Anarchism
To what degree can anarchism be an effective organized movement? Is it realistic to think of anarchist ideas ever forming the basis for social life itself? These questions are widely being asked again today in response to the forces of economic globalization. The framework for such discussions was perhaps given its most memorable shape, however, in …
Dry Wells of India
The Canadian Poetry Contest was launched to provide funds to help Canada India Village Aid in its programme of building dams and digging wells to counter the serious drought conditions that have arisen in northwestern India. A total of 1,255 poets entered no less than 3,223 poems. This collection includes the six prize-winning poems by John Pass (f …
A man who surprises the goddess bathing, naked
in full blush, head and shoulders haughty above
her scurrying handmaidens, who stumbles
upon her by accident, in an idle moment
as you or I upon the full, clear moon
over the mountain's white shoulder
driving, some January afternoon
the mundane highway. Such a man
in shift
from man of action to man the actor
in her drama, in transition, on the cusp
unaccountable, inarticulate, awkward
within strident grace
dies at the hands of his companions
dies in the teeth of his training, his prized hounds, dies her death as image of his desire-wild, elusive
specimen, silhouette
on a high ridge, leapt
out of range, out of bounds
except to accident, the tricks
of idleness, subtle art
of intention at rest, of the huntress. He dies
in the noise of his name, his friends shouting
"Actaeon, Actaeon. . .," wondering
at his absence, missing
the thrill of the kill.
And "Actaeon," in tone
innocent, excited
echoes today in its exile (unchosen, undeserved
and not bad luck exactly) echoes
because he cannot answer, strains to
through his muzzle, soft lips, thick tongue
of the herbivore, makes sounds
not animal, not human
and cannot and dies
in a body made exquisitely
for life, a trophy, a transport
for his name, lapsed quickly
on the lips of his companions (never
comprehending) on my lips now
ironic, uncertain, changed as he
who saw her
saw through the guise of modesty and boyish
enthusiasm her bright body wet
as any mortal's, saw
through no effort nor virtue nor fault
of his own, his eyes a deer's eyes
darkening, widening, feminine, startled
who otherwise would be unknown to us.
Gabriel Dumont
Born in St Boniface in 1837 of French and Indian parentage, Gabriel Dumont's childhood was spent in the Saskatchewan country, where he grew accustomed to the semi-nomadic existence of the Metis. These were the proud days of the Metis nation, when its people roamed freely throughout the Prairies. The most stable social institution was the annual buf …
George Woodcock's Introduction to Canadian Fiction
Here, in one volume, is noted literary critic George Woodcock's condensed guide to Canada's major fiction writers. From Susanna Moodie and John Richardson to Margaret Laurence and Robertson Davies, Canada's preeminent critic considers more than 60 Canadian short-story writers and novelists. This book covers the field and provides an excellent surve …
George Woodcock's Introduction to Canadian Poetry
In this companion volume to his introduction to Canadian fiction, George Woodcock discusses Canada's major poets, from Archibald Lampman and D. C. Scott to Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood. Woodcock indicates his own admiration for particular writers, and his reasons for paying less attention to others. Each volume is written in the fluid, intelli …
Ideas
For four decades, Ideas has presented more than 400,000 CBC Radio listeners in Canada and the United States with the most challenging contemporary thought of the day. Now, to mark the program’s 40th anniversary, executive producer Bernie Lucht has selected the most striking interviews and lectures for Ideas: Brilliant Thinker Speak Their Minds. F …
Introducing Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising
Canadian Fiction Studies are an answer to every librarian's, student's, and teacher's wishes. Each book contains clear information on a major Canadian novel. Attractively produced, they contain a chronology of the author's life, information on the importance of the book and its critical reception, an in-depth reading of the text, and a selected lis …
Introducing Margaret Atwood's Surfacing
Canadian Fiction Studies are an answer to every librarian's, student's, and teacher's wishes. Each book contains clear information on a major Canadian novel. Attractively produced, they contain a chronology of the author's life, information on the importance of the book and its critical reception, an in-depth reading of the text, and a selected lis …
Introducing Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Canadian Fiction Studies are an answer to every librarian's, student's, and teacher's wishes. Each book contains clear information on a major Canadian novel. Attractively produced, they contain a chronology of the author's life, information on the importance of the book and its critical reception, an in-depth reading of the text, and a selected lis …
Introducing Sinclair Ross's As for Me and My Body
Canadian Fiction Studies are an answer to every librarian's, student's, and teacher's wishes. Each book contains clear information on a major Canadian novel. Attractively produced, they contain a chronology of the author's life, information on the importance of the book and its critical reception, an in-depth reading of the text, and a selected lis …
Matt Cohen
These studies of Canadian authors fulfill a real need in the study of Canadian literature. Each monograph is a separately bound study of about 55 pages. Each contains a biography of the author, a description of the tradition and milieu that influenced the author, a survey of the criticism on the author, a comprehensive essay on all the author's key …
Moral Predicament
Canadian Fiction Studies are an answer to every librarian's, student's, and teacher's wishes. Each book, about 80 pages in length, contains clear, readable information on a major Canadian novel. These studies are carefully designed readings of the novels; they are not substitutes for reading them. Each book is attractively produced and follows the …
Orwell's Message
The Crystal Spirit, George Woodcock's intellectual biography of George Orwell, won the 1966 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. In this book he turns his attention to 1984, the novel which expresses Orwell's fears for the future, and his exhortations against totalitarianism.
First-hand experience with twentieth-century politics combines with e …
Patrick Lane and His Works
Following in the footsteps of his brother, Patrick Lane wrote poetry to escape a life of labour and helped found the small, west coast press Very Stone House in the mid-sixties. This analysis of his work, written by George Woodcock, explores how his peripatetic nature influenced his work, his interest in the everyday life, and his status as an out …
Power to Us All
In his introduction to this provocative collection of essays, George Woodcock describes his response to a recent question about national unity. "I remarked impatiently that what interested me was not the achievement of 'national unity, but the accomplishment of creative anti-national disunity."
Woodcock argues that if Canadians are angry about their …
The Great Canadian Anecdote Contest
Two fishermen find a whale trapped in their net; neither of them can swim so they must trust the whale to support them while they out away the net and get back to the boat. . . In the wilderness of the Peace River, a man performs delicate surgery on his sick comrade, without anaesthetic, and with only the assistance of a doctor's voice on the radio …
The Marvellous Century
In this fascinating and scholarly overview, George Woodcock, author and poet, allows us to experience the beauty, the savagery and the all-encompassing impact of The Marvellous Century.
It was an era of personalities and uprisings.
- It was the time of Xenophanes, Cyrus, Solon the lawmaker, Sappho, the Buddha, Aeschylus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Lao …
The Metis in the Canadian West
Marcel Giraud's well-known study pieces together an objective history of the Metis and their role in the development of western Canada. Sadly, this two-volume work is out-of-print and a reprint is not contemplated.
The Mountain Road
An early collection from the founder of Canadian Literature containing poems divided into four collections, excluding the preface and epilogue poems, named Bestiary, Mythology, Homage, and Anima.
This Side Jordan
In 1957, the British colony of the Gold Coast broke free to become the independent nation of Ghana. Margaret Laurence’s first novel, This Side Jordan, recreates that colour-drenched world: a place where men and women struggle with self-betrayal, self-discovery, and the dawning of political pride.
This Side Jordan transcends the traditional limits …
One
The six boys were playing the Fire Highlife, playing it with a beat urgent as love. And Johnnie Kestoe, who didn't like Africans, was dancing the highlife with an African girl.
Charity's scarlet smile mocked his attempts to rotate his shoulders and wriggle his European hips to the music. Her own fleshy hips and buttocks swayed easily, and her big young breasts, unspoiled by children and only lightly held by her pink blouse, rose and fell as though the music were her breath. Johnnie grinned awkwardly at her, then he jerked his head away.
'Fiyah, fiyah, fiyah, fiyah- ma,
Fiyah deah come – baby!
Fiyah, fiyah, fiyah, fiyah- ma,
Fiyah deah come – ah ah!
I went to see my lovely boy,
Lovely boy I love so well –'
At one of the tables around the outdoor dance floor, a young European woman watched thoughtfully. At another table an African man watched, then turned away and spat. Both were angry, and with the same person.
Music was the clothing of West African highlife, but rhythm its blood and bone. This music was sophisticated. It was modern. It was new. To hell with the ritual tribal dance, the drums with voices ancient as the forest.
The torn leaves of the palm trees shivered in the wind and the strings of fairy lights glittered like glass beads in the musty courtyard.
The dancers themselves did not analyse the highlife any more than they analysed the force that had brought them all together here, to a nightclub called 'Weekend In Wyoming', the wealthy and the struggling, the owners of chauffeur-driven Jaguars and the riders of bicycles.
They were bound together, nevertheless, by the music and their need of it. Africa has danced pain and love since the first man was born from its red soil. But the ancient drums could no longer summon the people who danced here. The highlife was their music. For they, too, were modern. They, too, were new.
And yet the old rhythms still beat strongly in this highlife in the centre of Accra, amid the taxi horns, just as a few miles away, in Jamestown or Labadi, they pulsed through the drums while the fetish priestess with ash- smeared cheeks whirled to express the unutterable, and the drummer's eyes grew glassy and still, his soul drugged more powerfully than the body could be.
Into the brash contemporary patterns of this Africa's fabric were woven symbols old as the sun- king, old as the oldest continent.
From the Paperback edition.
Two Plays
This volume contains two uniquely Canadian stories of exile. Whether portraying the romantic lovers in The Island of Demons, or the political revolutionary Gabriel Dumont in Six Dry Cakes for the Hunted, the plays are related by their underlying themes. From the earliest days of settlement in Canada, those who have adhered to their ties to colonial …
Walking Through the Valley
From the third volume of George Woodcock's autobiography:
Like many people who grew old and have not cast off from the past, I feel the urgency that makes me want to write even of the recent past before it is too late, and also, to see at times my life in panoramic recession. For I realize now, looking back over my eight completed decades, that fr …