A Leaders & Legacies Quintet

There have been five books published in the Leaders & Legacies series by Fireside Publishers with the publication of The Wail of the Wendigo which I will reviewed in my next post. The diversity of backgrounds to these young men, they are between 11 and 13, who became future Canadian Prime Ministers should inspire young Canadians that any young Canadian has the opportunity to become Prime Minister.

The first in the series, The Mystery in the Moonlight Murder, will always remain closest to my heart as it features, John Diefenbaker, the only Saskatchewan born future Prime Minister. It is set in 1908 near Borden, Saskatchewan where Diefenbaker’s father had homesteaded and was teaching school. Young Diefenbaker grows up working hard on the farm while acquiring an education in a one room school for his elementary education. It is a struggle as the family works to establish a farm and Diefenbaker’s father is so busy between teaching and farming.

The second book, The Legends of the Lake, is set in rural Ontario near Kingston almost a century earlier in 1928 and involves, John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister. Macdonald’s father is operating a flour mill which uses the water from a waterfall. Macdonald also works in the mill when he is not away at school in Kingston. The Macdonald family is doing well but is certainly not wealthy.

The third is Showdown at Bordertown set in the area of Windsor, Ontario across the river from Detroit. It is set in 1950 with young Paul Martin. His father, Paul Martin Sr., is a federal government Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party. At the time of the book Martin Sr. is the Minister of Health for Canada. The Martins live comfortably in a middle class neighbourhood.

Martin Jr. (never known as Jr.) is the only living Prime Minister to be the subject matter of a book and participated in the project including writing the foreword and joining the author, Caroline Woodward, for a book signing event that garnered great publicity.

Most unique about this book is that it was written by a teenager who won a contest to write the book.

The fourth book, The Hero of Hopewell Hill, returns to the 19^th Century. It is set on the coast of New Brunswick in 1888. Richard Bennett, our 11^th Prime Minister, is living on the family farm. His grandfather had owned a prosperous shipbuilding business but the advent of steel hulled ships brought an end to the family business. Bennett’s father main focus is his blacksmith business. Bennett is expected to work hard on the farm even though he is only 13. Bennett’s mother understands his desire to become a teacher as she had trained as a teacher.

The fifth book, mentioned above, is The Wail of the Wendigo, and features Pierre Elliot Trudeau when he was 11 years old. Trudeau grew up in Montreal. While his father came from a modest background he has prospered and owns a chain of gas stations in Quebec. Despite the Depression of the 1930’s the Trudeau family is doing very well financially.

The five future Prime Ministers come from four different provinces.

Of the quintet four come from rural backgrounds which is not a surprise. Until after World War II most Canadians did not reside in major urban centres.

There is no consistency in the occupations of their fathers.

None of the mothers worked outside the home in jobs. Once again these books are set at times when relatively few women had occupations away from home. Certainly three of the mothers worked on the farm or in the family business.

I acknowledge there is not as much inspiration for girls in reading the series. All the Prime Ministers of the series have been men. It will remain that way in future books as Canada has had but one female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, and she was in power for only a short time before an election decimated the Conservative Party.

What is common to the character of these boys who became Prime Ministers is that they came from families who valued education, hard work and discipline. Those traits remain a sound foundation for young Canadian boys and girls. 

I look forward to future books in the series to provide more interesting adventures about the men and woman who have been our Prime Ministers for 149 years.

Flavia de Luce and Tom Swift Jr.

Reading the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley has sent me back to thinking about what I was reading as an 11 year old over 50 years ago.

Flavis is a precocious child especially in her chosen field of chemistry. I would call her a prodigy.

Her knowledge of chemistry is formidable. In each of the books I have read I have learned about a practical application of chemistry of which I was unaware before reading the book.

In this book she set out how she made chloral hydrate from alcohol, lavatory cleaner and a bottle of chlorine bleach. She fed some of the mixture in an apple to a pig who became famous as "The Remarkable Sleeping Pig" as the pig took 5 days and 17 hours to sleep off the effects of the chloral hydrate.

Looking back to when I was a boy there was a series involving science and adventure that I loved greatly. I was an avid reader of the Tom Swift Jr. series.

While listed as science fiction I would describe them as science adventure fiction.

The teenage Tom Swift was a gifted inventor of machines for travel, especially but always, in outer space.

My favourite was his Flying Lab, the atomic powered jet that cruised at 1,200 mph. There is an image of it in the photo above.
Tom could work on almost any project while in his lab.

While there is no real life atomic Flying Lab there is the Super Guppy, a huge transport aircraft that is the size of the 3 story Flying Lab.

Looking up information on the series there were 33 books by Victor Appleton II, a pseudonym for several writers. I managed to get over 20 of them.

Living in rural Saskatchewan there were no bookstores in the towns near us and the series was not in the library. A trip to the city of Saskatoon might happen once a year. We would occasionally come to Melfort where there was Beeson’s Stationery and they carried some books. It was a good day if I could get a new Tom Swift Jr. adventure.

As I think about Flavia and Tom I admire their boldness. I was shy and focused on books.

Flavia and Tom are full of action. They have the spirit and inventiveness I think we all dream we had as young people.

The adventures of Tom were far away and impossible to do more than imagine.

Flavia is a character that is closer, but not close, to real life. As with many children I had a chemistry set with which I conducted experiments. Flavia has a personal lab. What 11 year old has access to all the equipment and chemicals available to Flavia.

Even if I had a laboratory as a boy I doubt I would have been a scientist. Words not chemical reactions are my strength.

I still have a box of Tom Swift Jr. books. Neither of my sons was interested in them. I guess I keep hoping someone in the family will want to read them.

****

Bradley, Alan - (2015) - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and A Postage Stamp Provides the Motive; (2016) - The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley – Flavia de Luce returns in the second of the series. Lying atop a tomb in the cemetery of St. Tancred’s church she contemplates what her family will think of her when she is dead (her preferred epitaph - A Maid whom there were none to praise / And very few to love). With her extraordinary hearing she hears a young woman intensely crying in another part of the churchyard.

Upon rising from the tomb she encounters Nialla, the assistant to Rupert Porson, the famed puppeteer whose Porson’s Puppets are the stars of BBC television on The Magic Kingdom. Well known to children throughout the land they still need to travel around England putting on local shows.

They have become stranded at Bishop’s Lacey as their aging Austin Eight van has broken down and they have no money for repairs.

Vicar Denwyn Richardson gallantly offers the church hall for a pair of performances that will get them the money needed for repairs and fill in the time until the local mechanic is back in the village.

Rupert has a well-developed upper torso but a crippled leg. He is also talented in designing and making his marionettes.

While chemistry is her passion Flavia’s curiosity is unbounded. She is enchanted by the puppets and the stage Rupert has built for shows.

Rupert and Nialla are given space at Culverhouse farm near the village to set up their tent during their stay at Bishop’s Lacey.

The farm is owned by Gordon and Grace Ingleby. Their lives were devastated 5 years earlier when their 5 year old son, Robin, died. He was found dead hanging from the decaying gallows used in generations past for hanging criminals. Grace Ingleby has never been able to adjust to the loss.

As Flavia makes her rounds on her bike, Gladys, she realizes that Rupert has some form of previous connection with the Ingleby family.

Never content to just observe Flavia wonders about Nialla’s outburst. She analyzes a discarded handkerchief used by Nialla and determines that Nialla is pregnant.

At the hall the stage has been erected and the first performance focused on the children of the village is a great success. Rupert is a master puppeteer.

The show is the classic Jack and the Beanstalk. The climax of the show sees the upper body of the giant crash upon the stage to great effect.

I do not know enough young children in 2016 to know if puppets are still as popular as they were 65 years ago. In 1950 television is in its infancy. (During the book the de Luces acquire their first television set.)

The evening performance sees many adults joining the children but it has a different dramatic conclusion. Rupert crashes on to the stage. He is dead.

Even in the chaos of the moment Flavia’s keen powers of observation and concentration let her see the evidence that allows her to determine the cause of death.

Inspector Hewitt is already at the performance so the investigation is begun within moments. Was it an accident or murder? Flavia knows.

Flavia continually draws upon her knowledge of chemistry as she investigates.

Flavia’s formidable Aunt Felicity visits the family. Her personality commands the house. An act of unexpected kindness by her towards Flavia relieves Flavia’s nagging unease over her relationship with her mother before her mother died.

Flavia has a growing relationship with the troubled Dogger. PTSD from World War II has left him a battered man but he has a keen intelligence that Flavia draws upon in her investigation.

Within the De Luce family a day of reckoning is at hand. Flavia’s father, drifting through life and absorbed by his stamp collection, has left the family on the verge of financial ruin. Fortunately, I have the third in the series, A Red Herring Without Mustard, to read shortly.

Early in the story I was not really caught up in the plot but it got better and better. I thought the ending moving and tragic.

****

Bradley, Alan - (2015) - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and A Postage Stamp Provides the Motive

Lady Sharon and Mr. Selnes

Earlier this week the Melfort Public Library held a tea in honour of the Downton Abbey T.V. series coming to an end. The last show was broadcast in the U.S. and Canada on Sunday. As a member of the Library Board the staff asked me if I would be the butler. The results are in the accompanying photo.

Lady Sharon accompanied me to the tea and is the well dressed and far better looking Lady with me in the photo.

 

The tea was great fun.

It was a typical rural Saskatchewan event.

You can see the effort the staff made to set up lovely tables.

Board members loaned tea cups and silver services. We provided 6 teacups and saucers and a complete tea service.

Staff and board members prepared the food.

The staff wore costumes appropriate to the event and served.

I greeted the Ladies. There was only one other gentleman.

Once coats had taken by the staff I escorted ladies to the tables.

I understand I was a credible butler. While I might have a future as a butler it will not be in Melfort. Not a butler in the community.

There were trivia games on tea etiquette and the Downton Abbey series. Sharon and I tied as winners of the Downton Abbey trivia. I won on a tiebreaker question as to the cast name for their historic adviser – “The Oracle”. I picked out a prize of English teas and gave the box to Sharon.

We enjoyed crustless sandwiches, scones with lemon curd and clotted cream, small cakes and dainties.

There were a couple of musical selections from the teenage member of the staff. The first was the series theme song which actually has words. I had never heard them We sang along with her on the second song.

Most guests wore costumes. Sharon’s outfit was actually what she wore to our son’s wedding last fall. She has been looking for suitable events to wear her hat again. The tea was the perfect occasion.

More photos are on the Melfort Public Library Facebook Page.

And the pricing was rural Saskatchewan. Each of the guests paid $5.00.

A Letter to Roger Angell on This Old Man Finished

Roger Angell and Andy in Central Park in 2014

In my last post I put up the first half of a letter to Roger Angell about my thoughts on his recent book, This Old Man. This post contains the rest of the letter.

****

(Continuing my letter to Roger)

I have admired how your love of baseball is not limited to the stars of the game. I enjoy reading your stories about spring training as much as any climatic regular season game or World Series games.

One of my favourite essays you have written is from one of your earlier books, Late Innings, in which you exchanged correspondence with and then meet Linda Kittell to sit and talk about baseball and life while watching her partner, Ron Gable, pitching semi-pro baseball. It is the baseball I know best.

Linda spoke so powerfully about Ron’s earlier pursuit of a distant dream of the major leagues while playing for the Boise Buckskins in the lowest of the minor leagues. And you listened.

In your essays I appreciate how you will develop a thought over a few pages. A reader is invited to think with you about the subject of your essays. I slow down when reading you. With most of my reading, especially on the internet, I find myself rushing through articles. Most are so short or so limited in content or both that I feel they were meant to be read in a hurry.

It took me until reading This Old Man to read your non-sport essays. I envy few people but your combination of contacts and interviews with authors and athletes left me envious of your life. I know of no other person who analyzes author Vladimir Nabokov in one essay and Hall of Fame ballplayer, Jackie Robinson, in another.

I admire how you follow the precept “be clear” set out by your stepfather, E.B. White, in Elements of Style which you quoted in an early essay of This Old Man. When I read your essays I know your themes and can follow your reasoning.

As a lawyer I strive to write with directness to make it easy for the judge to understand my submissions. For most legal briefs I have my clients read the whole brief. If they struggle to follow and grasp the facts and issues and arguments as I have set them out I know that I need to revise the brief.

I have come to appreciate grace in action in different forums. Watching a skilled lawyer in court is a pleasure. A well-presented oral argument can be a model of persuasion. A deft cross-examination can shift the course of a trial.

A challenging form of written grace is humour. You have the ability to make me smile. My wife would say I should read more of your work. I am not thinking of the strident LOL notations of emails and texts. It is the subtler grin that often stretches across my face while reading your essays and haikus.

I did initially struggle with your recommendation at the opening of This Old Man to feel free as a reader to move around in the book. I have always read books from start to finish. I was convinced to move around when I encountered some of your poetry. I expect your poetry is well done but the essays and letters are what I enjoyed best in the book.

Belated congratulations on winning the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. Reading your remarks at Cooperstown reminded me that when I was in my early 20’s and finally had some disposable income the first subscription I purchased was to The Sporting News. It was my portal to the big leagues. The only newspaper coverage in Saskatchewan of the major leagues at that time was through wire service stories. I devoured the baseball articles of The Sporting News even though they were a couple of weeks old by the time the paper reached me. I still find it hard to believe that through the internet and satellite T.V. I now get stories on the Yankees and Blue Jays as quickly as residents of New York and Toronto.

As an aside you mention you enjoy writing on blogs. A few years ago I started writing a blog concentrated on crime fiction, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan. The blog has given me a new outlet for writing. Unexpectedly it has allowed me to make blogger friends around the world.

This letter will make up two posts in my blog.

I hope you will continue to write essays, especially about baseball. Shirley Povich’s last column in the Washington Post was published the day after his death at 92. At 95 you have years to go as a sports writer.

Best wishes.

Bill Selnes

****

(2016) - A Letter to Roger Angell on This Old Man Begun and Finished

A Letter to Roger Angell on This Old Man Begun

During Christmas break I purchased a copy of This Old Man which contains writings of Roger Angell of the New Yorker magazine. Angell, 94 at the time of publication, made his initial contribution to the New Yorker in 1944 and became a fiction editor there in 1956 following in the footsteps of his mother, Katherine Sergeant Angell White, who had also been a fiction editor at the magazine. He is one of the most gifted writers of essays in the world. Age has not dimmed his writing skills. After reading the book I decided to write my thoughts in the form of a letter and mail it to Roger. The letter will be divided between this post and my next post.

****

Roger Angell

The New Yorker
1 World Trade Center
New York, New York
U.S.A. 10007

Dear Roger:

I enjoy exhibitions of grace. Whether on the field of play or on the printed page I love to see grace in action.

Reading your book This Old Man reminded me of the grace of your writing. The stories flow easily. They are interesting. They are unhurried.

It has been some years since I read your work. I have next to me in a bookcase four of your collections of essays on baseball. My recent reading has focused on crime fiction, especially for my blog, but there was no specific reason I drifted away from your writing. It has been good to return to reading your essays.

I have long admired your writing about sport, especially baseball, while carrying out your work as an editor of fiction at The New Yorker.

My life includes writing about sports while spending most of my time in other work. I have written a sports column for the local weekly paper, The Melfort Journal, for 38 years while practising law full time. I no longer write weekly columns but have continued to cover the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

In reading your stories about baseball in This Old Man it is clear to me that you like to have conversations with ball players, managers and coaches. I equally prefer to talk with athletes rather than just asking a couple of questions and moving on to the next person. I am finding it more difficult to have conversations. Players have come to expect no more than a leading question or two from a reporter. Most are startled by the concept of talking with a reporter.

Your essays, such as your recounting of a conversation with Earl Weaver, in which he profanely expressed disinterest in coaching high school or university baseball after being a major league baseball manager illustrates the unexpected joys that come from taking time to chat.

Occasionally I have had the chance to cover a major league game. In 1991 I was in Minneapolis and had a chance to visit with Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish, then an adviser on pitching to the Milwaukee Brewers. We were sitting in the dugout while he talked pitching. He told story after story. Suddenly I saw Rick Dempsey strapping on his catching gear and smiling at us. I expect Cal would have sat there in the dugout talking to me for the whole game if I could have stayed.

While I recognize a sports writer need not love sports I am glad that you love baseball. Most of my columns have been about football as the Riders are Saskatchewan’s professional team but it is baseball that I have loved all my life. My family has been playing baseball in Saskatchewan for almost 100 years.

Until I was an adult it was never baseball. I played hardball as a boy. I still like using hardball better than baseball to describe the game.

It is the grace in baseball that draws me to the game rather than the overpowering fastball or the homerun. Watching a pitcher changing speeds, locations and pitches is an artistry I look forward to every summer. Fielders smoothly handling ground balls never lose its allure. I admire the easy swings of the best hitters.

As I approach 64 I still play some baseball in Saskatchewan’s Twilite Provincial Tournaments. Many of the players are now a generation younger than me as you can be a Twiliter upon reaching 35. While grace now eludes me on the field guile can still get me, the slowest pitcher in the province, through some innings on the mound.

(Finished in my next post.)

Update on 9th Canadian Book Challenge

On a quiet Saskatchewan March evening with winter starting to wind down I am taking a look at my progress in the 9th Canadian Book Challenge which runs from July 1 to June 30 with the reader striving to read 13 Canadian authored books for the 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories. The Challenge is hosted at the fine Book Mine Set blog of John Mutford. It happens that I have now read 9 books for the 9th Challenge.

They are:

     1.) No Known Grave by Maureen Jennings;

     2.) Plague by C.C. Humphreys;

     3.) Booked for Trouble by Eva Gates;

     4.) Another Margaret by Janice MacDonald;

     5.) The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley;

     6.) The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny - Part I and Part II;

     7.) Tropéano’s Gun by John Brooke;

     8.) The Women of Skawa Island by Anthony Bidulka; and,

     9.) The Night Bell by Inger Ash Wolfe.

I have 5 more Canadian books already lined up for reading:

     1.) The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley;

     2.) A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley;

     3.) The Heart of Hell by Alen Mattich;

     4.) The Scottish Banker of Surabaya by Ian Hamilton; and,

     5.) The Wail of the Wendigo by Steve Pitt (An Early Adventure
     of Pierre Trudeau).

There is a 6th I will be reading for the Challenge which is the book I am most anxious to read. It is What's Left Behind by Gail Bowen which was just released on Monday. It will be the 16th Joanne Kilbourn mystery. I will buy a copy on my next trip to a city with a bookstore. 

Of the books already read my favourite new character is 11 year old Flavia de Luce in the series by Alan Bradley. I will have read 3 of the books in the series during the current Challenge. I am reading them both for pleasure and to give me information for the article I am writing on Saskatchewan mysteries for the third volume of The Saskatchewan Literary History.

I try not to forecast the future but I am optimistic I will complete the 9th Canadian Book Challenge.

The Night Bell by Inger Ash Wolfe

The Night Bell by Inger Ash Wolfe – Hazel Micallef is back. With the centralization process proceeding Hazel is no longer in charge of the Port Dundas detachment of the OPS. Now 64 she is a senior officer in the detachment.

The opening of the book is back in 1957 in Port Dundas. Hazel is 14 and helping out in the family store. She is an average young teenager with a real conscience. When a 17 year old girl, Carol Lim, goes missing Hazel insists to her friend, Gloria, that they must tell parents and police of their brief contact with Carol on the day she disappeared even though it means admitting they were smoking.

Fifty years later Hazel is doing her best to stem the decline of her 90 year old mother, Emily. The feisty former mayor has little spark left sleeping 16 hours a day and indifferent to everything but T.V. crime shows. Hazel desperately wants more time with her Mom.

Just south of town a golf themed residential development, Tournament Acres, is faltering. Work has stopped on one golf course. No one is sure it will be get built let alone the second course. Some of the new houses are incomplete. Plans have been announced to alter the development. The early purchasers are furious.

I was glad to see 3 maps at the start of the book showing where the plot is taking place. I can follow a story more easily when I have the visual aid of a map.

A human bone is found at the development by a resident. During a second subsequent sweep by 18 officers more bones are found. There is speculation they are connected with the massive former orphanage standing on a corner of the development.

Hazel’s younger brother, Alan, had spent 10 years at the orphanage before he was adopted by her family. Alan is considered slow in the language of the day. He struggled into adulthood.

With the sweep not yet completed the police are ready to wind down for the night when the plot explodes with an officer being kidnapped, shots fired at Hazel and a couple who are newcomers stabbed to death.

At home Hazel is lost about what to do about Emily. One moment her mother has retreated fifty years into the past. The next she is fully in the present.

They visit a specialist in aging:

By the time Emily was welcomed into the doctor’s office, all the fight had gone out of her. Sooner or later in your life, you have to put yourself in someone else’s hands. Just surrender. Hazel watched her mother being walked away. A small figure following a white coat down a hallway.

 

The investigation into the bones and the kidnapped officer proceed. At the same time there are flashbacks to what happened in 1957.

Hazel is determined to look back into life and death at the orphanage.

I found the book a choppy read. There were three stories intertwined and one of them did not fit well. There are too many issues for one book unless it was going to be at least 800 pages so the stories were not as developed as I would have liked.

The ending did bring all the plot lines together and there was plausible evil in this book.

It was interesting to read of Hazel at 14. She was an earnest girl.

I was surprised that there was not the intensity of investigation into a kidnapped police officer that I would expect.

The topics covered in the book do not lend themselves to sparkle but the story was unrelenting grim both in the past and the present. I find it harder to be engaged by a book that is all dark. It is difficult to find any light in Hazel’s life.

It is a better book than A Door in the River but that is not much praise. I am glad Hazel has returned to the competent professional officer she was in the first two books of the series. I wish she had some happiness in her life.

****

Wolfe, Inger Ash (Pseudonymn of Michael Redhill) – (2009) - The Calling; (2011) - Who is Inger Ash Wolfe? (2012) - The Taken; (2012) - Being Affected by a Male Author Creating a Female Sleuth; (2012) - Q & A with Michael Redhill on his Pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe; (2014) - A Door in the River and Other Reviews of A Door in the River and Email Exchange with Michael Redhill on A Door in the River (Part I)