Month: January 2014

January 18, 1917

This is the third part of my journal entry about the night at the Arts and Letters Club . You can read the second part of the entry here.

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After Dr MacCallum’s introduction, Duncan Campbell Scott stood up and walked over to the fireplace and rested his hand upon the mantel.

“Gentlemen, I thank you for your fine welcome.” He took his hand off the mantle. I believe he realized that because of the mantel’s height, it made his pose look awkward and vaudevillian. This was certainly no vaudeville show, that was to be later in the evening.

“It is such a pleasure to be here with such learned men here in Toronto! Ottawa is such a bore with its bureaucrats. I came down on the train earlier today. I shall not bore you with Ottawa’s war efforts or the re-building of Parliament. Instead, as a man of the arts and letters, I shall read from my new book of poetry and talk to you about another grave problem plaguing our Dominion, the ‘Indian Problem’. ”

It was difficult to hear Scott. He was at the front in the court room and his voice did not carry well through the sounds of scraping chairs and  persistent coughing. I did manage to make out the title of his poem, “The Half-Breed Girl”. I was familiar with it; I had read it a few weeks ago in the reading room of the public library. It was in his new book, published late last year. The main saving grace of this poem was that it wasn’t too long, unlike much of the incessant romantic tripe that passes for poetry these days. I knew that T.S. Eliot’s poetry was having an influence on me. I’d never read a poem the same way again.

Scott started into the first stanza:

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil

I knew these words so I could follow along through the noise. I did not listen to the rest of the poem because I already had the effect of the poem.  And there is nothing more boring that listening to a poet reading his own poems at a dinner function. It is a license to let one’s own mind wander. Once Scott finished,  he was met with a muted applause that barely supplemented the persistent coughing. With that poetic episode complete, he commenced his talk. I could tell he was a little too warm by the fireplace. He had sweat on his brow that reflected the electrical light from above. From where I was, I couldn’t help but imagine that his balding head looked like an electric bulb that was about to burn out. He stepped forward, away from the fireplace, for the next part of his delivery.  Once the coughing subsided, he began with a changed voice that had an odd authoritative resonance to it. This voice was different than the tone he used as a poet. It was like a different man was speaking. I am sure this was the voice he used to pass pronouncements as a bureaucrat.

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question.”

His talk continued for another twenty minutes. Men, like these, could speak for hours when given the opportunity, but when the coughing was accompanied by the occasional belch, and the men start to pay more attention to the bottles being passed around, he began to conclude his speech. I was in the back, paying more attention to the lighting of my pipe and the repeated replenishing of my glass; the bottle passed by me twice during his speech and was about to come around for the third time. Bloody bureaucrats at their desks, sending men off to war and stamping out races. All in the name of principles and the superior British way.

Dr MacCallum kindly thanked him, and the club was on to the next item of business: the unveiling of the club portrait.

…more to come.

January 23, 1917

Monday, Studio Building,Severn Street, Toronto

Dear Father,

I got both your letters Saturday night. The first one had got down behind the directory in the hall and was out of sight until I looked for it where I got two other letters for people in the building.

The cranberries were shipped from Achray between North Bay and Pembroke on the CN. I think they are charging too much as I was only charged 55 cents for two boxes the same size and weight, and a packsack weighing more than both together, that included  delivering from the shed to my place which is three miles, so you can see that compared with my stuff, they are charging more.

I will pay the freight myself later on as I could not do so at the place they were shipped from. There is no agent at Achray and the conductor could not attend to it on the train.

I was very sorry to hear that you have all been ill and hope that you will get over it quickly.  I hope that Peggie didn’t start away too soon after her sickness and that she will be all right at North Bay.  For myself I have been first rate and am getting considerable work done. It is too bad about your first letter but I have fixed the board so it cannot happen again.

Hoping you folks are all well soon.

I am your affectionate son,

Tom

January 18, 1917

You can read the first part of the entry here.

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There were numerous conversations going on. Not much of a talker myself in social situations like these, I had a tendency to dip in and out of conversations that didn’t require an effort from me to keep the momentum. That wasn’t a problem here, because most of the men of the club were journalists, writers, poets, and artists. “Men of the pen, pencil, and brush”, they’d like to call themselves, and they’ll talk themselves to their own graves.

“Victory Gardens!” The words jumped out from the buzz. They came from Jim MacDonald. He was having a lively debate with Rufus Hathaway, the club’s librarian. What I had discerned from the conversation was that Jim was still upset that the club decided not to have their Victory Garden club at his farm in Thornhill, but instead in York Mills. Jim moved north so he could farm his own vegetables, but with his poor health, and his wife’s too, it was more difficult than they had expected. He needed help gardening and was hoping to get it from the club. That was not the case.

Other topics were buzzing about the room: the rumour of Orville Wright making flying boats on Georgian Bay (he bought an island there this past summer, Dr. MacCallum told me), the immorality of Hun submarine warfare, the benefits of TB as a cleansing disease, and “Toronto the Beautiful against Toronto the Scientific”. Someone was bemoaning the impending completion of the the Bloor St. Viaduct. Someone from Rosedale, assuredly.

I sat down by the “Artist’s Table.” It didn’t have that official name, but whenever the artists came from lunch, they sat at the same table near the back far away from the fireplace. The tables closer the fireplace were reserved for the more established men of stature. Where we sat, court room still felt like a cold storage room. I sat with Bill Beatty, Curtis Williamson, and Fred Varley on the other side. Bill was president of the club once, but after his office ended, he too was relegated to the cold storage section of the club. The dinner was good, as best as what could be served in wartime to eighty hungry men at once. Boiled mashed potatoes, roast beef, carrots, turnip, and apple sauce. Dessert was apple crumble and tea and coffee. Nothing of the alcoholic sort was served due to the recent Temperance provisions, but several bottles were being furtively passed about. The “club medicine” as the men called it. Now I understood why the water glasses were never filled. When the club medicine came my way, I filled my glass and noted it was a mail-order whisky from Montreal. Jackson’s from Montreal. I should move to Montreal.

After dinner, the cigar smoke began to thicken further. Under shoulder height, the air was still clear to see through. About shoulder height, the smoke was becoming as thick as the approaching snow pillars I’d see in the Park in the spring and fall. The dim light from the street came through the tall narrow window like a ray of divinity and cut a solid beam the room. Only the fireplace, with its roaring fire, threatened the dominance of the divine ray of light. Through the thick smoke (or snow pillars), I could see Lawren Harris’s snow paintings on either of the fireplace. Harris gave them to the club, because, during his fascination with snow phase, he had a numerous canvases that looked pretty much the same and he decided to give two away. Beneath one of his paintings was a new instalment. I didn’t recognize it but from what I could make out in the dim light it was a recently deceased figure adorned with garlands and flowers. I found the painting particularly hideous, but given the sentiments of the time, it was a popular theme to depict dead people in glorious circumstances. I couldn’t help but think of the Varsity War Supplement I saw the other day. You had to be dead to get on the Roll of Honour – the pages with the fancy flowers and designs. If you were still alive, your page was mundane with crammed rows of photographs.

With the dinner completed, and the plates and cutlery whisked away by some unknown force, Dr. MacCallum announced the after-dinner program.

First, a poetry reading and talk, by Duncan Campbell Scott (who came down from Ottawa for this special occasion).

Next, the unveiling of the club portrait, by Sammy Sampson (his name is John Ernest, but everybody calls him ‘Sammy’).

Finally, a mystery painter speed-painting competition to round out the evening. I had heard the meat-carving contest at the last dinner was a rousing success, but a speed-painting contest, that was something new.

More to come…

January 19, 1917

With other demands, it is difficult for me to keep up writing about all of the events in real time from 97 years ago. It’s already January 19th, 1917 and I still haven’t written all what happened to me at the Arts & Letters Club Members dinner on January 17th, 1917. The events and words exchanged that night deserve a worthy recount.

With my rush to write to journal entries, I sometimes let slip by typos, spelling mistakes and  sentences that don’t make sense. I try to fix these up as best and quickly as I can. I hope this doesn’t take from the experience. So I’d like to ask you what’s important to you as I begin again the journey into my last spring.

If you have a moment, please respond the poll below.

Affectionately,

‘Tom”

P. S. You can vote for more than one option.

January 18, 1917

Note to my followers: This is what I’ve written so far. I had promised to finish yesterday, but I hope to finish tonight. The members dinner was quite an eventful night and is worthy of a detailed account.

‘Tom’

~~~~

Last night was quite the spectacle at the Arts and Letters Club. It wasn’t what happened during the formal proceedings and program but what happened after. It took me the better part of the day to get out of mood so I could write. I didn’t do any painting today.

When I was working in the commercial business, I preferred in my off-hours to go to the tea-rooms instead of joining a luncheon and dinner club. Most everyone else joined a club, but I saw enough of my chaps at work that I didn’t need to see them at lunch and dinner too. I needed time to myself. The tea-rooms you could go alone and no one would single you out for it. I’d bring something to read because I had enough of conversation and your nose in a book is a good barrier to someone approaching to socialize.

This didn’t mean I never wanted to go a club . I just didn’t want to become a member because once you become a formal member of a club, it’s the club obligations that begin to chip away at your freedoms. I’ve seen enough people, especially women, who’ve had their lives regulated by churches and clubs to the point of having nothing left for themselves.

The program for the members’ dinner started at 7pm. I walked from the Shack – it’s about two miles to the old Courthouse on Adelaide. I could have walked on Yonge, but I decided to go down Church instead because I liked walking through the Garden District instead. For some reason I could not get the TS Eliot poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” out of my mind. I got the issue of Poetry from Arthur Heming. To be truthful, I swiped it from him after an all night bout of drinking with Curtis Williamson amd Bill Beatty. We also managed to mash up Arthur’s hat. He was none too pleased about that.

Prufrock is nothing like I’ve ever read before.I found the words in poem absolutely spellbinding with its imagery expressed in an entirely alien way. I knew that what he was doing with poetry, I was doing with my sketches and a lesser extent my sketches. As I walked along Church, all I could think of were “one-night cheap hotels” and “sawdust restaurants” on “half-deserted streets”. Prufrock was giving a voice to my feelings in Toronto. I feel like I am living a life of indecision, isolation and unspoken frustration. Needless to say, these thoughts about Prufrock did not put me into a good disposition for the evening. I also was thinking that this type of poetry along with the War would be the death of the type of Canadian poets of the likes of Duncan Campbell Scott, Bliss Carman and Wilfred Campbell. Fortunately I’d be able to make a judgment tonight because Duncan Campbell Scott was on the program tonight to do a reading from the his new poetry book followed by a talk on the Indian Problem.

After a walk of about three-quarters of an hour I arrived at the club – shortly before 7pm. The club is on the second floor, and you can only access it through a narrow stairway in the back lane. Roy Mitchell, the club playwright, usually had a play prepared for these type events. But Roy had gone to New York to work as a stage manager so we were spared the preparation for one of his productions. The major effort being the creation of the stage in the Courthouse room. There was no permanent stage, so Roy had managed to procure 150 crates that he stored on the first floor. We’d have to bring these crates up two long flights of stairs and assemble at the far of the room. And of course, at the end of the evening (or the next day) bring them back down to storage. Then there was the jury-rigging of lighting equipment, made of biscuit boxes, stovepipes and tin wash basins. Once these were set up properly – with no electrocution or incendiary mishap – the show would go on. Unfortunately, for tonight, there was no show for Roy. I’m sure he was busy on Broadway, not thinking about us.

I could hear the low buzz of the converstation as I mounted the stairs. The lights were electrical, but it was still dim because the Court room is cavernous. The cigar and cigarette smoke (everyone smoked) hung in the air like a dissatisfied she-fog twisting itself around the men and then rising up into the ceilinged darkness. In the daytime I could see the ornate tin ceiling tiles, but tonight, these tiles were on the other side darkness, either in heaven or hell.

‘Tom, my boy! You made it!”

Dr. MacCallum emerged from the cigar-smoke gloom and greeted me effusively. I knew he did this because he really did welcome, but he also did it to signal to the other members that I was someone to be regarded highly. Every once in awhile, someone would be invited to the club that didn’t seem to quite fit, and the club members would unconsciously close ranks to squeeze them out so they would never come again. But most of the members knew, or knew of me well. I had a oil sketch exhibition here at the club in late 1915 that was well-received by the members with the exception the few. I’d come quite often with Lismer, Jackson and Harrison for lunch. I came along a few times with Varley, not since since we had a falling out last year. I saw that Varley was here tonight, talking to Gus Bridle.

January 18,1917

Duncan Campbell Scott read this poem from his new book last night at the Arts and Letter Club Members Dinner. As he was reading I could not rid myself of a dark foreboding feeling.

I’ll write more on that tonight in my journal.

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NIGHT BURIAL IN THE FOREST

Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair.

Fain was he for life, here lies he low:

With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,

Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,

And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring

So lone is the land that in this lonely room

Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss

Part and heap again on his quiet breast,

What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss

Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes

Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies,

And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast

To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren ground

Where the stroke of his coward heart is the only sound.

Haunting the tamarac shade,

Hear them up-thronging

Memories foredoomed

Of strife and of longing:

Haggard or bright

By the tamaracs and birches,

Where the red torch light

Trembles and searches,

The wilderness teems

With inscrutable eyes

Of ghosts that are dreams

Commingled with memories.

Leave him here in his secret ferny tomb,

Withdraw the little light from the ocean of gloom,

He who feared nought will fear aught never,

Left alone in the forest forever and ever.

Then, as we fare on our way to the shore

Sudden the torches cease to roar:

For cleaving the darkness remote and still

Comes a wind with a rushing, harp-like thrill,

The sound of wings hurled and furled and unfurled,

The wings of the Angel who gathers the souls from the wastes of the world.

~~~~~~~~~ 

January 16, 1917

I’m at the Public Reference Library on College St. and I found this book with Chevreul’s Laws. Chevreul invented, or discovered, the ‘Chevreul Illusion’ that bright edges seem to exist between identical colours that are of different intensities. Back in 1914, Jackson taught me about Chevreul and helped me to experiment with my paintings. By the fall of 1914, when we were up North with Lismer and Varley, Jackson was shocked at what I was doing with colours. I told him I owed it to Chevreul.

By chance today, I found a book that has Chevreul’s laws. I thought it would be handy to have these written down when I’m painting back at the Shack (I can’t take this book out of the library). I know what they are by practice, but it’s good to have them written down.

Chevreul’s Laws:

1. Colours are modified in appearance by their proximity to other colours.
2. A light colours seem most striking against black.
3. All dark colours seem most striking against white.
4. Dark colours upon light colours look darker than on dark colours.
5. Light colours upon dark colours look lighter than on light colours.
6. Colours are influenced in hue by adjacent colours, each tinting its neighbour with its own complement.
7. If two complementary colours lie side by side, each seems more intense than by itself.
8. Dark hues on a dark ground which is not complementary will appear weaker than on a complementary ground.
9. Light colours on a light ground which is not complementary will seem weaker than on a complementary ground.
10. A bright colour against a dull colour of the same hue will further deaden the dull colour.
11. When a bright colour is used against a dull colour, the contrast will be strongest when the latter is complementary.
12. Light colours on light grounds (not complementary) can be greatly strengthened if bounded by narrow bands of black or complementary colours.
13. Dark colours on dark grounds (not complementary) can be strengthened if similarly bounded by white or light colours.

Since I am headlong into painting, they made me think of what might be: ‘Tom’s Laws about Paintings’. I’m not sure there are thirteen, but I’ll see what I can come up with.

1. Paintings are modified in appearance by those who have feelings about what they see.
2. Paintings are most striking when the subject is something that is otherwise viewed as useless or ugly.
3. Two similar paintings (or sketches) when viewed side by side can have more power together when viewed alone.
4. A series of paintings, one after another, can tell a story that no words can tell.
5. Stories with no words are stories of feelings are best told by a series of paintings.

Only five laws before I came up with a good idea. As I was writing I began to think about the Bayeux Tapestry and started to realize why it is so powerful.  It tells a story – scene by scene – it’s a story, not of words, but of feeling.

This is the idea. When I go up in the spring, I’ll paint something like the Bayeux Tapestry, but with boards. I’ll record the events and transition of spring. I’ll paint something together everyday and when I’m done, I’ll put the whole thing together, the records of spring. It’ll tell a story of spring, not in words, but in feeling.

The bell is ringing. They’re closing the library. I have to pack up and get out.

I just thought up a law about artists:

1. If an artist dislikes another artist, it’s best to leave it that way.

I’m afraid this applies to some of the artists that I know.

January 13, 1917

Summer of 1916 was a hot and dry summer. I was a Fire Ranger on the eastern part of the Park keeping an eye on the log runs. It was starting to get tinder-dry in late August and we were all worrying about another big fire like the Matheson Fire that burned down all the towns around Cochrane. The fires killed over 200 and the smoke lingered across the province for weeks. It made the sun look sick.

Most fires started from lumber camps or from the trains. Ordinarily, not an issue, but with the Matheson fire, the Province decided to come down hard if a fire got out of control.  A fire started on the train tracks was bad publicity and the train companies were especially vigilant in keeping the grass down and the dry debris away from the railbeds. The lumber camps were the problem and it was our job as Fire Rangers to keep an eye on the companies of men doing the drivers. They didn’t like us. And neither did they take a liking to me sketching. I didn’t do much last summer.

These recollections came back when I was preparing my next canvas. That happened to me often. When I looked at my study sketches what flooded back to me was not the images but the feelings and impressions I had at the time. When I sketched my focus was to translate what I felt, not necessarily what I saw onto the board. When I look at these boards here and now I try to translate that feeling onto the canvas. Someone once asked me if making a sketch was the same as painting a canvas. I told them they were completely opposite processes. That’s why canvas painting is so difficult for me. I have to take what I have inside of me and bring it out. Sketching is bringing the outside in. It’s funny that I just came across that phrase. Late in the summer when I was done fire ranging, I was with Ned Godin at the Ranger Cabin on Grand Lake. We did some good and long fishing trips and I managed a good number of sketches. When we got back he wanted me to paint a sign for the cabin, which I obliged, calling it the “Out-Side-In”

Applying the ground to a canvas is more than just preparing the surface. It’s bringing your imagination to bear to what will be part of the whole picture. It’s similar to chess and playing a good game. I played a lot with Frank Carmichael when we had the Studio together when Jackson left for Montreal. In chess, it’s not seeing the pieces on board that makes you a good player, it’s seeing how the pieces work together and the possibilities of what you can do with them. It’s the same with putting ground on the canvas, you are visualizing, planning what you are going to paint.

It took me the better part of the day to apply the ground. I don’t recall how many layers I put on, but on some parts of the canvas there were more layers than other parts. I didn’t mind it rough because I wanted to have the same feel as a board. Although my eyes could only see the light brown umber on the canvas, my mind had already compose the picture. This way I had the luxury to change my plan of composition several times, all without setting down a single brush stroke of colour. I can remember the dam and its churning fury. The logs were jammed up on the lakeside and the men with their log poles breaking up the jams and guiding the logs through the chutes into channel below. This was on the Madawaska, near the Mazinaw. The logs would make their way to Arnprior into the Ottawa River and into the St. Lawrence to wherever they went.

I was exhausted by end of the day. I nearly didn’t have enough energy to write this entry, but I did anyway. It’s a good type of exhaustion and I realized I didn’t spend any of the day thinking about what was going on in the city. That’s a good thing. Canvases may be a difficult thing to do, but it’s gives me the escape I need.

January 11, 1917

“Slacker”

“Beware of the Green-Eye Monster”

“Conscription”

That’s what was marked in chalk on the wall beside the employment office on Bay St. There were three soldiers standing in front with grins on their faces that were anything but friendly.

I saw these three as I was going down to the shops to buy some groceries. I’ve been noticing that there’s more and more soldiers on the streets these days – not the ones going to war, but the ones that have returned. They seem to have nothing to do but to make trouble for others.

“Hey, Slacker!”

I knew that shout was directed to me, but I kept on going. Although I was a target (being a single male), the targets that had the greater attention of the soldiers were the Greeks. Most of the shops and cafes downtown are owned by Greek immigrant families. The Greek sons wait on the tables and the Greek daughters work in the back kitchens. There was a rising resentment against the Greeks because Greece was neither considered an ally or an enemy in the War. Canadians went off to fight, but they stayed home. Most of the Greeks had came here before the War and were well established. In contrast, the Macedonians more recently had come as refugees from fighting against or with the Greeks. I never could keep straight who was fighting who over there. The Macedonians stayed with their own in the neighbourhoods on Danforth on the other side of the Don. But the Greeks, having most of the shops and cafes by Yonge and Wellesley, were mixed in with the business district and it was a sore reminder to the  many families of English descent who had sent their sons overseas to fight to see the Greek sons working at home.  It was often said, “We Anglos are sending our sons to fight overseas, and it’s the Greeks making the money by taking their jobs.”

For the Germans, it was more straightforward. They were enemies. As a result of the Enemy Alien Registration Act,  the men of German-descent, “Huns”, as everyone called them in Toronto, were rounded up and sent to internment camps. The same happened in the town of Berlin, now named after Lord Kitchener.When I was fire ranging last summer I saw the camps on the eastern side of the Park and close to Pembroke too. But since the Enemy Act didn’t apply to the Greeks they stayed. They took the jobs in the factories and kept serving in the shops and cafes. When the veterans came back from the War, they found no jobs – all filled by women and Greeks. There was nothing left for them. Though they fought for the country, many of the soldiers felt that the Dominion had no longer had any use for them. Hardly a week would go by without someone jumping to their death out of a window or in front of a train. When the recruiting efforts turned in poor numbers, the talk of conscription started in earnest. The veterans began to call  it the “Revenge of the Green-Eye Monster”. The Green-Eye Monster would be rounding up the slackers to fight overseas. That was the intent of the chalk missive I saw scratched on the wall today.

I managed to get my groceries. When I got back I checked the directory in the Studio building to see if I had any mail. There wasn’t any mail but there were some old issues of the newspapers and magazines set aside for me. Bill Beatty, when finished with them, leaves them for me to read. And when I am done with the newspapers, I cut the pages into quarters and put them in the privy for one final use.

I had tea, and looked at my canvases . I looked at  the finished ones and the blank ones ready to go. I felt pretty good about my progress. I’ll start on my next canvas  tomorrow and I’ll prime it with a light brown. I like my canvases to have the same feel and texture of birch panels that I get from the mill in South River. Umber in linseed does the job well for light brown.