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Cadillac Cathedral
Love is a many-splendoured hearse
review by Cherie Thiessen
Take one laconic Finn, Arvo Saarikoski, a retired mechanic who, since leaving the logging camps, has lavished his love on abandoned cars. He spends much of his time restoring them and handing them off to his friends and neighbours.
Now add a vessel that makes his heart race, a 1930s hearse, the Cadillac Cathedral, left to molder in the mountains and subsequently used to haul logs. It's was an old-time glass-walled horse-drawn carriage, modified with an open-air driver's cab, sporting a long engine hood out front and a running board with a mounted spare tire alongside.
So Arvo's in love.
Then take a small but indefatigable flame that has been burning in him for over half a century, cherished memories of his childhood love, Myrtle Birdsong. Is she why Arvo has never married?
Cadillac Cathedral (Ronsdale $18.95) is made from a distinctly Jack Hodgins' literary recipe using locally sourced characters and settings. The hearse used to belong to Myrtle's undertaker father. Is it possible that by restoring the grand old hearse and returning it to Myrtle in the big city, he just might have a chance? Arvo's flame of love is leaping higher, but does he have the nerve?
But there's a detour on the road to bliss. When a well-like retired politician in Portuguese Creek dies, the only relative is an estranged son, so friends of the deceased, Martin Glass, gather in Arvo's garage and decide they ought to bring home Martin's remains for a proper send-off. But in what?
One of Arvo's friends, Peterson, recalls seeing the venerable old 'gal' in the forest.
Hodgins is a master taleteller and he's never going to be caught dead with only one dish on his table. As always, his fictional Vancouver Island community and characters become large as life in all their laid-back and humorous detail. The origins of the story emanate from his mid-island upbringing between Courtenay and Campbell River.
"I had toyed with the idea of once again using the little rural community I call Portuguese Creek,"; says Hodgins. "It's named after the real creek that wandered through nearly every farm in the community where I grew up.
"While I had never tinkered with old cars myself, I knew several who did and I recall one property nearby where there was always a gathering of old vehicles waiting their turn to be repaired or ransacked for parts.
"So I began with an image of a small group of pals watching a friend fix up a damaged vehicle in his workshop. I only realized much later that I'd already invented a very similar situation in an earlier novel.";
A short stage version of Hodgins' story was written first after the Vancouver-based Chor Leoni asked him to write a piece which they would set to music and sing in concert in early February performances in Vancouver, Nanaimo and Victoria. (See www.chorleoni.org.) Hodgins became intrigued and spun a longer tale for the new novel.
"I didn't know what he [Arvo] would find in the city,"; says Hodgins, "and I didn't know how Myrtle would react to him, until Arvo and his friends had brought me to the situation.
"By this time I had come to know that Myrtle was much more than simply Arvo's imagined 'goal.' She would have to have a story, an attitude, and a future of her own. By travelling with Arvo and his pals, I gradually discovered that what he had gone looking for was not necessarily what he would find.";
Myrtle is still available, as it turns out. She still lives in the town where she and Arvo grew up. But will she reciprocate the lanky old Fin's feelings? Will he even knock on her door?
All of Vancouver Island seems bent on keeping him from accomplishes his mission. Arvo is stymied by the slow speed of the hearse itself, the desire of an ambitious realtor to own the hearse at all costs to advertise his business and the 'borrowing' of the Cadillac for a 'pre funeral' (because there's no such thing as 'theft' on Vancouver Island back roads).
The detours and diversions of Arvo's accompanying pals who are helping to escort the hearse to pick up Martin's body are one thing; the fascination of the motorists who find themselves in an impromptu cavalcade behind the old 4-wheeled 'dowager' are another.
And then there are the machinations of one the regular visitors to Arvo's garage, retired schoolteacher, Cynthia O'Brien. Who can blame the winsome Cynthia for imagining what the single-minded devotion that Arvo has consistently put into restoring wrecks might be like when directed toward a woman? Or for wondering whether some of that long-nurtured love for Birdsong might spill her way?
I suspect some female readers might find the ending unconvincing, or frustrating, but it's definitely worth going along for the bumpy ride to arrive at the wake to end all wakes back in Portuguese Creek.
This is a welcome tale in the spirit of Hodgins' light-hearted novel that earned him a Governor General's Award for Fiction, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (1979), celebrating a potpourri of characters in the coastal town of Port Alice, as well as his venerable and much-loved first collection of stories, Spit Delaney's Island (1976). Both have been newly republished by Ronsdale Press, along with Hodgins' The Invention of the World and The Barclay Family Theatre.
978-1-55380-298-3
Cherie Thiessen regularly reviews fiction from Pender Island.
[BCBW 2014]
review by Cherie Thiessen
Take one laconic Finn, Arvo Saarikoski, a retired mechanic who, since leaving the logging camps, has lavished his love on abandoned cars. He spends much of his time restoring them and handing them off to his friends and neighbours.
Now add a vessel that makes his heart race, a 1930s hearse, the Cadillac Cathedral, left to molder in the mountains and subsequently used to haul logs. It's was an old-time glass-walled horse-drawn carriage, modified with an open-air driver's cab, sporting a long engine hood out front and a running board with a mounted spare tire alongside.
So Arvo's in love.
Then take a small but indefatigable flame that has been burning in him for over half a century, cherished memories of his childhood love, Myrtle Birdsong. Is she why Arvo has never married?
Cadillac Cathedral (Ronsdale $18.95) is made from a distinctly Jack Hodgins' literary recipe using locally sourced characters and settings. The hearse used to belong to Myrtle's undertaker father. Is it possible that by restoring the grand old hearse and returning it to Myrtle in the big city, he just might have a chance? Arvo's flame of love is leaping higher, but does he have the nerve?
But there's a detour on the road to bliss. When a well-like retired politician in Portuguese Creek dies, the only relative is an estranged son, so friends of the deceased, Martin Glass, gather in Arvo's garage and decide they ought to bring home Martin's remains for a proper send-off. But in what?
One of Arvo's friends, Peterson, recalls seeing the venerable old 'gal' in the forest.
Hodgins is a master taleteller and he's never going to be caught dead with only one dish on his table. As always, his fictional Vancouver Island community and characters become large as life in all their laid-back and humorous detail. The origins of the story emanate from his mid-island upbringing between Courtenay and Campbell River.
"I had toyed with the idea of once again using the little rural community I call Portuguese Creek,"; says Hodgins. "It's named after the real creek that wandered through nearly every farm in the community where I grew up.
"While I had never tinkered with old cars myself, I knew several who did and I recall one property nearby where there was always a gathering of old vehicles waiting their turn to be repaired or ransacked for parts.
"So I began with an image of a small group of pals watching a friend fix up a damaged vehicle in his workshop. I only realized much later that I'd already invented a very similar situation in an earlier novel.";
A short stage version of Hodgins' story was written first after the Vancouver-based Chor Leoni asked him to write a piece which they would set to music and sing in concert in early February performances in Vancouver, Nanaimo and Victoria. (See www.chorleoni.org.) Hodgins became intrigued and spun a longer tale for the new novel.
"I didn't know what he [Arvo] would find in the city,"; says Hodgins, "and I didn't know how Myrtle would react to him, until Arvo and his friends had brought me to the situation.
"By this time I had come to know that Myrtle was much more than simply Arvo's imagined 'goal.' She would have to have a story, an attitude, and a future of her own. By travelling with Arvo and his pals, I gradually discovered that what he had gone looking for was not necessarily what he would find.";
Myrtle is still available, as it turns out. She still lives in the town where she and Arvo grew up. But will she reciprocate the lanky old Fin's feelings? Will he even knock on her door?
All of Vancouver Island seems bent on keeping him from accomplishes his mission. Arvo is stymied by the slow speed of the hearse itself, the desire of an ambitious realtor to own the hearse at all costs to advertise his business and the 'borrowing' of the Cadillac for a 'pre funeral' (because there's no such thing as 'theft' on Vancouver Island back roads).
The detours and diversions of Arvo's accompanying pals who are helping to escort the hearse to pick up Martin's body are one thing; the fascination of the motorists who find themselves in an impromptu cavalcade behind the old 4-wheeled 'dowager' are another.
And then there are the machinations of one the regular visitors to Arvo's garage, retired schoolteacher, Cynthia O'Brien. Who can blame the winsome Cynthia for imagining what the single-minded devotion that Arvo has consistently put into restoring wrecks might be like when directed toward a woman? Or for wondering whether some of that long-nurtured love for Birdsong might spill her way?
I suspect some female readers might find the ending unconvincing, or frustrating, but it's definitely worth going along for the bumpy ride to arrive at the wake to end all wakes back in Portuguese Creek.
This is a welcome tale in the spirit of Hodgins' light-hearted novel that earned him a Governor General's Award for Fiction, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne (1979), celebrating a potpourri of characters in the coastal town of Port Alice, as well as his venerable and much-loved first collection of stories, Spit Delaney's Island (1976). Both have been newly republished by Ronsdale Press, along with Hodgins' The Invention of the World and The Barclay Family Theatre.
978-1-55380-298-3
Cherie Thiessen regularly reviews fiction from Pender Island.
[BCBW 2014]
Submitted on January 14, 2014 in By David.
