1.
Daniel O’Connell
Celtic Life International,
Sept-Oct 2014
The
grandest boulevard in Dublin, originally called Sackville Street, was renamed
O’Connell Street in 1924. At the south end of that street, overlooking the a
busy intersection and the River Liffey, stands a larger-than-life statue:
Daniel O’Connell. In Glasnevin Cemetery, on the city’s outskirts, O’Connell is
remembered with a round tower that dominates the graveyard. And at Derrynane,
the estate he inherited in southwest Ireland, visitors can see the magnificent
chariot in which O’Connell rode through Dublin, waving to the cheering
thousands who had gathered to celebrate his release from prison.
O’Connell
was jailed in 1843 when his non-violent “monster meetings” proved so effective
that the authorities felt threatened. His profound commitment to nonviolence would
inspire such figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who in the
twentieth century would adapt O’Connell’s approach to freedom struggles in
India and the United States.
O’Connell
was arguably the greatest statesman Ireland had ever produced. But one century before the Dublin
city fathers attached his name to their most splendid thoroughfare -- or 96
years, to be precise -- the man himself was fighting for his political life in
the town of Ennis, 250 km to the southwest in County Clare.
Today,
Ennis is a musical “boutique town,” population 25,000, situated on the River
Fergus between Limerick and Galway. It is less than 20 km from Shannon Airport,
and offers easy access to the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, and the Dingle
Peninsula. In June, my wife and I spent five days there for all these reasons,
but mainly because of Daniel O’Connell. I was researching a book about
outstanding Irish and Scottish figures and I wanted to get a sense of the place
where, almost two centuries ago, O’Connell made his first mark as a world
figure.
By then
he was forty-three. He had been born in August 1775 in a stone farmhouse
whose ruins can still be seen at Cahirsiveen, County Kerry, 200 km southwest of
Ennis. When he showed signs of being precocious, an uncle who owned an estate
(Derrynane) stepped in to educate him. After studying in France, and narrowly
escaping the violence of the French Revolution, O’Connell spent three years in
London, training as a lawyer. At a debate on the fate of Britain, he heard
Prime Minister William Pitt speak and took note of the man’s “majestic march of
language” -- the way he used lower tones to end sentences and threw his voice
to make himself heard at a distance. Inspired, O’Connell joined a debating
society and began training himself as a speaker.
Now
came a slow, steady climb to prominence. As a lawyer, he proved witty,
incisive, erudite, theatrical, fluent in English and Irish, creative -- soon
enough, peerless. His forte, according to biographer Charles Chenevix Trench,
“was the cross-examination of hostile witnesses.” With great good humour,
O’Connell would coax and confide, “from time to time rolling his large,
blue-grey eyes at judge and jury,” until he trapped the witness in a lie or
contradiction, and nailed him to the wall.
Born
and raised a Roman Catholic, O’Connell became politically active. Ireland’s Catholics.had been subject to
discrimination since England had gained control of the country in the 17th
century. They were barred from holding public office or serving in the army.
Members of the government had to be Anglicans, so that even Presbyterians --
mostly Scottish -- did not qualify. By the early 1700s, the Anglican ruling class,
known as the Protestant Ascendancy, had enacted Penal Laws to ensure their own
dominance over Catholics and Dissenters of all stripes.
By
the early 1800s, some of the worst excesses had been rescinded. Catholics could
serve in the armed forces or enter the legal profession, for example. Yet still
they could not inherit Protesant land, own a horse valued at more than five
pounds, become court judges, or be elected to serve in the British House of
Commons, which had governed the country since the 1801 Union of England and
Ireland.
O’Connell
set out to change all this, and to bring about “Catholic emancipation” by
democratic means. He insisted “that all ameliorations and improvements in
political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable
and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be
got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave
the country worse than they found it.”
In
1811, well-known as a barrister, O’Connell established the Catholic Board to
campaign specifically for Emancipation, or the right of Irish Catholics to
become Members of Parliament. A dozen years later, he turned this board into
the Catholic Association, a broadly focused organization that sought to improve
the Catholic situation generally. Gradually, he gained a massive following and
built a war chest to support pro-emancipation candidates standing in Ireland
for election to the British House of Commons. Yet because a discriminatory oath
of office demanded the renunciation of Catholicism, all of these propertied men
were Protestants.
In
1828, O’Connell decided to seek the election of an Irish Catholic who would go
to Westminster but refuse to take the reprehensible oath. When the 1828
byelection was called in County Clare, he anticipated that a prominent
Catholic, an ally from that County, would contest the election. When that
candidate withdrew, he agreed to stand himself -- not out of personal ambition,
he explained, but “to advocate a principle, which may in my person be
vindicated.”
The
election was to be held in Ennis. On Monday, June 30, 1828, after traveling day and
night by coach from Dublin, Daniel O’Connell arrived at two o’clock in the
morning. At the Court House a few hours later, his opponent, William Vesey
Fitzgerald, gave a tour-de-force speech that reduced most of the audience to
tears. As he rose to answer it, O’Connell -- already considered the greatest
Irish orator of the age -- knew he had his work cut out for him.
O’Connell
did not dislike Fitzgerald, a Protestant who supported Catholic Emancipation.
But if he were going to win this election, he had to demolish him verbally. In King Dan, biographer Patrick Geoghegan
shows how he did this with a speech that was “nasty, brutish, and brilliant,
without doubt one of the greatest of his life.”
O’Connell
charged that Fitzgerald belonged to a government that treated Catholics with
contempt. He lamented that he could not rise in his chosen profession because
he was a Catholic. He argued that Protestants could murder Catholics with
impunity, and that Catholics were not permitted even to mobilize. Fitzgerald’s
conduct was “barefaced and miserable hypocrisy.” The speech ended, Geoghegan
writes, “with a volley of execration for the combined enemies of the Catholic
cause” that had the crowd cheering, roaring, and laughing.
The
formal vote began the next day and, with people pouring into the town from the
countryside, lasted almost a week. When polling ended on Saturday, July 5,
O’Connell had won with 2,057 votes to 982. The people had elected a Roman
Catholic to enter the House of Commons.
In
February1829, O’Connell went to London to try to take his seat as a Catholic
member of Parliament. By now, the elected British government had accepted this
idea. But King George IV was trying to prevent it. Finally, in April, the emancipation bill gained royal assent.
Because of a technicality -- the bill did not become law until after the Ennis
election -- O’Connell had to get himself re-eected. This he did, unopposed, the
following July. And when Parliament resumed in February 1830, he took his seat
in the British House of Commons.
Having
planted a flag on behalf of Irish Catholics, Daniel O’Connell became known as
“The Liberator.” He would go on to fight many battles, and would even spend
three months in jail for non-violent political agitation. But as biographer
Charles Tenevix Trench observes in The
Great Dan, “the reputation of this greatest of Irishmen deserves to rest
not on what he might have done, nor on what he failed to do, but on his
wonderful achievement in 1828, which raised his people’s heads and straightened
their backs after generations of subjection and failure.”
In
Ennis, where Daniel O’Connell changed the course of history, the Old Court
House is long gone. But where once it stood we find O’Connell Square, which
boasts a sky-high, 74-foot tower topped by a statue of the great man. A local
historian, Jane O’Brien, sprinkles her daily guided walk around Ennis with
anecdotes about O’Connell. The town’s main street, she tells us, which has
taken his name, was once called Jail Street. And, this being Ireland, she takes
us past a lively pub: Dan O’Connell’s. Here in Ennis, as in Dublin, the great
man’s memory would appear to be cherished and protected.
2. Marvelling at the Legacy of Farley Mowat
National Post, May
16, 2014
The
recent death of Farley Mowat at 92 sparked heartfelt reminiscences and stirred
up old controversies. But the most interesting question, going forward,
concerns legacy. Some of us contend that Mowat was a giant. For starters, we
cite numbers: 45 books, 60 countries, and (ballpark) 15 million copies sold.
But if, as a writer, Mowat was a Gulliver in Lilliput, and not just
commercially, then surely he left a legacy? He must have established or
advanced some literary tradition? Profoundly influenced younger Canadian
writers?
The
answer is an emphatic yes. Born May 12, 1921, Mowat energized not only the Baby
Boomers, my own generation, but younger writers. Before going further, a
clarification: as a Canadian, Mowat is often linked with Pierre Berton, who was
born ten months before him. Both were prolific, larger-than-life personalities
published by Jack McClelland. Both wrote mainly nonfiction.
But
Berton, who cut his professional teeth as a journalist, became famous for
sweeping Canadian histories: The National
Dream, The Invasion of Canada, Vimy, The Great Depression, The Arctic Grail.
Contemporary Canadian historians who achieve readability while tackling big
themes are working in a tradition established by Berton and Peter C. Newman (The Canadian Establishment, Company of
Adventurers). Think of Margaret Macmillan and Paris, 1919, or of Christopher Moore and 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal. Think of such military
historians as Tim Cook, Mark Zuelke, and Ted Barris.
Farley
Mowat did not write history. He took a keen interest in prehistory, in
archaeology and legend, and so produced West-Viking
and The Farfarers. But looking
back at his long career in context, we discover that Mowat was Canada’s first
writer of creative nonfiction (CNF).
The
genre has been succinctly defined: “true stories, well told.” Its hallmark is
engagement: personal presence or voice. Celebrated early practitioners include
Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion. But Farley Mowat started publishing
in 1952, some fifteen years before these American figures emerged, largely from
the “new journalism.”
Mowat
had studied neither history nor literature. He had trained not as a journalist
but as a biologist. He had no veteran writer at his shoulder, offering advice.
When in the late 1940s, as a twenty-something environmentalist, Mowat sat down
to cobble a book together, he was alone in the dark. He wrote because he felt
deeply about the North, about the people and the wildlife he had recently
encountered.
Driven
by passion, and drawing on his extraordinary fluency, he produced The People of the Deer -- a powerful
indictment of government mistreatment of the Inuit. Did he exaggerate and make
mistakes? Yes, he did. Did he commit what today we regard as authorial sins?
Again: yes. But Mowat was finding his way in a wilderness, pioneering a new
genre of writing, one he called “subjective nonfiction.”
Today,
nobody uses that term. Writers, editors and critics lean to literary, narrative, or creative nonfiction (CNF). Over
the past 60 years, through trial and error and countless furious arguments, we
have hammered out a set of conventions. The writer of creative nonfiction
writer enters into a contract with the reader. You agree to tell the truth. You
don’t change dates, places, or other facts. You don’t invent characters. You
draw on research, memory, and imagination, and you use all the technical skill
you command to tell your true story.
As
these conventions emerged, Mowat evolved and worked within them. To survey his
body of work is to witness the development of a major writer. The rough
carpentry of People of the Deer gives
way to the equally searing but masterful Sea
of Slaughter. Down through the decades, while remaining true to his
singular vision, Mowat displayed an astonishing versatility. His permutations
and combinations represent a master class in the possibilities of creative
nonfiction. He did trail-blazing work in a variety of subgenres that other
Canadian writers have taken up and developed: environmental polemic,
autobiography/memoir, political polemic, exploration narrative, adventure
travel, cultural advocacy, cross-gender biographical narrative, the man never
stopped writing.
Mowat’s
environmental polemics include Never Cry
Wolf, A Whale for the Killing, and
Sea of Slaughter. All three inspired films. The first, published more than
50 years ago, crosses the line into fictionalizing and today would not pass
muster as nonfiction. It drew acclaim and sparked controversy in Canada, and in
translation, prompted Russia to change its laws regarding wolf culling.
In
A Whale For the Killing, Mowat
relates his losing battle to rescue a trapped whale from hunters who laughed to
kill it. And Sea of Slaughter (1984), probably
the most powerful of Mowat’s indictments, reviews in vivid detail the way we
humans have devastated birds, whales, and animal life along the Atlantic coast
of North America.
With
these books, Mowat cleared the way for John Vaillant (The Golden Spruce); Maude Barlow (Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever);
Taras Grescoe (Bottomfeeder); J.B.
MacKinnon (The Once and Future World);
Wayne Grady (Bringing Back the Dodo);
and Andrew Westoll (The Chimps of Fauna
Sanctuary).
Turning
to memoir/autobiography, CNF’S most popular subgenre, Mowat displayed an extraordinary
breadth of subject matter and mood. His harrowing evocations of life in the
trenches during the Second World War (The
Regiment, And No Birds Sang) contrast sharply with the comic misadventures
that drive such works as The Dog Who
Wouldn’t Be and The Boat Who Wouldn’t
Float. His spectrum, from the profoundly moving to the hilarious,
anticipates books ranging from Ian Brown’s The
Boy in the Moon to Will Ferguson’s light-hearted Canadian Pie, and from the darkness of Jan Wong’s Out of the Blue to the whimsy of Paul
Quarrington’s The Boy on the Back of the
Turtle.
Mowat
produced ferocious political polemics. The best-known is probably My Discovery of America, which he wrote
after being barred from entering the United States. In this sub-genre, his heirs
include Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism); Linda McQuaig (Billionaire’s Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality);
Stephen Kimber (What Lies Across the
Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five); and Lawrence Martin (Harperland: The Politics of Control).
While
he was at it, Farley Mowat “invented” the Canadian North -- certainly in terms
of global awareness, but also for many Canadians. In 1952, when he published The People of the Deer, readers around
the world said, what? Canada includes an Arctic dimension? And people actually
live in it? In a distinctive manner? Mowat drove this message home across three
CMF sub-genres: exploration narrative, adventure travel, and cultural advocacy.
Books like Coppermine Journey and Ordeal by Ice cleared the way for Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin
Expedition by John Geiger and Owen Beattie, and for my own Fatal Passage and Race to the Polar Sea.
Mowat’s
works of adventure travel found him ranging widely, from the north (High Latitudes: An Artic Journey) to the
European continent (Aftermath: Travels in
a Post-War World. His Canadian heirs include Charles Montgomery (The Last Heathen); Will Ferguson (Beyond Belfast); Charles Wilkins (Walk to New York); Karen Connelly (Burmese Lessons); Wayne Grady and
Merilyn Simonds (Breakfast at the Exit
Café); Myrna Kostash (Bloodlines: A
Journey into Eastern Europe); and J.B. MacKinnon (Dead Man in Paradise).
Mowat’s works of
cultural advocacy, from People of the
Deer through Death of a People
and No Man’s River, opened the road
for Ronald Wright (Stolen Continents),
Tom King (The Inconvenient Indian);
Daniel Francis (The Imaginary Indian); John
Ralston Saul (A Fair Country);
Richard Wagamese (One Native Life); Wade Davis (The Wayfinders); and Kenn Harper (Give Me My Father’s Body).
The master’s
adventure in cross-gender biographical narrative, Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey, encouraged Charlotte Gray’s
book about Alexander Graham Bell (Reluctant
Genius) and my own about the wife of Sir John Franklin (Lady Franklin’s Revenge). Yes, we
Canadian writers of CNF are all in this man’s debt.
Farley Mowat never
stopped working, never stopped sharing his vision, his passion, and his
literary gifts. He kept blazing trails, opening up one new path after
another. His death has turned us into a
first posterity, called upon to render judgment. On the one hand, we have a few
rookie-writer mistakes that are 50 and 60 years old. On the other, we discover
this marvellous legacy, still just launching. For those who read and write
creative nonfiction, the decision is a no-brainer. Farley Mowat, R.I.P. We will not see your like
again.
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