James Reaney

“The Box Social” screenplay success

Congratulations to student Scott Summerhayes, whose screenplay based on James Reaney’s short story, “The Box Social,” is one of the Top 13 Finalists in the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition.

“The Box Social” was originally published in 1947 in The Undergrad at the University of Toronto, and then in the popular magazine The New Liberty. Here’s what Reaney had to say about why he wrote the story, in an autobiographical piece from 1992:

“Out of the deep past it somehow came to me, I think from my mother talking about the way men treated women in our neighbourhood. They never struck back; well, in my story one of them did.” (James Crerar Reaney, Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 15, page 304.)

James Reaney’s short stories are collected in The Box Social and Other Stories, available from The Porcupine’s Quill.

Port Dover students triumph in Sticks and Stones

Congratulations to Mrs. Val Smith and her Theatre Partnership class at the Port Dover Composite School on their very successful performance of Sticks and Stones in Port Dover on January 13th and 14th. Val Smith encouraged the cast by pointing out that this was “the most beautiful and most difficult text they had ever dealt with or would ever deal with in high school.”

Val Smith and the cast of Sticks and Stones, Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Port Dover

The students succeeded in both mastering the text and conveying the story to others. “This has been an experience they will remember for the rest of their lives,” says their teacher.

Program designed by Theatre Partnership students.

“Out of Spenser and the Common Tongue”: James Reaney’s “A Suit of Nettles”

Germaine Warkentin, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Toronto, presented this paper on James Reaney’s A Suit of Nettles on January 7, 2011 at the 126th Annual Conference of the Modern Language Association in Los Angeles, California. It is reproduced here by permission of the author.

Modern Language Association, Los Angeles, January 7, 2011; “Spenser as the Poet’s Poet”

“Out of Spenser and the Common Tongue”:

James Reaney’s “A Suit of Nettles” (1958)

Germaine Warkentin, University of Toronto

James Reaney may be the best poet you never heard of. We all know enough about Milton, Stevens, and Merrill to engage in the conversation of this session, but apart from the Canadians here and a few Americans aware of my interest, I can guarantee that Reaney, who died in 2008, is a name unknown to you. In Canada I would not have to say this. Between 1950 and 1970 Reaney wrote prodigiously outside of the modernist framework then dominating Canadian poetry, and endured being unfashionable – too learned, too mythopoeic, too fixated on his home territory around London and Stratford Ontario. There was no cultural “Arcadianism” like that of the 1580s behind A Suit of Nettles. But Reaney was a playwright as well, busy developing a major career in the Canadian theatre, the masterpiece of which is his encyclopedic trilogy (1974-75) on the Black Donnellys, a legendary 19th century family who were at murderous odds with their Southern Ontario neighbours. It was the achievement of his plays that led more recent audiences back to the poems. I confess an interest – in 1972 I edited Reaney’s poems in a volume that helped turn the tide. Reaney was an amazing man: the most learned Canadian poet before Anne Carson, a civic icon in and around London and Stratford, a deeply responsible member of the professoriate at the University of Western Ontario, and a licensed mischief.

Read the rest of this entry >>

James Reaney in 1979. Photo by Les Kohalmi.

Sticks and Stones in Port Dover on January 13th and 14th

Students of Val Smith’s Theatre Partnership class at Port Dover Composite School will perform The Donnellys: Sticks and Stones on January 13 and 14 at 7 pm at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover. Tickets are $5 and can be bought at the door. For more about what promises to be a lively production, see Daniel Pearce’s story in the Simcoe Reformer.

Janitor

“Janitor” is a poem from Souwesto Home, James Reaney’s recent collection of new poems, published by Brick Books in 2005.

Janitor

I love gateways into farms & yards: even more
Do I love door-
ways (latches, their hooks, hinges, keyholes).
From my collegiate days
I remember the janitor,
Mr January,
Who lingered, with his blizzard broom
At the highschool’s entrance, tending
His garden of galoshes, rubbers, boots,
Mudmats, sleet mops, rainwhisks.
Awesomely quiet, brooding, puttering man,
He had, in his pockets, keys for all locks
Of classroom, gymnasium,
Even the mysterious cubby holes under stairs,
And the exits & entrances of the assembly
Auditorium.
You shuffler & sweeper, who opened, who shut,
Kept the rain, wind, mud, snow, out,
And us, inside, warm & dry.
Doorkeeper, in some strange way,
You caretaker, though you were
Neither principal nor teacher,
You secretly governed the school.
We often dreamt of you,
Our most remembered educator.

James Reaney, 2005.

James Reaney attended Stratford Central Collegiate, now Stratford Central Secondary School, from 1939-1944. On November 26, 2010, the school held a celebration to rename the school’s old auditorium the James C. Reaney Auditorium in honour of his achievements as a poet and playwright.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Here are some photos from Stratford Central Secondary School‘s recent production of Mimi Lights the Candle, a Christmas play James Reaney wrote in 1943 when he was a student.

On Christmas Eve, Laura, Mimi’s long-absent mother, returns home.

Mimi:      But you came!

Laura:     Yes, because it was Christmas. My money was nearly gone,
but I managed to pay my fare here. And then Mimi’s candle drew me.

November 26, 2010: Stratford Central Secondary School students in a scene from Mimi Lights the Candle. Photo by Wilma McCaig.

November 26, 2010: Carollers from Mimi Lights the Candle, Stratford Central Secondary School. Photo by Wilma McCaig.

Stratford Secondary School dedication on November 26

Stratford Central Secondary School’s new James C. Reaney Auditorium

Thank you all for coming to Friday night’s ceremony at Stratford Central Secondary School to dedicate its old auditorium, now the school’s drama centre, in honour of alumnus James Reaney.

The students gave a wonderful performance of Mimi Lights the Candle, a Christmas play James Reaney wrote for the school in 1943. As well as the carols in Mimi, students also sang “The Girls at Swift’s,” a song from King Whistle!, a play James Reaney wrote for the school’s centennial in 1979.

Special thanks to Stephanie Nescier for her excellent direction, and to Anne Swerdfager and the other members of the original 1979 cast of King Whistle! for singing along.

Thanks also to Ron Dodson for organizing this event, and to Lois Tarr, James Reaney’s classmate, for keeping her copy of Mimi Lights the Candle all these years. We know Dad would have been thrilled to be honoured in this way and to see you all enjoying his play.

For those of you who couldn’t be there, watch for news and interviews about the event on genienet.ca

November 26: The play was performed on the main floor and the audience was seated on the stage and around the performers. (Photo by Leith Peterson)

James Stewart Reaney (James Reaney's son) and his wife Susan Wallace

James Stewart Reaney with Lois Tarr

Stratford Secondary School dedication and special performance

On November 26 in Stratford, Ontario, please join us for a gala celebration at Stratford Central Secondary School to dedicate the James C. Reaney Auditorium. The evening will begin with a brief reception at 7:00 p.m. and the program will begin at 7:30 p.m.

James Reaney attended Stratford Central from 1939-1944. To honour his achievements as a poet and playwright, the school made him its first inductee into its Arts Hall of Fame on May 6, 2010.

As part of the evening’s celebrations, students will perform a scene from Mimi Lights the Candle, a school Christmas play James Reaney wrote in 1943 when he was a student. Thank you Lois Tarr, a former classmate of James Reaney’s, for preserving your copy of the script all these years!

Admission is free, but seating is limited. Please reserve a seat by sending an email to stratfordcentralss@gmail.com or calling 519.271.4500 and asking for Diane Yausie, Head Secretary.

Stratford Central Secondary’s address is 60 St. Andrew Street, and the auditorium is located on the second floor near the front entrance to the school.

There is limited parking behind the school, and there are quite steep stairs at both the front and back of the school. Hope to see you there!

The Champlain Society’s The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta back in print

As part of its mission to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records, The Champlain Society has reprinted The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta, in a special paperback edition.

The monograph, edited and introduced by James Reaney, recounts the story of The Biddulph Tragedy of February 4, 1880, where “a body of men, blackened and masked, entered the dwelling of the somewhat notorious Donnelly family and murdered the inmates, the father, the mother, one son, and a girl, a niece”* in Biddulph Township near Lucan, Ontario.

James Reaney heard about the tragedy as a child: “The effect of my first hearing this story was paralyzing… It was my first glimpse of evil close to home.”**

***

*London Free Press Weekly, 12 February 1880 (See The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta, page xv and page 118)

**From the Introduction to The Donnelly Documents: An Ontario Vendetta, page xxiv.

James Reaney Memorial Lecture held on October 17 in Stratford

Thank you all for coming to the lecture on Sunday afternoon to hear Colleen Thibaudeau, James Reaney’s widow, talk about their early days together and read from some of his works.

For those of you who were unable to attend, Stratford Beacon Herald reporter Mike Beitz reports on Thibaudeau’s talk here and Charles Maidment has posted an audio recording here.

Our thanks also to the organizers of the lecture at the Stratford Public Library, Charles Mountford, Anne Marie Heckman, and Sam Coghlan. Colleen Thibaudeau especially appreciated all the help she has had from her family and others; she couldn’t have done it without you.

One of James Reaney’s poems that Colleen Thibaudeau read was “White Grumphies, white snow” from Souwesto Home, published by Brick Books.

“White Grumphies, white snow…”

The students of Agricultural Diploma, their fathers
Grow square miles of blue flowering flax near
Pilot Mound and square miles of yellow mustard which
I saw as I drove out from Minnesota,
Well knowing that in the fall, in the autumn,
We would be teaching them Robert Penn Warren’s
Understanding Poetry, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,
Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, Emily Dickinson.

As I climbed the stairs to their classroom
Over the Rupertsland Agricultural Auditorium,
Prepared to teach them “I heard a fly buzz when I died,”
I heard them splitting desk into kindling
For a bonfire in a waste paper basket where they
Burnt the texts on the course one by one,
Rainbow-coloured poems and prose they burnt,
Book by book, as I taught them.
As verbal virgins they were tougher
Than such pastoral nymphs as Diana or urban ones
Such as Athena.

However, a day or two later, taking a random stroll
Across the winter campus, I saw,
Around the corner of the Swine Barn, a herd
Of white, white pigs being driven into the barn
By my Aggie Dip students each with
A very proper and even beautiful pig-driving stick.
Was it their mid-term test in pig-herding?
It must have been.

The whiteness of the piggies against the whiteness of the snow
Presented them with optical problems.
They had trouble seeing me as well.
In fact not one of them did, for I
Was wearing this poem.

James Reaney, 2005.

My editor, Stan Dragland, wishes me to explain “White Grumphies, white snow.” They are white pigs herded by agricultural students on a snowy day.

James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau in Stratford, 1980. Photo by C.H. Gervais.