A store window in Westmount

Redpath Museum (4)

Frederick Philip Grove in November

Frederick Philip Grove begins his autobiography, In Search of Myself (1946), with a prologue that was originally a separate essay, also entitled "In Search of Myself". In this essay Grove captures perfectly the essence of a November day in Canada, which is also the essence of November, a month of shadows and cold. Indeed, the month of November begins the Celtic season of Samhain, a time when the spirits of the dead walk and communicate with us. This is my experience of November, always profoundly experienced, and something I tried to communicate in my poem, "November", published in Girouard Avenue (2009).

I would have included the quotation below from Grove's introduction in my poem had I remembered it from when I used to teach the book back in the late 1970s in Canadian Literature. I remember much discussion of Grove's literary deception--his falsifying the events of his life, and also reading D.O. Spettigue's marvelous FPG in which Spettigue exposes the truth of Grove's life--in Louis Dudek's graduate seminar at McGill back in the early 1970s.

Here's the passage I'm referring to from Grove's introduction:

It was a dismal November day, with a raw wind blowing from the north-west and cold, iron-grey clouds flying low--one of those [Ontario] days which, on the lake-shores or in a country of rock and swamp, seem to bring visions of an ageless time after the emergence of the earth from chaos, or a foreboding of the end of a world about to die from entropy.

Gael Monfils at the Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Rafa Nadal at the Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Roger's Cup, summer 2011

Jo-Wilfred Tsonga at the Roger's Cup, Montreal, August 2011

Redpath Museum (3)

Redpath Museum (2)

Louis Dudek

SM and Louis Dudek at the League of Canadian Poets' AGM, held in Montreal in 1993. I had nominated Louis for a life membership and introduced him to the AGM before he spoke that evening. Louis, fondly and lovingly remembered, someone who helped so many of us as poets, a titan among Canadian poets, respected and loved by all of us who knew him. 

A quiet morning at McGill's Redpath Museum (1)

At McGill's Redpath Museum, a cold early June morning

It was a cold morning in early June when I visited McGill University's Redpath Museum, located on the McGill campus. I remember visiting the Redpath Museum when I was a student at McGill, many years ago. Perhaps the museum was closed for several years, and I was living outside of Montreal for many years, so it wasn't until June 2011 that I finally returned to the Redpath. It's a marvelous place! Meanwhile, on the campus, only a few hundred feet away, I had watched as William Shatner received an honourary Ph.D.; Shatner attended the same high school I went to; in Shatner's time it was called West Hill High School but by the time I got there it was Monklands High School. I have only happy memories of Monklands, especially after the miserable years I had put in at Willingdon School and especially Rosedale School. Shatner grew up in our old neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace. Here's an interesting link for more information on the Redpath Museum: http://redpathmuseumclub.wordpress.com/

More coming on that morning at the Redpath Museum!

Family Album: Parker, Chew, Richards (six)

Here we are back in April 1, 1992 in Kingston, Ontario, at the funeral of my Auntie Muriel. That's my son, Jake, on the far left; my mother Hilda Parker Morrissey (and later Nichols) next to him; an unidentified woman, perhaps the minister; my Uncle John Parker whose wife, Muriel Bott, with whom he had been married for almost fifty years has just died; then Erma and John Parker of St. Eustache, QC, the son of my uncle; and on the far right, John's sister, my cousin, Jo-Anne Parker. The two boys in the foreground are John and Erma's sons.

Here is my uncle with his son, John Parker, and daughter, Jo-Anne Parker, on either side of him.

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Family Album: Parker, Chew, Richards (five)

My grandfather's car, his wife Bertha Parker in the front seat; Uncle John in the back seat.

In Woodstock, Ontario: Irene Holden on the left, Hartley Holden with cigarette in the middle, and Jenny Holden on the right. All were born in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. Irene died before marrying.

It's the early 1930s, my uncle John Parker with his sister, my mother, Hilda Parker



My grandfather's brother Victor Parker; he lived with his mother Bessie Richards until her death. He used to work at a dairy located just below Rene Levesque and Lucien L'Allier (the streets had different names at that time). After his mother's death he spent many years at the Douglas Hospital in Verdun, Quebec. One day (in the early 1970s) my mother was reading the obituaries and came across his name. We visited a funeral parlour where he was laid to rest. His mother had intended that he be looked after by his brothers after her death, but this doesn't seem to have happened. He is seen here with the family husky.

Family Album - Parker, Chew, Richards (four)

Hilda Parker on a snowy day near the Mother House (corner Atwater Street and Sherbrooke Street West) where she was a secretarial student.

We're in the Laurentians, just north of Montreal, and that's my uncle John Parker eating an apple, then Iris Price, my grandmother Bertha Parker (ne Chew), and my mother Hilda Parker Morrissey.

This is my uncle John Parker, and his sister (my mother) Hilda Parker, at a cemetery perhaps visiting Bill. This must be in the early 1920s. Montreal.

At the same cemetery as above, Bertha (Chew Parker), her husband (my grandfather) John Parker, children John and Hilda.

Family Album - Parker, Chew, Richards (three)

.Here is my mother, Hilda Parker (Morrissey), at her First Communion at St. Jude Anglican Church in Montreal; the dress was borrowed from a Roman Catholic friend's family.

Here is my mother, Hilda Parker, with family friend Iris Price at Plage Laval. Iris was the daughter of a friend of my mother's mother.  



Here is my uncle, John Leslie Parker, my mother's younger brother, in front of or near a flour mill in Woodstock, Ontario, where other relatives from England had settled after moving to Canada.

This photograph was taken in the Laurentians just north of Montreal. That's my uncle John Parker eating an apple on the far left, then Iris Price, my grandmother Bertha Chew Parker, and her daughter Hilda Parker on the far right. John Parker in the photo is Bertha Chew Parker's son.