Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment

Notes

Notes Introduction 1 Barbara Wickens, "From Reviled Art to Revered Icons," Maclean's, 8 May 1995,15. 2 From the Toronto Star, qtd. in Allan Fotheringham, "The 'Old Boys' of Canadian Art Can't Win," Maclean's, 4 May 1996, 84. 3 Peter Mellon suggests that the myth of a reactionary establishment hostile to innovative artists was exaggerated , and that the Group's paintings were on the whole well received and quickly became popular. But the "nauseating colors" attack was made by the Toronto Star in 1932, over fifteen years after the Group began unofficially to work together. Even admitting that such attacks were not typical, they carried weight and authority precisely because they were voiced by official, opinion-forming organs like major newspapers. 4 MargaretAtwood, letter to Claude Bissell, 9 August 1982, Ernest Buckler Manuscript Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto (hereafter BMC). 5 MargaretLaurence, tribute to Buckler sent to ClaudeBissell and included in Bissell's "Ernest Buckler Presentation— Mountainlea Lodge, Bridgetown," 11 September 1982, BMC. 233] 234 Notes 6 Buckler, "My First Novel," undated typescript, p. 4, BMC. The text which Buckler prepared and read for the CBCin 1953but never published, was subsequently included in Cook, ed., Ernest Buckler, 22-27. 7 In this essay, entitled "The Transcendentalist," Emerson explains that the transcendentalist "believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy" (90). 8 John Rackliffe, letter to Buckler,27 September 1961, BMC. 9 Bissell, "Ernest Buckler: Rural Intellectual," typescript of lecture at Carleton University, n.d., p. 11, BMC. 10 "Supplementary Answers to Questionnaire," undated typescript, p. 1,BMC. Certain references make it clear that it was written at the time of the publication of Ox Bells and Fireflies (1968). 11 Buckler, letter to Harry Brown, 30 June 1969,BMC. 12 Buckler, handwritten notes about writing, BMC.This phrase is found under another remark under the title "Esquire" and is clearly meant to be eventually used as material for an opinion piece. 13 Tribute dated 15August, 1982 from William French to Buckler sent to Claude Bissell to be read during the celebration organized by Bissell in Bridgetown, 11 September 1982, BMC. 14 Apart from Janice Kulyk Keefer's heuristic analysis of Buckler's oeuvre in Under Eastern Eyes, there has been little analysis of The Cruelest Month with the exception of the introduction by Alan R.Youngin the 1977 paperback edition of the novel, further developed in his monograph Ernest Buckler, and the brief commentary of Robert D. Chambers in Sinclair Ross and Ernest Buckler. Similarly, Keefer, Young, and Chambers, as well as Andrew Seaman in "Fiction in Atlantic Canada" and John Orange in Ernest Buckler andHis Works, are among the few to discuss Ox Bells and Fireflies. Nova Scotia: Window on the Sea, has not been analyzed, and Buckler's short stories have on the whole been dismissed as mere embryos of TheMountain and the Valley, which incorporates much of this earlier material. Chapter 1 1 The Halifax Gazette, founded in 1751, was Canada's first newspaper, preceding by 12 years the Quebec Gazette. The first performance of a play by a Canadian author took place in Halifax in 1774. The first Canadian university was the Anglican King's College, founded in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1802, preceding the founding of Montreal's McGill (1821), Toronto's King's College (1827), and Kingston's Queen's College (1830). The first film production company (the Bioscop Company) in Canada was also founded in Halifax in 1902. It notably produced a series of short features for the CPR, intended to attract immigrants from GreatBritain. 2 Margaret Laurence, tribute to Buckler sent to Claude Bissell and included in Bissell's "Ernest Buckler Presentation—Mountainlea Lodge, Bridgetown," 11 September 1982, BMC. Notes 235 3 qtd. in French, "Ernest Buckler:a LiteraryGiant Scorned?" (23).Furthermore, in a letter to the mayor of Bridgetown paying tribute to Buckler in anticipation of the 11 September ceremony, Nowlan stated, "I have said in print before and will say here again that TheMountain and the Valley is not just the finest novel yet written in Canada, but among the finest novels in the English-speaking world," 1September 1982, BMC. 4 The opening sentence of Buckler'sessay "My First Novel" (typescript, BMC), clearly proclaims: "What I happen to be is a farmer who writes, not...