The last time I met Keitha MacIntosh was in
the early-1990s, it was at a Greek restaurant that she often frequented and
where she sat for hours drinking tea and correcting her students’ papers. This
was the first time I’d seen Keitha for many years, from when I used to give
poetry readings to her classes at Vanier College in the early 1980s. In early
September 2012 I heard from Keitha’s daughter, Susan Hull, that Keitha had
passed away.
I first met Keitha in the fall of 1972, in
Richard Sommer’s creative writing class at Sir George Williams University.
Perhaps she was fifteen years my senior, and we became friends during that time. The 1970s were an important time in Montreal poetry, it was the time
of a poetry renaissance here. Keitha’s contribution to this renaissance is her
magazine, Montreal Poems, that she edited and published. In it you can
find the early published work of Artie Gold, Richard Sommer, Ken Norris, Carole
Leckner, Ray Filip, Sharon H. Nelson, Ross Leckie, Marc Plourde, Steve Luxton,
Claudia Lapp, Mona Adilman, Mary Melfi, Guy Birchard, myself, and others. All
of these poets have since made a contribution to Canadian literature.
There is a large correspondence between
Keitha and myself, archived in my literary papers at McGill University’s
Special Collections, at the McLennan Library. From 1975 to 1984, in all, 137
letters went back and forth between us. We wrote to each other about other
poets, Montreal Poems, and life in general. She wrote and published a poem
about me, “Stephen's Day”, that I still find deeply moving. She shared with me
her enthusiasm for writing and never doubted that I was the poet she believed I
was.
After she married, Keitha and her husband
ran a dairy farm in Dewittville, Quebec, but as Keitha became more independent
she wanted a place of her own. She was a writer for many years before we met and her creative
life began late at night when she was alone and writing. After the farm was sold she lived in a trailer until restoration of
her 200 year old log cabin was completed. I visited her at the trailer and
later at the log cabin. One evening, around 1981, I was invited over to meet Sharon
H. Nelson; Keitha went on to publish some of Sharon’s work. After Keitha’s Poems
of the Chateuguay Valley was published I reviewed her book in the
Huntingdon Gleaner thinking Keitha would be happy with this recognition
of her work; it was a mistake on my part as she was upset that her writing life
was revealed to her neighbours. There was a firm dividing line between her
writing and how much she wanted her rural community to know about her.
There
are many women today who hold prestigious positions in business, academia, and
government, but Keitha was born at a time, and in a society, that was
conservative regarding a woman’s role in society. It is important to remember
that Keitha was a highly intelligent woman; however, this very intelligence and
her desire to be a writer made it difficult for her to accept the life of a
farmer’s wife, a life that many other women (just as intelligent as Keitha)
would have found fulfilling. What set Keitha apart from other women is a
combination of things: she was introverted and very sensitive; her life was
pulled in two different directions, her desire to fulfill her life and be a
writer and the demands of a domestic life.
Keitha
had been a registered nurse before earning her B.A. and M.A. degrees; she was a
professor of English at Vanier College for twenty-two years. She was a writer
for many years before we met. She read widely and she was an excellent teacher.
She was a good and generous friend to many of us. She was always on the side of
the underdog, whether for women’s rights, or for Natives and French Canadians
who had been dispossessed by the newly arrived English, or English-speaking
Quebecers whose rights had been denied by the French. Keitha was also active in
promoting literacy and access to books. She co-founded the Little Green
Library, located in Huntingdon, in 1972.
In
the mid-1980s, Ray Filip, in one of his poetry columns published in Poetry
Canada Review, referred to Richard Sommer, Keitha MacIntosh, and myself as
the “invisible rural transcendentalists”, for all three of us now lived in the
country and had withdrawn from much of the poetry activity in Montreal that we
were involved in only a few years before. However, I continued writing and
publishing my work and gave poetry readings in Toronto and Vancouver, and later
again in Montreal. Carolyn Zonailo and I returned from the country to live in
Montreal in 1997. When I met Keitha, at that Greek restaurant mentioned above,
preparing classes and correcting student papers seemed to be taking up all of
her time, except for weekly visits to a local country and western restaurant
and bar where there was live music and dancing. She seemed happy enough, but
more physically fragile than ever. Her health declined to the point where she
had to take early retirement from teaching around 1995. Richard Sommer
continued writing and publishing from his home in the Eastern Townships; he
passed away in February of this year.
Keitha
and I have a Celtic ancestry, her family is from Scotland, mine from Ireland.
My family arrived in New Brunswick in 1837 and we’ve been in Quebec since the
early 1840s. My grandson, Edmund Morrissey, is the eighth generation of our
family to have been born in Canada. Keitha’s family has also been in Canada for
at least eight generations or more. After she retired she moved to Vancouver
where she lived for the next fifteen years; she was the matriarch and elder of
her family, living with her daughter, her grandson and his wife, and her great
granddaughter.
One
day when I was in Vancouver in the late 1990s I saw Keitha, from a distance,
walking on Broadway, but something held me back from greeting her. That was the
last time I saw her. Was it just by chance that a
month before Keitha passed away I wrote a long poem remembering her? I recounted
in the poem much of what she had told me about her life and I reflected on what
our friendship had meant to me. It is also forty years ago this month that
Keitha and I became friends, and what a privilege it is to have been friends
with Keitha! I believe that Keitha’s spirit came to me when I was writing that
long poem about her, she was preparing to leave this earthly dimension; it was
her way of saying, “Goodbye for now.” Yes, goodbye, old friend, and God bless
you.
A Short History
by Keitha K. MacIntosh
You might say
I
am a new arrival
on this continent.
Six generations ago
they
came
the ancestors
Calvinist
Scots
with brimstone in their blood.
They
laboured well.
They
ploughed the fertile soil
and dug up sins
and
other aberrations
and kept them hidden
in
small closed rooms and tidy attics.
Their
calloused hands
sand deep
and
laid foundations
for
concrete forests
and
churches, gothic arched
with highland shepherds
leading
their flocks
to
everlasting servitude.
I find log houses
among
the apple trees
with lilac bushes
at
the door
Burdock Blood Bitters
on
the shelves
butter churns
made
of yellow pine
apple peelers candle molds yarn winders
and
ghosts
of
screaming child-birth
that
rich the soil.
(from Poems of the Chateuguay Valley,
1981, p. 17)
In
Her Own Words:
In her author’s statement published in Poets’ Information Exchange Sampler (1976),
Keitha writes the following:
“Born in Lachine, Quebec, I was a closet
poet to begin with. My first published poem appeared in the Northern Messenger
when I was seven but I hid the magazine so my family wouldn’t know! My
Presbyterian ancestors frowned on the frivolity of poetry though any writing,
however mundane, that earned money
was acceptable. For the last fifteen years I have been publishing poems and
stories while earning my bread by helping to run a dairy farm and doing nursing
part-time. God grant me strength to continue to write about my people, so
lovable, so destructive, so brave, so often misguided. I’ve published in Ellipse, Other Voices, Quebec Histoire,
Anthol, Cross Country, Canadian Author and Bookman, among others. A
collection of poems, The Shattered Glass
and other fragments, is scheduled for 1976. Editor, Montreal Poems.”
Bibliography:
Short Stories:
Keitha K. MacIntosh. The Crow Sits High
in the Lilac Tree (Kateri Press, Huntingdon, 1982). 37 pp.
Poetry:
Keitha K.
MacIntosh. Shattered Glass and other fragments (Sunken Forum Press,
Dewittville, QC, 1976). 48 pp.
Keitha K.
MacIntosh. Poems of the Chateuguay Valley (South Western Ontario Poetry, London, ON, 1981). 24 pp.
Anthologies
(incomplete):
Keitha K. MacIntosh. Montreal Poets’ Information Exchange Sampler. Edited by Matie
Falworth. M.P.I.E., Montgreal, 1976.
Keitha K. MacIntosh.Cross/cut, Contemporary English Quebec Poetry. Edited by Peter Van
Toorn and Ken Norris. Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1982.
Editor and Publisher:
Montreal Poems, spring/summer 1974, number one
Montreal Poems, autumn 1975 (with an Introduction by Louis Dudek), number two
[note: this issue was originally published in the spring of 1975; however, the
printing job was unacceptable and these copies were destroyed; the same content
was reprinted dated autumn 1975].
Montreal Poems, winter 1976, number three
Poesie de Montreal Poems, winter 1978, Women’s Edition
Montreal Poems, 1981, number five [only issue to have perfect binding; all
previous issues were staple bound]
050724
