In 1922, Arthur L. Phelps published Bobcaygeon: a chap-book. But what exactly is a chap-book? Why not simply title the book Bobcaygeon?
According to Canadian Poetry, a chap-book is “an appurtenance of the aspiring poet–a small book written and designed to artistic standards, printed by the author at personal expense, bound inexpensively, and all in all produced outside the mainstream commercial book trade.”
Bobcaygeon was written by Phelps at his cottage, Walden Park, in Bobcaygeon. The chap-book was published by Phelps, printed in Lindsay, Ontario, and contained 16 poems divided into three parts.
“Part I of this book was done in one morning; Part III in another.” – Phelps, Bobcaygeon: a chap-book.
The author mentions his favourites in the introduction, while also mentioning his friend in the neighbouring cottage, E.J. Pratt, and his favourites lines from Phelps’s poems. Phelps suggests Pratt would be publishing his own chap-book in the summer.
Phelps may have started a trend. In 1925, Ryerson Press of Toronto began publishing chap-books, putting out a few titles every year until 1962. In total, over 200 chap-books of poetry were published.
In 2016, Conway Books of Peterborough, reprinted Bobcaygeon: a chap-book together with Phelps’s poem “Bobcaygeon” (1919) and a short biography of Phelps.
PEACE
If you talk of the moon of amber
That comes over the jade woods
To spread silver on blue and black fields
I shall let you talk on,
And after,
Speak simply and slowly
Of moonless midnight and peace.
Arthur Leonard Phelps (1887-1970) was born in Columbus, Ontario on 1 December 1887, and in his lifetime moved around, but for a number of years he had a Bobcaygeon cottage. His ‘chap-book’, “Bobcaygeon: a sketch of a little town,” was published in Lindsay in 1922. Through his editing work and hosting a CBC radio show, Phelps influenced the development of a Canadian identity and was well-known as a critic of Canadian culture.
Phelps studied at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he met fellow writer, E. J. Pratt, and they became life-long friends.
Sometime within the next few years, he bought a cottage in Bobcaygeon and lived there permanently. The April 1919 edition of Canadian Bookman described Phelps as “permanently a denizen of Bobcaygeon, Ont., but his ministerial function in connection with the Methodist Church keeps him supplied with a temporary address, which happens just now to be Bath, Ont.”
On 18 September 1914, Phelps married Lila Irene Nicholls, daughter of Thomas Henry Nicholls, a farmer in Verulam township, and Margaret Staples. Phelps and Lila were wed in Peterborough, Ontario.
In 1921 Phelps accepted a professorship at the Wesley College at the University of Manitoba where he was head of the English department. A year later, he asked his friend, and fellow KL writer, Watson Kirkconnell to work with him. At first Kirkconnell refused because English wasn’t his field of study. He studied the Classics at university. But then he changed his mind and accepted the position. Together they were the entire English department, with Kirkconnell teaching anything Phelps didn’t want.
During this time, Phelps kept the cottage at Bobcaygeon and spent his summers there. (Kirkconnell, A Slice of Canada: memoirs (1967).)
A visitor to the Bobcaygeon cottage crew was friend and fellow writer, Fredrick Phillip Grove. Grove named his son Leonard after Phelps and made Phelps the boy’s godfather. (“Afterword: genesis of a boys’ book.” Mary Rubino, 1982)
While at Wesley College, Phelps started the English Club, a discussion group for senior students, one of whom was Margaret Laurence. (Later, Laurence would move to Lakefield and become Chancellor to Trent University.)
Phelps stayed at Wesley College until 1945. He was awarded Fellowship in 1967.
Starting around 1940, Phelps was a radio broadcaster for the CBC, serving as a culture critic, trying to define a cultural identity for Canada. It was around this time when Canada was trying to define its own cultural identity as separate from Britain and the U.S.
Phelps has been widely quoted for saying, “a Canadian is one who is increasingly aware of being American in the continental sense, without being American in the national sense.” (The quote is from an article he wrote for The Listener, a BBC magazine, titled, “A Canadian looks back on the Royal Visit,” published in the 46th volume on Thursday, November 15, 1951.)
In 1947, Phelps became an English professor at Queen’s University, and while in Kingston, he hosted a radio show.
In the summer of 1955, Phelps hosted a television program called “Cabbages and Kings.” Phelps moderated the panel discussion show from Vancouver. Participants and subjects included Northrop Frye on Canadians’ reading habits; CJOR newsman Jack Webster and lawyer Bill McConnell on television and radio; and McConnell, writer Roderick Haig-Brown, and Hugh Christie, warden of Oakville Prison Farm on crime and society.
Unfortunately, Phelps did not include the work of the iconic Lucy Maud Montgomery as significant to the culture and identity of Canada. At least not while she was alive to be included. Nine years after her death, Phelps included Montgomery in his book, Canadian Writers, listing her accomplishments alongside other writers as E.J. Pratt, Robert W. Service, Frederick Philip Grove, Archibald Lampman, Stephen Leacock and other notables. The first half of his Montgomery article discusses other “popular” fiction writers and their place in “respectable artistic achievement,” indeed, the entire issue with Montgomery’s work until now was that it was commercially successful and written for girls. In this article, Phelps admits he’d not read Montgomery’s work before and when he checked out four of her books from the library, he was reassured to find her work was still popular. Phelps finally gets around to writing about Montgomery and her work in the last two pages of the article.
Phelps missed the mark on the draw of Montgomery’s work, though. He called her writing old fashioned, sentimental, nostalgic, and said, “L.M. Montgomery’s stories have qualities of range and subtlety and fine comprehension which make them relatively worthy.” He said, “the Island, the sea, the people of the Island, come alive in the telling. All this came about because L.M. Montgomery knew her Island– its places, its people– and, with direct unpretentious simplicity, through her an, was able to communicate something of what she knew.” (Canadian Writers, 1951.)
But Montgomery does not remain commercially successful even today because of nostalgia or because she knew the Island and its people. She remains popular because she gave girls a hero in Anne. She remains popular because Anne showed girls that it was okay to be angry and to feel alone.
It’s unfortunate that the fight between “commercially successful” and “literarily relevant” remains today.
Phelps’s first wife, Lila died in 1965. Phelps remarried in 1968 to Margaret Duncan. The 1921 census shows Phelps and Lila living with his parents in the Toronto area. They didn’t have children at that time. His obituary mentions his daughter Ann, married to John David Hamilton. The University of Manitoba notes the Phelps fonds were donated by his granddaughters, Meg and Kate Hamilton in 1997.
After Phelps was diagnosed with cancer, he was allowed to continue his radio show from his sick bed. He passed away April 27, 1970 at his home at 47 Earl Street in Kingston and was buried in Bobcaygeon. (Globe & Mail, 29 April 1970 page 41.)
Works:
Poems (1921)
Bobcaygeon: a chap-book (1922)
The Poetry of Today. (1917)
This Canada: A series of broadcasts. (1940)
These United States: A series of broadcasts. (1941)
Community and culture. (1947)
Canadian Writers. (1951)
“Introduction” for Habitant Poems by William Henry Drummond (1961)
There’s a wealth of Phelps’s work at Canada’s Library and Archives, particularly in the archived Film, Video and Sound collection.
In 1971, Arthur R. M. Lower published a brief biography of Phelps, “Arthur Leonard Phelps (1887-1970),” a chapter in the book, Proceedings of The Royal Society of Canada, series IV, volume IX, 1971, pages 94-96.
Edwin John Dove Pratt (1882-1964) was primarily Torontonian, but had a cottage in the Bobcaygeon area. He was a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for poetry and winner of many other awards, including in 1946, Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by King George VI.
In 1935, the Montreal branch of the Canadian Authors Association had been running a successful annual poetry contest. They appointed a committee to see if publishing a periodical would be financially feasible. Disappointed by the results, they decided to not go through with the project.
One member of the CAA’s executive, another local Kawartha Lakes writer, E. A. Hardy heard about the end of the project and urged the national executive to take it on as a means of doing something for the entire membership. They agreed and the first issue of Canadian Poetry magazine was published in 1936. Pratt was appointed editor and served in that role until 1943.
EJ Pratt and Clare Pratt in Bobcaygeon, c 1931.
Pratt was born in Newfoundland on 4 February 1882, where he also trained to be a minister like his father, but instead went on to study psychology and theology at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Themes of religion and psychology would thread his poetry.
While at Victoria College, Pratt met Viola Whitney, where they both worked for the college newspaper, of which Viola was the editor. Viola was also a writer and would go on to be a magazine editor. After four years of engagement, they married 20 August 1918.
Their daughter Claire was born in 1921. At just four years old, Claire contracted polio. The disease would affect the rest of her life, but not prevent her from becoming a publishing editor and author.
While at Victoria College, he met life-long friend, Arthur L. Phelps, another Bobcaygeon cottager and writer.
The Pratts visited Phelps and his wife Lila at their new Bobcaygeon home, and were immediately taken with it. Pratt almost bought a Bobcaygeon cottage in September 1918, but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t until 1921 when Pratt finally bought the Bobcaygeon cottage where he would do most of his writing during his summer vacations from his work at the University of Toronto.
Viola Pratt said, “Ned loved the place, which surprised me at first, because he wasn’t the type who ordinarily enjoyed ‘roughing it in the bush.’ He hated the mosquitoes — and we surely had lots — but he devised ways to combat them, and after a while he didn’t mind so much… It was really a delightful spot, right on the lake, surrounded by trees, mostly cedars, with a clearing out back that we called the Glade.” (Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the truant years. p. 199)
The Pratts financially extended themselves to acquire the cottage. They didn’t have a car; they took the train from Toronto to Bobcaygeon.
Pratt started a backyard garden, growing corn, beans, tomatoes, and squash. He’d hoped to grown enormous squash.
Pratt built himself a small cabin away from the cottage, where he went to write.
Pratt became a weekend host to his friends. He even picked them up at the train station– in a canoe. Weekend pastimes included canoe trips to Nogie’s Creek, a cookout at the stone fireplace by the lakeshore, and poetry readings.
The Bobcaygeon summers, especially the early ones were golden times for Pratt, among the happiest he would ever know… halcyon days.
Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the Truant years.
Among his guests were William Arthur Deacon, who also bought a cottage nearby, Fredrick Philip Grove, Pelham Edgar, E.K. Brown.
Pratt was known to lend the cottage, as he did to Deacon in 1926 when Deacon and family were looking to get away from the city. Pratt wrote to Deacon, “From the 15th of June until July 20th it is at your disposal. Why not send Mrs Deacon and the Kiddies up there on the earlier date, you going, say, week ends till your vacation starts. The Phelpses are next door and will give her all the advice re food and other desirables. By then the lettuce will be up and by July the peas ought to be forming. The strawberries look promising.” (https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/letters/texts/260603dea.html)
Pratt family with Deacon family, c. 1930.
Frederick Varley, one of the founding members of the Group of Seven, was the artist for E.J. Pratt’s Newfoundland Verse (1923). When Varley and his family were evicted from their Toronto house, Pratt let Varley, his wife Maud and their four children camp in a tent on the lot next to the Pratt’s cottage. “A large army tent pitched on a wooden platform supplied them with at least a shelter from the elements, and the Pratt cottage the necessary domestic facilities. Not infrequently too the grocery bill to feed five extra mouths was paid out of Pratt’s meagre pocket.” (Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the truant years. p. 226.)
During that time, Varley made a charcoal sketch of his wife Maud with their youngest son, Peter, curled up in her lap. The tent can be seen in the upper left corner. The sketch, titled Bobcaygeon, 1923 (private collection), was sold in 1926 by Maud to raise enough funds for her to travel with the children to Vancouver. Varley painted a similar picture, Evening in Camp, 1923 (private collection.) (Katerina Atanassova, F.H. Varley: portraits into the light, Dundurn Press. 2007.)
Sometimes Pratt’s summer retreats involved golfing in Lindsay with Watson Kirkconnell.
[Pratt] needed a little relaxation before completing his preparations for what he was already planning to make a ‘triumphal progress.’ Having promised Kirkconnell a few games of golf on the course at nearby Lindsay, where ‘Kirk’ usually spent his summers, Pratt took his clubs with him and during the first week or so of his holiday pleasantly indulged himself in his favourite sport for almost the first time since the previous autumn.
David G. Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the master years (1927-1964), page 22.
As he was closing the cottage in the autumn of 1925, Pratt asked a local handyman to build a swimming dock, using the wood from Varley’s tent platform. Pratt wanted “an enclosure in which little Claire might paddle, safe from the remnants of submerged tree stumps and the danger of going beyond her depth.” He suggested if the the handyman needed more lumber he could get it from the local lumber ‘magnate’ and building contractor (i.e. Mossom Boyd Lumber Company.)
What Pratt found the following spring was “a leviathan of a wharf.” It seems the handyman placed an order in Pratt’s name with the contractor for an “Ontario dock,” or pier. It was built by half-a-dozen carpenters and “vast quantities of the best materials.” Arthur Phelps described it as big enough “to tie up an ocean liner at if one ever came into the Kawartha region.”
The bill was equally as enormous. Pratt, feeling he’d been tricked into the large pier, chose to fight. He wrote his tale in full to a lawyer. The lawyer agreed to appear in court in Lindsay, if the case went to trial, which it did not. Both parties agreed to compromise. Pratt ended up paying $200 and the “magnate” withdrew his suit for further payment. (Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the truant years. page 298-299.)
The summer of 1935 was the last summer in Bobcaygeon for Pratt. Financial reasons due to Claire’s numerous operations and the economy of the times, forced Pratt into one of the hardest decisions he had ever made. The cottage was in need of numerous repairs, but ultimately the decision to sell was due to Claire: “her condition was unlikely to permit her ever again to take full advantage of the natural amenities, swimming in particular,” which Pratt felt was the best thing about Bobcaygeon. (Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the master years. page 164-165.)
That last summer at the cottage, Pratt wrote The Titanic, a dark, tragic poem that he found depressing and was glad when he finished it.
Pratt never returned to Bobcaygeon, though he missed the cottage days and would reminisce with his friends of his halcyon days there.
Pratt’s cottage was featured in John Robert Columbo’s Canadian Literary Landmarks (1984.) At the time of printing, the cottage was still standing. Overlooking Sturgeon Lake, the cottage had a verandah and a green den, according to the brief write-up.
Arthur Phelps said, “One of the best things that ever happened to Ned Pratt was his marrying Viola Whitney. Up until then he was just drifting hither and yon with every tide that rose and fell. He had no settled way of life, no regular job, not actual goal in life. And this was bound to militate against any real creativity. But after he got married all that began to change…” (Pitt. E.J. Pratt: the truant years. p. 172)
But without his cottage, it seems Pratt became untethered.
In the summer of 1937, Pratt went to teach summer school at the University of British Columbia where he began an extramarital affair with a graduate student. She transferred to Victoria College (Toronto) in the fall and the affair continued until the spring of 1938. Although his college friends knew about the affair and encouraged him to end it, his wife and daughter never knew and the affair never affected his career. (http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/letters/texts/38springdea.html)
Pratt is internationally famous for his epic poems of national significance. He won the Governor General’s Award three times: in 1937 for The Fable of the Goats and other Poems; in 1940 for Brébeuf and his Brethren; and in 1952, for Towards the Last Spike.
His biographer, David Pitt writes, Pratt had been a “faithful if less than zealous member [of the Canadian Authors’ Association]. But he had no wish to be anything more, partly one gathers, because a large proportion of the Toronto membership was made up of ‘literary females,’ a species of which he was not particularly fond.” (Pitt, E.J. Pratt: the truant years. pages 312-313.)
Pratt and his friends Deacon and Edgar were not at all kind to women authors, even if the women were incredibly successful, as seen these notes about how they treated Madge Macbeth and Lucy Maud Montgomery:
Although it did have slightly more women members, the association was continually run by men, some of whom fought against female leadership. Carole Gerson, for example, points to an example of this “gendered subtext to Canadian literary politics” in Kathryn Colquhorn’s description of Madge Macbeth’s reception at a C.A.A. convention. Macbeth went to Toronto to make a speech at the Annual C.A.A. dinner:
[Macbeth] had a pretty mean reception here . . . Pratt was in the chair and he, and Prof. De Lury, spoke so long, that she didn’t get a chance to say a word. A lot of people thought that it was a put up job, as Pratt had charge of things as chairman. Then, when she was elected National President, none of the Executive, Pratt, Deacon, or Edgar, attended the Convention. (Kathryn Colquhorn qtd. in Gerson “The Canon” 54)
Christopher M. Doody. “A Union of the inkpot: the Canadian Authors’ Association, 1921-1960.” 2016.
E. J. Pratt died 26 April 1964 in Toronto.
He was designated a Person of Historical Significance in 1975.
The library at Victoria College in Toronto was named after him and contains his fonds. The university also awards the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize for poetry and past winners included Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje.
The University of Toronto created the E.J. Pratt Chair in Canadian Literature, which since its founding has been held by George Elliot Clarke.
In 1983, Canada Post issued an E.J. Pratt commemorative stamp.
Poetry
Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, (1917)
Newfoundland Verse (1923)
The Witches’ Brew (1925)
Titans (“The Cachalot, The Great Feud”) (1926)
The Iron Door: An Ode (1927)
The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930)
Verses of the Sea (1930)
Many Moods (1932)
The Titanic (1935)
New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors (1936)
The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems (1937)
Brebeuf and his Brethren (1940)
Dunkirk (1941)
Still Life and Other Verse (1943)
Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (1944)
They Are Returning (1945)
Behind the Log (1947)
Ten Selected Poems (1947)
Towards the Last Spike (1952)
“Magic in Everything” [Christmas card] (1956)
Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (1958)
The Royal Visit: 1959 (1959)
Here the Tides Flow (1962)
Prose
Studies in Pauline Eschatology (1917)
“Canadian Poetry – Past and Present,” University of Toronto Quarterly, VIII:1 (Oct. 1938)
Edited
Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tre. (1937)
Heroic Tales in Verse (1941)
Further Reading:
E. J. Pratt: The Truant Years 1882-1927. David G. Pitt. (1984)
E. J. Pratt: the Master Years 1927-1964. David G. Pitt (1987)
Thomas Phillips Thompson (1843-1933) was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in England on 25 November 1843. He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1857. The family spent some time in Lindsay (appear on the 1861 census in Lindsay) before settling in St. Catharines.
Thompson studied law and was admitted to the bar, but instead became a journalist for the St. Catharines Post. He covered the Fenian raids as a correspondent for the Montreal Herald.
In 1867, he became a police reporter for the Toronto Daily Telegraph.
Around 1870, he wrote a weekly political column under the pseudonym “Jimuel Briggs, D.B., graduate of Coboconk University.”
The column was satire, making fun of the law and politics, and giving Thompson a name as a humourist.
In 1873, a collection of the columns was published as The political experiences of Jimuel Briggs, D.B., at Toronto, Ottawa and elsewhere. (D.B. stood for “Dead Beat.”)
Other fictitious local references in his columns include the newspapers (the Coboconk Irradiator and the Coboconk Progressionist), the Coboconk Reform League, and the Bummer’s Roost (a “most aristocratic hotel”.) As for real references, Thompson mentions the Toronto and Nipissing Railway as well as Laidlaw.
Note the purchase price on the cover: 5 drinks.
But “Coboconk University” wasn’t completely made up.
As it turns out, the old saw mill was locally known as “the university.” It burned down in June 1885.
The Canadian Post, June 12, 1885, p. 6.
On 2 February 1872, Thompson married Delia Florence Fisher. They had 3 daughters, Clara Florence, Laura Beatrice, Edith Maud and 1 son, William Phillips who died in childhood. Delia died in 1897. Two years later, Thompson married her sister, Edith, who was 13 years younger. In 1901, they had a son, Phillips Whitman.
Laura Beatrice Thompson married Francis George Berton. They had two children: Lucy Woodward and Pierre Berton. (Yes, that Pierre Burton.)
In 1874, Thompson helped found The National, a weekly journal that supported the Canada First movement.
By 1883, his career was flourishing. Thompson accepted an editorial position at the Toronto Evening News. During this time he began writing in the weekly journal of the Knights of Labor.
He died in Oakville on 20 May 1933, well-known as one of Canada’s most influential labour writers of the late 19th century.
Publications:
The Future Government of Canada: being arguments in favor of a British American independent republic, comprising a refutation of the position taken by the Hon. T. D’Arcy McGee in the British American magazine, for a monarchical form of government. (1864)
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