& after this our exile

Sap's War

2011-12-15T04:40:00.015-05:00

Just as the "now" of & after this our exile is not the war itself, but the middle 1930s (1934 to be specific, the summer of the first, great Corps Reunion), so the present tense of Sap's War saddles the slough between 20s hedonism and 40s heroism: 1936, the summer that saw Walter Allward's incomparable memorial at Vimy completed and opened to the public. The Vimy "pilgrims" (my stepmother was the daughter of one of these) travelled to Belgium, France, and then England, to mark what by then was obviously not the war to end wars (there is full-page ad for the Nuremberg Olympics in the passenger list of the liner Montrose).

Same characters: some new; some alive, some not (one of the lost shows up at his girlfriend's home in Roland, Manitoba). As with previous research, Will Bird (the author of Ghosts Have Warm Hands) was my spiritual guide, with his Maclean's articles on the Old Front Revisited. The "Sap" of Sap's War is Sapphira, the sister of Stan Allward (no relation to the sculptor), the infantry officer protagonist of & after this (the allusion to earthworks is not without relevance). Sap died in the flu pandemic of 1918; she haunts Stan like any lost, kid sister would. And then some. Her war is waged against Sir Joseph Flavelle and his pork empire.

The Canadian Corps is represented by the redoubtable Arthur Cane, former Company Sergeant Major of the 108th (Toronto Typographic) Battalion, and William ("Bill") Ostic, corporal and Lewis-gunner extraordinaire. Art Cane is modelled after a friend (Bruce Cane, who really did have a great uncle, Art, who served in the war); Bill Ostic's name is drawn from James Pedley's narrative Only This, but the character of this soldier ("he was tough, profane, a peripatetic drunk") came to me in a dream. He continues to ground and astonish me, and says some things about the Menin Gate that took my breath away when I first heard them on the page.

The beautiful nursing sister Jenny Gray has at last married Stan, somewhat unhappily. There is an informal reunion of sisters in a home on lower Jarvis Street in Toronto, and Margaret Macdonald, our superlative Matron-in-Chief, is a character, as is (encore) Canon Scott (who was in fact on the Pilgrimage).

Perhaps nearest to my heart is the ghost of John Herald, and his Fort Garry dream-horse, Blaze. John turns up like a rumour in Carman, Manitoba, in the spring of 1936, and not long after, just outside the summer kitchen of his wartime sweetheart, Mary Helen Degault. John's character I draw from experience; Mary Helen is her own creation, someone who, as the novel states, "remained faithful to her memories. People could do that, then. No one told them to get on with their lives; they were not afraid of dying."

Completed in the grip of my 12th year with Parkinson's Disease, the story-lines structure themselves accordingly, in 90 sections (no chapters), weaving in and out of each others' slipstreams like the Snowbirds. I am slated for deep brain surgery in the new year, so this may be my last literary effort. As with & after this our exile, the concealed hero of the book is the Canadian Corps, and the combat highlighted is not the heady days of Vimy and then Amiens, but the bastard abortion gas raid against Hill 145 in March of 1917.

This disaster lends a more sombre tone to the volume, which nevertheless celebrates the incredible courage and heroism of the men and women whom we cannot remember, but who, through their example, remind (remember), us.

Fall in!

2011-12-08T06:34:00.005-05:00

Fall in!, a photo by Ward108 on Flickr.

Some images from the launch of

& after this our exile

at the Horse Palace in April, 2008.

Gorilla Interview: & after this our exile

2011-06-07T02:53:00.002-04:00

The second half of this interview discusses the book specifically and writing generally. Essentially, John Dunsworth showed up to meet me and two friends (Scott Owen, whom you see, and Michael Hymers, whom you hear) with a wonderful videographer who shall remain nameless but whose channel this vid is from so you can find out for yourself.

Then, in characteristic Dunsworth fashion, he sprang his generosity on me without a moment's further notice and interviewed me about my acting and my writing life. The bar is Freeman's and the place is Halifax and the server (whose name I never learned) was forbearing and wonderful.

Webbing; water

2011-04-24T07:46:00.003-04:00

private dean – he died at home.
jack private shore, he is no more.
they were both at – what do they call it,
now ... 2nd Ypres.

two of the lucky ones, who lost their lungs
later. you should have eaten
before you came courting.
god knows, for them, it was the first time.

Allward Up

2011-04-09T07:41:00.004-04:00

They went over, these few, chalk and bone.
They did it for each other, to get home.
Walked into actual bullets, their 5-round
clips, stuffed in triplicate, on either side

of chests that, when not bursting red,
were perplexed by burdens. Dad
taking me on his back in the rain.
Outside, dawn begins to lighten.

Literature

2011-01-08T17:22:00.007-05:00

I’ve just finished Ward McBurney’s first novel & after this our exile. I don’t think I can express just how much I enjoyed this book.

I was quickly absorbed by Ward’s storytelling. His prose is lyrical; his descriptions evocative. His style of painting a vignette and then not closing it off – leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions – was captivating. It’s a common enough contrivance by writers, but rarely so well done.

And his love stories – just incredible. Sister, friend, lover … Then, the love and admiration for the colonel, and for Canon Scott – beautifully painted and told.

The development of his fictitious battalion was superb. He caught so very many elements of what held the battalions together. Their unique sense of belonging to each other; their particular form of esprit while at the same time being so proud of the whole Corps.

And, he didn’t fall into the trap of beating the drum about how “special” the Canadian Corps was by drawing comparisons to the Brits, Anzacs or Yanks. He settled for emphasizing the cohesiveness of the Corps which carried through to that final gigantic reunion.

This is the best novel of the Great War that I’ve ever read. It’s far, far above a simple “good read.” It is literature.

Gavin K. Watt
Historian & Writer

Waves against the sea

2010-11-14T10:33:00.013-05:00

Remembrance Day, 2010. Historian Chris Laverton represents a Private in the 4th (City of Aberdeen) Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, circa 1916. This is the unit in which his grandfather, Private William Laverton (#2701), served from 9th October, 1914 to 28th August 1916.

We have just come from the service held each year on Garrison Common, west of Historic Fort York in downtown Toronto. Kilts were worn at the front, usually covered by an apron. In many ways, they were better suited to the conditions of trench warfare than more conventional garb.

Private William Laverton served at Ypres in 1915 and the Somme in 1916. His Character Certificate (Army Form B2067), which he carried for the rest of his life, reads: His conduct has been very good. He is honest, sober, and trustworthy; clean, intelligent, and punctual.

He had also been through the hells of the Salient and High Wood. Above you see the battle patch of the Gordons; below, the kit that most soldiers carried into battle.

You can read more about the Gordon Highlanders at their official website.

Rising, roaring, rushing with the tide,
Gay goes the Gordon to the fight!

A friend writes ...

2009-06-24T23:37:00.009-04:00

Hi Ward:

I'm feeling guilty that I finished & after this our exile nearly a month ago and have been meaning to let you know how great I think it is ever since.

I thought the writing was truly amazing. Your prose maintains so much of the poetry and I hope you won't mind if I say the only other book that I've read that so successfully walked that line and evoked such a strong sense of place for me was In the Skin of a Lion, which I count as one of my all-time favorites.

Now I'm getting self-conscious about my run-on sentences, but I'll just say thanks for the stories and I look forward to many more.

Cheers,
Andy Ballantyne

Manuscript pages

2009-04-16T15:04:00.011-04:00

These pages tantalize me with their sure strokes and wavy elisions.

& after this our exile was written, largely, onscreen, but parts of it were not. As Parkinson's advances, handwriting retreats, but when I began writing the book in earnest, it was still easy to print.

Here are seven pages from a notebook dedicated largely to the novel-in-process. You have to click on them to see them properly. The first (above) is a title-page that gives the working title; the next two feature the beginning of chapter 1. The two after that are two versions, en face, of Sapphira's Shell Villanelle; the last two concern chapter 5, the route Stan Allward takes through Toronto between the wars.

I started in pencil because I thought corrections; how many times were my busybodied digits sent packing back to their rhythmic originals! I plucked pentametres out of my prose-in-motion only to see where they were, then let them go, back into the stream.

I love arrows; I grew up reading war books that were full of them. They were all pointing to this novel, or nowhere; the dreams of Clausewitz crossed with 70s graphics. Clappison's Corners occurs at the junction of Hwy. #5 and Hwy. #6; I used to ride there as a boy. Wingham is where Alice Munro grew up. Carman is where my Great Uncle Fred Abercrombie grew up.

I have long wanted to turn my printing into a font; too late for that, now. Besides, in Sapphira's day, children were actually taught penmanship. I was not.

This map is an arrow orgy, the route between me and Toronto.

I love how co-here happened here first, on paper.

Lit City Kickoff

2009-03-08T01:53:00.023-05:00

& after this our exile had a spectacular debut in downtown Toronto last Friday ...

... & it wasn't just the eye-candy in the audience ...

... the weight of the subject matter ...

... the light from Nathan Phillips Square ...

... or the light from the listeners:

but they sure helped!

All photos, with the exception of the first, copyright Ralph Kolewe.

First photograph, copyright Shelley Wall.

Mr. McBurney's jacket care of Magpie Designs.

PS: The best part was asking the audience if they went to the Timothy's at Bay & Queen:
silence.
Then, "Who remembers Bowles Lunch?"
A wave of, Yes.

PPS: Those of you who were there will have a better appreciation for the photo below, taken by Toronto photographer William James of Returned Men at Shrapnel Corner (College & Yonge Streets) in 1917.

Unwanted ghosts

2009-02-16T21:25:00.008-05:00

This morning, I opened the pages of Stretcher-Bearers ... at the Double! to revisit some of the passages concerning the postwar struggles of the men of the Fifth Canadian Field Ambulance. Their "history" is rare in that it is, one, avowedly anecdotal; two, written by a self-appointed committee (i.e. in no way "official"); and three, came out quite late in the interwar period, being printed and bound by Hunter-Rose in Toronto in 1937.

Nearly Everything Seemed Different

That's the first subhead in the final chapter of the book: Post-War Activities. The paragraphs following it bear reading and re-reading:

"Gradually we realized we had come back like unwanted ghosts and to a new world -- a world entirely different from that which we left in 1914. Everything had changed -- or was it we who had altered? Certainly it was not the world we had pictured ourselves returning to so many times while in France, Belgium, and Germany. Those of us who did get jobs, found working conditions less congenial than before. We found ourselves 'clique-ing up' with other returned men in the establishment, and out of harmony with co-workers of military age who hadn't worn khaki. Almost invariably the boss, manager, superintendent or foreman was not an overseas man and seemed to resent the bond which held together the returned men under his control."

The authors go on to describe various "readjustments" men had to make to adapt to the "cold, calculating, unsentimental business world" and then turns to the plight of "the remaining veterans for whom temperaments and experiences prevented any sort of compromise with the changed conditions and people in civilian life. For these men demobilization brought tragedy, despair and defeat."

"We shall not elaborate on the plight of the man discharged 'burned out' and physically unfit. A description of his trials and tribulations requires a more practised pen than ours. Let us hope that before it is too late a Zola or a Hugo may appear and place the case for this type of ex-soldier before the general public in a manner befitting the terribly tragic subject."

It is too late. And the general public was, is, and forever shall be, like the monuments to the men themselves, stone blind.

Shrapnel Corner

2009-02-11T00:29:00.006-05:00

Dare We Forget?

At a corner of a busy street,
one noonday I espied
(and longed with all my heart to greet)
two soldiers side by side.

Neither vainglorious nor proud,
with interested eye
they watched the busy, happy crowd
that, careless, passed them by

with scarce a hurried backward glance,
or more than passing thought,
and yet, there two "somewhere in France"
our battles fierce had fought.

The shell had done its deadly work;
each cruel traces bore
of "No Man's Land" where dangers lurk,
of conflict hard and sore.

Within a sling, a shattered arm
was eloquent of pain;
that I might be kept safe from harm
he braved that deadly rain.

His comrade, too, had faced the storm;
one limb was torn away.
His slight, emaciated form
had crutches for its stay.

With sympathy my heart o'erflowed
their sacrifice to see;
with fervent pride my spirit glowed—
they suffered this for me.

I longed to clasp those brave, strong hands,
my gratitude display,
but, bound by strong Convention's bands,
I silent, went my way.

(Letter submitted to the Toronto Star by "Jane,"
10 November 1916;

Shrapnel Corner was originally the southwest corner

of Yonge and College, facing College;

there were soon complaints about the returned men

who sat there on benches donated for the purpose:

pictured above are some of these men, on those benches.

Note the Black veteran; also the canes.)

That web you weave ...

2008-11-17T05:33:00.011-05:00

Herewith the best articulated response I have had to my work to date; the accompanying images are taken from a William James photograph of Pearl Street in downtown Toronto. "It was something to be going along Pearl," chapter 7 begins; it is something to be read so well.

As for the book, I can tell you a few things off the top of my head. I read it in one go, tried not to stop and go over things too much, except with questions of clarity. I know that more will be revealed with successive readings (it is dense with meaning, connections and allusions all over the place -- to other elements in the text and to things outside the text), but I wanted to get a sense of the whole, first off. This is because I know you can write, and once I started I realized how assured this really is (remarkably so), so that the only thing I wondered about was how the whole would cohere.
The two things that struck me most are the assuredness of the voice -- the amazing confidence and knowledge and then the places you take the reader with that voice, that suspension (of belief), that web you weave. The other thing that struck me was the wallop it packs, and delivered with no artifice, no screwing around, no fuss. It's so affecting, and not at all sentimental.

Okay, and maybe there is a third: that it's all there. Life, the universe, all the lessons we should have learned by now, and do learn, and the things that ultimately level us -- it's all there. You give us war as a personal experience, you avoid the cliches, you come across as authoritative, though the approach is never didactic.

The love stories slayed me. Killer. The sister and the Sister. And by the end we don't really know "what happens," but we feel the love, everywhere. The friends and the woman, so beautiful.

The rhythm, the pace, the movement back and forth in time is dynamic, effective. Your timing, your pacing the placement of scenes, all masterful.

And it's very you (all-Ward). You were everywhere, but it's a you that any reader can be intimate with -- it's not because I know you.

There is such a sense of purpose here, a universe where everything has a place, a role, and I don't know that anything should be changed (not that it's a given that something should be, always, but come on! This is your first novel. Bastard ...)

Bethany Gibson

Beautifully Realized

2008-11-04T19:33:00.008-05:00

I stayed with & after this our exile fascinated to the end. It was a little like reading a complicated, metaphorically structured poem, whose main links aren't chronological or literal (in the pre-Frye sense of 'literalistic'). I plan to reread it, since I know this will be justified; I want, for example, to think more about, and follow through on, the metaphors involved in the soldiers-typesetters identification. Also on the illuminating literary references, especially Milton's, which work so well. They don't seem far-fetched in the environment of the foot soldiers, a considerable achievement, I think, on your part.

Your book is beautifully realized, with a host of concrete images of old Toronto and the trenches and the No Man's Land around Vimy. You must have done a tonne of research to have created such a full and authentic canvas. I was confused some of the time, because you deliberately were making non-chronological connections and letting separate spaces merge metaphorically, but I kept my bearings pretty well. I'm still not sure how the romance between the lovers ended, or if it did?

Thanks for this prodigious achievement. Take a lot of satisfaction from it. There are few up to such a complex task of imagining.

Warm regards,

Alvin Lee,
President emeritus, McMaster University
General Editor, Collected Works of Northrop Frye

Twisty tribute ...

2008-11-03T23:51:00.010-05:00

When I get to see the film, Passchendaele, I will see it through and around & after this our exile. I've been meaning to write to you about your novel and your book of short stories, which I read this summer, but school has been on me and I've not had the time. I've only seen the trailers for Passchendaele, which looks to be a straightforward wartime romance with some pretty good battle scenes, not anything like your twisty tribute to the 108th with its time shifts and its Toronto street scenes.

The singularity of your device, I'm still pondering it, that battle flag, a battalion of printers, it gives your novel its curious Melvillean turn, its metafictive complexity, Typos in battle. For all that, the verisimilitude is exacting, you get that Canadian soldier perfectly, Upper Case, Lower Case. I have a certain limited and now distant expertise, having served three years along side the RCAF at at NATO headquarters in the middle fifties. I was a clerk typist.

I liked the weave with Wave Hands, walking the battleground, taking it in, the topography, the haunt of it. I liked Wave Hands a lot, the way each story is set in place, picaro abroad, sojourner, Toronto person, memoir beautifully constructed.

Also the books are the handsomest books I've seen in a while. I love the cream color, the marginalia, the literary layout, the bold black typeface. I hope to meet you on one of our rare forays to the Blessed City.

Neil Schmitz, Professor, Department of English, University at Buffalo

Absolutely fearless ...

2008-10-14T06:10:00.011-04:00

When I returned to education in my youth, Germaine Warkentin stood at the gate: one of Canada's great scholars. Teacher, reader, mapmaker, friend; she opened the door on literature, and on our part in it, for me. She also lived through the novel's present tense, remembers 30s Toronto, the busy must of it, the Returned Men. I have held this back out of modesty, but only just realized, this morning, to whom the absolute fearlessness really refers.

Ward, I've just finished reading your novel. Well, I loved it. What a really masterful piece of work! I would have killed to have a novel like this to teach when I was doing Canadian Fiction courses.

Wonderful structure, powerful and serious, yet with marvelous undercutting comedy, literary without being overwhelming (don't let anybody tell you the allusions are over the top -- they're integral), AND absolutely fearless writing.

It was a great read. Made me think of Tristram Shandy. I could write an essay on it already. I have the occasional point to query, but nothing serious. The side-bar historical stuff works brilliantly, making you read carefully and stop for reflection.

I liked Michael Redhill's Consolation, which was all the talk last winter, but this is a better book. I wouldn't change more than the occasional comma, and would just ask for a little more help for the reader with respect to how Jenny and Stan ended up separated. Or did I miss something important?

Germaine Warkentin, English (Emeritus)
Victoria College, University of Toronto

Khaki Guardian

2008-10-06T04:21:00.012-04:00

Chris Laverton and friends Andrew and Hannah after the launch of & after this our exile at the Toronto Mounted Police Headquarters in the Horse Palace, located on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Sunday, the 20th of April, 2008, although to look at Chris, it could be 1918. If you had an allegorical, or even emblematic, turn of mind, you might say Chris stands for the Canadian Corps flanked by the future for which it fought. Some 60,000 Canadian women and men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force died overseas in the 1914-1918 war to end wars. Their bodies lie in France and Flanders but their souls stand pavilioned with us. Photo by my dear friend Jed Braithwaite, whose grandfather served with the 20th Battalion, C.E.F., and who attended its great reunion, headquartered here, in the Horse Palace, on the August 4th long weekend, 1934.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Swipe Books

2008-09-30T19:43:00.009-04:00

Before Swipe Books moved to its new home in the 401 Richmond Building, I was poking around in their former location further west along Richmond and found the Canadian Book of Printing, published in Toronto in 1940. The title page tells the story behind it best:

The proprietor of Swipe, David Michaelides, is a refreshing, realistic, good-humoured entrepreneur who keeps one of the most interesting inventories I have ever encountered. From Swipe came my copy of Siegfried Giedion's contribution to anonymous history, Mechanization Takes Command, in addition to most of my volumes on typography, beginning with the wonderful Stop Stealing Sheep and moving on to Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style.

Swipe thus had already had a considerable impact on the germination and research behind & after this our exile when David asked me why I was buying a 60-year-old book on printing in Canada. There was nothing for it but tell him about the 108th (Toronto Typographic) Battalion -- who spell their "8" with an ampersand (&) -- and, just when I expected David's eyes to glaze over in regret, he brightened and told me that, when the book was finished, he'd very much like to carry it.

I tried to dissuade him, arguing that, as a Lulu title, it wouldn't earn him much of a margin, but he persisted in his good-natured way to tell me or my wife, each time we went to Swipe, alone or together, that he was still wanting to carry copies of the completed book.

Ralph Kolewe (who, incidentally, is the person who suggested Lulu in the first place) swung by Swipe earlier today and found three gallant copies of the novel prowing out from the corner of one of David's well-stocked tables.

Shop at Swipe. The store functions as a magazine of thought in a desert of amazonian bargoons; it has real volumes, toys, children's books, staff, floors, and a clerestory roof tarped with canvas. If our urban cores survive as civilized agorae in this anti-social, auto-destructive age, stores like Swipe will take the lion's share of the credit. You can sit down; there is a splendid cafe down the hall and art galleries throughout the magnificently restored 401 Richmond Building.

Of type and men

2008-09-06T01:54:00.022-04:00

The pages of & after this our exile are 6 by 9 inches, an approximation of the golden section, and in conformity with standard sizes in the US paperback book trade. When it came to laying out the book, the text block was the first consideration. Or rather, blocks, because I had decided, in lieu of a glossary, to augment the text with marginal notes. The result was a relatively narrow measure (that’s the maximum width of each line), and, to compensate for the loss of text in the main body, a slightly deeper block than I would otherwise have wished.

Wave Hands, my first book with Lulu and my first complete book design, had a renaissance text block, which is to say, as deep as the page is wide, and conforming to the golden section. This results in very generous margins, by today’s standards, particularly at the bottom of each page, where most people’s fingers hold their books when reading. In addition, the text was let ragged right; something about the live nature of the radio stories in Wave Hands made me want this rough-edged look on the page.

& after this our exile is fully justified. To justify the ways of God to men, yes, but in addition to that, it has to be, not only because of the marginalia, which is itself ragged left or right, depending on whether it was set on a verso or recto page. It has to be fully justified because the story is a late Victorian military one, and because it is partly set in Toronto, that apogee of Victorian bombast run amok.

True, the deeds at Troy or in more recent conflicts may be better set ragged, with random warriors calling each other out, or brave packs of troops ditching drill for survival in the WTF of Afghanistan, but the men of 1914-1918 inherited several centuries of close order marching, not only in mind but on the parade square, where massed movement was (rightly) seen as a point of pride and forger of that greater body each army must become if it is to triumph, as the Canadians assuredly did, in large unit actions on the Western Front.

I could have said that far more simply: the soldiers in the imaginations of the men who went to war in 1915 fought in regular formations, even if they themselves had different training.

And then there is the city, this city, grid-locked Toronto, laid down by Georgian dreamers to be made up of little cubes. It is not too much to say that the squares of British infantry at Waterloo and the blocks of modern cities shared more than just an excessive amount of horse traffic around their brick red edges; they were the future of the as-yet-unborn century between Napoleon’s last throw and the Kaiser’s first. Clothes tightened, drill straightened, traditions calcified, to the point where troopers who had not at least seen the Charge of the Light Brigade were not allowed into the ranks of the regiments that had carried it out, for decades, until those regiments were but the ghosts of their former selves. Holy ghosts, indeed.

The marginalia of & after this our exile is ragged left or right because it has to be: the measure in this case is so narrow that, were the text within it justified, it would be illegible. But the text blocks proper, how to make them reflect both the thunder of battle – the unprecedented barrages – which the text likens to “a stream of screaming steel” and the shock of the men, at the front & after they had, in the parlance of the time, returned?

The typographic answer is generous tracking. Company tactics gave way to platoon assaults, which in turn broke down into sections, into those individual acts of valour to which any perusal of the VCs won by Canadians during the Great War attests. Consider, if you will, Sergeant Mullin, of the PPCLI, who, during the Passchendaele offensive, took a German pill-box single-handed by – get this – standing on it and compelling the garrison to surrender from above. One might as well stand on stage during a rock concert and hope to blend in behind the bass player. And yet Mullin survived.
Such men were shook up ever afterwards. Imagine a chase of type, before being placed, banged by that monster ingratitude, the hair spaces and ens and ems kocked out, rearranged, shuffled, and you have what I sought to evoke by such ample tracking within so narrow a measure: men, locked into the trenches, or Toronto, or whatever particular social box coffined their final days, but jangled out of tune, and shaking still, as they stumble up Spadina Avenue, looking for coffee at 3 a.m.

Trench mates there were, and aplenty; Plato wasn’t read in the trenches for nothing. But there are no ligatures in & after this our exile. The tracking is too great. The phalanges of Stan’s fingers, loosing cohesion in the soil, are the postwar bonds of these men, loosened likewise by their differing fates after the war. As Colonel Leading reminds his beloved Typos, during their Battalion dinner, the comradeship of the trenches did not carry over. But he can read them, and now, to the extent that my poor prose can describe it, you have a small leg(ature) up on the matchless characters of this book.

Only This

2008-08-15T22:38:00.008-04:00

It is not my intent to be either scholarly nor even creatively exhaustive in these posts. Those looking for history should betake themselves to libraries, schools, and battlefields; those looking for a fictive account of Canada's part in the Great War should read & after this our exile. Here, I merely wish to share with you, who have read or are reading the book, some of the artifacts and places that stand behind it. Now, look at this:

That's the cover, less the dust jacket, to one of Canada's most remarkable books by any standard. James Pedley was a subaltern in the 4th Infantry Battalion, C.E.F. (recruited from Aurora, Barrie, Brampton, Brantford, Hamilton, Milton, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Simcoe, and York), and left us a terrific, specific, clear-eyed account of his life at the front. His was one of the first first editions I acquired to ease me on my way. Every time I read it, I find many things, new.

The book as object is as unique as its contents. It is the only volume on my shelves from the period following the war to boast a colophon, which tells you it was written in Toronto between 22 December 1921 and 22 October 1924. And, as you can see from the flyleaf, it had a designer, too. It was published by The Graphic Publishers, Ltd, out of Ottawa, in 1927. My copy (which I found, like many of my books, at Stephen Temple in Toronto) is handsome without being ostentatious, light, compact, readable - in addition to being in very good shape. Here's a spread of pages:

And here's an excerpt from that spread:

And here's that excerpt in the margins of chapter two of & after this our exile:

Those who have read the novel will remember Pedley's appearance in the Wheat Sheaf Tavern, where Stan, Bill, and Art ask him to read his generous, skilful description of what it was like to encounter Canon Scott, Padre of the First Canadian Division. My debts to Pedley are too numerous to mention, but off the top, the name (but not the character) of Bill Ostic is taken from his pages; there is a strange coincidence with the name of the first trench Pedley occupied and Stan's home street in Toronto; and both he and Stan have a best friend named John. In an hommage to Pedley, chapter 10 of the novel is called "Only This."

Few are the narratives from the First World War to appear without some form of map or maps, almost always drawn by the men who went over the ground themselves. Here is Pedley's map of the Telegraph Hill sector, where his best friend was killed (see No. 14):

It was Bruce Cane who first told me to read Only This and I quickly acquired a reprint from C.E.F. Books. But the narrative was too good; I wanted to hold the object veterans would have purchased in the 20s - the closest I will ever get to going over the same ground with them. The 4th Battalion was part of the First Contingent; its battle honours cover Canada's entire involvement in the First World War. I will conclude this post with them:

YPRES, 1915, 1917
GRAVENSTAFEL
ST. JULIEN
FESTUBERT, 1915
MOUNT SORREL
SOMME, 1916
POZIERES
FLERS-COURCELETTE
ANCRE HEIGHTS
ARRAS, 1917, 1918
VIMY, 1917
ARLEUX
SCARPE, 1917, 1918
HILL 70
PASSCHENDAELE
AMIENS
DROCOURT-QUEANT
HINDENBURG LINE
CANAL DU NORD
PURSUIT TO MONS

Sullivan Street Revisited

2008-08-14T17:05:00.010-04:00

Stan and Sapphira Allward grow up on Sullivan Street, just east of Spadina, in what is now part of Chinatown. At the turn of the last century, Sullivan was an Anglo-British neighbourhood for both working and middle class families, many newly arrived from the mother country. The fathers and sons of these families supplied many of the recruits for Canada's fledgling army. I took these pictures last winter of the area around which Sap and Stan play as children in the novel; it is also where Stan lives, alone, in the 1930s.

Back kitchens to the working class homes on the north side of Sullivan, in which block Stan and Sapphira live ...

This is where Sap and Stan raid gardens for carrots and rhubarb ...

An old loading door looms above the street ...

An alley leading from Sullivan to Phoebe Street; both streets were named after members of William Baldwin's family: Phoebe for his wife (Phoebe Willcocks); Sullivan after his son's wife (Augusta Elizabeth Sullivan).

A dull window above bright brickwork; Stan's father is a bricklayer.

A closer look at the same windows ... the string above the top sash is called a soldier course. Fred Allward takes his son "bond hunting" to teach him the various patterns of brickwork in the city.

An unexpectedly Georgian rooftop humps a view of the modern monstrosities of Spadina Avenue ...

Pure texture:

Pure text:

Sons of England ...

2008-08-14T08:23:00.004-04:00

Pictured above is an original art work by Shelley Wall, showing the Sons of England memorial statue, which watches over the confluence of University Avenue and Elm Street. & after this our exile had its genesis here; those who have read the book will know more. This post marks a return to backing up the book with some local colour.

LaSalle Park Reading

2008-05-15T21:32:00.006-04:00

Last Tuesday, 13 May 2008, care of the excellent, long-standing reading series hosted by A Different Drummer Books, I read from & after this our exile at LaSalle Park Pavilion, in Burlington, Ontario. Here are some pictures from that event.

Shelley catches me as I emerge from the woodlands of my childhood ...

With Richard Bachman, the Dean (and some say, the James Dean) of Canadian Booksellers.

Up front with James Laxer and Russell Wangersky; the former read from The Perils of Empire; the latter from Burning Down the House.

And there were books aplenty ...

The hardest working author in showbiz ...

With friend and former colleague Ian Elliot ...

Pretending I know what I'm talking about, with Lana from TV Cogeco ...

Back at A Different Drummer; Manda ran the shop in our absence ...

Lucky man ...

Can't buy a thrill ...

2008-05-02T14:32:00.007-04:00

Fifteen years after, trains bearing weary veterans again troop into Toronto, but not troop trains: these are some of the 100,000 former servicemen and women who converged on the city for the 1934 Canadian Corps Reunion on the August 4th long weekend, which is also the present tense of & after this our exile. Like the 1919 car, this one is covered with graffiti.
Some of the humour is lost on me; some may be lost forever. "The better 'ole" is of course a reference to Bruce Bairnsfather's Old Bill; my grandfather, a veteran of the Somme, called his summer cottage "The better 'ole" (the full joke is, two Tommies are sheltering in a shell hole during a bombardment, and the one says to the other, who is obviously not thrilled with the situation, "Well, if you know of a better 'ole, go to it").
"Some say good old Serg't" was usually followed by, "But I say #$%&! old Serg't." The "Quarante Hommes, Huit Chevaux" is perhaps the most obvious (huit has been misspelled): this was often stencilled on the rolling stock in France.
"If the Sergeant steals your rum, never mind," is a variant of a popular prewar song, "Never Mind," which, sung by Gertie Gitana and played on a gramophone in Battalion Headquarters, is featured in the novel as Colonel Leading's favourite tune.
"Are we downhearted? No!" was a familiar call-and-refrain from the war years; here, it doubtless refers to the Depression. Those are mainly battle honours mixed with place names (which often amounted to the same thing) running along the top of the boxcar.
A Woodbine was a type of cheap cigarette smoked at the front; most soldiers were addicted to tobacco. The dreaded Number 9 pill was prescribed for a variety of ailments. I'm particularly fond of "Thank God we had a navy."
Not all veterans came by boxcar, and this is clearly a posed photograph; nevertheless, a great many of the men slept in "Coach City" or on straw in the Horse Palace. "Keep your feet off the cushions" is classic Corps humour; there were few cushy billets on this train.

go to the 1919 troop train

go to the 1919 graffiti train

Peace Train

2008-05-01T22:45:00.008-04:00

Same train, same day, although not precisely the same carriage as the previous picture. James has taken this picture the moment after the men dispersed. Behold, the graffiti of the front. In this case, the familiar "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8" of the railway cars in France has transmogrified into a cornucopia of Highlander slang. Note the care with which the "48" of the 48th Highlanders of Canada has been chalked on the door. "The Old Red Patch" refers to the battle patch of the First Division. This is an example, writ large, of something that struck me again and again during my research: the unique language of the Canadian Corps, and the myriad forms it took, from spoken argot to personal narratives, concert party skits, doggerel verse, and unrecorded profanity. Did the chalk come from the fields of France herself? The chalk strata of Vimy and other areas, where trenches left a double scar of white? I like to think so.

go to the Reunion boxcar

Returned Men: the 15th Battalion

2008-04-30T20:44:00.013-04:00

Here is a rare shot of men from the 15th Battalion, 48th Highlanders of Canada, newly arrived on the siding of Exhibition Station (not the current one; the siding pictured was further west). Having reached Halifax on 7 May 1919, the battalion history tells us that the men entrained for Toronto and after "a gay journey and an unforgettable one," the unit's 782 officers and enlisted men "rolled up to the Exhibition sidings and were clambering out in a hysteria of greetings as half the city crowded the grounds to meet them."

Crowds there may have been, but the photographer, William James, caught the faces of the men before they met their loved ones. I have abstracted 9 from the big picture and they follow in no particular sequence.

Preparation for writing & after this our exile included weeks of photo research. It was not research in any conventional sense. Mainly, I looked through the entire William James collection at the City of Toronto archives, and then again, poring over faces and places, in no particular order. I asked myself, wordlessly, who these people were, what they had been through (wound stripes tell part of that story), what they were feeling, what awaited them in postwar Toronto.

This was one of their last moments as soldiers; their uniforms, kit bags, battle patches and, not least, their weapons, were soon to be returned or folded away; the familiarity of cinched khaki and webbing to be replaced by the more subtle constraints of mufti. Here, on this siding, the men are still at home, but not because they are in Toronto. Spend some time with them.

go to the 1919 graffiti train

go to the 1934 Reunion boxcar

Sapphira's World

2008-04-25T09:57:00.003-04:00

The protagonist of & after this our exile, Stan Allward, and his sister, Sapphira (Sap, for short), grow up in turn-of-the-last-century Toronto. Here is a map (click on it; it gets much bigger) of the city they knew. The darker shaded urban areas are those visited in the narrative. They live on the north side of Sullivan Street, between Huron and Spadina.

Here is a close-up taken from the above; Victoria College hangs in the upper right; the Ward is the large block centre right; the old fort, the Exhibition grounds, the Asylum, and Sullivan Street all make their exits and entrances as the narrative unfolds, bound by bound.

However measured ...

2008-04-25T00:08:00.019-04:00

from
Box Barrages
to
Big Box Bookstores ...

Who carries on?

A Different Drummer Books:
Keeping pace with our past ...
Stepping into the future.

& after this our exile:
a Canadian classic
sold by classic Canadians

$25 Canadian in paperback
in stock now

Bringing it all back home ...

2008-04-20T19:32:00.008-04:00

Well, we just had the launch, and a happier event could not have been construed. Images from that bash are coming; for now, here are some pictures I took of my first copy of the novel on the Bathurst Street Bridge. The bridge is a frequent flyer in the text of & after this; I am not responsible for the graffiti matching the colours in the cover.