From little-known facts about musicians and a local moviemaker to the intriguing life and loves of Anne Lister, a.k.a. ‘Gentleman Jack,’ Western News suggests the following winter reads to take you through the holidays and into the new year.
A Cosmic Treasury: Seeing The Skies Through Poets’ Eyes
Edited by Beatrice Welling and Mark Tovey, BA’95, DipHon’97, professor, department of history
With A Cosmic Treasury, Mark Tovey, observatory curator at Western’s Cronyn Observatory, offers weekly poems and art for the year. The book showcases art and poetry about the night sky down the centuries, arranged by the calendar year.
The poems were selected 80 years ago by Western librarian Beatrice Welling and then lost. Rediscovered in 2019, here they are brought to life in book form with more than 100 pieces of astronomical art curated by Tovey, who is also a professor in the department of history.
In the foreword, David H. Levy, co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, writes: “What you find in these precious pages are poems that relate to specific months in the calendar. But there is far more than scheduling to a collection of poems. Each line of verse suggests a thought or an idea designed to force the reader to stop and think, to look around and see the world not for what it is, but for what is possible.”
Curating the collection was a labour of love for Tovey, who is recognized for his unique creations of astronomical period rooms at the Cronyn. Of the book he quips, “I decided right away that there wasn’t going to be any nudity in this book—surprisingly hard to achieve for an anthology of the art and poetry of the night sky. Within these covers you will find gorgeous images of transits of Venus, or the topography of Mars, but not the topography of Roman goddesses (or gods). It is, I am afraid, relentlessly wholesome.”
The book is available at the Western Bookstore and Oxford Book Shop.
101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts
David McPherson, BA’96, MAJ’98
As the clock strikes midnight this Dec. 31, David McPherson wants readers to remember that long before it became a New Year’s Eve tradition, Auld Lang Syne was being played by Canada’s greatest dance band leader Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. The band ended their sets with the song during their earliest gigs in places like the Stork Club in Port Stanley, Ont. That fact about the band leader from London, Ont. is one of 101 stories McPherson shares in his third book 101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts.
McPherson got his start as a music journalist writing for The Gazette student newspaper while attending Western. “Never did I imagine that some of the artists I interviewed as a nervous college reporter would become friends 30 years later.”
He combed through countless notes and memories to share little-known facts about a variety of Canadian musicians.
Did you know that Serena Ryder played the quietest concert ever from the ocean floor during low tide at Fundy National Park? What about 12-year-old Liberty Silver singing in a reggae band that opened for Bob Marley at Madison Square Garden? And what’s the story behind the title of The Tragically Hip’s 1991 album, Road Apples?
In choosing his stories, diversity, from a geographical and genre perspective, was important for McPherson.
“I didn’t want it all to be white rock from the sixties or seventies, so it involved deciding on a certain number of stories from the early years and representing a range of artists, musically and in terms of gender and race, from the East coast to the West.”
McPherson previously authored a pair of books on two of Canada’s most revered concert venues, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern and Massey Hall.
Al Christie: Hollywood’s Forgotten Film Pioneer
Mark Kearney, BA’77, lecturer, Faculty of Information and Media Studies
Mark Kearney’s interest in the silent film era has resulted in a biography of Al Christie, a filmmaker from London, Ont.
With over 1,000 short comedies and features to his credit, Al Christie was a prolific director and producer who made the first comedy films in the then little-known town of Hollywood starting in 1911 and left an indelible mark on the movie industry during his subsequent 30-year career.
“It’s my understanding this is the first full biography of Christie, so I’m glad as someone who lives in his hometown that I got to write the book about him,” said Kearney, a lecturer in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the department of English and writing studies.
Al Christie: Hollywood’s Forgotten Film Pioneer celebrates Christie’s life and work from his early days growing up in London, where he helped touring Vaudevillians hone their comic skills, to his years in Hollywood behind the camera during the silent film and early talkies’ era.
“I like to say that all of Hollywood film history starts with Christie,” Kearney said of the man who produced, directed and wrote the screenplays for early silent films, including Rowdy Ann, Charley’s Aunt and Hold Your Breath.
Kearney, first learned about Christie after browsing through movie history books at the Weldon Library. He spent the next 20 years, on and off, researching Christie’s life, travelling to California to interview various silent film experts and some distant relatives of Christie.
Kearney hopes his book will put a bigger spotlight on Christie, who died in 1951.
Although Christie has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there’s nothing in London or Canada recognizing his filmmaking achievements. Yet.
“I’ve contacted Canada’s Walk of Fame people in Toronto to suggest that they give him one,” Kearney said.
Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’
Co-edited by Chris Roulston, professor of French studies and gender, sexuality and women’s studies
Before Anne Lister became a cultural phenomenon in the BBC-HBO series Gentleman Jack, the 19th century diarist had already captured the attention of historians and scholars decades before. Among them, Chris Roulston, a professor in French studies and gender, sexuality and women’s studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Roulston, along with her co-editor, Caroline Gonda, recently released Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentlemen Jack’, a collection of essays exploring Lister’s negotiations with her own ‘odd’ identity, her multiple same-sex relationships, her involvement in politics and her lifelong thirst for knowledge.
“Lister has been well-known among historians and literary academics since the 1990s, but the series, Gentleman Jack, brought her into popular culture,” Roulston said. “Caroline and I had planned the book before the series came out in 2019, but we already felt Lister’s star was rising and that this was the right moment to showcase new scholarship on the diaries. We were also lucky enough to get an interview with Sally Wainwright, the writer and producer of Gentleman Jack.”
Lister’s diaries are five million words long – the longest in the English language – and 15 per cent of them are in code, detailing Lister’s sexual relationships with women.
“For an early nineteenth-century woman (1791-1840), that in itself is extraordinary, but Lister was outside the norm in almost everything she did, including opening her own coal mine, being the first person (not just the first woman) to climb the highest peak in the French Pyrenees, and refusing to be bound by the constraints of gender or sexuality in anything she set her mind to,” Roulston said. “I think it’s this refusal of boundaries, and drive and zest for life that has made readers and viewers today feel so connected to her.”
The foreword of Roulston’s book is by author Emma Donoghue, who released Learned by Heart, a historical novel based on Lister’s first love, earlier this year.
Learned by Heart
Emma Donoghue, DLitt’13
The historical fiction novel Learned by Heart, by best-selling author and former Western writer-in-residence Emma Donoghue, is inspired by Anne Lister’s first love affair at 14 years, with Eliza Raine. Lister and Raine, an orphaned, biracial heiress from Madras, India, fell in love while sharing an attic room at Miss Hargrave’s Manor school in York.
While Donoghue has been fascinated with Lister since first encountering her diaries as a graduate student, Learned by Heart focuses more on the lesser-known Raine’s untold story.
Quill and Quire calls Learned by Heart a “salient, passionate example of how historical fiction can expose and enrich histories that are otherwise obscured,” while The Suburban heralds it as a “heartbreaking novel that is sure to stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page.”
Someone Like Her
Awais Khan, BA’08
The setting for Awais Khan’s latest book is Multan, Pakistan – a conservative city where an unmarried woman over the age of twenty-five is considered a curse by her family.
“Shining a spotlight on societal issues can be done in a multitude of ways, but none as immediate and powerful as compelling fiction,” Khan said. “Pakistan has a long and sad history of domestic abuse and coercion. Strong independent women have long been forced to conform to societal expectations and when some of them resist, they can be subjected to unthinkable revenge. Such is the story of 27-year-old Ayesha when she catches the eye of wealthy and influential Raza Masood in Someone Like Her.”
All Black Everything
Shane Book, BA’93
All Black Everything, the third poetry collection by Shane Book, is described as a mashup of voices and styles that’s both performative and musical.
Book, an award-winning poet, filmmaker and professor in the writing department at University of Victoria, had originally intended to sample lyrics from rappers throughout the collection, until he discovered securing permission would be too costly. Instead, he rewrote 93 of the passages that contained hip-hop lyrics, keeping only three.
In an interview with UVic News, Book said his latest release “has a lot of hip-hop references and these kinds of attitudes that you see in hip-hop, this kind of braggadocio that is maybe not as common in poetry. And then it also has more modernist, lyric poems. So, it’s a real mixture.”
Sudan Media Makers: Writers from the Diaspora
Mohamed A. Satti, professor, Ivey Business School
In Sudan Media Makers: Writings from the Diaspora, Ivey Business School professor Mohamed A. Satti identifies and interviews six prominent Sudanese media personalities in the diaspora to tell their stories and examine their contributions to Sudanese media. The media and communication professionals are from a variety of backgrounds. They include print and television journalists, a political cartoonist, and a novelist. Throughout the book, Satti connects the lives of these media makers to the history of Sudan from the last three decades to the present, providing insights on Sudan, Sudanese media, and the Sudanese people.
“Not a lot of literature has been written about Sudan in general,” Satti said of his home country. “There are books written about Sudan’s history, politics, and geography, but when it comes to the media situation, there’s a genuine dearth, and you will not find a single book written in English about Sudan’s media personalities.”
Each of the six media personalities Satti interviewed are well known for their storytelling, including Nima Elbagir, an award-winning investigative journalist for CNN, fiction novelist Leila Aboulela, and political cartoonist Khalid Albaih.
The American Liberty Pole: Popular Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in the Early Republic
Shira Lurie, BA’12, MA’13
During the American Revolution and into the early republic, “liberty poles”— tall wooden poles bearing political flags and signs—were a central fixture as a form of political expression and public dissent, often leading to conflict and confrontation. Protesters raised liberty poles as a sign of resistance to government rule, while counter-protesters often tore them down.
In her book, The American Liberty Pole: Popular Politics and the Struggle for Democracy in the Early Republic, Shira Lurie covers the first debates over protest, monuments, and political expression in the United States.
“My book explains how and why Americans continue to fight over the way citizens should seek political change in a democratic republic,” said Lurie, who makes links between the past and present, demonstrating the long history of American debates over protest, monuments, elections and free speech.
The Character Compass: Transforming Leadership for the 21st Century
Professors Mary Crossan, MBA’85, PhD’91, and Gerard Seijts, and Bill Furlong, executive-in-residence, Ivey Business School
When Mary Crossan, Gerard Seijts, and Bill Furlong first considered what was needed for leaders, employees, and corporations to thrive in the current global environment, every road they explored led back to character. In particular, they saw the need to prioritize character at the same level as competencies within organizations to achieve results.
“There are multiple crises facing the world right now, and it seems clear we are struggling to navigate our way through them. A lot of smart people are working hard to try to find solutions but there seems to be something missing. We think that something is character,” said Furlong, executive-in-residence at the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership at Ivey Business School.
“Given the complex, ambiguous, uncertain, high-pressure nature of the workplace in which Ivey graduates are heading into and the struggles people are having with well-being, it would be irresponsible to send anyone into that environment without the strength of character to be able to navigate it,” he said.
Furlong, along with Ivey professors Crossan and Seijts, combined their decades of experience into their new book, The Character Compass: Transforming Leadership for the 21st Century. The book is a practical, evidence-based guide for practitioners to take stock of – and reshape – their character and that of their organizations to create sustained excellence and improve personal well-being.
*with files from Ivey Business School
