1947 Leacock Medal Winner
Ojibway Melody
by Harry Symons
This podcast
celebrates the 1947 Leacock Medal winner Harry Symons’ Ojibway Melody: Stories
of Georgian Bay. It includes excerpts of an interview with the author’s
son, Professor Tom Symons, the founding president of Trent University.
Professor Symons passed away on 1 January 2021 at the age of 91. But before he
died, he supported the reprinting of his father's book. That project and Professor Symons’ passing
reminded me of why I like Ojibway Melody, and I think it should be
taught in Canadian schools. The book celebrates Harry's cottage “Yoctangee” near
Pointe au Baril, Ontario with stories about
life around Georgian Bay.
At first, the book
might seem modest and unpolished. But after I talked to his son Tom, some 12
years ago, I started to look at Ojibway Melody differently and
appreciate not only what was on the pages, but what was not. Part of that rests on the author's own story.
Born in Toronto in 1893, Harry Simons was more of an athlete than a writer in
his youth. He sailed competitively, served as captain of the University of
Toronto football team, and even quarterbacked for the early Toronto Argonauts.
When World War I broke out, Harry joined the army to serve on the front lines
in Europe, and later in the Royal Flying Corps. He survived a plane crash and
had enough victories to place him in the ACE category as a pilot. But he never
talked much about the war, except about meeting a nurse in a British hospital,
who later became his wife.
Tom, his son told me
that his dad's World War I experience was grisly. And one of the things that
helped him get through it psychologically, as you will hear, was imagining that
one day he would return to Canada to Georgian Bay, and buy a cottage.
Tom Symons (TS)
As a young boy, as a
high school student, he got a summer job assisting a surveyor, and the
surveying was done in that area, Pointe au Baril. He simply loved it. And when
he went off to the war, he just stopped and he came home, he wanted to have a place
there. And he acquired it a few years after the war when he could afford to.
DBD
So I find that
interesting, because Ojibway Melody was written in the early 1940s, as
we all know, and I always assumed that the cottage and the book and the writing
of it were we used to escape talk of World War II.
So it looks like it
helped him get away from the pressures of two different wars. It also sounds
like your dad spent much of the year up there.
TS
Oh, was the oldest cottage
in the bay, and it was not a summer cottage. It was a cottage would have been
used three out of the four seasons. And it was built and used by fishermen. You
know, the fishing for white fish and trout and so on, and there were
professional fishermen. Still there. And still, when I was a boy,
DBD
It must have been a
remote area in those days. Did you go up by train? Or did you drive up as a
family?
TS
Often by my train, stopped
briefly, at Pointe au Baril, just whistle stop. Parry Sound was the big place
about twenty miles down. There was a road up to Parry Sound, and then gravel
road north from there from the shore of Georgian Bay. It's actually slightly
tricky driving – I was a little boy at that time, but it was tricky driving.
DBD
Well, Professor Symons, as you know, I think the book is fun. And it's window
on a different time. But what would you say is the reason that people should
read the book?
TS
Well, I'm not going to
argue whether people should read it or not. I love the book. It means great
deals. I think of it, and it often gives me answers when I'm considering things
or helps as a compass a bit when I have chores to do.
DBD
Still. I wonder if you
would mind just elaborating a bit on precisely why you personally value the
book?
TS
First of all, it reads
the way my father talked, and I enjoy that. When I do think of it, I can hear his
voice, his respect for people, and his concern for other people -the book is
about it.
DBD
Yes, it has a really
wonderful, respectful tone that seems to stand out for all people.
TS
And over half a century
ago, his empathy and concern for the native people. That chapter is superb. I
was raised with that concern. And I'm sure that's one of the reasons that Trent
University was the first university in Canada to have a Department of Native Studies.
DBD
Yeah, I was really impressed by that chapter about the Ojibway boy Little Sam
and Regatta Day. It's very moving. So that's really interesting that we can
draw a line between the tone and respectfulness of Ojibway Melody and
your own role in the creation of Indigenous Studies programs in Canada, which I
gather you feel was overdue.
TS
I mean, it's shocking, as
late as the founding of Trent that nowhere in Canada was there a university
that had a formal program in native studies, Trent’s was the first in the late
60s. That really was something I grew up with and was part of my father's
concern for people. And my interests and
concern for the rapport between French and English speaking people, you can see
that in this book and his feeling for the history of Georgian Bay, beginning of
with Champlain and his interaction with Aboriginal people.
DBD
So the book has
influenced French and English relations and the study of Canada as well. You
also suggest in your messages that the book offers a moral compass mixed with
that Leacock Medal humour.
TS
There are strands that run through the book, and you could easily not realize
that you were seeing something that reflects the deeper human values of the
author because it's written very amiably.