The Unpleasant End of Russell Teed

The Body on Mount Royal
David Montrose [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1953

First the good news: our private dick is back to drinking beer. The bad news is that he's hitting the hard stuff more than ever.

What happened? When we first met Russell Teed, back in The Crime on Cote des Neiges (1951), he specialized in investigating corporate embezzlement and fraud. A son of privilege, known for his discretion, Teed's introduction to Montreal's seamy and seedy came when he was hired to look into the husband of a childhood friend. A year later in Murder Over Dorval, the private detective who had once taken such pains to present his services as "private investigatory", returned as a self-described "skip-chaser... an eye, a Humphrey Bogart role." The corporate jobs were pretty much gone, and while Teed told us then that he was "sober, sensible, and not given to impulse", we could see that wasn't at all true. Things are much worse in The Body on Mount Royal; Teed can't even go a few blocks to meet a friend for drinks without having to stop in at a tavern en route.

"Don't walk alone at night on Mount Royal," narrator Teed advises the reader, "a big, brave friend of mine looked awful funny without his wallet, wristwatch, glasses, pants, and false teeth." The ramblings of a barfly? Can't say I've ever had a problem myself. Never mind. A body is found on Mount Royal, but as Teed discovers, the murder is not a mugging gone wrong. The Body on Mount Royal is set in the united underworld of blackmail and illegal gambling. The mysterious Montrose seems to have been quite familiar with the latter – it fuels Gambling with Fire, his fourth and final novel – yet I found myself less interested in barbotte and craps than with the women in Teed's life.

In previous outings the dick was crazed in his infatuations; here he's unhinged. The first woman to attract Teed's attention is Elena Giotto, "a tall girl, with a surface coolness that made you feel you should approach her with a gift, begging acceptance." Hours after their first fleeting encounter, he meets Lila, Elena's doppelgänger. She'll do in bed, but it's Elena he really wants.

And it's Elena he gets.

And following the sad model set by men everywhere, once he's won Elena Teed decides that it's Lila he really wants.

I've spoiled things a bit, though I rush to add that the above reveals nothing of the mystery in The Body on Mount Royal. That said, those intending to read the book are warned that the following will spoil:

In the final two pages, Elena takes a bullet by throwing herself between Teed and an assailant. She dies. The assailant's head is split open by an axe-weilding Lila. He dies. Teed then empties a clip into the assailant's face as payback for those he'd killed: a blackmailer, a blackmailee, some innocent girl who got caught up in it all... but not Elena, the woman who loved him, the woman who saved his life, the woman who lies dead at his feet.

As I say, unhinged.

Lila then takes Teed's arm and suggests they take a trip to Bermuda.

Yes, unhinged.

The Body on Mount Royal is the final Russell Teed mystery. It's a wonder that he made it that far.

I'm betting he died of drink.

Trivia: The Body on Mount Royal is the only Montreal noir novel to mention the Aldred Building, the most noirish-looking structure in the city.

Full disclosure: I'm Consulting Editor for Véhicule Press' Ricochet Books series, of which this title is soon to be a part.

Object: A cheaply produced, poorly constructed mass market, it is blessed with my very favourite Harlequin cover. Yes, I like it even more than To Please the Doctor and Doctor in Bondage.

Though the clothes are all wrong, that would be Lila on the cover. The bottle – also wrong – should look something like the one pictured above. By the way, the man clutching his head counts as the only image of Teed.

Access: The Body on Mount Royal enjoyed just a single printing. One lonely copy is on offer online, and it sure ain't pretty: "Moderate spine slant, moderate edgewear, an unfortunate full-length vertical crease to front cover, a couple of other creases to front cover, the usual Harlequin tanning. Quite scarce. Good to Very Good." I'll agree that it's quite scarce, but can a copy so described be "Good to Very Good"? Price: US$75 (plus US$12 shipping).

Library patrons will find copies at Library and Archives Canada, the Toronto Public Library, the University of Calgary and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book LIbrary at the University of Toronto.

Related posts:
Teasing the Private Dick

A Private Dick's Disturbing Descent into Darkness

An Atlantic Canada Steampunk Fantasy

The Chignecto Ship Railway
H.G.C. Ketchum
Boston: Damrell & Upham, [1893]

The current Canadian edition of Reader's Digest features a piece I wrote about some of this country's great unrealized projects. Toronto's Vimy Circle, the Chateau Prince Rupert and Jean Drapeau's 325-metre-tall concrete celery stalk figure, as do Thomas Mawson's plans to recast cow town Calgary in the City Beautiful style, but the Chignecto Ship Railway ranks as my favourite.

The dream of New Brunswick engineer H.G.C. Ketchum, the whole venture seems like the work of a madman today, yet it received government backing, millions of dollars in investment from British businessmen and was once held up as a model that would be emulated the world over.

In Ketchum's dream, ocean-going ships would be raised from the Bay of Fundy, transported along a 27-kilometre double-tracked railway, then gently lowered into the Northumberland Strait.

And vice versa.

The pitch for what was to have been the world's first ship railway is all here in this booklet Ketchum wrote for the 1893 World's Columbian Water Commerce Congress. A desperate document, it was produced at a time when the project was in great jeopardy. You see, the most incredible aspect of this impossible dream is that the money ran out within weeks of completion.

It wouldn't be right to retell the whole sad, tragic story here – buy the magazine – but I spoil nothing in saying that the effort failed. The Chignecto Ship Railway died – and with it the whole idea of ship railways. Ketchum knew one could not live without the other, writing:

The safe transit of a ship in cargo across the Isthmus of Chignecto will be the signal for many other ship railway schemes to begin construction. The Tehuantepec, the Panama, the Cape Cod, the Ontario and Michigan isthmuses will be vanquished by this means; and various obstructions can be overcome and short cuts made in different parts of the world.

That passage is one of the most interesting in The Chignecto Ship Railway. The booklet is the work of an engineer doing his darndest to attract investors: bland prose is peppered with facts, figures and dollar signs. Visual aids would've helped.

Ketchum might have done well in turning to fellow New Brunswicker Charles G.D. Roberts. who had written about the project with great enthusiasm in the August 1890 edition of Cosmopolitan. The next year, Roberts painted a lovely scene in his Canadian Guide-Book:

When it is completed a line of steamers will run between St John and Charlottetown and the traveler will have the novel experience of watching from his vessel's decks a lovely landscape of meadows and orchards unroll below him as he moves slowly across the isthmus. The sensation will be unique, as this is the world's only ship railway.

I'd have paid good money to take that cruise.

Object and Access: A nondescript booklet, The Chignecto Ship Railway should not be confused with Ketchum's The Chignecto Ship Railway: Will It Pay? (1887), The Chignecto Ship Railway: The Substitute for the Baie Verte Canal (1892), Ship Transportation and the Chignecto Ship Railway (1892) and a handful of other similarly titled publications issued in support of the project. The others have been picked over by print on demand vultures, but only our old friends at Bibliolife have spotted this one. "We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide", they tell us. Bibliolife will happily sell you a copy of this 12-page public domain booklet for $15.50 (postage & handling not included).

Or you could just read it gratis here.

Bonus:

A scale model of Jean Drapeau's 325-metre concrete celery stalk
(otherwise known as the Monument Paris-Montréal).

America's Canada and Ours

Canada
Richard Ford
New York: Ecco, 2012

Canada
Richard Ford
Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2012

Giving lie to that old saw that books with green covers don't sell.

When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

For my poet friends, these observations from Canada 1962:

A striking feature of Canadian letters in recent years has been the consistently high level of Canadian poetry. Although the poet's audience was often not large, he was at least assured of publication in one of the many literary magazines of the country where his work would receive discriminating critical attention. Too often, however, such limited circulation was the most that could be expected. More recently a growing interest among a wider reading public has made possible the publication of a number of volumes of poetry, some of which have achieved minor commercial successes.

A comprehensive picture of Canadian poetry was made available to readers during 1961 by the appearance of the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Several other important collections also appeared during the year, including Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth, River Among Rocks by Ralph Gustafson, The Devil's Picture Book by Daryl Hine and Irving Layton's collection of stories and poems, The Swinging Flesh. The Governor General's Award for poetry in English for 1960 went to Margaret Avison for Winter Sun and Other Poems, her first published collection. Poetry in French Canada is no less important and vital as was amply illustrated in the Oxford Book. Among the most widely known of the younger poets are Alan Grandbois, Rina Lasnier and Anne Hébert. The latter received the Governor General's Award for French Poetry for her book Poèmes. 

Canadian fiction is perhaps somewhat less vigorous.

The Greater Canada of 1962

Canada 1962: The Official Handbook of Present Conditions
   and Recent Progress
Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1962

I missed the better part of 1962; by the time I showed up at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Marilyn Monroe and William Faulkner were gone and E.E. Cummings looked in rough shape. I wasn't a reader then, of course, but had I been this handbook would've provided a good introduction to the land of my birth. This is Canada as it was just before I came to know it, a country in which bookmobiles rode the rails,

a personable young woman might find employment as a bus hostess,

and mothers and daughters bought groceries from vending machines.

The Grocerette never caught on, but I don't imagine that it's failure was recorded in subsequent handbooks – challenging enough just keeping up with the successes. In 1962, Canada was undergoing great change, as reflected in the caption accompanying this photograph of my hometown.  

Our cities were changing so quickly that it seemed pointless to include new buildings; better to feature models of those under construction. Here's Place des Arts, which would be built to a similar, yet superior design:

And here are the new offices of the Toronto Telegram and Sudbury Star:

While the Telegram is long gone, the Star hangs on. A year ago, the Star building "that once bustled with a library and an archiving service, a press and a pre-press operation, a distribution centre and warehouse, the largest newsroom in Northern Ontario and a full complement of sales agents, circulators and office support staff" was put up for sale. There have been no takers.

Stray tears drawn through nostalgia can blind. In the Canada of 1962, homosexual acts were criminal, employers could pay a woman less than a man for equal work, and Native Canadians had only just won the right to vote in federal elections. Yet that Canada was moving forward; building more than just skyscrapers, concert halls and newspaper offices, it was investing in institutions, education and services. All comes into focus with this photograph:

The uniformed man pictured is a food inspector. While the country's population has almost doubled since 1962, fewer people hold his position today. This year alone, our Minister of Agriculture, comedian Gerry Ritz, a man who finds humour in death from listeriosis, will be overseeing the dismissal of 308 people from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Ours is a contracting Canada. The self-described "Harper Government" would have us believe that we can no longer afford the services and protections offered under the record surpluses of previous governments not ten years past. As these Conservatives run up record deficits, the advantages they themselves enjoyed, the programs from which they themselves benefitted, are being stripped from my generation and denied the next.

We are a smaller country now.

Object: A very well-constructed, remarkably heavy trade-size paperback printed on glossy paper with tipped in fold-out map of the dominion. The cover was a commissioned piece by Kiakshuk.

Access: It  should come as no surprise that Canada 1962, a five-decade-old reference book, has disappeared from our public libraries. Those looking to add it to their own collection should be happy to learn that Very Good copies of the paperback begin at seven dollars. The uncommon, bland hardcover edition is yours for forty bucks.

The True North...

From Canada 1962, a proud publication of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics' Information Services Division, further evidence that we were once a stronger, gentler people.

The World's Most Unusual Detective Magazine!

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Check out the gams! It took me a while to realize that that blonde's about to take a leap. Or is she being pushed? Whatever's happening here, the fella sure looks happy.

International Detective Cases was "THE WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE!" No question. So unusual was the world's most unusual that it seems to have vanished without so much as publishing a single issue.

The above, which comes to me courtesy of the family of the late Leo Orenstein, looks to be yet another of the artist's unused covers. Formatting and presentation suggest that like Aphrodite, Against the Grain and Curious Relations of Mankind, International Detective Cases was an aborted effort of Toronto's Fireside Publications. But here's the thing, Fireside didn't produce any original material, rather they'd re-issue, re-package, re-package... My hunch here is that publisher meant to mine the corpse of a dead American true crime monthly by the same title.

International Detective Cases, December 1937

I'm keeping the file open.

An aside: Where the title of England's "A Case for Scotland Yard" seems rather ho-hum, the Canadian entry, "The Tale of Singed Dog Island", did intrigue. I spent a happy half-hour yesterday reading newspaper accounts of this forgotten case. It began 23 November 1935 when the appropriately named John Harms, a trapper, murdered his partner. He next terrorized a neighbour by showing her the body, then made repeated attempts to break into her home. Eventually Harms gave up, yelling: "Report to police that the kid is dead. I will be waiting for them at my cabin on Singed Dog Island."*

The Leader-Post, 30 November 1935

It's clear that the papers were hoping Harms would turn out to be another Albert Johnson, the "Mad Trapper" who had led the RCMP on a 16-day manhunt four years earlier. Instead, Harms sat in his cabin and gave himself up when the Mounties arrived on 3 December. Found guilty of murder, he was hanged five months later.

No detectives needed.

* There really is a Singed Dog Island; a nine-acre piece of land just inside the Saskatchewan portion of Lake Athabaska, from the air it resembles a rotting steak. The actual murder took place at nearby Spring Point, but "The Tale of Spring Point" doesn't sound nearly so interesting.

'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!'

Monument George-Étienne Cartier

For la Fête de la St-Jean, George-Étienne Cartier's 'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!',  a song I've written about in the past. No reason to go over it all again here; instead I offer this link to my favourite recording, sung by M Alfred Poulin.

The above comes from Devoilement du Monument Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Baronnet, Le Six Septembre 1919. It's an odd little booklet as the Montreal monument had been standing for all to see for three years. Hard to miss. A note on the last page provides something of an explanation:

The celebration of the Centenary of Sir George Etienne Cartier [sic] was to have taken place in September, 1914, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The outbreak of the war in that year necessitated a postponement of these festivities until peace had been declared.

Rien n'est si beau que son pays...

Ralph Connor's Beautiful War of 1812

The Runner: A Romance of the Niagaras

Ralph Connor [pseud. Rev. Charles W. Gordon]

New York: Triangle, 1939

481 pages 

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Arthur Stringer Under the Influence

Emmeline

Arthur J. Stringer

The Canadian Magazine, vol. XVII, no. 3 (July 1901)

Something less than not much of anything, the plot of this early Arthur Stringer story is simple. A middle-aged man marries a young beauty. The young beauty loses her baby and becomes depressed. Work calls her husband away and a young man aims to fill the void. Gossip grows. The climax occurs after the husband's return. Loggers both, the husband and aspiring paramour disappear in the drink while trying to clear a log jam; only the older man survives. "W'ere is he? W'ere is he?" screams the young beauty. Told that "he" is dead, she poisons herself. The gentle twist comes with the revelation that – gossip be damned – the young wife had remained true; she poisoned herself thinking that it was her husband who'd been killed.

Far from Shakespeare – though something might be owed Romeo and Juliet – I was surprised to discover that so slight a story went on to be reprinted throughout the English-speaking world.

I think that language had everything to do with its considerable commercial success. You see, the description of our heroine as a "young beauty" is mine. Stringer's narrator has her as "de mos' pretty girl on all de Reever, wit' cheeks lak de peach-blossom, an' de hair w'at she braid alms' down to de knee." Her husband – Patrice Gérin – is a "qui't feller" who "try hard to make some plaisurement for hees young wife an' always mos' kind wit' her." And the unfortunate man who tried to break up their marriage? He wasn't such a bad sort; one cannot fault him for "fall in loaf wit' Emmeline."

With "Emmeline", the ever-savvy Stringer sees and seizes the poetry of William Henry Drummond to produce profitable prose. Clever. In 1901, Dr Drummond was our best-selling writer; his distinctive dialectic verse sold in the tens of thousands. It had been that way ever since his debut, The Habitant and Other French Canadian Poems, arrived in bookstores four years earlier. Nineteen-aught-one saw the publication of Drummond's second biggest selling book, Johnnie Courteau and Other Poems. 

Who was de man can walk de log
W'en w'ole of de reever she's black wit' fog
An' carry de beeges' load on hees back?

Johnnie  Courteau! 

Johnnie, meet Patrice. He's a good man, though he doesn't have your skill in walk de log.

Hector de Saint-Denys-Garneau at 100

Hector de Saint-Denys-Garneau

13 June 1912 - 24 October 1943

Paysage en deux couleurs

La vie la mort sur deux collines
Deux collines quatre versants
Les fleurs sauvages sur deux versants
L'ombre sauvage sur deux versants. 

Le soleil debout dans le sud
Met son bonheur sur les deux cimes
L'épand sur faces des deux pentes
Et jusqu'à l'eau de la vallée
(Regarde tout et ne voit rien) 

Dans la vallée le ciel de l'eau
Au ciel de l'eau les nénuphars
Les longues tiges vont au profond
Et le soleil les suit du doigt
(Les suit du doigt et ne sent rien) 

Sur l'eau bercée de nénuphars
Sur l'eau piquée de nénuphars
Sur l'eau percée de nénuphars
Et tenue de cent mille tiges
Porte le pied des deux collines
Un pied fleuri de fleurs sauvages
Un pied rongé d'ombre sauvage. 

Et pour qui vogue en plein milieu
Pour le poisson qui saute au milieu
(Voit une mouche tout au plus) 

Tendant les pentes vers le fond
Plonge le front des deux collines
Un de fleurs fraîches dans la lumière
Vingt ans de fleurs sur fond de ciel
Un sans couleur ni de visage
Et sans comprendre et sans soleil
Mais tout mangé d'ombre sauvage
Tout composé d'absence noire
Un trou d'oubli — ciel calme autour.

Monday Morning with Aphrodite

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

What better way to begin the work week than with Aphrodite? Sadly, it seems that this particular edition of Paul Louÿs' erotic novel of Alexandria was never issued.

All signs indicate that the image above, which comes courtesy of artist Leo Orenstein's family, was commissioned by Toronto's Fireside Publications. Had it been published, this Aphrodite would have competed in the Canadian market with American editions flooding in from the south. Since 1933, the novel had been part of the Modern Library – this is the cover being used in the early 'fifties, when Fireside was in operation:

At $1.25, Modern Library's tasteful hardcover might have challenged Fireside's cheap, pulpy 50¢ paperback, but the real competition would've come from Avon. No one exploited Aphrodite quite like Avon:

1946

1950

1951

1955

Avon was having such a good time that in 1957, Berkley got in on the action with this, the first of their two editions:

But just who is that on the Avon and Berkley covers? It can't be the Goddess of Love, she only appears in the novel as a statue.

No, it must be the beautiful courtesan Chrysis, the main female character. It seems that only Leo Orenstein knew the book well enough to depict her as Louÿs describes: a blonde.

Teamwork

Face-Off
Scott Young and George Robertson
Toronto: Macmillan, [1971]

It's playoff time in the NHL and who cares? Canada, the nation referred to in the league's name, hasn't had a team in contention since April. The last ice I saw was in February. It's two weeks to the summer solstice, for goodness sake.

Face-Off dates from just about the time things started going south. Pun intended. This is not a literary endeavour, but a bit of hack work described awkwardly as "a novel based on an idea created by John F. Bassett".

That would be the John F. Bassett who was the son of John W.H., father of Carling, and owner of the justly forgotten Memphis Southmen, Birmingham Bulls and Tampa Bay Bandits. His idea – not at all bad – was to turn Love Story into something that would appeal not only to readers of Erich Segal, but Rolling Stone and The Hockey News. The novel would be followed by a feature film and, ultimately and improbably, a delicious chocolate bar.

George Robertson, screenwriter of the unjustly forgotten Quentin Durgens, M.P.,  was recruited, as was sportswriter Scott Young. The casting of the latter name was particularly inspired; Young had not only penned a few kids' hockey adventures, but was the father of Neil.

The hero here is Billy Duke, a defenceman touted as "the third in a line of Golden Boys" that includes Bobbys Hull and Orr. The hottest of prospects, Billy is about to be drafted when he meets beautiful, talented folk-rock chanteuse Sherri Lee Nelson, a hippy chick who has "a trim, lean figure with everything in about the right amounts distributed in the right places."

A warning to parents: This is no Boy at the Leafs' Camp or Scrubs on Skates. Billy makes mention of his penis on the first page, and the second... and will talk about laying your sister in the third. Though the sex peters out – again, pun intended – this is not a novel for children. Pretty Sherri, an unstable pot-head, will turn to LSD, mescaline and loads of other stuff as things turn sour.

I thought I'd have a field day with Face-Off; everything about it seemed on the surface so silly – "Happy flip-side and all that jazz... Pull up a joint and make the scene", Sherri's manager invites – and yet I came to care for Billy and Sherri and was shaken when the ending, which is set up to be very Disneyesque, turns out to be anything but.

Reading Face-Off has made me want to see the film... and reading about that film makes me want to see it all the more. A commercial failure, it was criticized for focusing too much on hockey; just about half the run time is taken up by footage of games. Like the novel, it skates between fact and fiction; Derek Sanderson, Bobby Orr, Brad Park and Jacques Plante all figure as characters.

Nine – just – when Face-Off was released, I was only dimly aware of its existence. Still, even as a young pup I recognized that it served as the inspiration for SCTV's Power Play, "the Great Canadian Hockey Film", starring William Shatner Dave Thomas, Al Waxman Rick Maranis, Helen Shaver Catherine O'Hara and Hockey Hall of Famer Darryl Sittler John Candy as hot prospect Billy Stemhovilichski.

The parody features in the DVD reissue of Face-Off.

Such good sports.

Object and Access: A slim hardcover in dark blue boards with shiny red type, the Macmillan first edition, with its 6000 print run, supposedly sold out by November 1971. That same month, Pocket Books let loose 50,000 mass market paperbacks, though you'd never know it from online booksellers. Three copies of the Pocket edition are listed at between US$5 and US$21 (condition not a factor). The Macmillan edition is more common online with all sorts of acceptable copies going or about ten bucks.