BOOKPATHS

The Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Alberta, Canada

Wonderful Life:  The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen Jay Gould (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990; first published in 1989)

Science, beauty, and a sense of wonder interweave in Stephen J. Gould’s Wonderful Life, a book whose topic is “the most precious and important of all fossil localities – the Burgess Shale of British Columbia.”  Gould’s explorations include the 1909 discovery and excavation of the Burgess Shale by C. D. Walcott; revisions of Walcott’s work by Gould and other paleontologists; and what the fossils mean to his readers, what they “tell us about evolution and the nature of history.”

The Burgess Shale occupies one of the most majestic settings that I have ever visited – high in the Canadian Rockies at the eastern border of British Columbia.  Walcott’s quarry lies at an elevation of almost eight thousand feet on the western slope of the ridge connecting Mount Field and Mount Wapta.  Before visiting in August 1987, I had seen many photos of Walcott’s quarry; I took several more in the conventional orientation (literally east, looking into the quarry).  But I had not realized the power and beauty of a simple about-face.  Turn around to the west, and you confront one of the finest sights on our continent – Emerald Lake below, and the snow-capped President range beyond, all lit, in late afternoon, by falling sun.  Walcott found some wonderful fossils on the Burgess ridge, but I now have a visceral appreciation of why, well into his seventies, he rode the transcontinental trains year after year, to spend long summers in tents and on horseback.  I also understand the appeal of Walcott’s principal avocation  -- landscape photography, including pioneering work in the technology of wide-angle, panoramic shots. – from Wonderful Life:  the Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen J. Gould

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive

Yoho National Park of Canada

The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History – The Burgess Shale

Chiefswood National Historic Site, between Onondaga and Middleport, Ontario, Canada

Canadian poet and performer Pauline Johnson was born at Chiefswood, “in the square room overlooking the Grand River,” on March 10, 1861.  Her father, a Mohawk chief, had built the mansion in 1856 as a gift for his English bride, Emily. Today, Chiefswood Historic Site honors the life and work of Pauline Johnson.  It’s open for guided tours May through mid-October and by appointment the rest of the year.  For historical and visitor information, see the Chiefswood National Historic Site website.

(Photograph from Ontario Heritage Connection.)

Robert Service Cabin, Dawson City, Yukon, Canada

Robert Service’s (1874-1958) “two-room cabin, set amidst the willows and alders on the lower slopes at the eastern end of town,” is part of Parks Canada’s Dawson Historical Complex National Historic Site.  The poet lived in the cabin from November 1909 to June 1912.  Restored “to the period when Service lived in it,” the cabin is open year round, with summer programming running from June to September.  Visitor information is offered on The Dawson Historical Complex National Historic Site website.

Tom Gatti interviews Margaret Atwood, whose newest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, offers a timely discussion of debt.

“’It was a coincidence,’ she claims. ‘I chose this topic several years ago and then found myself writing the book while all this was happening - the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and these ads plastering the Underground: ‘We will help you with your debt', ‘Why pay more?', ‘Declare personal bankruptcy!’” – from “Exclusive Interview with Margaret Atwood,” by Tom Gatti, The Times

Canada

The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson: an Introduction, by Anne Newlands (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada:  Firefly Books, 2008; first published 1995)

In this spare volume, Anne Newlands introduces readers to the stunning paintings of the Group of Seven, including Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, Frederick Varley, and Tom Thomson, closely associated with the artists, but who died before the group was formed in 1920.  Newlands’ text briefly describes the artists’ lives and work, the time in which they lived, how they met, and their unwavering belief in the Canadian landscape as inspiration.  Photographs of selected paintings confirm the accuracy of their belief.

“By the time the Group of Seven was established, the artists had known each other for more than a decade – working, laughing, talking and exploring Canada’s wilderness, sharing their views and enthusiasm for the North.  They called themselves ‘adventurers in paint,’ and in a nation where the ambition of many other artists was to imitate the gentle rural scenes of Europe, they set out to be different.” – from The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson: an Introduction, by Anne Newlands

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario (houses over 600 pieces of art from The Group of Seven)

Northern Manitoba, Canada

Some sixty miles due north of Windy Bay, across the sodden plains and gravel ridges, there is a nest of Little Lakes huddled close up against the banks of the river we call Kazan but which is properly Innuit Ku – the River of Men… The waters of the Little Lakes flow into the Innuit Ku not farm from its beginning at Lake Ennadai and for some centuries this little group of lakes has been the center of the inland culture. The People spread up and down Knnuit Ku until their camps stood on each lake and river in the rolling land. And it is from the mounded hills which lie about the Little Lakes that this branch of the Innuit took their local name – Ihalmiut – the People of the Little Hills. – from The People of the Deer, by Farley Mowat

People of the Deer, by Farley Mowat (New York: Da Capo Press, 2004; first published in 1952)

Farley Mowat first became interested in the “arctic lands” at fifteen-years-old on a 1935 summer birding trip with his uncle. In 1947, Mowat was finally able to return to the north, traveling beyond the railroad line into the homeland of the Ihalmiut people, who depended on the caribou for their survival. Mowat beautifully describes the Ihalmiut way of life, the migrating herds of caribou, and the land itself, at once starkly beautiful and unforgivingly harsh. But, at the book’s core is the tragic warning to readers of the Ihalmiut’s rapidly declining population, due to famine and disease, brought on by the outside world’s exploitation of the fragile arctic environment.

That night I sat for a long time on the ridge behind the cabin, smoking and thinking of that vision. I knew little of the People of the Deer as yet and now that I had seen the herds, I was aware that I knew nothing of the deer themselves. The People and the deer fused in my mind, an entity. I found I could not think of one without the other, and so by accident I stumbled on the secret of the Ihalmiut before I had even met them. I believe it was this vague awareness of the indivisibility of the Barrens People and the caribou that made my later attempts to understand the Eskimos yield fruit. – from The People of the Deer, by Farley Mowat

Glamorgan Farm, North Saanich, British Columbia, Canada

North Saanich is located on the Saanich Peninsula, approximately 25 kilometres north of Victoria, British Columbia on southern Vancouver Island. – District of North Saanich Website

Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm, by Anny Scoones; with illustrations by her parents, artists Molly Lamb Bobak and Bruno Bobak (Victoria, B.C.: Hedgerow Press, 2004)

For twelve years, Anny Scoones passed Glamorgan Farm, dubbed “the Spooky Place” by her “mum”, because of its rundown appearance, on her daily walks with her dogs. Then, “one spring morning” in 2000, she purchased the 19th-century farm, “quite suddenly,” she writes, “surprising myself.” She describes her life there, on “just over eight acres within the Agricultural Land Reserve,” in Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm. Each story, illustrated beautifully by her artist parents, shares the joys and challenges of farm life -- raising rare breeds of livestock, growing a garden filled with heirloom plants and vegetables, restoring the farm for future generations, and sharing time with family and friends. Scoones’s words pull you into the farm, making you wish you could see it, walk its paths, wander into the old barn. Fortunately, visits are allowed by appointment.

It was on a morning amidst all these revelations that the desire to buy the Spooky Place overtook me. As fate would have it, I had come into some money that same week. The dogs and I turned off Glamorgan Road to walk up the driveway, full of potholes and littered with trash, towards the great, looming cross-shaped barn. The building was open to the outdoors, and a few streams of sunlight filtered through the boarded-up windows. I went up an old wooden ladder to the loft. Birds were nesting high in the red cedar rafters. As I sat there, I felt a curious energy go through me. It wasn’t the ‘sudden joy’ I’d been experiencing but a calm and good feeling coming from the barn loft itself. The barn seemed to speak to me, almost as if it were smiling.

By nightfall I had bought Glamorgan Farm. I hadn’t even seen the house or the other structures. ‘Without so much as an inspection?’ asked the shocked real estate woman. ‘It just feels right,’ I said. ‘I belong here.’ – from Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm, by Anny Scoones

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Glamorgan Farm

Saskatchewan, Canada

Saskatchewan is a province of Canada, “one of the Prairie Provinces… Its southern half is largely an extension of the Great Plains of central North America, rarely rising 2,000 feet above sea level, and its northern half, most of which lies in the ancient rock mass of the Canadian Shield, is sparsely populated bush country with many lakes and tundra.” --Encyclopedia Britannica

As for Me and My House, by Sinclair Ross (Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1989; 2008; first published in 1941)

Sinclair Ross’s spare, bleak, novel pulls readers into the fictional Saskatchewan prairie town of Horizon during the depression of the 1930s. In the diary entries of Mrs. Bentley, wife of Philip Bentley, the new minister in Horizon, their lives unfold, lives of isolation and loneliness, monotony, bitterness, desperation, unsaid feelings, but also, finally, a grasping for change and, perhaps, happiness. As for Me and My House is considered a classic of Canadian literature, written by an author who was “born on a homestead near Shellbrook in northern Saskatchewan” and worked for many small-town banks in the province before leaving the prairie.

It’s an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses are helpless against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high, tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind. Close to the parsonage is the church, black even against the darkness, towering ominously up through the night and merging with it. There’s a soft steady swish of rain on the roof, and a gurgle of eave troughs running over. Above, in the high cold night, the wind goes swinging past, indifferent, liplessly mournful. It frightens me, makes me feel lost, dropped on this little perch of town and abandoned. I wish Philip would waken. – from As for Me and My House, by Sinclair Ross

Publisher’s Website

Canada

Hundreds and Thousands: the Journals of Emily Carr (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Douglas & McIntyre, reprint 2007)

Hundreds and Thousands: the Journals of Emily Carr offers insight into the artist’s life and work. Spanning the years from 1927 to 1941, Carr writes about her home life in Victoria, British Columbia, and her travels, including her first meeting with The Group of Seven in Toronto, camping in “the old Elephant”, and visiting Native villages. Entries describe disappointments, despair, and successes, along with an unwavering “commitment” to art and love for her native land.

“December 13 [1934] – My sixty-third birthday and everyone’s been lovely over it. Bless them all! The rain is on the shingles overhead in the attic. All the mountains are washed out in the mist and the telephone wires are solid rows of diamond drops. I’ve got to rattle out and vote for mayor and then come home and make pounds of Christmas candy for the Christmas boxes of the nieces. I’d rather write and write and write -- about D’Sonoqua and the West coast, about the looks and smells and feels, and the joy and the despair and the bigness and depth and sweetness and awfulness.” – from Hundreds and Thousands: the Journals of Emily Carr

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Emily Carr at Home and at Work

Emily Carr House

To the Totem Forests: Emily Carr and Contemporaries Interpret Coastal Villages

Bookpath: The Margaret Laurence Home, Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada

The home where Margaret Laurence, whose novels include The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, and The Diviners, lived from age nine through high school is open to the public. After years living first in Africa and then England, Laurence returned to Canada permanently in 1973, settling in Lakefield, Ontario. Although she never returned to Neepawa to live, she always considered herself “…a Prairie person, because I have always remained deeply just that.” Laurence died in 1987. “At her request her ashes were brought by her children, Jocelyn and David, to be interred in Riverside Cemetery, Neepawa, on June 23, the day before the official opening of the Margaret Laurence house.” The Margaret Laurence Home displays mementoes from her life, including her typewriter, doctoral robes, and award certificates; while also offering research materials, writers’ workshops, and book launchings.

Visitor Information

Address: 312 First Avenue
Phone: 204-476-3612
E-mail: mlhome@mts.net
Website: www.mts.net/~mlhome/
Hours: Monday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
There is a small admission fee.