Baseball in Panties, of Course

The Chartered Libertine

Ralph Allen

Toronto: Macmillan, 1954

As a young man I placed Ralph Allen with Thomas B. Costain and Thomas H. Raddall; Canadian writers whose book club editions choked church bazaars, thrift stores and library sales. Raddall, I would learn, was a perfectly fine writer; The Nymph and the Lamp was one of the more enjoyable novels read during my undistinguished university years. And Costain? Well, I could never get through more than a few pages. I didn't touch Allen, which is a pity because The Chartered Libertine is one of the cleverest satirical novels to have come out of this country

Timely and timeless, it concerns attacks on the CBC and its struggle for survival. At the centre is businessman Garfield Smith, "sole owner and president of radio station CNOTE, part owner and business manager of the Toronto Daily Guardian, chief debentures holder and Editor Emeritus of True Blue Revelations Magazine, and non-stockholding past chairman of the board of the rather disappointing Drive-in Dentistry Inc." Smith's newest acquisition is a failing women's softball franchise called the Swansea Lady Slugerettes. He brings the team to Toronto, renames it the Queens d'Amour and clothes the players in new uniforms consisting of "scarlet bodices and long opalescent pantaloons".

No fan of public broadcasting, Smith has been content to limit his attacks to station identification: "This is CNOTE, a station that is listened to and makes money." The trouble begins after the CBC refuses his cash offer to air Queens d'Amour games in place of cultural programming. Working under cover of anonymity he sets out to destroy the broadcaster through the League for the Incorporation of Godly and Humanistic Training (LIGHT), folks who don't much care for Shaw and take great objection to mention of unwed mothers on the radio.

The Globe and Mail, 29 May 1954

There's a good deal of noise, but no culture war. With an eye on the polls, the Conservative-Liberal PM orders the crown corporation sold, thus outmaneuvering the Liberal-Conservative leader who had always hoped to do just that... not that he'd ever let on.

You see, he had a hidden agenda.

Trivia: Robert Fulford, amongst others, has identified the model for Garfield Smith as Jack Kent Cooke.

Object: A nicely bound hardcover, it belonged to my father, a CBC employee.

Access: Easy enough to find in our university libraries. As far as I've been able to determine, there was just one Macmillan printing, and no paperback edition. The book was also published in the United States by St. Martin's – one wonders what American readers made of all that stuff about the CBC and Canadian party poltics. No surprise, I suppose, that one Yankee bookseller is selling the book as a "different kind of baseball novel". There are a few Very Good copies currently listed online in the C$15 to C$20 range. Of these, the real gem is one signed by blurb contributor Northrop Frye. And at only US$19.95! Then we have the sad example of an Ottawa bookseller who asks US$100 – four times more than anyone else – for a jacket-less copy with previous owner's signature. Priced fairly only if that previous owner was Jack Kent Cooke... and features his annotations.

Related post: Jack Kent Cooke in Extra Innings

Another Sunday, Another Lesson

Following the first, another story of faith from Thomas Conant's 1898 Upper Canada Sketches:

During the summer of that memorable year (1843) the Mormons came to the country, in the hope of making converts. At Butterfield's Corners (Taunton) a man named John G. Cannon held forth for several days, sometimes in the open air and again in the houses of those inhabitants who appeared to have leanings that way.

On one occasion, in the midst of a heated harangue out of doors, he raised his right hand and said, "I ask Heaven if this is not true?" at the same time looking upwards. A moment, and the answer came from above, in a deep bass voice, "It is true," thus startling the audience almost into belief. Again, on making the assertion that the golden tablets of brother Joseph Smith were inspired, he asked, raising his voice, "Are they?" and again came the deep-voiced reply, "They are." One of the men, listening, declared there must be a man in a hollow basswood tree standing near, and said he would go for his hired man with his axe and have it cut down. "Don't you touch it," the Mormon cried authoritatively; "if you do the Lord will strike you dead." Perhaps half convinced, the man did not have the tree chopped down, the fraud passed, and the Mormon thus scored what appeared convincing arguments.

Quite near this scene a young girl was very sick with a fever, and lay in a state of coma. That he could raise the dead he now gave out, as in the illustration he is represented as doing. And it is only fair to the Mormon to add that after his pressure and manipulations over the girl she did open her eyes and look about.

Several converts were made. Among these a family of the name of McGahan embraced the faith, sold their farm for $4,000, gave the money to the Mormon, and went off to Salt Lake. Another, named Seeleys, also sold all and went, but they could not raise much money.

My father had charged me many times, that if ever I went to Salt Lake I should go and see these people. In 1878 I happened to be in the Mormon centre. From a man cutting stones for the new Mormon tabernacle I enquired for the family. The stone-cutter dropped his mallet as quickly as if shot, and replied that he knew them well, and would get a conveyance and take me to them, twenty-five miles down Salt Lake valley, and assured me of a most hearty welcome.

I did not, however, accept his offer, for, honestly, I confess I was afraid of the Mormons. As a "Gentile" I feared to risk my life among them, and preferred not to leave the protection of United States troops at Camp Douglas.

Related post: A Lesson for Sunday

Happy May Day!

'Poetry to us is given'

James McIntyre's obituary in the the Globe of 2 April 1906, two days after his death. Not a word about his verse.

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

James McIntyre's Fair Thames

The end of National Poetry Month approaches, and with it the stragglers in the parade of things McIntyre. I suppose he'll always be remembered as "The Cheese Poet"... a bit unfair, but as noted at the start of the month, the poet brought this on himself. Certainly, the couplet feaured on the title page of his 1889 Poems of James McIntyre didn't help:

"Fair Canada is our Theme,

Land of rich cheese, milk and cream."

The dairy does distract, but McIntyre is honest in writing that his theme is Canada. "Canada Before Confederation", "Canada's Future" and "Birth of Canada as a Nation" kick things off, leading to poems about maple sugar, the railway, the North-West Rebellion and a tribute to politicians, living and dead.


The centrepiece of this self-published collection is not McIntyre's seventeen "Dairy and Cheese Odes", but "Sketches on the Banks of the Canadian Thames". Twelve poems in all, they deal with the river that McIntyre calls the "Happiest spot". It's the same body of water that in April 1891, two years after publication, overflowed its banks and quite literally carried away his livelihood.

He never published another book.

The vale of the Thames, St Marys, Ontario

Before Apple, Before the Bic Banana

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Here's to Robert Gourlay!

Three or so years ago, I happened upon a newly installed bust of Robert Gourlay in Toronto's St. James Park. It was a pleasant surprise; we have so few of these sorts of things in Canada. Gourlay, being very much a forgotten figure, I suppose it was felt that something of an introduction was warranted. The pedestal reads: "Banished from Upper Canada in 1819 on false charges of sedition brought by the Family Compact. His writings had an impact on events leading to the 1837 rebellion." True enough, though Gourlay would be the first to add that he condemned that rebellion; indeed, he fought against it by sending Lieutenant-Governor Francis Bond Head intelligence on rebel activity south of the border.

It's simply not possible to reduce such a complex and confusing life to a couple of sentences – and I'm sure not going to try it here. The best account of Gourlay's life, written by S.F. Wise for The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, is recommended reading, if only for the description of the "darling system" (which proponents of electoral reform are encouraged to study).

When James McIntyre met this frustrated man, Gourlay was an octogenerian. Newly married to a 28-year-old bride, he was attempting one last time to gain some small amount of influence in a run for parliament. McIntyre reports his sad defeat.

In The Four Jameses, William Arthur Deacon treats the poet rather unfairly, writing that Gourlay "returned to Canada in 1856; and contested the Oxford seat in 1860, not in 1858 as McIntyre asserts." In fact, McIntyre is correct, though he does misspell Gourlay's surname – an obvious error that appears to have escaped the critic's notice.

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Drowning by the Dock of the Bay

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

It seems they were forever fishing bodies out of Toronto Bay in the 19th century. Here's a small sad story from the 29 June 1886 New York Times in which authorities dragging the bay for one man found another.

The next day the paper used the the very same headline in reporting the death of a third man.

James McIntyre's young Montrealer of genteel form and dress may have been Henry Jaques, eldest son of Great Lakes shipping magnate G.E. Jaques, whose body was found floating in the harbour in May of 1873. Though initial reports drew attention to head and facial wounds as evidence of foul play, a coroner's jury found otherwise. According to the 28 May 1873 Montreal Daily Witness, his "features were much swollen and discolored from immersion in water", not as "the result of violence." Blame was instead placed upon the dangerous state of Toronto's Hamilton Wharf, from which, it was presumed, Jaques fell.

A Lesson for Sunday

A cautionary tale concerning faith from Thomas Conant's Upper Canada Sketches:

During the winter of 1842-3 the Second Adventists, or Millerites, were preaching that the world would be all burnt up in February, 1843. Nightly meetings were held, generally in the school-houses. One E— H— , about Prince Albert, Ont, owned a farm of one hundred acres and upwards, stocked with cattle and farm produce, as well as having implements of agriculture. So strongly did he embrace the Second Advent doctrines of the Millerites that he had not a doubt of the fire to come in February and burn all up, and in confirmation of his faith gave away his stock, implements and farm. Sarah Terwilligar, who lived about a mile east of Oshawa "corners," on the Kingston Road, made for herself wings of silk, and, on the night of 14th of February, jumped off the porch of her home, expecting to fly heavenward. Falling to the ground some fifteen feet, she was shaken up severely and rendered wholly unfit to attend at all to the fires that were expected to follow the next day.

The apocalypse was to have begun at two o'clock in the morning, at which time the fresh February snow would have turned to blood and started to burn. Obviously, the Millerites were a bit off in their prediction.

Conant was less a year old at the time of the anticipated apocalypse, and so relied on others in penning his sketch. This including a manufacturer named Whiting, who complained that come morning "he could do no business, because the people had not gotten over the surprise of finding themselves alive."

And poor Sarah Terwilligar? The author tells us she broke her leg.

Related post: Another Sunday, Another Lesson