A Visionary Tradition

university of toronto quarterly, volume 70, number 4, fall 2001 J.R. (TIM) STRUTHERS A Visionary Tradition Thinking about the achievement of James Reaney as I listened to Tom Gerry speak about him part-way into the five-and-a-half-day and five-night celebration of Canadian Literature and Culture that I hosted in Guelph from 10 to 15 November 1999, I found myself re-experiencing the awe I had felt twenty-five years earlier when I first encountered contemporary Canadian writing. Back then, in 1973B74 and 1974B75, I=d had the opportunity not only of attending Reaney=s graduate-school seminars on Literary Symbolism and on Ontario Literature and Culture at the University of Western Ontario but also of seeing the opening-night performances of his three-part epic drama, The Donnellys, at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. From the moment the Guelph conference began to take shape in my imagination, therefore, I sensed that Reaney should give a keynote address on the visionary tradition in Canada B past, present, and future. >I=d enjoy that,= he replied immediately when I phoned to ask. Then, after I outlined the anticipated scope and difficulty of the conference, he offered a heartening observation: >You have to have courage, Tim.= As a result of a conversation with my friend and colleague Donna Palmateer Pennee, I began to see the Guelph conference as a turn-of-thecentury (or, rather, turn-of-the-millennium) successor to the >Canadian Writers= Conference= held from 28 to 31 July 1955 at Queen=s University in Kingston, which had been planned by the distinguished poet, constitutional lawyer, and visionary F.R. Scott. To acknowledge the connection between the two conferences, F.R. Scott=s biographer, Sandra Djwa, was invited to Guelph to give an address on Scott=s intellectual relationship with his fellow visionary Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Since James Reaney had read and answered questions about his work in Kingston in 1955, his presence in Guelph in 1999 reinforced the connection. On opening night, he and Colleen Thibaudeau read A.M. Klein=s >Portrait of the Poet as Landscape=; the next night B Remembrance Day 1999 B he delivered his keynote address, >Vision in Canada?=; the day after that, he gave a public interview about his own work. Reaney=s intense involvement provided vital testimony to the ongoing energy of our visionary tradition. Like its predecessor, the Guelph conference sought to bring together 948 j.r. (tim) struthers analytic and imaginative ways of understanding. The cast was large: in addition to about fifty-five critics, editors, and publishers, it included some thirty-five poets, fiction writers, playwrights, performers, visual artists, and musicians. The types and the locations of the three venues B a music room at the University of Guelph, an art centre a short walk away, a church in the middle of the city B served to emphasize the multiplicity and the connectedness of arts, disciplines, and communities represented. The culminating of each day=s activities in evening performances at Chalmers United Church was symbolically appropriate for a conference devoted to the celebration of the visionary. This location was also historically suitable, since the United Church was founded in this country, and thematically apt for a conference influenced by Northrop Frye, that transformative literary theorist who began his career as an ordained United Church minister. Preparations for the Guelph conference B formally named >A Visionary Tradition: Canadian Literature and Culture at the Turn of the Millennium= B included production of a program and a poster that featured works by the multi-gifted poet and visual artist P.K. Page/P.K. Irwin. The program contained her new >Poem Canzonic with Love to AMK,= a radiant tribute to her fellow visionary A.M. Klein; the poster displayed her wheeling apocalyptic drawing >Cosmos.= As it turned out, Page was unable to make the trip to Guelph, though she promised >I=ll come some other time ... and dance!= B but her presence was as strong as anyone=s. She, too, provided exactly the words I needed to hear when she wrote: >What an astonishing project you have dreamed up. Or did it dream up you?= ...