Selected Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1926-1957)

Selected Poems (1926-1956) published by the Ryerson Press, 1957

Selected Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1926-1956) was published by the Ryerson Press in 1957. It features an introduction by literary critic Desmond Pacey and was published as part of the Ryerson Library of Canadian Poets series.

Dorothy Livesay (1909-1971) was born in Winnipeg to Florence and John Frederick Bligh Livesay. Her mother, Florence Livesay (1874-1953) was a journalist and author first in Ottawa and then in Winnipeg. She was the author of a volume of verse, Shepherd’s Purse, published in 1923 and a work of fiction titled Savour of Salt (1927). Her father, J.F.B. Livesay (1875-1944), was born on the Isle of Wight and came to Canada in 1895 to become a journalist. He served as a war correspondent for the Canadian Press in 1918 and was General Manager of the Canadian Press from 1920-1940. He was the author of Canada’s Hundred Days and Peggy’s Cove: an integral portrait of Peggy’s Cove, it’s people and their significance. Following his death in 1944, his autobiography was edited by Florence Livesay and published under the title The Making of a Canadian: Builder and Architect of the Canadian Press in 1947. *

Peggy’s Cove, Ryerson Press, 1944

The Making of a Canadian, Ryerson Press, 1947

Newspaperman and poet Charles Bruce (1906-1971) wrote of J.F.B. Livesay, “Few Canadians of his generation have rendered more notable and enduring service to their country… He was the organizing hand that charted the plan on which the Canadian Press was fashioned. His skill and tact guided it through the earliest and most difficult years. His amazing knowledge of the relative values of the various news agencies in Europe and America, his familiarity with every important channel of internal communication, and his balanced sense of the regional interests of every section of Canada, enabled him to obtain and correlate with The Canadian Press a network of world embracing news agencies which, in the aggregate, are today giving people of Canada a news service unsurpassed in any of the other countries in the world. Such is the heritage he left his fellow Canadians. How many of his contemporaries did more for their country?”

Desmond Pacey, in his introduction to Selected Poems (1926-1956) says of Livesay, “Dorothy Livesay is one of the most important poets of her Canadian generation – of that generation which came to maturity between the two World Wars.” Encouraged by her parents, she was fortunate to have a well-stocked library from which to choose the works of some of the best English, American as well French and Russian writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1920, the Livesays moved to Ontario and spent summers on the Benares estate near Clarkson, rumoured to be the inspiration of Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche. Livesay attended high school in Toronto and in 1927 entered Trinity College as an honours student in Modern Languages majoring in French and Italian. The University of Toronto was an inspiring environment for an aspiring young writer—E.J. Pratt, Robert Finch, L.A. Mackay were lecturers along with faculty members Pelham Edgar, Herbert Davis, Felix Walter, J.S. Will and E.K. Brown.

After winning the Jardine Memorial Prize for Poetry in her first year at Trinity College, Hugh Ayres of The Macmillan Company published a sixteen-page chapbook entitled Green Pitcher in 1928. Livesay was only 19.

From the Selected Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1926-1956)

REALITY

ENCASED in the hard, bright shell of my dreams

How sudden now to wake

And find the night still passing overhead,

The wind still crying in the naked trees,

Myself alone, within a narrow bed.

 

SUCH SILENCE

SOME silence that is with beauty swept

With beauty swept all clean:

Some silence that is by summer kept,

By summer kept all green…

 

Give me such silence in a little wood

Where grass and quiet sun

Shall make no sound where I have run

Nor where my feet have stood.

 

FIRE AND REASON

I CANNOT shut out the night –

Nor its sharp clarity.

The many blinds we draw.

You and I,

The many fires we light

Can never quite obliterate

The irony of stars,

The deliberate moon,

The last, unsolved finality

Of night

 

Livesay travelled to France in the early 1930s where she studied at the Sorbonne. She was impressed by the bohemian life style of the Left Bank and the sentiments and demonstrations against unemployment, war and the social revolutionary movements. She returned to Toronto and became involved in radical political groups. She worked for a time in the Family Welfare Agency in Montreal where she saw firsthand the impact of mass unemployment. Two poems for which she is well-known are The Outrider and Day and Night. The latter was selected by E.J Pratt in the Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1938 and caused a sensation as it was considered revolutionary poetry. When it was published in book form, it won the Governor-General’s Award in 1944. Livesay won the Lorne Pierce Medal by the Royal Society of Canada in 1947. In 1950 Livesay published Call My People Home, a documentary Poem for Radio which was broadcast over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network in August 1949.

Desmond Pacey, describes Dorothy Livesay’s poetry as a “fascinating combination of innocence and experience, of hope and fear, of faith and doubt….In a world which often seems in imminent danger of disintegration she lyrically proclaims the values of love, joy and art which are at once the justification and the salvation of the world.”

Dorothy Livesay died in 1971.

 

*Canada’s Who’s Who

G. Raymond Chang Award

The inaugural G. Raymond Chang Outstanding Volunteer Awards Night was held on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at Ryerson University. The award celebrates the exemplary generosity and contribution of alumni and friends to Ryerson University. The awards are named in honour of the late G. Raymond Chang, former chancellor of Ryerson University, for his deep belief in the importance of volunteering.

Since retiring from McGraw-Hill Ryerson in 2011, Clive Powell has been immersed in the Ryerson Press collection, which was acquired by the publisher when it purchased the Ryerson Press in 1970. For more than six years he has been documenting the collection of almost 3,000 book titles and more than 2,000 related archival materials, conducting extensive research, producing a video and writing a blog about various aspects of the collection. His search for an appropriate home for the collection in order to preserve its rich Canadian cultural legacy led to its donation to the Special Collections unit of Ryerson University Library and Archives.

The award was presented by Mohamed Lachemi, President and Vice-Chancellor, Ryerson University.

Canadian Wild Flowers

Canadian Wild Flowers, Catherine Parr Traill, published by William Briggs, 1895

Canadian Wild Flowers, written by Catherine Parr Traill and illustrated by Agnes FitzGibbon, was a publication of William Briggs in 1895. Canadian Wild Flowers can be considered Canada’s first 4-colour, illustrated coffeetable book.

The four editions of Canadian Wild Flowers date back to 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1895. A note attached to the front of the fourth, 1895 edition from the desk of C.H. Dickinson, General Manager of The Ryerson Press, reads as follows: “Original Book — Bound in the Methodist Book and Publishing House in the year 1895 in light blue C M Pattern Extra Cloth. Cover – bevelled edges, stamped in gold leaf and blinded as this book – tripple* rules on outside edges with special circular stamp in centre in gold on page one of cover, the same stamping on the back cover – gilt edges, blue and gold lines with flowers, end papers.”

*Notes from C.H. Dickinson on the 1895 edition. Note the word “tripple” spelled with two “p’s”

Catherine Parr Traill was born in England in 1802. She, and her sister Susanna Moodie, were two of four Strickland sisters who pursued literary interests. Catherine Parr Strickland had married Thomas Traill in 1832 and emigrated to Canada that same year to join her sister. She settled near the Otonabee River, near what is now Lakefield, Ontario.

In her preface to the 1868 edition, Ms. Traill presents a few words of introduction to her many “subscribers” to the work. She claims that any “shortcomings that may be noticed by our friends must be excused on the score of the work being wholly Canadian in its execution…Our Canadian publishers can hardly be expected to compete with the booksellers and printers of the Old Country, or of the United States, labouring as they must necessarily do in a new country under many mechanical disadvantages.”

The title page of the 1895 edition shows the original copyright page, 1869

In her introduction to the fourth edition, Ms. Agnes Chamberlin, formerly Mrs. Agnes FitzGibbon, daughter of Susanna Moodie and niece of Catherine Parr Traill, provides a fascinating history of the publication of the book.

She records that: “In 1863, my aunt, Mrs. Traill, whose work on the Canadian flora (Studies of Plant Life in Canada (1885)) is well known, brought the manuscript of that work to Toronto, in the hope of finding a publisher willing to undertake it. She was unsuccessful, principally because of there being no illustrations. A kind friend, the Rev. Mr. Clementi, who had sketched some of our native flowers, offered her the use of his drawings if she could find someone to copy them.

 “I had never painted a flower, but the attempt to copy these drawings led to the discovery that I could sketch more accurately from Nature; and although Mrs. Traill’s book was not then published, I continued to make drawings of all the wild flowers I gathered, with the assistance of friends, on the Humber plains and in the woods about my house on the Dundas Road.”

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Widowed with six children in 1865, Agnes FitzGibbon turned first to teaching to provide for her children. Later, she decided to try her hand at illustrating and publishing her aunt’s book. FitzGibbon managed to secure five hundred subscribers in an attempt to defray the initial costs of publication. Having guaranteed her patrons that the book would be entirely published in Canada, she set about finding the means of producing the book entirely by Canadian suppliers. A limited edition of 500 copies was printed by Messrs. Chewett & Co. Once printed, Ms. FitzGibbon along with “the help of one or two young friends, coloured the whole edition by hand.”

The book was first published by John Lovell of Montreal in 1868 and a second edition in 1869. A third edition came out a year later. In 1870, Agnes FitzGibbon married Colonel Chamberlin and some years later began to revive the publication of a fourth edition through her Toronto publisher, William Briggs. Of the fourth edition, she says: “The work has many faults, of which no one is more conscious than myself, but both in drawing and colouring, the flowers are accurate representations of those gathered by myself and friends, and the book should be interesting as the first attempt in Canada to produce a work of this kind, and by an amateur who had never seen a lithographic stone till she commenced the work.”

Many of Agnes Chamberlin’s original drawings are contained in The Agnes Chamberlin Digital Collection in the Fisher Library at the University of Toronto.

Andy Clarke and his Neighbourly News

 

Andy Clarke and his Neighbourly News, The Ryerson Press, 1949

Andy Clarke and his Neighbourly News was published in 1949 by the Ryerson Press. The flap copy reads, “Few Canadian books have been so widely heralded or so eagerly awaited by so many as Neighbourly News….Andy Clarke had a genius for friendship, and in the end this group of old friends in his own craft joined hands to raise this living memorial to one they greatly loved.”

This 160-page book is a compilation of Clarke’s articles and broadcasts. Selected by his wife, Violet Clarke, edited by Lorne Pierce, and illustrated by Thoreau MacDonald, this volume represents the best of Andy Clarke’s weekly Sunday morning broadcasts over the CBC during the 1940s.

Andrew D. Clarke was first a newspaperman and then a radio broadcaster. He was born July 13, 1882 in Grimsby, Ontario. Clarke got his start in journalism at the age of 22 following a conversation with Lou Marsh, legendary sports reporter for the Toronto Star (The Lou Marsh award for outstanding Canadian athlete was named in his honour after his untimely death in 1936). Marsh helped land Clarke an interview with one of the seven Toronto dailies of the day, The World. Marsh had told him that, “if he could write as entertainingly as he talked, Andy would have no trouble getting a job as a reporter.”* After nine years at The World, Andy took a job at the London Advertiser. Four years later, Clarke got a call from the Toronto Globe where he remained for 16 years until The Globe was amalgamated with The Mail and Empire to become the Globe and Mail.

Andy Clarke

While at The Globe, Clarke initiated “The Southeast Corner”, a short two-column feature that appeared in the same spot on The Globe’s front page. This column contained humourous stories from small towns across Ontario and Quebec. Stories about “Barrel-bellied pumpkins, two-headed calves, a dog that could play the piano, raspberries in November, a boy who could sing bass, a pike that had swallowed an alarm clock, a school teacher who crocheted, a parsnip that looked like a person.” There was an endless supply of content for The Southeast Corner which provided a measure of relief during the dark days of the Depression.

When radio arrived in Canada in the early 1920s, Andy Clarke began broadcasting the news every night from the newsroom of The Globe. He had a down-home approach and a friendly neighbourly voice that appealed to a wide audience. Clarke’s love of picking out stories from the local newspaper feeds also filled his nightly broadcasts with stories and anecdotes along with the news of the day.

The book contains illustrations by Thoreau MacDonald

When The Globe was bought by The Mail and Empire in November 1936, Clarke soon found himself out of a job. But not for long. The CBC had been “thinking about a weekly news broadcast of a different sort, that would deal with the homely happenings of everyday life in Ontario, the things that were never touched on in news bulletins that dealt with the daily grist of disaster, crime and international worries.”* Andy Clarke’s name came to the fore and on Sunday, January 7, 1940, the first broadcast of Andy Clarke and his Neighbourly News hit the airwaves. Clarke also travelled to small towns and would broadcast to live audiences. Andy Clarke was given the title Mayor of Little Places by Enid Donahue of Kahshe Lake, Muskoka in one of her columns in the Gravenhurst Banner. The title stuck throughout Clarke’s broadcast career.

In his tribute to Andy Clarke, well-known humourist Greg Clark says, “But in all the cities of Eastern Canada where his Sunday morning feature was released, there were thousands upon thousands of people, wistful of the country air in which they had been born and raised before coming to the cities, who waited upon that quaint, surprising voice every Sunday morning with something of a religious attitude of mind and heart, to be transported. Transported is exactly the word. Andy Clarke loved what he did; and people on every level of the community, urban, rural and backwoods, were picked up and carried by him into a homely, fanciful, happy mood. He was an artist.”*

Andy Clarke died May 19, 1948.

*Greg Clark, Andy Clarke an Introduction by Greg Clark

The Ryerson Press Collection at RUL

The Ryerson Press Collection in the Library at McGraw-Hill Education, Whitby, Ontario, March, 2017

The donation of the 3000-title Ryerson Press Collection dating from 1862 to 1970 to Ryerson University Library Archives and Special Collections was officially recognized on Tuesday, April 18, 2017 in Toronto.

A reception was held in the 4^th Floor Student Learning Centre and was attended by members of the Ryerson Library Staff, Ryerson Faculty as well as invited guests. These included retired McGraw-Hill Ryerson executives Theresa Courneyea, Rachel Mansfield and Clive Powell along with current McGraw-Hill Education executives Gary Henn, Alex Dimech, Yolanda Pigden and Rhondda McNabb.

Lynda Powell, Theresa Courneyea, Rachel Mansfield

The group was welcomed by Dr. Paul Stenton, Deputy Provost and Vice Provost University Planning. Chief Librarian Madeleine Lefebvre expressed her appreciation on behalf of Ryerson University Library for the incredible gift of 3000 Ryerson Press books along with 7 boxes of author contracts and documents pertaining to the Collection. Rhondda McNabb spoke on behalf of McGraw-Hill Education wishing Ryerson University students and scholars many years of discovery with the rich resource of the Ryerson Press Collection.

Many of the titles in the Collection date back to the 19th century and have been under the care and stewardship of McGraw-Hill Ryerson and McGraw-Hill Education

The Ryerson Press Collection was obtained by McGraw-Hill following the sale of the Ryerson Press to McGraw-Hill in 1970. The sale of The Ryerson Press, at the time, was viewed by some as the death of Canadian culture. The controversy surrounding the sale spawned the Ontario Royal Commission of Book Publishing in 1972 and government scrutiny of foreign ownership of Canadian companies ensued. The fact that no other Canadian publisher at the time had stepped forward to purchase the company was somehow overlooked. In reality, The McGraw-Hill Book Company had been operating in Canada since 1948 and was fully managed by Canadians publishing books for the Canadian market. McGraw-Hill took over The Ryerson Press outstanding debt, continued to honour outstanding author contracts, employed many Ryerson Press staff and even changed the name of the company to reflect the rich heritage it was inheriting. McGraw-Hill Ryerson also revived several Ryerson Press titles in subsequent years and continued to publish Ryerson Press authors well into the 1990s.

Clive Powell with Betty Anne and Hugh Anson-Cartwright

When the 3000 Ryerson Press titles arrived at McGraw-Hill offices following the sale in 1970, they were immediately housed in elegant glassed-in bookcases and put on display in the corporate offices of the newly formed McGraw-Hill Ryerson. The stewardship of this valuable collection remained with McGraw-Hill Ryerson for close to five decades – a testament to the care and concern expressed by the management team of McGraw-Hill Ryerson for the rich heritage that is, and continues to be, The Ryerson Press Collection.

Clive Powell addresses the Ryerson University Library Archives and Special Collections, April 18, 2017

Among the many invited guests at the reception was Earle Toppings, former editor at The Ryerson Press, David Mason of David Mason Books, and Hugh Anson-Cartwright, Antiquarian Bookseller. Their thoughts and reminiscences along with the hopes and aspirations of Ryerson University Library and Faculty for The Ryerson Press Collection are captured in a video by Graeme Powell. You can watch it here.

It has been my distinct and absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to work with The Ryerson Press Collection. I hope to be able to continue to be surprised and amazed at the rich history that this collection represents.

Ryerson Press Collection donated to Ryerson University Library Special Collections

RYERSON UNIVERSITY RECEIVES HISTORIC MCGRAW-HILL RYERSON PRESS COLLECTION

 Gift of remarkable resource from Canada’s oldest English-language publisher

TORONTO, April 17, 2017 – Ryerson University is pleased to announce that publisher McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, part of McGraw-Hill Education, has made the largest single donation of books ever received by the university library’s Archives and Special Collections.

The McGraw-Hill Ryerson Press Collection is valued at nearly $1 million, and contains works by such seminal Canadian authors as Alice Munro, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Norval Morrisseau, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Archibald Lampman, Milton Acorn and Al Purdy.

 

In all, the McGraw-Hill Ryerson Press Collection includes almost 3,000 book titles—many of which are first editions and date back as far as 1862—and more than 2,000 archival materials, including catalogues, author contracts and related documentation. It is a rich collection which many in the industry had thought lost.

 

Madeleine Lefebvre, chief librarian, Ryerson Library and Archives, says, “we are proud to welcome the McGraw-Hill Ryerson Press Collection to its new home in the Ryerson Library’s Special Collections unit. The press made an enormous contribution to Canadian literature before it was known as such, and now offers a rich resource of academic research potential.”

 

“We are immensely pleased that this collection will now be part of Ryerson University,” said Aaron Yaverski, Managing Director of the Americas for McGraw-Hill Education. “These materials belong in the hands of scholars and we are delighted they have found such a wonderful home.”

 

The Ryerson Press began operation in Toronto in 1829 when Egerton Ryerson (for whom the Ryerson Institute of Technology, now Ryerson University, was named in 1948) obtained the licence for a printing press. The sale of the press to the American company McGraw-Hill in 1970 was controversial at the time, many considering it an issue of Canadian cultural identity. It prompted a Royal Commission on Canadian Publishing, legislation on foreign ownership, and sparked activism among Canada’s literary community that would eventually take shape in the founding of the Writers Union of Canada in 1973. The generous gift from McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited repatriates a wealth of the nation’s cultural and publishing history.

 

Among many other treasures, the collection includes Alice Munro’s first book, Dance of the Happy Shades, published by Ryerson Press in 1968, as well as her author’s contract for that volume. Munro went on in her career to win many literary awards, including the Man Booker International Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

About Ryerson University

Ryerson University is Canada’s leader in innovative, career-oriented education. Urban, culturally diverse and inclusive, the university is home to more than 44,500 students, including 2,400 Master’s and PhD students, 3,200 faculty and staff, and nearly 170,000 alumni worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.ryerson.ca 

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Media Contact:

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Public Affairs
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On Books & Reading

On Books & Reading was published by The Ryerson Press, December, 1954

The booklet On Books & Reading: The address by His Excellency The Right Honourable Vincent Massey, Governor-General of Canada at the 125^th Anniversary Dinner of The United Church Publishing House and the Ryerson Press, October 19, 1954, was published by The Ryerson Press in December, 1954. Only 1600 copies of this booklet were printed and distributed to “Their Friends at Christmastide, 1954”.

Vincent Massey was a career diplomat and served as Governor-General of Canada from 1952-1959. His 1951 report, The Massey Report, was the basis for the formation the National Library of Canada and the Canadian Council of the Arts. He also founded Massey College at the University of Toronto and The Massey Lectures.

In his address on the occasion of Ryerson Press’s 125th anniversary, Massey paid tribute to Book Steward C.H. Dickinson for his leadership and to Book Editor Lorne Pierce for his creative editorial work over the past several decades.

Massey admitted to knowing very little about the business of publishers and publishing, save to point out that once having accepted the invitation to address the group he turned his hand to familiarizing himself with terms such as “cast-offs, cross-heads, captions and cases”.

Massey offered sympathy and to understanding the dilemma of publishers and the publishing community. He quoted a German writer as follow:

“To write books is easy. It requires only pen and ink and the ever patient paper. To print books is a little more difficult, because genius so often rejoices in illegible handwriting. To read books is more difficult still, because of the tendency to go to sleep. But the most difficult task of all that a mortal man can embark upon is to sell a book.”

Massey contemplated, in 1954, the fact that “there are many today who are ready to proclaim that books will find little or no place in this age of mass media. It has even been claimed…that, “Radio and TV have books on the ropes.”’

He pointed out that civilization endured for thousands of years before the appearance of the printed book. “We must also remember that printed books have been circulating only for some five centuries, and our society has known general literacy for little more than a hundred years. One might conclude that a widespread and constant use of books may only be a slight interlude, a transition, shall we say, between natural and scientific forms of communication. Books, it may be argued, will remain with us, but once again will be confined to libraries for the use of the cloistered scholar. The world will pass them by, securing its information through more attractive, more convenient, more striking, and broader channels.”

Massey went on to say that he believed books were obviously still the obvious means for recording and communication of facts in ample, precise and coherent form. He said, “In our age, marked by a progressive revelation of new and significant knowledge, there is a constant demand for information which cannot be met by a series of ‘radio talks,’ however good. On the contrary, as we all know, the usual response to a satisfying series of addresses on the air, is the demand that they be printed. As a means of serious communication there may be supplements to, but there is no substitute for the clear, adequate, permanent and portable book.”

Of publishers, Massey had this quote to offer: “The feeling that one may be building with permanent materials, the knowledge that one’s name is associated with books that enshrine profound thought and the triumphs of the creative imagination add a fascination to the best publishing. To offer the public what it wants, to pander to the worst prejudices of the moment, may be the speediest way to profits, here as elsewhere; but it is a dull road to follow. Publishing has far more thrilling adventures to offer the man who is ready to accompany pioneers along fresh paths; eager to help overcome apathy, ignorance, and prejudice; anxious that, above all, the lamp of truth should be kept burning. It may not yield the same monetary reward, but it will afford a satisfaction no money can buy. If you are a student and lover of human nature in all its amazing variety, where will you have such an opportunity of gratifying your desire as in publishing? Among authors, you will meet the very perfect gentleman and his exact reverse; you will encounter the colossal egotist who acclaims his manuscript as opening a new era, and the learned man of humble spirit, and all shades and patterns in between.”

While Massey was not far off in predicting the onslaught of newer forms of communication such as the TV, the tablet or other portable listening and viewing devices, it is interesting to note, 60 years on from this celebratory address, that books remain a stable communication device.

The Right Honourable Vincent Massey died December 30, 1967.

Breastplate and Buckskin

Breastplate and Buckskin, The Ryerson Press, 1953

Breastplate and Buckskin, by George E. Tait, was published by The Ryerson Press in 1953. The book went through 31 printings and was also published in the US by Chas. A. Bennett Co., Peoria, Illinois. Breastplate and Buckskin is the story of the conquistadores, the explorers, the fur traders and the earliest settlers of the Americas. The 1953 Fall Catalogue of Ryerson Books states, “Told in the easy style of a man who knows what children expect of a story, each chapter is full of drama and adventure. A time chart and suggestions for activities are included. There are over fifty illustrations and ten maps printed in two-colours – all of which have been prepared by a specialist in the field of children’s art – Vernon Mould, Art Master, Upper Canada College.”

The book was touted as a model of how to present educational material. Breastplate and Buckskin was used by three generations of students in many Canadian Provinces and American States. A note at the beginning of the book states, “To the Boys and Girls who Read this Book: From time to time you will find words which may be new to you underlined like this. So that you may learn what they mean, you will find these words listed under “Things to Know” on pages 225 to 234 with a full explanation.” Unfortunately, in the era of indigenous reconciliation, many of the images and the recounting of incidents from the 16th to the 18th centuries depicted do an injustice to the native peoples of the Americas.

George E. Tait was born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1910. He was educated in Ontario Schools at St.Catharines and Watford, and later graduated from the Universities of Western Ontario and Toronto. He began teaching soon after graduation. In 1941, during the Second World War,  Tait and his wife Reginae, also a teacher, were asked by Canadian External Affairs to open the Anglo-American School in Bogota, Columbia. They stayed for three years. Upon their return in 1944, Tait was appointed Inspector of Public Schools in Huntsville and Welland, Ontario. In 1950 George Tait became Associate Professor of Elementary Education, University of Toronto, and remained at the U of T until his retirement as Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education.

 

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George Tait produced over 20 books including The Saddle of Carlos Perez, The Silent Gulls, Wake of the West Wind, The Eagle and the Snake, The World was Wide, One Dominion and Fair Domain.  The Silent Gulls was dramatized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Tait travelled widely and on one trip to the Arctic, his team came across a stash of food left by the men of the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845.

In 1978, George Tait received the McGraw-Hill Ryerson Special Book Award for outstanding contribution to Canadian education. He was presented to the Queen on two occasions, once at Buckingham Palace and once at St. James’ Palace. George Tait was also an accomplished amateur painter.

George Tait died in 2000 and is buried in his home town of Watford, Ontario.

My Mother the Judge

My Mother the Judge, published by The Ryerson Press, 1955

My Mother the Judge, by Elsie Gregory MacGill, was published by The Ryerson Press in 1955. It is the remarkable story of a woman, Judge Helen Gregory MacGill, who successfully “asserted the freedom of women to apply their talents in a day when this was a solely male prerogative.”

Helen MacGill was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1864. She was the first woman undergraduate of Trinity College, University of Toronto, receiving both a BA and an MA. She was also the first female in the British Empire to receive a Music Degree.

Helen MacGill was no stranger to politics or advocacy. Her maternal grandfather, also a judge, successfully represented participants in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Upon graduation, MacGill turned to journalism and wrote for Cosmopolitan, the Toronto Globe, San Francisco Morning Call and the St. Paul Globe. This led her to social advocacy and she spent much of the rest of her life pursuing better laws for women and children, notably in British Columbia. In 1917, she was appointed British Columbia’s first woman jurist and helped to establish standards in Juvenile Court. By 1947, MacGill had seen most of her personally-urged reforms become law.

From the flap copy of My Mother the Judge: “The story credits women with being the instigators of modern social legislation, and details this development in British Columbia. It treats the movement for women suffrage as part of the general social revolution, and the logical sequence to the struggle for manhood suffrage.” She served as a judge of the Juvenile Court of British Columbia for 23 years. Helen Gregory MacGill died on February 27, 1947.

Elsie Gregory MacGill, 1905-1980, grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was the first woman to graduate in engineering at the University of Toronto (1929) and the first to take an MA in aeronautics at the University of Michigan. She became the chief aeronautical engineer of The Canadian Car and Foundry company of Montreal where she carried through the design, testing and certification of a primary training aircraft in 1939. She was also in charge of all engineering work of the Hawker Hurricane fighter (Battle of Britain) where she gained the title Queen of the Hurricanes. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Elsie MacGill was also an active feminist and was a member of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1967-1970. Elsie Gregory MacGill died November 4, 1980.

Pauline Johnson and Walter McRaye

Pauline Johnson and Her Friends by Walter McRaye, published by The Ryerson Press, 1947.

Emily Pauline Johnson was a Canadian poet and entertainer. She was born March 10, 1861, the daughter of a Mohawk chief. Her Mohawk name, Tekahionwake, means “double-life.” Pauline Johnson and Her Friends by Walter McRaye, was published in 1947 by The Ryerson Press. The 1945 catalogue reads as follows: “This is the story of Pauline Johnson, that everyone has eagerly awaited. The writing of this book is the fulfillment of a promise made her as she lay dying. “Tell them something of the real me, of my father’s people, my hopes, my dreams, and my aspirations.” Friend and fellow-artist for many years, Walter McRaye here sets down in simple and sincere form the story of the Mohawk poet, her rise to fame, and the tours they shared together, across Canada, and into almost every hamlet and city, from the Cariboo Trail to Halifax, and from Ottawa to London, England.”

The catalogue copy for 1945 reads in part, “This biography is much more than a formal life of the almost legendary Mohawk princess. It is a living likeness of the poet, and it is placed over against her time, the time they both knew best, people, growing towns, a pioneer country growing up, with side glances at the romantic world of London, its great houses, celebrated writers, Steinway Hall, the Watts-Duntons, Swinburne, and a world far removed from the Grand River Reserve – and now all but dissolved away and become history, legend, a lovely vanished dream.”

Pauline Johnson lived before Canadian authors had come into their own, as they have today. There were no book drives or “Canadian Book Weeks” or “Book Fairs” given by associations, no authors speaking before Canadian or other clubs in an effort to arouse Canadian enthusiasm for Canadian literature.

Pauline Johnson and Walter McRaye at Banff, 1901

As Pauline Johnson travelled across the country, reciting and entertaining the Canadian  public, she was inspired by its vastly changing landscapes as depicted in this stanza of her poem The Sleeping Giant:

You have locked your past, and you keep the key

In your heart ‘neath the westing sun,

Where the mighty sea

And its shores will be

Storm-swept till the world is done

Pauline Johnson died in Vancouver, March 7, 1913.

 

Walter McRaye

Walter McRaye was born in Merrickville, Ontario, 1876. While on a tour in Winnipeg in 1897, he met Pauline Johnson, at the height of her career. By 1901 they were touring together, McRaye acting as her business manager, and sharing the billing with her. They toured together for nine years and gave their final performance together in Kamloops, B.C. in 1909. They shared fame together.

Following service in the First World War, McRaye resumed his entertainment touring and billed his tours as “entertainment with a punch.” McRaye, a staunch Canadian, deplored the fact that most of Canada’s pulp went to the Hearst empire and other American papers, but he was even more concerned by the fact that “the children of today have but a superficial knowledge of any of the great epochs in Canadian history that should never die.”

His book, Town Hall Tonight, was published by The Ryerson Press in 1929. The 1929 Fall Announcements states that “This Odyssey of the well-known entertainer, Walter McRaye, sets forth in sprightly fashion the colourful incidents of some thirty years’ wandering across Canada, with an occaisional excursion elsewhere – the United States, Great Britain and France. Thirty years ago “Town Hall Tonight” was the usual heading for all concert and lecture programmes and Mr. McRaye has chosen this as an appropriate title for his book of reminiscences.”

Town Hall Tonight by Walter McRaye, published by The Ryerson Press, 1929

In the introduction to McRaye’s book, Town Hall Tonight, Lorne Pierce, Managing Editor of The Ryerson Press from 1920 to 1960, quotes McRaye as saying, “The main work has to be done in our schools, if we are to become a nation of thinkers and executors, rather than a conglomeration of dumb followers.” He goes on to say, “ Teach citizenship.” “Boost Canadian literature.” We should say “Not Canada for Canadians, but Canadians for Canada.” These were sentiments akin to Lorne Pierce’s own heart. Pierce played a huge role in support of Canadian literature and Canadian culture throughout his life.

Walter McRaye died in 1946, just after his manuscript Pauline Johnson and Her Friends was delivered to The Ryerson Press.