Sarah Binks - Brossura

Hiebert, Paul

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0771034539 ISBN 13: 9780771034534

Casa editrice: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1991

Riassunto

Paul Hiebert’s critical biography of the wholly mythical but irrepressible and irresistible Sarah Binks, “the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan,” who gave her life to poetry and died a martyr to the muse, is a hilarious analysis of her career and influences, along with a memorable selection of the poet's tenderest, most inspiring writings.

This masterpiece of satire won the 1947 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

PAUL HIEBERT was born on 17 July 1892 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and grew up in Altona. A professor of chemistry at the University of Manitoba, Hiebert was best known for his novel Sarah Binks, which won a Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and was a Canada Reads selection in 2003.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

Childhood and Early Life
 
A plain shaft of composition stone with the simple inscription:
 
Here Lies
Sarah Binks
 
marks the last resting place of the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan. Below the inscription at the base of the shaft in smaller letters is carved the motto; alone, and above it in larger type:
 
this monument was erected by the
citizens of the municipality
of North Willows
and was unveiled on July 1, 1931
by
the Hon. Augustus E. Windheaver
in the presence of
the reeve and council
 
Here follows the names of the reeve and councillors together with the names of a number of outstanding statesmen of the day. Truly a fitting tribute to so great a woman. And it is no less a tribute to the Province of Saskatchewan that on the occasion of the unveiling of this monument the register of names at the Commercial House at Willows should be at the same time the roster of the greatest of Saskatchewan’s sons. The Hon. A.E. Windheaver writes of that occasion in a letter to his committee;
 
It was hot as hell! There was no making it by road and we could have arranged for a hot box to hold the 4.46 for half an hour, but it was no use. We had to stick it until everybody was through. I think I was wise to leave out the tariff in my speech. This Sarah seems to be something of a tin god around here.
 
Something of a god! The tribute of a great statesman to a great artist and a great woman.
 
Half way between Oak Bluff and Quagmire in Saskatchewan lies the little town of North Willows. Its public buildings are unpretentious but pure in architectural style. A post office, two general stores, Charley Wong’s restaurant and billiard parlour, two United churches, the Commercial House (Lib.), the Clarendon Hotel (Cons.), a drug store, a consolidated school, and eighteen filling stations, make up the east side of Railroad Avenue, its chief commercial street. On the west side Railway Avenue is taken up by the depot, the lumber yard and four elevators. At right angles to Railway Avenue runs Post Office Street, so called because the post office was on this street before the last provincial election. It is, however, generally known simply as the Correction Line.
 
Business in Willows is not what it used to be. The Board of Trade meets every Thursday night above Charley Wong’s, and the younger set of the town is beginning to give up auction bridge in favour of contract, but in spite of these signs of progress there has been little real growth for several years. The town is now in what is known as the dry belt. Once it boasted seven elevators; one was torn down and two were destroyed by fire and have not been rebuilt. But Willows has little need for commercial greatness. It lives in its glorious past, and to its shrine every year come hundreds who pause for a brief moment at the Clarendon Hotel or the Commercial House, or buy gasoline at the “Sarah Filling Station.”
 
If we follow Post Office Street, or the Correction Line, due east for half a mile to where it corrects we come to Willow View Cemetery where Sarah Binks’ monument stands. From a distance it appears to rise in lonely grandeur. If we follow Post Office Street due west for a mile and a quarter from the town, we come to the North East Quarter of Section 37, Township 21, Range 9, West, the former home of Sarah Binks herself. Little remains of the old homestead. The house itself has been torn down by souvenir hunters, one of the barns leans drunkenly and the other is about to fall. Gophers play on the site of the little corral where Sarah kept the calf, wild roses grow where once were beans and potatoes. In the coulee, now dry, that ran behind the house, a meadowlark has built its nest. It may have been that Sarah, with the prophetic eye of the poetess, visualized this scene when, in her later years, she wrote those famous lines, now inscribed in bronze over the gateway of St. Midget’s, entitled, Ode to A Deserted Farm.
 
How changed and bleak the meadows lie
And overgrown with hay,
The fields of oats and barley
Where the binder twined its way!
 
With doors ajar the cottage stands
Deserted on the hill –
No welcome bark, no thudding hoof,
And the voice of the pig is still.
 
The west was still the West in the days when Jacob and Agathea Binks first homesteaded the N.E. ¼ Sec. 37, Township 21, R. 9, W. To the east lay Oak Bluff, the end of the steel. To the west stretched the boundless prairies of the North West Territories, in which, to quote Sarah’s own words, “The hand of man hath never trod.” Here was the home of the coyote and the gopher, the antelope still flaunted his lack of tail to the western wind, and the pensive mosquito wandered unafraid. A region rich in historical interests and traditions, of tales of Indian fights with their squaws, of squaws with the Mounted Police. Willows was then Wallows, and the very name, Oak Bluff, was derived from an old Indian word, or combination of words, indicating that at that spot the white man had been frightened, or, to use the Indian term, “bluffed” at a conference between Chief Buffalo Chip and Colonel MacSqueamish, the outcome being described by the chief in the Cree dialect as being “oke,” meaning very good, or excellent.
 
Into this free and untrammelled country came Jacob Binks and his wife Agathea (née Agathea Thurnow), the parents of Sarah. It is not known exactly from where they came but, from a report of a conversation in front of the post office, and from the fact that Sarah was often wont to refer to herself proudly as a daughter of the Old South, it is now generally accepted that they came from South Dakota. Beyond this fact we know little of the Binks antecedents. The Thurnows, however, are said to have traced their family back to Confederation. The parish records in Quoddykodiac in New Brunswick show that a daughter Agathea was born to one Abram Turnip and that the Turnips later moved to South Dakota. The name Turnip may have been Americanized to Thurnip and later to Thurnow.
 
Prosperity smiled upon Jacob and Agathea Binks. The original sod house of the homesteader was replaced by a more pretentious frame building faced with best quality tar paper and having an outside stairs leading to the guest room over the kitchen roof. One entered the “lean- to” or antechamber before reaching the main body of the house and living quarters. This antechamber served the purpose of receiving and storage room. In it was kept the fuel, the churn, the harnesses undergoing repair, here the chickens were plucked, the eggs collected, and here slept Rover, the dog, and Ole, the hired man. Through the antechamber one passed into the kitchen and from there into the parlour which in turn led into the bedrooms.
 
The birthplace of Sarah has been described as having been furnished with some taste. Around the walls of the parlour were hung in pairs the ancestral portraits; Jacob and Agathea Binks in bevelled glass and gilt frames occupied the south wall. A crayon enlargement of Grandfather Thadeus T. Thurnow, together with a black and white steel engraving of a prize sheep which bore a remarkable resemblance to the old gentleman, occupied the north wall. The gaze of all four was thoughtfully concentrated upon the Quebec heater which stood in the mathematical centre of the room. This heater, when glowing with fire, not only served the purpose of heating the room, but acted during the night as a species of navigating light from the bedrooms to the outdoors via the kitchen when the occasion required. The keynote of severely artistic, almost geometrical simplicity, marked the arrangement of the three chairs and sideboard which completed the appointments.
 
The parlour was used only on great occasions. Rover and Ole were never allowed to use this room if we except the one occasion when, according to Dr. Taj Mahal, who claims to have examined the floor, the former made a complete circuit of the freshly painted surface, paused for a moment at one of the chairs and departed through the north window.
 
The kitchen too, was not without its artistic touches, but here a lighter and more imaginative motif prevails, the influence of the Thurnows to which Sarah’s artistic and imaginative qualities may always be referred. Two calendars in particular mark the aesthetic discrimination of the home. One shows a vessel in full sail in dangerous proximity to the Eddystone Light, and the other, of more idyllic theme, shows in an orchard a young woman of beautiful proportions offering a cherry to a young man of her acquaintance. One of these calendars is said by experts to be an original. (Both are preserved in the Binksian collection.) But quite apart from the cultural influence which these two great pictures must have had upon the susceptible mind of the young Sarah, they bear a great significance in that they enable us to fix with considerable certainty the dates of several of her early poems. Professor R. Ambush has called attention to the fact that the date of April 1st bears the entry “caff,” and that this refers to the date on which Sarah’s pet calf was born and that those poignant lines of Calf could not have been written before this date and were probably written soon after since it had not yet received a name;
 
Oh calf, that gambolled by my door,
Who made me rich who now am poor,
That licked my hand with milk bespread,
Oh calf, calf! Art dead, art dead?
 
Oh calf, I sit and languish, calf,
With somber face, I cannot laugh,
Can I forget thy playful bunts?
Oh calf, calf, that loved me once!
 
With mildewed optics, deathlike, still,
My nights are damp, my days are chill,
I weep again with doleful sniff,
Oh calf, calf, so dead, so stiff.
 
Sarah was the second or possibly the third child of Agathea and Jacob Binks. No...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
• Data di pubblicazione: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0771034539
• ISBN 13: 9780771034534
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 184