The Secret of Willow Castle (1966), by Lyn Cook

Way back in 2012, I was out in Ontario celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the War of 1812, staying in Brant County, one-time home to Sara Jeannette Duncan, E. Pauline Johnson, Adelaide Hoodless, and other notable early Canadian women. Although Brantford was fascinating, I was rather sad that it lies so far from Westport, up near Kingston, where author Lyn Cook lived at that time. I had spoken to Lyn Cook a number of times by telephone; she was a delightful woman: sharp, engaging, knowledgeable, and with a sense of humour that made me really want to meet her in person. But alas, on that trip, it was not to be. The next best thing, though, was visiting the… bookstore? library? home? of Mr. Nelson Ball, who had been slowly selling off his Canadiana library over the years, and who had a store of Lyn Cook first editions. Having already depleted my book budget, I could only choose one, so I purchased The Secret of Willow Castle, the favourite childhood book of Lisa Wood, my host in Brantford. She loved this book so much, she tells me, that she forced her parents to take her to Napanee, to see where it takes place. Doubtless Napanee has changed since 1834, but one always hopes to find something of the story still lingering…

For The Secret of Willow Castle is based on real people: Henrietta MacPherson and her family existed; she appears on both the 1861 and 1871 Canadian census records, still living with her parents. A comment in the end matter of the book tells us that “in the town of Napanee, Ontario, Henrietta’s home still stands now, as it did in 1834, on the river bank looking towards the falls. The mills are gone but a plaque in a hillside park marks their place, and the willows still trail their branches in the quiet waters of the pond.” The house is in fact now the Napanee town museum, with its own website. So too is there ample historical evidence of Henrietta’s cousin John Alex, who weaves his way in and out of her life, an inspiration to her growing sense of honour and responsibility. John Alex is in fact John Alexander MacDonald, destined to be the first Prime Minister of Canada. There are sufficient indications of his growing political acumen, and discussion of his future should he choose to enter politics, but never is he firmly identified. The unaware reader does not stumble over the politics in the story, which are natural comments made by the adults, not ideologies masking as narrative. Politics are only interesting to Henrietta because she is a curious child who wants to know what the adults around her are discussing. The reader, like Henrietta, learns just enough to stay interested: “’Tis not usual for young ladies of eleven to be interested in politics, childie, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you” (31), her father tells her, and includes her in his discussion with John Alex about William MacKenzie’s leadership, couching his discussion in terms that young Henrietta will understand.

Despite its extensive and solid connection with Canada’s real history, I read The Secret of Willow Castle with no introduction other than that a friend had liked it. I knew nothing of the history of Napanee, or its connection to John A. MacDonald or Canadian history as a whole. To me, The Secret of Willow Castle was an entrancing story of a young girl being raised by an affluent and morally honourable family in the early 1830s. The tone of the novel reminded me of Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins (1875), undoubtedly my favourite book as a girl, as the sense of a young girl needing to learn her place in the world, not only as a woman but as a member of an entitled family, resonates in both.

The story begins with young Henrietta MacPherson—having recently celebrated her 11^th birthday—awaiting the arrival of her favourite cousin, John Alex. John Alex brings her a present, but in her excitement, she demands that she receive it immediately. The moral current of the novel is set here, for her father allows her to open the present, but not to actually use it until she learns to behave in a more controlled manner. John Alex agrees, noting that she will learn such control as she grows older. While Henrietta is not—and does not become—a meek, obedient child, such as this scene might suggest both the author and the parents would like, she does learn both control and responsibility through the course of the story. Allowed to accompany her father to the gristmill they own, she discovers a mysterious new friend, Sarah, who has created a “secret castle” in a willow tree by the river. The girls become fast friends, hiding notes in the tree when they cannot meet, but contriving to meet whenever they can. The friendship between the girls is the underlying thread that weaves through the other events in Henrietta’s story: being barred from a skating party; attending a fair; meeting the neighbour’s slave, Jim, and questioning the morality of his situation; helping to settle a long-standing feud with another family; visiting the local wise woman for medical aid; being surprised with a trip on a river schooner; and participating in the day-to-day life of young girls in the mid 1800s. The girls’ lives are thrown into turmoil, though, when Sarah, an orphan servant to a neighbour, is at risk of being sent away to a family fallen on hard times. Just as the crisis reaches its climax, Henrietta falls dangerously ill.  Narrative expectation tells us that all must work out in the end, and the reader can almost—but not quite—see the path of Sarah and Henrietta’s story before it unfolds. There is no overarching dramatic tension in the story—despite a few tense scenes—but drama and excitement are not the point of The Secret of Willow Castle. This novel has significantly more substance than the faster-paced sensationalist story often written for youth today. The Secret of Willow Castle is both an extremely well researched and seemingly faithful representation of early Canadian life, and a heart-warming portrayal of a young girl’s growth into a strong, liberal-minded young woman to whom friendship and family remain paramount.

More by Mona Weiss…

After receiving this morning a particularly heartening comment on one of Mona Weiss’s poems, I decided to poke about in our records to see what else we knew about this poet. Not much, it turns out, so hopefully her family will get back to me with more. I did, however, find digitized copies of the complete run of The McGilliad, the magazine of the McGill University Arts Undergraduate Society, to which she contributed in 1931. Here is the complete set of poems (including the poem in the previous post) she published in The McGilliad, which only ran for 1930-1931.

Maybe the family might know, too, who S.K. is…

“To S.K.” and “Discovery.” The McGilliad 2.3 (January 1931): 10.

“Desertion” and “To S.K.” The McGilliad 2.4 (February-March 1931): 82.

“Burma Road” (1942), by Edna Jaques

Jaques, Edna. “Burma Road.” Lethbridge Herald (13 February 1942).

I found this while looking (rather unsuccessfully, I might add) for anything about Asia or the War in Canadian newspapers by Dora Sanders in the early 1940s.

At first I thought to myself: “Surely Burma is jungle, and humid, not a dry, dusty desert?” but then I consulted my oracle, Madame Google, who tells me that there is extensive desert in Burma, but that are not (as I also suspected) any hyenas.

Still, readers would not miss the intent, I am sure.

Dora Sanders in the Circle of Young Canada

Dora Sanders’s contributions to the “Playtime for Little People” column on the Circle of Young Canada page of the Toronto Globe: “To The Robin” (26 June 1915), “My Flower” (15 January 1916), “Daylight Savings” (1 July 1916), and “Wonderments” (19 August 1916).

Dora Sanders’s contributions to the “Playtime for Little People” column on the Circle of Young Canada page of the Toronto Globe: “To The Robin” (26 June 1915), “My Flower” (15 January 1916), “Daylight Savings” (1 July 1916), and “Wonderments” (19 August 1916). Playtime Prizes of one dollar each were “given to boys and girls from 11 to 13 years old for the best letter on any subject, the best story or nature letter, and the best poem, photograph or drawing.” Dora won “best poem for April” in 1915 and “best poem for January” in 1916 but it is not certain if “My Flower” was in fact the winning January 1916 poem. The correlation between publication and winning is tenuous; not all winning poems appear to have been published. Dora Sanders’s daughter Pat Carney, in her memoir Trade Secrets (Toronto: Key Porter, 2000), notes that her mother “published her first poem, ‘Song of the Trees,’ the the Globe in 1915″ (26), but I at least could not find it in the Globe’s online archives.

Here are all the poems I did find. They are barely legible, but hopefully can be parsed.

New entries coming soon: Dora M. and Byrne Hope Sanders

There are still so many women to include…

I’m creating entries for Dora M. Sanders, aka Dora Sanders Carney, journalist, author, and mother of BC politician Pat Carney. Her biography came out in 1980, which does not put her on our radar, but she also (we discover) was a journalist in the 1930s, which does. Her sister, Byrne Hope Sanders, is also on our list of women to include, so I will be adding her soon, as well.

Meanwhile, I have run across a couple of articles by Dora M. Sanders in the Maclean’s archives that reveal her position regarding women’s rights, especially politically. The first article —dealing with border crossings—seems prescient, given her own experiences during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1939.

Sanders, Dora M. “Shackled!” Maclean’s (February 2, 1933), 17, 41.

Sanders, Dora M. “Women Won’t Be Free,” Maclean’s (August 15, 1933), 8, 33.

More about Katharine and Helen Bagg

Today, I am going through all of our authors to discover who has or has not been added to Wikipedia… Yes: all 800 authors. It’s rather time consuming, especially when I go down the inevitable rabbit holes the internet provides, like discovering a beautiful photograph of Joyce Marshall on an island in an Ontario marsh, or coming across a twist in the convoluted biography of Marian Osborne that needed to be untangled, or landing upon this blog post from 2017 about the children of Stanley Bagg of Montreal, lamenting that the Dictionary of Canadian Biography has left out his four daughters, two of whom (Katharine and Helen) are authors in our project…

The post is written by Janice Hamilton, Stanley Bagg’s great-great-granddaughter, who assisted us in our initial creation of our entries; we are really grateful to her, here, for filling in more details of these authors lives.

Now that we can travel again…

Some day, I want to take a holiday on a narrow boat in England. So, I thought to myself, why don’t I think about recreating the trip recorded in V. Cecil Cotes’s Two Girls on a Barge (1891), given my love of all things Duncan and my recent research about that text.

So I went through the text and tried to unravel the route. You think it would be easy, as it is a line, not a web, but there are a couple of items inconsistent with the actual geography of the canal. Still, the route does go from A (London) to B (Coventry), so all is not lost.

Here’s the page references from the text, and a bit about each. The Canal River Trust has a fabulous dynamic map. I have copied the pertinent parts and marked the mentioned places.

• Page 2: “She sat down with a decided air, and we composed a note to Messrs. Corbett, of the London Salt Works. For, as everyone knows, Messrs. Corbett’s boats are some of the best of those which ply between London and Birmingham.”
  —John Corbett (1817-1901), was notable in the salt trade: “Corbett acquired in 1852 the premises of [two salt works] companies, which stood respectively on opposite banks of the Worcester and Birmingham canal. Within a few years the enterprise was completely transformed [including] the acquisition of fifty canal boats, the cutting of tributaries from the canal to the lofts in which the salt was stored, the building of a railway—the property of Corbett—which traversed the works […] and the establishment of a wagon factory, a foundry, fitting shops, sawmills, and a brickyard. […] For his workpeople he built model houses, gardens, schools, a club-house, lecture-room, and dispensary. In 1859 he abolished female labour on the works, a step now commemorated by a window placed by public subscription in Stoke Prior church. He sold the works in 1889 to the Salt Union” (Dictionary of National Biography).
• Page 12: “The Cadet must have waited a long time on the wharf at Paddington, when we did at last arrive prepared to start.”
  —The Paddington Canal (or Paddington Arm) runs from Paddington Basin to join the Grand Union Canal in Bull’s Bridge, near the Hayes and Harlington Rail Station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddington_Arm).
• Page 21: “It was the Bargee’s face that shone over the bulwark with a tentative inquiry. ‘Being Willesden, there’s stabling for the ‘orse, at least if you think proper!’.”
  —At Willesden, the Paddington Arm now runs beside rail tracks and through an industrial area.
• Page 42: “So we left Uxbridge far behind, with its funny little streets and utterly uncomprehending air. … And dawdling through the morning, we came after a long while to Rickmansworth.”
  —Uxbridge is just north of Cowley, and just past the junction to the Slough Arm canal. I think if I were to repeat the journey, I’d have to pop up the Slough Arm, for nostalgia’s sake. Slough has always been an object of local derision: “Come friendly bombs and drop on Slough / It isn’t fit for humans now”; also a sign posted between Slough and Maidenhead when we lived in Windsor read: “Slough, twinned with Chernobyl.” It’s really not that bad, but it is not Home Counties idyllic, certainly.
• Page 45: “We found our canal lingering lovingly through Lady Keppel’s park the third morning of our wanderings.”
  —“Lady Keppel’s park,” the estate owned by the Capell family since 1627, is now Cassiobury Park in Watford./https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiobury_Park). Cotes notes that they “had come to Lady Keppel’s acres through ‘a many’ locks. First a pound and then a lock, a lock and then a pound — ‘pound’ being a canal definition of the level reaches that lie between the locks — and we had begun to feel like some sort of accomplices in a very old book of the Arabian Nights. For these locks were, many of them, quaintly picturesque, with the quaintness that arises from an undisturbed possession of themselves” (page 45–46) but as the map shows, such a description is far more apt for the stretch of canal they encountered on the next day, between Hemel Hampstead and Marsworth.
• Page 59: “But fate having brought us to King’s Langley, the city of a Liliputian street, we paid the homage due at the shrine of local precedent.”
  —King’s Langley has a Roman villa excavated just to the south; not much else to say.
• Page 65: “So we found Stoke Brewin, with its low-roofed cottages among its grass-grown roads.”
  —”Stoke Brewin” is actually “Stoke Breuene,” which lies just south of the Blisworth Tunnel; not sure what it’s doing at this point in the narrative.
• Page 66: “ ‘Hitch their waggons to the Polar system of an Uxbridge or a Rickmansworth!’ quoth Mr. Squif, studying the old grey tower of the little church.”
  —Rickmansworth is not otherwise mentioned, but it lies just south of Watford so, like Uxbridge, they would have already travelled through it.
• Page 67: “Well, then, there was Berkhampstead. Berkhampstead reclining its lank self away inland, but staying for a little space on the side of the canal to dabble its white stones.”
  —Berkhamstead boasts Maria Edgeworth, Graham Greene, and the Whomping Willow from the Harry Potter movies.
• Page 72: “ ‘Leighton Buzzard it ‘ull be to-night,’ said Mrs. Bargee next day. ‘It’s a good stoppin’ place is Leighton, and there’s fodder for the ‘orse.’ But Mrs. Bargee was flustered as she stated this as a predetermined fact. If she had not been flustered she would immediately have added, ‘leastways, in the best of our endeavours it will be Leighton Buzzard.’ Perhaps that was an added reason for our not finding ourselves at Leighton when the evening came.”
• Page 75: “Therefore we went up to Tring at once.”
• Page 83: “ ‘Blisworth,’ shuddered the voice, almost involuntarily, it seemed.”
  —Blisworth Tunnel is the first tunnel they encounter. Apparently, as the horses couldn’t get through the tunnels (obviousl), two men would have to “leg it” through, lying on the deck and using their feet on the walls of the tunnel to propel the boat along. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/narrowboat-legging
• Page 88: “We went amiably together to beg roses from a dewy garden situated on a promontory of the conclusive name of Northampton Amen.”—I can find no place with this name, but a canal branches off to Nonrthampton at Gayton Bridge, just after the Bliksworth Tunnel.
  “ ‘There was somebody inquiring for you down at Fenny Lock yesterday when I come through,’ said a tall brown bargee — ‘a stranger-man’ — accosting the roses principally, as we came back to the barge.”
  —Fenny Stratford Lock is near Bletchley.
• Page 107: “Sunday had anchored at the Seven Locks with us in idleness.”
• Page 109: “We had turned out of the Grand Junction and crept up a smaller channel that branches out of the main stream somewhere between Watford and Crick. An unfrequented channel — a sort of a baby canal, where the water was so shallow that, leaning on the bulwark, one could see the tangled roots of the reeds, and the silly little shoots and foolish, straggling grasses which grow on the brown wrack of last year’s sedge. Then the stream had grown broader and deeper, and more still and dignified, and there stood in front of us the Seven Locks like seven cool white sisters in some old quiet park with the water all about them.”
  —This description is not consistent with modern maps of the canals, but there is a story. The Leicester Line Arm of the Grand Union Canal was previously the Leicestershire & Northamptonshire Union Canal, which ran from the junction of the River Soar with the Trent & Mersey Canal through to Market Harborough. It was extended down, intending to meet up with the Grand Union Canal just south of Watford (Leicestershire), but the dates of the construction of this Arm are not easy to find. The “old” Grand Union Canal and the L&N Union Canal were purchased (by a company named Grand Junction—hence the confusion about the names Grand Union and Junction Canals) in 1894, three years after the publication of Two Girls on a Barge. So it is likely that the only waterway connecting the two at the time was a small canal where the larger one would soon be. If this were true, the small canal would have led directly to the Seven Locks at Watford.
• Page 128: “It is a long way by canal from the Seven Locks to the Braunceston Tunnel, and it was noon when we reached the gorge between the quivering larches that creep by the dark portal in the hill.”
  —The route from the Seven Locks to the Braunceton Tunnel would have been to backtrack through the small canal to the Grand Union Canal proper.
• Page 136-37: “So we glided on, as the afternoon was waning, to Braunceston, Mrs. Bargee’s home.”
  —After Braunceston, in order to get to Coventry, the route leaves the Grand Union Canal and heads north into the Oxford Canal, which runs from Oxford to Exhall, where it junctions with the Coventry Canal. The route then runs south from that junction into Coventry.
• Page 139: “One day he stood still on the bank, and the Bargee, indicating all the meadows in a large-minded way, observed, ‘This be Rugby, sir.’”
  —Rugby, as is mentioned in the book, was not only the name of the town but also of the preparatory school run by Dr. Thomas Arnold, father of poet Matthew Arnold and author William Arnold.
• Page 144: “Stealthily, silently creeping up between low banks, slowly gliding by the shingle to the denser shadows of Godiva’s town, we came to Coventry, and on the farthest outskirts of her mantle, just where its border wears a sheen of poetry and its hem curves gently to the water, we dropped anchor, lingering.”—Coventry, much described in the book, is where the journey ended. The barge and fittings were sold up, and the travellers returned to London. The Grand Union Canal continues from the junction with the Oxford Canal, through Leamington Spa, on to Birmingham.

Audrey Alexandra Brown (1904-1998)

The things you find when dancing about the internet…

I’m adding some missing references to our entries, and came upon a 1934 collection of essays by Martin Burrell that includes a biography of Audrey Alexandra Brown. Our entry for her is not as well fleshed out as it could be, so I know what this afternoon’s task will be…

But I thought you might like to have the whole essay to read, as she is a little known but quite interesting poet from Victoria, back when the Victoria and Islands branch of the Canadian Authors Association was highly active and populated with great talent.

Burrell, Martin. “Audrey Alexandra Brown.” Crumbs are Also Bread (Toronto: Macmillan, 1934): 313-327.

Brown AA – bio in BurrellDownload

Ellen H. Gregsten (1831 – 1923)

I received a request for information about Ellen Gregsten from Christine Campana. Sadly, I was absolutely no help, but she did send the link to the FindaGrave page for the author. There, we are told that

Ellen was one of six children of John Robinson, a printer (from Omagh, County Tyrone Northern Ireland), and Mary Turner or Sarah (Maiden Name Unknown) … an orphan, raised in Liverpool … Ellen married William Gregsten on 29 February 1860 in Liverpool, England, at St. Bride’s church. At the time, William lived there on Clayton Square, and Ellen lived on Falkner Street. Soon after their marriage, some time in 1860, they left England and moved to London, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada. Although William died there in 1869, Ellen chose to remain in Canada for the rest of her life.

The FindaGrave entry also includes a photo, and a few pages of Gregsten’s chapbook, My Secret: A Story in Rhyme; a second chapbook/pamphlet, My February Wish, has no date.

If anyone has any information about this author, please contact us, and we will pass the information forward to Christine Campana.

Lydia Frances Williamson (“Richard Scrace”)

I love connection to community…

I while ago, Ed Butts, of Guelph, Ontario, sent an email asking if we had a better copy of our photo of Lydia Frances Williamson for an article he was writing. The original is from John W. Garvin, ed. Canadian Poets, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926), so it was easy to provide. His article has come out today in the Guelph Today news.

Butts, Ed. “Get to Know Two of Guelph’s Lesser-known Composers and Poets.” Guelph Today (26 April 2021). Web.