Lost, found, missing

Percy Leggett forty-three years later

Here is more information on Percy Leggett. The original clipping (below), from June 1965, is a newspaper article on Percy's death; I cut the article from the Montreal Star when I read it, and kept the clipping all of these years.

There is a certain charisma and attractiveness to eccentrics like Percy Leggett, perhaps they have reduced life down to a measurable level of apprehension, deleted the randomess of life, and come up with their own diagnosis of life's suffering and how to live a happy life, but all of it slightly nuts and impossible to conform to in a middle class life. And yet, they also infleunce some of us, not an influence to do anything as much as to know that there is an alternate way to do things, you don't have to be at the mercy of life, of the demands of life, and so on. You can be yourself, be a poet, write your poems, think your own thoughts, go your own way, march to your own drummer...

Perhaps this is the legacy of someone like Percy Leggett. We have very few eccentrics in North America, we are burdened with conformity in a society that allows you to do whatever you want, but always under the strictures of political correctness. Be careful what you say, the thought police are listening.

At this point, I think also of Roy MacDonald, whose Paradoxical Logic I reviewed in the May 1984 issue of CVII. I remember knowing Roy in the late 1960s/early 1970s when he hung out at Sir George Williams University where I was a student at the time. Roy was a mystic, a Beatnik, a poet, and we all seemed to look up to Roy as this eccentric who had something wise to say. He had a beard down to his waist and sold posters of himself. Maybe he also had something to say; he impressed a lot of young people -- he was a mystic -- or was I the only one who was impressed by him, everyone else only humouring him? I wonder. I believe Roy also came from Hamilton, ON, and, I suppose, Roy is also no longer among the living. There aren't many today like Roy, or Percy Leggett.

Here is an article on Percy Leggett, forty-three years after his death in 1965. It is taken from http://sites.google.com/site/hamiltonartsandletters/pantlesspercy

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Pantless Percy and the Good Life

by Samuel Isaac Robinson

Forty three years ago Hamilton’s best-loved eccentric died. The Globe and Mail wrote that he was “as well known as any civic dignitary.” Once, when he threatened to abandon Hamilton and walk to Vancouver, a tug-of-war ensued between the mayors of the two cities. Both wanted him.

Percy Leggett was an institution in Hamilton, and a living monument to stubborn self-determination. From 1956 to 1965, he walked wintry streets in his distinctive and unchanging outfit of baggy, revealing shorts without underwear, black rubber boots without socks, and a flimsy jacket. Every school kid knew him. The Spectator reported his words and deeds on a regular basis. He had the mayor’s ear, whatever his complaint.

Like all visionaries, he had questioned and resolved, with elegant simplicity, the existential contradictions years before the rest of us had taken note of them. From the 1940’s onward, Percy Leggett questioned the foods we eat, our obsessive work habits, and the nature of the good and fulfilling life. He wanted to ponder the eternal questions in solitary peace, but his eccentricity only attracted attention. He constantly displayed an unintended flair for the theatrical.

The conflict between the Midtown Seniors’ Centre and Percy Leggett was a focus for most of his philosophies on The Good Life. The Midtown was a drop-in centre for senior citizens. Percy Leggett had visited the club daily for four years. He played sacred songs on the piano, sang old-time favourites, and danced joyfully. But in May of 1964, a group of ladies at the centre raised vocal objections to the revealing nature of Percy Leggett’s shorts. He was told by the centre’s director that he’d have to wear more modest garb or be banned forever.

“I refuse,” said Percy. “I will not dress to conform. I will expose this trend in the old people’s clubs. It’s a trend that says you must conform – or get out. I live right. Clothes confine. Let the air get at you, massage you. It stops you getting tender. No socks. My body breathes."

He went straight to the Mayor’s office to protest and he threatened to leave Hamilton’s stuffy attitudes behind and walk to Vancouver. Mayor Victor Copps quickly announced that he was ready to fight to keep long pants off Percy Leggett. After all, you just don’t go around covering up civic monuments. But before Vic Copps could go to battle on behalf of sartorial indecency, word of Percy Leggett had spread across the nation. Mayor Bill Rathie of Vancouver announced that he would personally welcome Percy Leggett to his city “with or without pants.”

Percy Leggett was far from being an exhibitionist and clowning eccentric. His claim that he’d strangle in a collar and tie was as much literal as metaphorical. He had lived the straight-laced, upright life. And he had lived it successfully. He found it unbearable. Several decades before the popular concern with stress, nutrition, physical fitness, and environmentalism, Leggett had diligently, and with some distress, developed a life devoted to a simple enjoyment of exercise, health, quiet study, and a passive relationship to the environment. He also worked hard at self-sufficiency, though he wasn’t always successful.

Born in London, England in 1892, the son of a carriage maker to King Edward VII, Percy Leggett came to Canada in 1911. he worked for the Grand Trunk Railway for seven years, rising to the rank of locomotive foreman. He then turned to plumbing and eventually became a business executive. The Second World War seems to have triggered in him a repugnance for technology and a wary discomfort with the pressures of mass society. “I got rid of that uniform – pinstriped suit and white shirt – ran away from the human race and let my face be (free) from the razor.” He had become a vegetarian under the influence of Bernard MacFadden, a popular and wildly successful health faddist in the early decades of the century. In 1946 Leggett left Montreal for the northern woods and began his apprenticeship in the unencumbered life of the hermit. It was far from easy, and for many years he periodically landed in trouble with the authorities.

In many ways he was not a successful hermit. He seems to have had a gregarious quality that always brought him back to town. Like many idealists he hated society but had an affection for people. In the mid to late ‘40’s, Percy lived around Kirkland Lake, Englehart and Charlton. Generally he built a flimsy shack in the woods and lived on a meagre diet of raw grains, nuts, and potatoes. But he seems to have been unmotivated, or perhaps unskilled, in pioneer ways. He never learned real self-sufficiency. One winter he stayed in his shack for a full month without getting out of bed, feeding himself with dried peas and grain. He believed that to move around would use up more energy and make him eat more of the food he was rationing until spring. In 1949, he collapsed from malnutrition while trying out a diet of potatoes and oatmeal. But most winters he was lured into the nearest town by the dream of a warm, secure jail cell. With a mixture of temperance, idealism and self-preservation, he’d hurl a brick through a liquor store window. “Breaking the windows was my protest against the liquor traffic, though I also wanted to get food and keep warm. They treated me very well at Haileybury jail.” When no brick was sent through the liquor store window one year, the police sought him out fearing he’d frozen to death.

He seems to have been full of wonder, and like a child easily distracted from practical matters. His shacks, according to one visitor, were “as full of holes as gorgonzola cheese and just as fragrant.” A wood stove fought valiantly against the north wind. “When it’s 40 below outside, it’s 20 below in here,” he said. During the summers, he worked for the CNR and CPR on their northern lines. Yet his shack was without even a tar paper cover. While he planned a garden that would give him real independence, he never in fact put any of his land under cultivation.

While living in Montreal, he had sung tenor in a church choir. He always kept a bundle of sheet music near at hand. During his life in the woods, passersby on the road were often startled to hear his clear voice raised in melodious praise as he sang an old hymn from deep in the forest.

Eventually, he drifted south spending one winter at Brantford Jail Farm, before making his triumphant entry into Hamilton in 1956. His nine years in Hamilton were happy in most respects. He perfected his simple diet of wheat hearts, oatmeal, raw fruit and vegetables. His days began at 5 a.m. with exercises in his rented room. After a brisk walk, he’d lift weights at the YMCA, run a mile around the indoor track, and float in the pool for more than an hour. Eventually, he’d arrive at the library’s main branch where he read most of the day. In his travels around Hamilton, he was accompanied by a gaggle of children, and adults leaned out of car windows to greet him. But he knew that he was considered crazy because of his flimsy clothing, his unkempt appearance, and his disdain for grinding work. “But they’re the crazy ones. And their lives get crazier all the time … they worship money … they rush …” Then with a sigh, he added, “I would have been happier in ancient Greece.” He was keenly aware of the weaknesses inherent in huge, highly organized social structures. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was favourite reading for him, and he often drew parallels between ancient civilizations and the contemporary world. During the evening, Percy visited the Midtown Seniors’ Centre. Aside from playing inspiring hymns on the piano, he’d hold forth on The Good Life, on opera, on the news of the day, on job schemes for the unemployed. His life was very full and he knew that he’d found a secret that few shared. He often said that he knew he’d live to be at least a hundred. “I’ve found the way to ‘ealth and ‘appiness,” he’d say in a Cockney accent. “Only thing’ll kill me before I’m a hundred will be a car. Almost as bad as people, no sense at all.”

But all the good exercises in the world, a healthy diet, serious reading, and hymn singing won’t stand up to the rejection of the human community. Even an idealistic and failed hermit seems to need a community’s warmth. Percy Leggett’s rejection by the Midtown Seniors’ Centre seemed to take the wind out of his sails. It threw him back on his belief that he could live outside the human circle. A group of business people, The Hamilton Men’s and Boy’s Wear Guild, with Mayor Copps’ intervention, persuaded Percy to don a new set of shorts. But he vowed never to return to the seniors’ centre. He began to visit the Wesley Centre, and he demonstrated against the city’s snow clearing inadequacies by clearing a full city block in one hour. But within the year, Percy Leggett announced he was leaving Hamilton, heading for the northern woods and The Good Life.

In ten days he walked a hundred miles to north of Orillia. He slept during the day and walked in the cool of the night, pushing his few possessions along in a wheeled shopping cart. On the night of June 10, 1965, Percy Leggett was struck by a car and killed. The driver, who had been drinking, was convicted of careless driving and fined $35.

Mayor Copps declared that the City of Hamilton would pay for a proper burial in Hamilton, if relatives were not located. Percy Leggett had become a civic institution. Two brothers and a nephew were found around Montreal. Percy was buried, in his shorts, in Orillia. Two of my teenage chums drove up to Orillia for the funeral. In a park before the burial they met a nine-year-old boy who’d never been to a funeral before and to whom Percy had given a nickel for an ice cream cone a few days before. The three of them, along with his three relatives, saw Percy buried. Eight bouquets of flowers adorned the casket, one from the Hamilton Downtown Association, one from family, and the rest from Hamilton friends.

Two years before his death, Percy Leggett sat on a curb in Hamilton after almost being run over by a bus. He composed this epitaph for himself:

Here I am, interred in this place,
Now twice removed from the human race,
I beat the germs, I beat the cold,
I’m immune to disease, the new, the old.
But alas I’ve lost, I’ve become a crumper,
Not to a virus, but a ruddy car bumper.

Lost, found, missing

Lost, found, missing

The Compass comes home

Last year I wrote of seeing an article on CNNGO, out of Hong Kong, about someone finding a compass and inside was a copy of my poem "The Compass". This was news to me! I suppose whoever copied my poem found it on my website, www.stephenmorrissey.ca.

Last January I received an email from French author Ann Scott. A friend of hers had returned several years ago from a trip to Bangladesh and, as a present, given her a compass, the same one with my poem in it. This compass was purchased in Bangladesh! Ann wanted to know if I was the poet and, if so, did I want the actual compass? Immediately, I said I wanted the compass. A few weeks later I received a parcel in the mail containing the compass. Thank you, Ann!! I appreciate it!!

Someone (it was Richard Olafson of Ekstasis Editions) mentioned to me that poetry has a life of its own, and it does. Perhaps there are many copies of the compass out there, decorated strangely with a picture of St. Thomas More on the lid, with my sexy poem inside. A strange combination, indeed.

How a poem travels. From Montreal to Hong Kong, to Bangladesh and then to Paris, and then back home to Montreal. Around the world in several years time.

Welcome home, compass. Any more compass sightings out there?

Lost, found, missing

Lost, found, missing

Champlain Bridge (12)

Champlain Bridge (11)

Champlain Bridge (10)

Champlain Bridge (9)

Champlain Bridge (8)

Some notes on poetry and soul

Many of C.G. Jung’s psychological concepts and related interests—for instance, shadow, archetype, symbolism, alchemy, animus and anima, mythology, the collective unconscious, and so on—are the natural interests of many poets. The major difference between poetry and psychology is that poetry is the voice of the human soul, while Jungian psychology tries to explain how the soul works. They are two very different disciplines. The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanaugh, writes in one of his poems, “He knew that posterity has no use/ For anything but the soul…” Kavanaugh’s poems resonate for us because we recognize in them, as we do in all good poets, someone who speaks to our inner being. We can tell if a poet is genuine or not, inflated or not, and if the poet’s work is an authentic expression of the soul. We resonate to the authentic expression of the inner being of a fellow human being. Great poetry is an expression of “where psyche is leading one.” This phrase, from one of James Hollis’s books, that we need to find “where psyche leads us,” is the quest for an authentic life, an expression of where soul will lead us if only we follow.

C.G. Jung’s comments on the relationship of the collective unconscious and poetry in Modern Man in Search of a Soul are worth referring to here in relation to poetry and as they help explain something of the importance of Kavanaugh’s poetry:

"Great poetry draws its strength from the life of mankind, and we completely miss its meaning if we try to derive it from personal factors. Whenever the collective unconscious becomes a living experience and is brought upon the conscious outlook of an age, this event is a creative act which is of importance to everyone living at that age. A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men."

James Hillman’s “idea of psychopoesis” is also important, Hillman suggests that a poem is always at the heart of things. Depth psychology is referred to as soul making; however, poetry doesn't "make" the soul, it reveals the soul. One of the concerns of both poetry and depth psychology is the human soul: the intention of depth psychology is to unfold the complexity of a person’s life so that it can be better understood, and perhaps placed in a mythopoetic context; the poet’s intention, also to do with the soul, is to write poetry that is authentic to his or her soulful vision.

Some poets are wounded healers; however, these wounds may also be the source of the poet’s creativity and, as such, something that he or she may not want to give up. Poetry isn’t therapy -- poetry is a form of art -- but as anyone who reads literature knows, poetry can have a healing and transformative quality. The intention of poet and psychologist is substantially different; the difference is that while poetry is an expression of the soul, psychology speaks about the soul. The two disciplines should not be conflated; we need to remember that poetry is the oldest art form, thousands of years old, while psychology is about a hundred years old and still in its infancy. With this perspective in mind, we need to re-evaluate the importance of poetry and remember its relationship to soul.

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These are excerpts taken from rough drafts of a review on Patrick Kavanaugh's poetry and Jungian psychology. SM

Champlain Bridge (7)

Champlain Bridge (6)

Champlain Bridge (5)