The second round of book reviews is another short category – non-fiction. However, compared to previous years, this category is storming ahead in the lifetime stakes with a total of six entries.
It’s not often that Queenie reads six books that aren’t story books.
These were all second hand items I picked up in desperation, when I didn’t have the price of a novel, or even a CanLit novel (they being cheaper than non CanLit here in Canada) on me, but still needed something to read.
They were all pretty good despite their bought for the sake of buying a book rather than for the sake of owning them status. And there are one or two gems in here.
The Little Immigrants, the Orphans who came to Canada by Kenneth Bagnell, published in 1980, was a book I picked up in a store called ‘So many books, So little time, which we happened upon during our road trip to Algonquin last October. It’s a little shack down a side street in Huntsville, but when you enter the shack, it turns out to be quite the store. Second hand books line shelves that surround the real purpose of the store – tchotchkas and dried flowers. Plus the owner had two of the nicest dogs I have ever seen lounging around a second hand bookstore.
The book is described on the cover as ‘one of the finest pieces of Canadian social history to be written’ and the author was a respected Globe and Mail and Star newspapers, which of course are THE newspapers in Canada. It apparently spent one year on the bestsellers list when it came out.
As befits a book about the littlest immigrants, it is a little book. It really should have been called ‘the littlest hobos’ but I guess that title was taken.
The book traces the fate of over 80,000 orphans or indigent children who were shipped from England (primarily from East End London) to Canada between the 1860s and the 1930s. When they got to Canada, they were dispersed across this vast country to work as farm labourers. A number of organizations were involved in ‘saving’ the street arabs, as they were then known.
The collection, transportation and dispersal of these children was organized mostly by evangelical Christian organizations at first. A number of redoubtable Christian women were involved; women who steam-rolled over the concerns of the Canadian and English authorities.
Despite a serious enquiry that uncovered wholesale abuse and defrauding of these children (they were supposed to be fed, clothed, educated and paid, and a lot of the time, not much of any of these things happened), Canada’s need for cheap agricultural labour and England’s need to rid itself of street children overcame the Dickensian concerns of the media and the child advocates.
The collection and transportation was a bit hit and miss for a number of years. Then a young man named Dr. Barnado got involved and the process hit its stride. Thomas Barnado, born and educated in Dublin of course, sent 30,000 children to Canada. The book spends quite a bit of time on Barnado, his life and works, and the obstacles he overcame with his unwavering zeal that his choice for these children was the right one.
He sounds like a terrible person… one of those individuals so consumed with his calling his actions towards friends and family are monstrous. This monstrosity almost becomes his downfall, as a falling out with a friend results in a plot against him by a number of other evangelists.
It seems Barnado is yet another mixed blessing imposed by the Irish on the British. Having said that, his legacy organization is still fairly highly regarded in some places. But the book cleared up the rationale for a lot of moral standpoints I found strange about the old Barnardos.
The book is interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, it documents the terrible treatment that a lot of these children received on isolated and primitive farms located deep in provincial Canada (all in the name of Jesus of course), and reiterates the fact that in Victorian England and Canada, children were not children as we now know them to be.
Secondly, the book describes very well the result of concerns finally getting a media airing when various well got individuals questioned the value (to the children) of ‘the importation of waifs’. The immediate reaction by God-fearing Canadians was to condemn the practice outright, because Canada should not have to house the scum and wastrels of England.
Nice kick to moral touch there, Upper Canada.
Finally, the book has some local flavour as one of the homes where the children were housed before they were sent to their new masters was in Bedford, near Halifax.
I meant to go find the home last summer and forgot. I must do it this spring.
Many of the stories outlined in the book were from Nova Scotia too, and they don’t come out well from it.
Worth a read if you ever find it.
The Secret Life of Lobsters, by Trevor Corson, is quite simply the best biological book I have ever read. I followed it with The Lobster Chronicles, by Linda Greenlaw (who is the actual woman who is represented by an actress trying to talk the skipper played by George Clooney out of his fool’s errand in A Perfect Storm).
After she lost her friend in that storm, she gave up her career as a swordfish boat captain, and went home to a small island off Maine to fish for lobster. The book describes a season and its not very good. Although I get the sense she was very contrained by the fact that all her neighbours were a little tense about the writing of it.
She does get the whole ‘living on a small island, knowing everyone, knowing their faults and failings and adjusting to them so nobody will kill each other’ thing very well. I’m just not sure it’s as riveting a read as she thought it would be.
Salutary…
As for the fact that I spent quite a lot of my reading time last year reading up on lobsters… it’s all about the fishery, doncha know… you gotta get with the game when you’re in Nova Scotia.
It was funny… when I finished reading The Secret Life of Lobsters, Himself and I were down visiting his folks on Long Island for the weekend. I was so impressed by the book I couldn’t stop talking about it or lobsters, much to everyone’s amusement because usually I pay no heed to the talk of fish. Eventually I had to haul it out of my bag to show them what was pushing my buttons.
Turned out every guy in the room had read the book when it came out first.
It is a great book. Even if you have no interest in lobsters, fishermen, the sea, crustaceans, ocean currents, the Atlantic, North Eastern USA/ Canada, or whatever, you will still love this book.
It is such a labour of love. It is beautifully written. It is painstakingly researched. It understands that a lobster is just one example of the beauty, uniqueness, humour and genius of evolution. In fact, in the dying days of the Empire of Creationism (which is when I read it), it really was a refreshing reminder that the USA can do so much better than Bush and his cronies.
Did you know that lobsters urinate on each others heads when they’re horny? Lobster sex is the most interesting animal sex I have ever read about.
But even more interesting than the description of lobster sex is the description of how US scientists figured out every aspect of lobster sex.
And that’s what I love about this book; it’s celebration of enquiry.
I found Alexander the Great, Journey to the end of the Earth, by Norman F Cantor in the bargain bin at Chapters for $2. As Kitty was doing Classical History I bought it for her, but it ended up being read by me as I had suspected.
It was okay… the maps weren’t great and I would have preferred more what and less why, as we don’t know why.
Late in the year, I found a new second hand bookstore, DustJackets, in the bowels of the Aliant building on Barrington St. and celebrated by buying a copy of A Brief History of The Celts, Peter Bereford Ellis’ recommended tome for beginners in the subject.
It’s a very good, concise overview of every aspect of Celtic society. He breaks it down into aspects of Celtic life – laws, women, religion, politics, architecture, art, money, trade, etc. He does a good job with shitty sources. That’s the problem with the Celts – it’s either some Roman making up stuff about how they’re all mental and they eat brains, or it’s some monk in a monastery in Ireland banging on about Lugh of the Long Hand and giants and such like.
Ellis’ book is famous for being a serious attempt to make sense of it all and I must say I got a lot out of it.
Plus, I found out that my maternal surname is over 3,000 years old and is one of the oldest surviving surnames in Europe.
So there.
Finally, I bought a copy of Getting Past No this year, because it was time I did. This is the sequel to Getting to Yes, the bestselling book on negotiation written by the guys who invented interest-based bargaining.
If you haven’t read GTY yet, then what are you doing reading this article. Go out and buy it. When you get it, I mean get it as in get it…. practice that for a while and then buy Getting Past No.
If you haven’t done any of that stuff yet, and you have children who are going to be older than five soon, then just go straight past GTY and buy Getting Past No.
It’s good for puppies too.
That’s it for the non-fiction.
Onto CanLit...
