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Mariposa Podcast - 1954 Pardon My Parka


1954 Leacock Medal Winner

Pardon My Parka by Joan Walker 


 Link to Audio of Podast

This podcast is about the 1954 Leacock Medal winner Pardon My Parka by Joan Walker. I have to admit to some confliction in respect to this book; it's light-hearted and a fish-out-of-water bit of humour that speaks to a specific Canadian experience. But at the same time, it's sprinkled with a few references that are more than politically incorrect and hard to overlook. 

I talked about these features of the book with Brian Busby, a writer, a literary historian, and a Contributing Editor to Canadian Notes and Queries. His works include The Dusty Bookcase, a collection of reviews of little-known Canadian works of fiction. And he has also read and reviewed some of the Joan Walker's other books and written about what her writing might say about her life.

 

Dick Bourgeois-Doyle (DBD)

Hi Brian, thanks a lot for doing this. It's rare to find someone who knows Joan Walker, and in my circles, if someone does know her, it's people who have read her Leacock Medal book. So, it's great to talk to someone like you who knows her other works and can discuss them in a broader context. You of course, being an aficionado of Canadian literary history, I wonder if I could start by asking you how you developed your interest in these old books ?

 

Brian Busby 

Yeah, I think I was more drawn, not necessarily to something old but kind of forgotten and obscure, suppressed in many cases, in Canadian literature, and this might come all the way back to my intro to Canadian literature, which wasn't through school. I think I addressed that in my book about how I went to Allancroft elementary school in Beaconsfield and Beaconsfield High School - there on the west island of Montreal. And we were never assigned in all those years, a Canadian novel to read. And so, my introduction came basically through just stumbling upon things at bookstores. And one of the first to capture my attention was by William C. Heine, The Last Canadian, which was paperback original about a man who, interestingly, survives a pandemic that wipes out most of North America. And I think I really picked it up as a kid because it had the word Canadian in it. So, I knew it was a Canadian novel. And it appealed to me greatly because at the very beginning of the novel, it features the main character driving into Montreal from the West Island. So, to me, it was something I recognized, you know, a landscape that I recognized, even though it's not really described - you know, just the idea that here's a novel that took place where I live?

 

Dick Bourgeois-Doyle 

Well, I think with that comment about reading something that took place in the place where you live, you're kind of touching on some of the merits of the Leacock Medal books, at least from my perspective. Notwithstanding the case for studying the great literature of the world, books with Canadian subjects and sensibilities, even historical, have a capacity, I think, to engage Canadians and thus draw us into studying literature more broadly and the craft of writing is both consumers and producers. So, I always say that the Leacock books can be a window of Canadian history. So, it's instructive to look at books from the past. And so, what a book like Pardon My Parka can tell us about Canada, and maybe ourselves.

 

Brian Busby   

And, you know, it's very much a reflection of the time and what was selling back then. I'm currently reading Ralph Connor, for example, you know, who was a huge bestseller just massive, and is largely forgotten today, except maybe in academic circles. So, it's interesting to think you know, that this was once popular, my great-grandfather had a Ralph Connor collection, like a lot of Canadians did. And, you know, every Christmas and another Ralph Connor book would come out and just get added to the shelf. So, it was  - I find that sort of thing very interesting. And it's the same thing I think you kind of touched on with the Leacock awards -so it's interesting to see what won in a specific year and some of the things that won in the 40s could never win today.

 

Dick Bourgeois-Doyle 

So of course, one book that might fall into that category of being something that might not succeed today is the book that's the focus of our conversation - Joan Walker's Pardon my Parka. I have, of course, read that book and have my own take on it. But I'd really be interested in hearing about her other books and what you think of them. I think you've read two or three of the others, right?

 

Brian Busby 

I've read two, two novels. And as you as you probably know, she wrote four novels in total – Pardon My Parka, her memoir is right down the center - two novels before Pardon My Parka and two after. So, the ones that I've read are East of Temple Bar, her first novel and, and Repent at Leisure which is the novel that came right after Pardon My Parka. The other novels that she wrote - one is a mystery that she published under the name Leonie Mason, and the last one, which was published in 62. I think you've remarked on this, how she had an unusual career as a writer of books because she stopped with decades remaining in her life. She just stopped producing books. But the last one is Marriage of Harlequin in 62. And it's a historical novel centered around the 18th century dramatist Richard Sheridan.

 

Dick Bourgeois-Doyle 

There's not a lot of written about Joan Walker, and I'm not sure why she had this special fascination with Sheridan. Maybe if you read the rest of her books, you can share an insight with me on that someday?

 

Brian Busby   

Oh, I'm definitely going to read them all. I haven't read the mystery either. I'm kind of glad I read the two that I did read because with what little I knew about her life, and you're right, she's not really written about at all. I remember really, I mean, her books have been long out of print. But the two that I did read seem to have real autobiographical elements that some of which I've discovered from reading your essay on Pardon My Parka.

 

DBD 

I guess Pardon My Parka would probably be the closest to autobiographical of any of her books, though there's probably some exaggeration. Much of it's true. It's certainly a good description of her life in northern Quebec and her love for her husband James Walker. I didn't know until recently that she was married once before, sometime before the war. And I wonder whether this marriage, which evidently was an unhappy one, might have been fodder for the book you read Repent at Leisure.

 

Brian Busby  

it may have had some bearing on it, but I suspect the inspiration may have been her second marriage because she was a war bride. And it's about a war bride. But I think she's imagining being a war bride who made the wrong choice. And I think that's what's happening. They're not which is not to suggest there aren’t some real autobiographical elements. I will say one thing I found peculiar about Joan Walker, and this is found in both her books is, you know, there, there tends to be a bit of fiction that she's created about her own life. I think there's fiction in Pardon My Parka, just as there's nonfiction elements in, in the two books that I've mentioned. And the one thing that struck me is and I want to ask you about this is she refers to herself as a war bride, who met her husband in London, is that correct?

 

DBD 

Yes, well, at least that's how their encounter is portrayed in Pardon My Parka and in the notes to it. She says they met during a London blackout.

 

Brian Busby 

Right, right. And the thing I find peculiar about it is that in Marriage of Harlequin, her author bio, and I suspect, like a lot of author bios, authors sign off on it. But often, you're even invited to write it. And in her author bio, in the for Marriage of Harlequin, she says that she had come to Canada on business and had intended to return to England, but then met and fell in love with her husband.

 

DBD 

Yeah, perhaps there is an element of truth to both scenarios. Maybe they met in London and renewed their relationship when she came to Canada in what I guess was the final days of her first marriage prior to her divorce. As you know, my preoccupation with Joan Walker flows from some of those what you might call unfortunate cultural and racial references that she makes in Pardon My Parka. They jump out at you, and I'm conflicted. Because otherwise, she seems like a cheery, friendly, self-deprecating person who you might like to meet and even know. So as someone who's read or other books and works of that era, would you say that she was particularly egregious in this regard?

 

Brian Busby 

I don't think she was unusual for her time. Well, I shouldn't say that because I do find the part you quote about, I guess she would refer to them as Indian children. I found that absolutely shocking to read, especially in a in a work of humour.

 

DBD

Yeah, that's a section that's kind of hard to look past. So, I guess my question, though, is was there anything in those other books by her that echoed this feature?

 

Brian Busby  

And I was thinking about this after rereading your essay today and I thought there's only one real instance. You know East of Temple Bar takes place on Fleet Street during the war, and I don't think there were many minorities around or even foreigners other than Allied soldiers essentially, who appear on the scene but in Repent at Leisure, as I alluded to before, it's really a book about a war bride or a novel about a war bride who makes a bad choice and she marries a French Canadian, as he would have been known then, named Louis Latour, and he's fabricated his past. And she comes to Montreal and discovers that he didn't have like upper middle-class upbringing that she had in London. And as matter of fact, he lives with his parents in a really pretty awful cramped flat in the east end of Montreal. And she does pass judgment on something that you noticed on Pardon My Parka and that is the idea of these eight big French-Canadian families. And the mother, for example, we're told is in her 40s, we're also told she is basically an old hag - used up by having too many kids. I'm not quoting her directly, but it's just as strong a judgment in her novels. That's about the only part you see though it's and you're right that she has this kind of happy-go-lucky persona, which you see in East of Temple Bar, or the main character has – same as the main character in Repent at Leisure, always looking on the positive side of thing.

 

DBD     

Well, I guess I want to be more positive myself when I talk about Joan Walker, and with what you've said about Repent at Leisure, I think that we could recommend that Canadians might want to read those two books as a package for an insight into the experience of war brides in Canada. I read this week that there were some 50 to 60,000 of them. So, it was a significant feature of our post-war culture. Some of the war brides had happy experiences like that portrayed in Pardon My Parka. And others, who fell in love with dashing young soldiers in Britain, came to Canada to find them in broken by the war with different personalities and living in humble circumstance. So, I guess we, as I say, we could recommend not only the Leacock Medal book, but the one that you're referencing, as well.

 

Brian Busby 

I agree with you 100%. I think it's a fascinating book particularly because it's written by war bride. We always think of the war brides - we think, oh, yes, they came with their husbands. But they didn't come over with their husbands - Their husbands, they came back first with the rest of the troops and then they followed. In this case she flies in on a repurposed Liberator bomber. One of my favorite scenes is where she, she talks about, this is the main character, of course, I keep thinking of her as Joan Walker, which may or may not have been her experience, but about how, at one point she has to relieve herself and she's ushered to the back of the plane where there's a curtain. She pulls back the curtain and is surrounded by glass because it's where the tail gunner used to sit. Instead of the tail gunner’s chair, it has a chemical toilet. And I found that sort of thing remarkable, you know, just the idea of these repurposed planes and just the hardship in general. And I agree with you. I think I would have liked her and tried to ignore the other things because she seemed like a livewire, and she really seemed to love Canada. When you read Repent at Leisure, she really loves Montreal and really, everything about Canada is great to her. There are no real complaints, although she can be a bit snobby at times. But no real complaints, no complaints about the weather, which I think you remarked on yourself. So yes, I thought it was it was a very interesting, very interesting, read and really recommend it.