Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

excerpt

were alternately enthusiastic and appalled at the size of the project. Joseph
Carrier on the other hand, came to Ken’s studio, periodically, and
smiled and nodded approval at everything he saw.
That there was still no money to stage the show brought Rocco to the
edge of nervous exhaustion. Ken’s reassurances did not fill him with encouragement.
“If you’re willing to get on this vehicle with me, I’m going
to take you for a ride like you’ve never had – and I will bring you back.
You might be bruised but you won’t be dead.”
Ken outlined a poster campaign to take place in three phases. The
posters were to be museum quality: so beautiful that people would rip
them off walls in order to take them home and frame them. Invitations,
under the auspices of the Portuguese Embassy, were to be printed on the
finest paper.
“I don’t have any money!” Rocco cried.
“Neither do I,” Ken said. “And you have more money than I do.”
He refused to compromise. He bartered paintings. He found a printer
who agreed to run off fifteen thousand posters, in three lots of five thousand
each, and he hired young people to put them up strategically – in Rosedale
where the old money lived, and in the financial district downtown. He had
flyers printed and distributed to thousands of homes in the city.
He scanned the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail until he found a
journalist with a style he liked. “I have a story of a young boy who grew
up on a beach in Portugal, and one day he woke up and he was in the
Arctic,” he told her. “The story is much better than Sir John Franklin’s.”
Sharon Singer listened and wrote in her stenographer’s pad for seven
hours. Then she called her editor. “I think I have a story you’re going to
love.”
The article started a landslide. Other newspapers called, and a CBC
crew arrived at the studio. The broadcast caught the eye of Gary McLaren
– an amiable, articulate man – whose popular talk show was aired every
Sunday morning from Kitchener-Waterloo. He arrived at Ken’s studio
one day with a cameraman, who filmed while the two men talked.
Two weeks after the show aired, Gary asked for a follow-up. Both shows
were so popular that segments with Ken became regular features of the
show.
The media coverage drew the attention of a tall, quiet businessman
named Irving Shakter, who began to drop into the studio once every couple
of weeks to watch Ken paint and to listen to his stories.
“There’s something awfully big going on inside of you,” he said when
they met.
“What makes you think that?” Ken asked.
“I have a sense for it,” Irving said. “I used to play hockey, and I could
anticipate where the puck was. I was a very good hockey player.

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Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

One Hebrew Girl who Combed
her Hair with a Silver Comb
I shall break
your nostalgia
I shall kill
your secret
joy
with
my white birds
that live
and flutter
in your eyes

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

“Rebel Casey, some are calling him now.” Finn stared with uneasy eyes at the embers in the fireplace. They needed only a breath to excite them into flames again. “He was in Dublin with the rest of them at the Easter Rising. Came back a wounded hero and married my Nora.”
“They’ve been sweethearts since childhood, if I remember rightly,” Padraig said.
“They’re little more than children yet.”
“Nora’s nearly twenty-seven, Finn. She and Flynn are hardly children.”
“They are in my eyes,” Finn said. “They haven’t the sense of two calves. Caitlin has more wit than the two of them put together.”
“How is Nora?” Padraig asked.
“Still the same sweet, silly girl. A model daughter, a model wife, and now a model mother. Everyone loves her. And I’m frightened for her. Young Casey is a danger to wife and child. He’s a marked man in these parts, Padraig. He’s known as a Sinn Fein Republican. He’ll finish up like a dead dog in a ditch one of these nights and leave my daughter a widow and my grandson a fatherless orphan.”
Padraig shivered. The room was rapidly becoming cold. “I heard he was planning to move to Dublin to live.”
Finn seemed unaware of the chilliness. “That’s not the safest place for him either,” he said. “He’s in Dublin now, running the risk of being shot by an RIC policeman or a British soldier with a finger on the trigger. But I don’t want him to go and live in Dublin. I don’t want to lose Nora and Dermot. Not at this time in my life.”
“Dermot’s over two now, Caitlin told me.”
“Ay. Handsome little sprat. Spitting image of his father.”
“You are proud of him.”
“Yes, I suppose I am. What man doesn’t wish for a grandson?” Finn looked at Padraig, pale and thin in his black clothes, a skeleton of a man, not a real flesh-and-blood human being. “I never had a son but you. And you didn’t turn out the way I’d want a real son of mine to be. With Nora for a mother, I dare say Dermot will turn out to be a Christian too, like all the rest of your mindless minnows, but with luck he’ll show more independence as he grows older. The fingerling baby might turn out to be a shark of a man. I’m tired of Christians. Only Caitlin shows any spunk around here. She’s not your meek, subservient Nora, Padraig. Caitlin’s grown into a strong-minded, spirited young woman.” Finn looked wistful. “She should’ve been my son. First out of her poor mother’s womb. Always the active one,

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