“The Bridge,” by Pauline Havard

Havard, Pauline. “The Bridge.” Canadian Poetry Magazine 10.2 (1946): 17-18.

The preface to this poem in the Canadian Poetry Magazine notes that it “was awarded the $25.00 prize in the first of a series of annual competitions established by Mrs. Maida Parlow French.” The award was the Donald Graham French Award for Poetry, named after Maida Parlow French’s poet husband.

The Bridge

He was a supple, bronze giant of a man
Who knew his lifetime’s gossamer-frail span
Could be a sturdy bridge that stretched into
A shining future; saw the span upheld
By two tall sons who watched the fir-trees felled,
House built to last a century. … The blue
Eyes like the father’s blazed with the same vision.
Yes, they, like him, had made their great decision–
To build a span for their own sons to follow.
They, too, found comfort in the dimpled hollow,
The warm soft grasses and the hill’s green cap;
The field that held the harvest in its lap,
Sunlight and rain and sweet, enriching seasons.

Thus as one man these three men strove, and won
Against the frost’s attacks, the age-old treasons
Of weevil, hail and drought. Son after son,
They held the farm, until their names were part
Of a land whose heart beat closely with their heart,
Their brown hands building, quietly but sure
A span of dreams, a bridge that would endure!

“The Small Consolation,” by Catherine Bagg

Bagg, Catherine. “The Small Consolation.” Canadian Poetry Magazine 12.4 (1949): 30.

I received an email from a woman the other day who is researching her ancestry. She is a descendent of Catherine Sophia Bagg, sister-in-law to Helen Frances Bagg (Mrs. Albert Edward Lewis, then Mrs. Herbert Charles Drummond), one of our authors. Being from a prominent Montreal family, both Helen and Catherine appear in the 1930 vanity publication Women of Canada, which provides a smattering of biographical detail. But what, I thought to myself, if anything, have these women to do with Catherine Bagg the poet, who published the following poem in the Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1949? Ancestry.ca does not provide the best of information once you reach the 1920s, so it turns out to be little help, and my correspondent can think of no Catherine of the right age in her extended family. Still, how many Bagg families were (or are) there in Montreal? The very scant biographical information the Canadian Poetry Magazine provides about our Catherine is as follows:

“Catherine Bagg, Montreal. Work has appeared in Blue River Anthology, Poetic Outlook, Canadian Home Journal, etc.” (38)

So what is the connection? I continue to wonder and search…

The Small Consolation

“Rough Ben” (1888) by Kate Simpson Hayes: Revisited

“Rough Ben” was first published in The Regina Leader on 24 July 1888 under the little-known pseudonym “Elaine.” (Interestingly, Susannah Moodie’s 1852 Roughing It In The Bush was being serialized at this time in The Leader as well: “Brian, the Still Hunter,” for example, appeared on 6 November 1888.) Hayes apparently contributed five pieces to The Leader in 1888 under the pseudonym “Elaine”: the poem “Rough Ben” (24 July 1888); the poem “The Sea Song” and the article “The Early Days” (4 September 1888); the poem “An Angel” (30 October 1888); and “The Short Handler” (27 November 1888). Other pieces in The Leader (1888-1900) appeared under Hayes’s usual pseudonym, “Mary Markwell.”

“Rough Ben” was subsequently published in WD Lighthall’s Songs of the Great Dominion (1889), the version I have posted earlier. Other than the changing of the spelling of “wagon” to “waggon,” and a few punctuation edits, there was only one difference between The Leader’s and the anthologized versions of the poem: the final verse from The Leader version was removed for publication in Lighthall’s collection. This is how the poem originally ended:

Brave Rough Ben then turned him westward,
Leaving the lover and death alone.
Where in his grave, the simple hero?
Who lived unnoticed and died unknown.
Where has he gone? Where does he rest?
God will reward: He rewardeth best.

“I Didn’t Think,” by Margaret E. Sangster

Sangster, Margaret E. “I Didn’t Think.” Regina Leader (6 November 1888) 7.

This poem was published under the newspaper’s subheading “Young Folks.”

I Didn’t Think

The Shadow on the Steppe (1930), by Mabel Broughton Billett

Map of Afghanistan, 1930, courtesy of Probert Encyclopædia (http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/photolib/maps/Map%20of%20Afghanistan%201930.htm)

Billet, Mabel Broughton. The Shadow on the Steppe. London: Hutchinson, [1930].

The Shadow on the Steppe

Another sensational novel by Canadian author Mabel Broughton Billett. This time, I must admit, the novel unwaveringly returns me to the adage: “Write what you know.” Broughton Billett, in this case, certainly did not.

The Shadow of the Steppe belongs to a genre of literature of Asia–begun with Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary (1811)–written by women and men who had never been there, but wished to capitalize on the exoticism of any one of the multitude of cultures populating the Indian subcontinent. Sydney Owenson admitted to gleaning her information from Sir Charles Ormsby’s extensive oriental library (see Mary Campbell, Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson [London: Pandora, 1988], especially 108). Given the rather sparse biographic detail available for Broughton Billett, I have no idea where she went for her information, but the accumulation of fictional accounts of life, love, and conflict in Central and South Asia had increased exponentially since Owenson began the trend. With so much to choose from, Broughton Billett’s sources could have been any of the Imperialist novels published so frequently, and indeed seems to have been many of them.

The only connection in the novel to the locale that is represented so faithfully and effectively in both Calamity House (1927) and The Robot Detective (1932) is that the uncle of the European protagonist (for there is also, fortunately, an Afghani protagonist, albeit raised in America) had worked on the construction of the Kettle Valley Railway, which runs from Midway, BC; through Merritt, where Broughton Billett lived for a spell; to Hope, BC, where it joined the regular CPR trans-Canada railway route. Our protagonist, Captain Frederick Stacpoole, had thus lived for a short spell in what is now the Thompson-Okanagan district, but returned to his native England in 1916 to enlist with the British military in World War I.

So much for the Canadian connection. The first 180 pages of the novel focus almost entirely on the political unrest in Afghanistan which results in our Afghani protagonist, Haider Khan, heir to Kinsunkush, being spirited as a child out of Afghanistan and ending up in an American circus, then travelling back as a young man to claim his inheritance through intrigue and bloodshed. Captain Stacpoole, representative of British unofficial interests, assists Haider Khan in his endeavours, and the plot includes the requisite Russian spy, a noble Indian princess as Haider Khan’s lover, a conniving Indian woman who foils his romantic plans, a multitude of feuding Afghani, Waziri, and Indian factions, and of course the dependable British soldiers who follow Captain Stacpoole. The second half of the novel is more comprehensible, although not more authentic. All the elements are there for the stereotypic novel of Imperialist dominance. While Broughton Billett knows too little of military tactics and life to make her novel either engaging or realistic, she does at least give significant agency to her native characters, and in the end leaves her Afghani Khan on his Afghani throne, with her British character–having both saved and been saved by Haider Khan and other native characters–retreating from the scene, leaving the locals in charge of their own lands. This, at least, differs significantly from earlier British novels of Imperialist India. Broughton Billett’s representation of military characters, though, relies too heavily on stereotypes: Russian, Asian, or British. Having read hundreds of such novels in my capacity as an academic, I have to admit that despite the refreshing balance of power we are left with, I found The Shadow on the Steppe to be one of the hardest to wade through. In the end, the American circus comes to save the day; I leave you to fathom the significance of that…