Tag Archives: Tour

On the Robertston Davies Trail

by Douglas Gibson

The morning after the Arnprior show, Dave and Alison fed me kippers then took me on a sentimental journey to Renfrew. This was the town, sixty miles northwest of Ottawa, where Robertson Davies (born in 1913)  spent the years from 1919 to 1925.

The town (a little larger than its rival, Arnprior, to the east) had a huge influence on Davies during those formative years. As Judith Skelton Grant shows in her expert biography, Davies did not enjoy Renfrew, and he got his revenge with the portrait he painted of “Blairlogie” in What’s Bred in the Bone. “It thought of itself as a thriving town, and for its inhabitants the navel of the universe.” (The physical metaphor could, I suppose, have been worse.)

He wrote about its proud ignorance and its exclusivity (where newcomers were concerned), and commented on the three-layer cake of its inhabitants, with the Scots on top, followed by the French, then with the newer Polish immigrants at the bottom. Even at the age of 70, his feelings about Renfrew were so strong that he felt that he had to write “to get it out of my system.”

We began our tour with a visit to the McDougall Mill Museum, kindly opened for us specially by the very knowledgeable Mr. Gilchrist. The museum  building itself is hugely impressive, set beside a fast section of the Bonnechere River. Since Renfrew was at the heart of the timber trade, the museum is rich in examples of the tools of the trade involved in “hurling down the pine.” There are many photographs of the local bands that must have entertained young Rob Davies, and posters for the “O’Brien Opera House,” which we know he attended. For What’s Bred in the Bone he turned Senator O’Brien (who was in fact an important figure not only in the lumber trade, but also in the development of hockey, and the man behind The Renfrew Millionaires) into Senator McRory.

It was notable that the sports teams from the start of the century shown in team photos all featured Scottish and Irish names. By the 1950s there was a fair sprinkling of Polish names on the team.

We tried to trace the three Davies houses in Renfrew. Of the first house Judith Skelton Grant writes that “the Davieses were dismayed to find that the house . . . arranged for them was in the Polish section of town.” We found the house on Cross Avenue, and I roamed around outside, taking in the stark red-brick exterior. As if on cue a young man came out to check the mailbox just by the front door. I greeted him with my usual charm: “Hi there! Did you know that a famous author once lived in this house?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, his name was Robertson Davies, a famous Canadian author. He lived right here when he was a boy, about a hundred years ago.”

If I’d told him that birds sometimes landed on the roof of his house his shrugging reaction would have been the same: “Whauuh,” followed by a determined return to the house and a slamming of the door.

We found the old site of the Renfrew Mercury office, where Davies sometimes helped his father (at the age of nine he even wrote a review of a local lecture, where a lady sang “very acceptably”). It is now a sporting goods store, right next door to the grand central post office on Raglan Street. We failed to find the second house, but did cross the dramatically  swaying suspension bridge that he crossed every morning to get to school. And we did find the dramatic final Davies House (now a Doctor’s Surgery) in the best part of town, marking the rise of the Davies family over those Renfrew years.

We did not knock on the doctor’s door. Although the woman who runs the sporting goods store had heard of him.

Arnprior Is a Priority

by Douglas Gibson

The day after my time swanning around the Chateau Laurier as one of the Honoured Guests at Politics and the Pen, I was picked up at the hotel and whisked an hour west to Arnprior. The whiskers were my old friends David Lewis Stein and his wife, Alison. Dave is famous as the author (whom I’m proud to have published) and Toronto Star columnist who dressed like a Damon Runyon character, a fedora always perched on his head. He was also famous as the man who really knew Toronto city politics, inside out, and was the ultimate streetwise, big-city guy. And now he has retired to Arnprior, a little town of about 8,000 in the Ottawa Valley, where Alison’s family has ancient links.

How are they doing? Very well indeed, to judge from my happy stay with them at the big Victorian house that sits about 100 yards away from the distinctive Arnprior Museum, where Alison puts in volunteer time. About fifty yards down the main street is Gwen Storie’s bookstore.That evening the amazing Gwen and her staff rearranged the store to accommodate 40 paying customers ($15.00, including a delicious snack in the bakery next door) and I gave my show.

And we sold 26 copies! If you walk down the street in Arnprior, the odds that the first person you meet has a copy of my book at home are pretty good!

The more serious message is that a good local bookstore can act as an important community centre, and I’m glad to do all I can to help the Gwen Stories of this world.

Uxbridge (Or, More Formally) Tuxbridge

by Douglas Gibson

Uxbridge (or, as Terry Fallis amended it, since it was a formal dinner, “Tuxbridge”) staged a fine “Book Lover’s Ball” on April 14 in aid of the local Library.

The setting was the local “Wooden Sticks Golf Club,”  a name that spoke to the ancient tradition of golf clubs with hickory handles. I was able to mention that in my ancient Scottish village, I actually grew up playing golf with “wooden stick” clubs, which at the time seemed normal to me. But then, true to my “make things last” Scottish roots, that evening I was wearing the tux that my parents gave me as a 21st birthday present. Dinner jackets don’t change much over 47  years, and nor does my lean shape — nor my respect for my parents’ admonition that if I looked after the tux properly I “should get many years of wear out of it.”

The excellent Terry spoke about his three books (The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, and this fall’s Up and Down, which will prove that he can make readers laugh, and also make them cry) and delighted the audience after the salad course. I did my stuff after the (very fine) chicken course, talking about a few of the authors featured in my book, and telling stories about them.

But the best speaker of the evening  — and by far the best storyteller — was Michael, a local dentist. He spoke about his family’s experience  escaping from Vietnam as “boat people” who were sponsored by kind people in Uxbridge. The local librarian made a special point of always asking him what he was reading, and, like dental patients flossing before an appointment (an interesting professional analogy), he read voraciously, to be always able to answer her question.

When the family was moved away from Uxbridge to downtown Toronto, although his parents both worked two jobs, things were hard for the young family in a tough area. In time their Uxbridge friends contacted them with an offer that would bring them back to Uxbridge, with a down payment on a house supplied by an anonymous benefactor. The family accepted gladly, on one condition: that they learn the name of the benefactor, in order to pay him or her back.

It was the librarian.

Now here was Michael (like his brothers and sisters a successful professional) giving back to the Uxbridge community by providing major sponsorship for this fundraiser for the Uxbridge Library.

Stories really matter, don’t they?

Peterborough and the Mafia

by Douglas Gibson

One interesting side of a publisher’s life is how the families of your authors regard you. In my book I write about how in mid-summer Alistair MacLeod was hard at work finishing No Great Mischief, and I was guilty of putting unremitting pressure on him.

As the book says, “In the course of these frantic weeks I had occasion to call Alistair in Cape Breton. The phone was answered by a MacLeod son to whom I introduced myself as the man who was ruining his father’s summer, ha ha. “Oh yes,” he said, heavily, and passed the phone to Alistair.”

In the Peterborough event, held at Traill College downtown, Lewis MacLeod (who teaches in the English Department), was my host and the MC of the performance I gave there. He spoke of growing up aware of the name “Doug Gibson” as someone who distributed good things “like a second-rate Tooth Fairy” but who over time developed a more threatening side, “like a Mafioso.”

What an interesting take on the two sides of the Publisher/Editor, part Tooth Fairy and part Mafia enforcer!

In the audience were two others with family links to one of my authors, Orm Mitchell and his wife, Barb, the biographers of W.O. You can imagine my delight when Barb told me that in my acting out a phone conversation on stage, I “sounded just like W.O.!”

It’s wonderful that my friendship with W.O. and Merna has descended down to the next generation, where Jane and I are able to stay (not for the first time) with our friends Orm and Barb.

Aurora Public Library

by Douglas Gibson

This March event was my first appearance at a library (apart from the Wolf Hall Theatre, in the London library), with the enterprising Blue Heron Books on hand to sell copies. I hope that there will be many other library events around the province and the country.

The talk was held in the Magna Room in the library, which reminded me of just how extensive the impact of Magna is on the community (and have you ever driven around the massive Magna main campus, modelled on Versailles, just east of town?) I did not get around to mentioning Wayne Lilley’s balanced but properly critical book Magna Cum Laude: How Frank Stronach Became Canada’s Best-Paid Man, which I was proud to publish half a dozen years ago. It criticized Frank for excessive interest in his money-losing racetracks, and for corporate governance that neglected share-holders, two themes that were to become headline news in the years after the book was published, when the Magna Chairman, a former politician named Mike Harris, was ridiculed for the rich pay-out granted to his friend Frank.

Ah, well, the Magna Room was a fine space, and I had an enjoyable evening.

There was one uneasy moment, when, in answer to a question, I spoke about Brian Mulroney sympathetically. This provoked the cynical question “Did you pay him in cash?,” which I pretended not to understand.

Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club

by JK

My tour of many clubs as a performer reached new heights here. We had to close the curtains in my lecture hall, otherwise the audience would have been mesmerized, as I was, by the skaters whizzing by to the west, and the curlers scrubbing excitedly to the east. Some of the best figure skaters in the world train here (under staff like Brian Orser) and on a scouting mission before my show I watched a coach use a training harness (like a giant fishing rod dangling above the skater’s head) as the young skater tried a new, tricky, unfamiliar jump.

The evening went well, with Jane selling many copies of my book, some of them via a club chit system swiftly organized by her cousin, the admirable Doug Knights, the club’s manager.

Edmonton

by Douglas Gibson

My time as the invited Corus Lecturer at Grant MacEwan University allowed me to spend an entire day on campus, visiting and chatting with classes. Very interesting, especially the sociology of facing a Media Studies classroom where the 30 students are all hidden behind vertical fixed computer screens, on which they are typing . . . who knows what? I had some success in attracting their attention, since some of them followed me to the John L. Haas theatre that evening, where the audience of about 300 seemed to enjoy the evening. The description (attached elsewhere in this website) by the West Edmonton Local uses nice words like “captivated.”

Roaming around downtown Edmonton next day I came on a fascinating Ukrainian-language bookstore, which I was informed is “the biggest in North America.” Who knew?

Close by, I came on a stretch of Jasper Avenue East made up of interesting old buildings erected around 1912-13. One of them, in the “flatiron” style, was named “The Gibson Block.” I regretted not having a camera with me, because I would have enjoyed posing beside it. Ho, ho.

Not so fast. When I investigated the historic plaque, I learned that the building was erected by one William Gibson (good) who came west from Ontario (good, and no doubt earlier from Scotland, very good) and erected this building, where the street level featured a well-known eating place called “The Gibson Café.” All very good, until I reached the line “with its now-notorious sign outside ‘White Help Only.”

Very, very bad.

I guess if we’re going to take pride in our names, we have to take the rough with the smooth.

— Douglas Gibson

Green Door Cabaret

by Douglas Gibson

The Lower Ossington Theatre is in the trendiest part of Toronto, near the junction of trendy Queen Street, and up-and-coming Ossington, where hip new restaurants sit alongside auto repair shops and cigar factories.

The Green Door Cabaret is a new venture by my friend (and theatre agent) Bob Missen, and I put on a Sunday afternoon cabaret there. Forget about striding around a stage. I perched on a bar stool and talked about my authors, while I flashed power point caricatures on the screen that Jane and I had rented. We’re becoming pros, able to rent mikes and speakers, or projectors and screens, as necessary.

Forty-five brave souls made up the (paying) audience, and it went well, give or take the odd technical glitch with the music that accompanies the slides. And I got to see a lot of old friends, including the amazing bookseller, Janet Inksetter. She earns the adjective this time by revealing that she read my entire book at one sitting! Surely an award of some sort is in order. And a job as a speed-reading book reviewer.

— Douglas Gibson

Marching to the Beat of a Different Drummer in Burlington

by Douglas Gibson

This was the last pre-Christmas show, and in several ways it was the biggest.

Ian Elliot at A Different Drummer Books had bravely booked the new Burlington Arts Centre (recently opened by Stephen Harper, and then filled in its main space by Sarah McLachlan). Even more bravely, he had asked me to do the full 90-minute version of the show.

The hall (the smaller of the two) was so new that the sound guys were still finding out which system worked. This delayed the start, meaning that the crowd was kept in the lobby, outside the closed theatre doors. I took the chance to go out and roam around, explaining that there was just a brief technical hitch, and we’d be starting soon. The best part was that I was able to meet lots of old friends and colleagues and to make some new ones, so when the show started I felt at home.

In the end 125 people showed up to fill the place, paying $10.00 for the privilege. Best of all, Ian reported that a staff usher on duty, who had been disgruntled at not being assigned the (very expensive) Sarah McLachlan show, felt compensated, at least partly.

People in the audience seemed to like it, with an enthusiastic minority giving me a standing ovation . . . or perhaps their legs were cramping after 90 minutes. I was delighted when Ian reported that one man told him, “I had no idea what to expect of the evening . . . but, God, he was good!” I’m going to retire now.

Back in Toronto

by Douglas Gibson

On November 30th (St. Andrew’s Day, a big day for haggis-eaters everywhere), I was lucky enough to be the first speaker in a lunch series hosted by the Literary Review of Canada and the Gardiner Museum, which provided the venue. At the top floor’s southwest corner we all gathered in a pleasant room with tables and chairs arrayed before the screen.

While people munched through their paper-bag lunch (yes, it was a brown bag), I whizzed through the Tony Jenkins caricatures, then asked the audience for suggestions about which authors they’d like to hear about. The questions came thick and fast (they always do) and I was able to be a polar bear gutting James Houston’s husky or Morley Callaghan knocking down Ernest Hemingway, and so on.

At the end I signed a dozen copies or so. As I was leaving my signing place, compliments still ringing in my ears, I was approached by an elderly member of my audience. I stooped graciously to accept her comments.  “I notice,” she said, severely, “that frequently you use ‘who’ when it should be ‘whom.’  ‘Who’ is the subjective, and ‘whom’ the objective case.”

I thanked her, as objectively as I could.