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Forty Years in Canada
In his foreword to a recent biography of Robert Service, the successful and prolific novelist and former actor Jack Whyte described the magical day in his childhood when he heard a recitation of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."; From that moment on his literary taste was set, and his heroes were Robert Service, Rudyard Kipling, and later his fellow-countryman, Robert Burns.
Now Whyte has detoured from his two series of novels based on the Arthurian legends and the Knights Templar for an upbeat memoir of "personal, often trivial reminiscences"; to showcase his prolific talent for versifying. This is not a compelling tell-all confessional work; Jack Whyte's Forty Years in Canada (Heritage $29.95) is much lighter fare to give reign to his life-long passion for popular ballads, folk-songs and story poems with their satisfying rhyme schemes, repetitions and refrains that are easy to memorize and fun to perform. "If a song strikes me immediately as being wonderful,"; he writes, "I can learn it within minutes-the lyrics and melody practically burn themselves into my mind.";
We learn that when Whyte immigrated to Canada in 1967, his luggage contained a multi-volume set of Child's ballads, and he eventually launched a one-man crusade "to rescue narrative verse from postmodern oblivion."; In fact, some of the few lapses in his unshakable good humour occur when he is reminded that "literary pretentiousness"; has consigned his favourite verse form "to the garbage can of history"; and caused it to be excommunicated from the literary canon.
Whyte's own exercises in the genre include pieces for public performance before large crowds, and for private occasions among friends. One of his most popular works resulted from a 1973 invitation to propose the toast To the Immortal Memory at the annual Robbie Burns Supper of the Royal Canadian Legion in Lethbridge. It was a daunting assignment because the year before Tommy Douglas had proposed the toast. Whyte decided to adapt the bard's own verse from "Tam O' Shanter"; and in two 45-minute sessions produced "A Toast to Canada-Our Adopted Land,"; a fifteen stanza poem, of which this is the tenth stanza:
Oh, Robert Burns, could you but see
This mighty and superb country,
I think your Muse would hide her heid,
So great would be your bardic need
To capture, with an image terse,
A different scene in every verse,
For here's a country that demands
Fair play, Rob, at the poet's hands.
A friend who witnessed the enthusiastic response of the audience created an illuminated scroll of the poem, and 20,000 copies of it were eventually sold. Whyte was called on to recite the piece on many occasions. The most memorable of these was at the Canadian National Exhibition's Scottish World Festival, where he stood alone on a field before thousands of people.
The forty-five narrative poems, which form the core of this memoir, are linked by sections of prose that describe their genesis and place them in the context of Whyte's career in Canada. For a wedding anniversary party he wrote "Thank God for John and Betty Stein,";
Most men today, they will snidely say,
On a scale of one to ten,
Are as prone to cheat as to eat red meat
And reduce their wives to tears...
So thank God for John and Betty Stein
And their forty years...
For his step-son's coming of age, he wrote, "For Mitch, at Twenty-One,";
Congratulations, Mitch, your first lap's run;
You've left boyhood behind, you're twenty one;
A formal, legal adult, fully grown
And from this day forth, son, you're on your own...
After visiting his wife's native province, he wrote "Saskatchewan,";
Only a few, a loyal few
Endured and stayed to learn and grew
To love Saskatchewan and knew
The beauties of her face;
For, when she smiles, her countenance
Is open, loving, and her glance
Will melt your heart and brace your stance
With pride, and strength, and grace.
Along the way, Whyte describes his arrival at the Edmonton airport to take up a teaching post in the town of Athabasca, ninety miles north of the city. His disillusionment with the educational system is specific to Alberta where the response to his Universite de Poitiers diploma was "we don't talk French in cattle-country."; Nevertheless it will resonate with every teacher who immigrated to North America from Britain, Europe, and Australia only to find their qualifications from major universities called into question and found wanting. Some made up the perceived deficiencies with courses from departments of Education; many simply found other work.
Whyte, who was clearly a gifted and inspirational teacher, was one of the latter. He turned first to singing and entertaining in such venues as the Calgary Stampede show and the Tradewinds Hotel in Calgary. Then, benefiting from that experience, he moved on to a successful cross-country tour with a one-man show "Rantin,' Rovin' Robin-A Night With Robert Burns,"; that he wrote and performed himself. He became a television scriptwriter, had a successful career in communications and, more recently, wrote a dozen internationally best-selling novels.
The many fans who have witnessed Whyte's skill as an entertainer will, no doubt, relish every last rhyming couplet of his narrative verse, no matter how banal, but, in the opinion of this reviewer, the prose sections are the strongest part of this memoir. Details of his private life and his career as a novelist are not forthcoming, but it's clear Whyte has a lively intelligence to go with his exuberant behavior on stage.
978-1-894974-22-6
by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2007]
Now Whyte has detoured from his two series of novels based on the Arthurian legends and the Knights Templar for an upbeat memoir of "personal, often trivial reminiscences"; to showcase his prolific talent for versifying. This is not a compelling tell-all confessional work; Jack Whyte's Forty Years in Canada (Heritage $29.95) is much lighter fare to give reign to his life-long passion for popular ballads, folk-songs and story poems with their satisfying rhyme schemes, repetitions and refrains that are easy to memorize and fun to perform. "If a song strikes me immediately as being wonderful,"; he writes, "I can learn it within minutes-the lyrics and melody practically burn themselves into my mind.";
We learn that when Whyte immigrated to Canada in 1967, his luggage contained a multi-volume set of Child's ballads, and he eventually launched a one-man crusade "to rescue narrative verse from postmodern oblivion."; In fact, some of the few lapses in his unshakable good humour occur when he is reminded that "literary pretentiousness"; has consigned his favourite verse form "to the garbage can of history"; and caused it to be excommunicated from the literary canon.
Whyte's own exercises in the genre include pieces for public performance before large crowds, and for private occasions among friends. One of his most popular works resulted from a 1973 invitation to propose the toast To the Immortal Memory at the annual Robbie Burns Supper of the Royal Canadian Legion in Lethbridge. It was a daunting assignment because the year before Tommy Douglas had proposed the toast. Whyte decided to adapt the bard's own verse from "Tam O' Shanter"; and in two 45-minute sessions produced "A Toast to Canada-Our Adopted Land,"; a fifteen stanza poem, of which this is the tenth stanza:
Oh, Robert Burns, could you but see
This mighty and superb country,
I think your Muse would hide her heid,
So great would be your bardic need
To capture, with an image terse,
A different scene in every verse,
For here's a country that demands
Fair play, Rob, at the poet's hands.
A friend who witnessed the enthusiastic response of the audience created an illuminated scroll of the poem, and 20,000 copies of it were eventually sold. Whyte was called on to recite the piece on many occasions. The most memorable of these was at the Canadian National Exhibition's Scottish World Festival, where he stood alone on a field before thousands of people.
The forty-five narrative poems, which form the core of this memoir, are linked by sections of prose that describe their genesis and place them in the context of Whyte's career in Canada. For a wedding anniversary party he wrote "Thank God for John and Betty Stein,";
Most men today, they will snidely say,
On a scale of one to ten,
Are as prone to cheat as to eat red meat
And reduce their wives to tears...
So thank God for John and Betty Stein
And their forty years...
For his step-son's coming of age, he wrote, "For Mitch, at Twenty-One,";
Congratulations, Mitch, your first lap's run;
You've left boyhood behind, you're twenty one;
A formal, legal adult, fully grown
And from this day forth, son, you're on your own...
After visiting his wife's native province, he wrote "Saskatchewan,";
Only a few, a loyal few
Endured and stayed to learn and grew
To love Saskatchewan and knew
The beauties of her face;
For, when she smiles, her countenance
Is open, loving, and her glance
Will melt your heart and brace your stance
With pride, and strength, and grace.
Along the way, Whyte describes his arrival at the Edmonton airport to take up a teaching post in the town of Athabasca, ninety miles north of the city. His disillusionment with the educational system is specific to Alberta where the response to his Universite de Poitiers diploma was "we don't talk French in cattle-country."; Nevertheless it will resonate with every teacher who immigrated to North America from Britain, Europe, and Australia only to find their qualifications from major universities called into question and found wanting. Some made up the perceived deficiencies with courses from departments of Education; many simply found other work.
Whyte, who was clearly a gifted and inspirational teacher, was one of the latter. He turned first to singing and entertaining in such venues as the Calgary Stampede show and the Tradewinds Hotel in Calgary. Then, benefiting from that experience, he moved on to a successful cross-country tour with a one-man show "Rantin,' Rovin' Robin-A Night With Robert Burns,"; that he wrote and performed himself. He became a television scriptwriter, had a successful career in communications and, more recently, wrote a dozen internationally best-selling novels.
The many fans who have witnessed Whyte's skill as an entertainer will, no doubt, relish every last rhyming couplet of his narrative verse, no matter how banal, but, in the opinion of this reviewer, the prose sections are the strongest part of this memoir. Details of his private life and his career as a novelist are not forthcoming, but it's clear Whyte has a lively intelligence to go with his exuberant behavior on stage.
978-1-894974-22-6
by Joan Givner
[BCBW 2007]
Submitted on November 15, 2007 in By David.
