundances, online with Coracle Press. She was a terrifically creative person, a poet, a visual artist, a playwright, and most recently she had branched out to making films. You can find out more about Sonja at www.skarwood.com.

Signs in New York City and Los Angeles

In Richmond, BC (above), or was that Steveston? CZ and I out one day with Hilde and Denis...

(my son's name is Jake, so restaurants with his name always interest me)

On Amsterdam one day in 2008, in New York City (below):

On Broadway (below), again in New York City, reminding me of Artie Gold:

Venice Beach, California, back in 1997 at Christmas. That's where I want to live, somewhere where it's July all year long... no winters. Isn't that what we all say as we get older?

Le Grand Seminaire (two)

A photograph (above) of Le Grand Seminaire from Sherbrooke Street West and then some photographs (below) taken on the grounds. 

Beginning with towers (one is seen above), I think of the Tarot cards, and then the Twin Towers in New York City. There is Joyce's tower in Dublin but, also, Yeats's famous tower; there is Robinson Jeffers' tower and C.G. Jung's tower. There is the poet's tower which is an archetype that exists inside the psyche of every poet. 

There is also a long pool of water on the grounds of the Grand Seminaire, overgrown and intimate, with its invitation to dream, to the unconscious, to other pools of water and to water itself, the unconscious mind, a timelessness and place existing beyond space, beyond the here and now but thoroughly involved in the here and now. Water to enter and find, at the ocean's bottom, strange fish from the water's cold depths and perhaps sunken ships and lost treasure. 

Doors are entrances, but they are also exits, and they are firmly closed (possibly not opened for many years and next to impossible to open), or left open and busy, part of the mercantile class, or ominous and forbidding, but always archetypal and evoking the unconscious. 

Always the invitation to the unconscious is there, that place of poetry and creativity, presented in archetypes, in that which is timeless and gives us hope against the soul deadening efforts of everyday life at the material level. What is life denial? It is existing in the here and now, with no God, no prayer, no meditation, no art, no poetry, no dreams, forsaken of the spiritual... and there are those people in our society with their efforts to eradicate the spiritual by condescension and ridicule and life denial. And then, the presence of archetypes, the unconscious, the mythic dimension. There are the life deniers among us, but no one can ever fully succeed in denying life because, always waiting, like water in a spring (so important to the Celts), are the archetypes, the spiritual, the divine presence, which is always there, always waiting to appear, as natural as fresh water bubbling up from a spring on the side of a road. And what is as natural as water from a spring? It is that the unconscious mind is seemingly hidden but always present, always showing itself in dreams and archetypal dream imagery or strange complex behaviour only explainable by psychology. 

The unconscious is present, it is always "behind the scenes" so that life is not as we might rationally want, but as the unconscious decides in its own way, almost a separate entity with its own rules and, importantly, always moving towards psychic wholeness, psychic healing. 

You ignore the unconscious at your own peril. The archetypes are portals into the unconscious, into poetry.

Revised: 31 March 2020; this is substantially the same commentary as when it was originally published; I have edited a few sentences, included paragraph breaks, and so on; some of this is no longer what I would write today. 

In the name of making money and nothing else, what you see in these photographs no longer exists.  

At Le Grand Seminaire, corner Atwater and Sherbrooke (one)

These are photographs (above) of the twin towers at the Grand Seminaire, which is located on Sherbrooke Street West near Atwater Street; the Grand Seminaire is a teaching institute run by the Sulpician Order in Montreal. I took these photographs a few years ago, and other photographs I have taken of the Grand Seminaire are on this site. The towers, built in the early 1600s, are at the top of Fort Street and Tower Street in Montreal, and were used for protection when French settlers were attacked by Amerindians. There is a narrow slit in the stone walls from which a rifle could be placed. I am interested in the Sulpicians because three of my great great uncles were students here and in France, and then, later, became priests serving parishes in Montreal. They were among the very few English-speaking students at the Grand Seminaire, and Father Martin Callaghan and his brother Father James Callaghan are both buried in the crypt in the basement of the Seminary. Only last week we attended a "light show" presented at the Basilique Notre Dame, in Old Montreal, and saw a history of the Sulpicians in Montreal. The Sulpicians once owned the entire Island of Montreal, from when the tiny settlement was called Ville Marie (City of Mary), through the time of the English Conquest, to modern times and the radical decline of the influence of the Roman Catholic church in all of Quebec. I recommend this presentation at Notre Dame to anyone who is interested in these things and who is visiting Montreal. It can be seen in only a half hour or so, and it is incredibly well done. The other Callaghan brother, Father Luke Callaghan, is buried at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, a cemetery that is owned by the Sulpicians. A few years ago, I went on a tour of the other Seminary, next door to the Basilique Notre Dame in Old Montreal (not the buildings shown here) and I'll post these photographs one day. This tour was organized by my cousin Sharon Callaghan. I remember thinking, at both locations, that I could easily stay living there the rest of my life, I felt so much at home in either location. And since I am both English-speaking and not a Catholic this is quite something! I think the Sulpicians made a very nice life for themselves, not one of struggling and penance, but one of teaching, apparent affluence (but not ostentation), and a life of devotion to the beliefs of the Church. Below are some photographs of the entrance to the Grand Seminaire and the grounds of the property. Adjacent to the Grand Seminaire, on east side, is the College de Montreal, where the poet Emile Nelligan was a student. Nelligan's father was Irish and Emile was baptised at St. Patrick's Church; he wrote all of his poems in French, by the time he was twenty years old, and spent most of his life institutionalized due to mental illness. He is one of Canada's best poets.

Central Fire Station, Old Montreal

My grandfather, John Parker, worked here as a fireman after he emigrated to Canada around 1914 from Blackburn, Lancashire, England. My mother would bring his lunch to him at the fire station. It is now the location of the Centre d'Histoire de Montreal in Old Montreal.

The Trout River in late winter, early spring

At The Cedars on Trout River

The old Morrison property located on the Morrison sideroad -- the house burned down years ago -- and only this shed remains. There are a few places I would say are "sacred sites" and this is one of them, another is St. Patrick's Church in Montreal. A sacred site doesn't have to be associated with any organized religion (sometimes the opposite prevails), there is a quality of quiet, depth of thought, and spirituality that can be felt at these places. Dowsers can locate them, they exist on ley lines, so you can hold out your hands, palm down, and walk along a country road, and feel the living presence of the earth pulsating in your hands. The Morrison property is located at the junction of the Fourth Concession and the Morrison Sideroad, in Godmanchester, Quebec. I remember in the mid-1990s, often visiting the Morrison property, just to sit and think or be quiet for a few minutes. It was one day, perhaps in 1996, that I decided to sell The Cedars and relocate back to Montreal. I was walking past the Morrison property when I realized that where ever I am living, whatever I have done, that who I am as a human being is a part of my essence. I don't have to live in any particular place, where ever I am I carry with me where I have been and who I am. I am on a journey in life and this is it.

An old oak--important for us Celts--in the middle of a field, on the left side of the Morrison Sideroad as you approach the Morrison Bridge that crosses Trout River from Route 138. I can see Route 138 in the distance...

I made this path just by walking on it from our house to the river. Whenever I think of The Cedars, our old home, I think of Trout River. It was a long commute from the city, about an hour and twenty minutes each way for work, but you certainly felt a lot more in touch with nature when you were out there. And the scenery was beautiful; it wasn't stunning or magnificent, but it was beautiful. The Trout River runs across the U.S. border from the Adirondacks, oddly enough an unpolluted river entering Canada from the States, and then in the perhaps ten miles it's in Canada it becomes polluted. Then, just before you reach Huntingdon, the Trout River merges with the Chateauguay River. You wouldn't want to drink the water from the Trout River, but you could swim in it, and it wasn't polluted where we lived except with some run-off from farmers' fields. The only "problem" with the river was that it was very shallow, but this was also a good thing, you could swim in places and enjoy the river, but you could also wade the river. If there was one thing I really loved about this area, where I lived for almost twenty years, it was the river. You couldn't really cross country ski there, the snow blew across farmers' fields and became impacted and icy. I skated a few times on the river, and that was fun. Mostly I'd sit in the summer on a rock in the middle of the river, it was quite narrow (maybe twenty or thirty feet wide where we lived) and read and write poems. Or walk down to the river, it was maybe a hundred feet behind the house, and stand by the river and enjoy being there.

Above: Trout River in early spring. Below: some trees by the river:

The Cedars

Our home on Route 138--six miles south of Huntingdon, six miles north of the American border--from June 1979 to June 1997.

At the Botanical Gardens in Montreal (two)

Carp at the Botanical Gardens

Where the carp swim...

Hingston Family Grave at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

After reading Allan Hustak's biography of Sir William Hingston, Montreal mayor, surgeon and banker (Price-Patterson Ltd., Canadian Publishers, Montreal, 2004), who lived from 1829 to 1907, I was delighted to find the Hingston family plot at Cote des Neiges cemetery. I used to live about six miles from the New York State border, at Trout River, and William Hingston grew up only a few miles away at Athelstan, Quebec. I enjoyed Hustak's book on Hingston very much. I've read several other books by Allan Hustak, including his excellent biography of St. Patrick's Basilica, and I recommend whatever he's written.