RETURNONCE

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William Allen FisherQueen’s University, 1929

RETURN ONCE

MORE

A Christmas Anthologyby

WILLIAM ALLEN FISHER

Edited byMark Winston Fisher

RNU Press2009

© 2009 Mark Winston Fisher

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permision of the author.

Book Design & Layout: © David Edwards (RNU Press)Edited by: © Mark Winston Fisher

First published by RNU Press555 Mapleview Drive WestBarrie, ON, L4N 8W2www.rnupress.com

ISBN: 978-0-9812886-9-7

This book is printed on acid-free paper.This book is a work of Non-Fiction. Places, events, and situa-tions in this book are True.

Printed and Bound in Canada.

But when the snows of winter lendPerspective to the placid trendOf time far gone in vagrancy,Only our dreams in tapestry

Of woven word now lightly pennedReturn once more.

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uWilliam Allen Fisher and Eva Lucas,

Queen’s University Homecoming, 1929

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IntroductionBy Mark W. Fisher

For several years since his death in December 1989, I intend-ed to compile a book based on the collected works of my father, W.A. Fisher. The intention was given further incentive in 1994 when the executive of the Simcoe County Historical Association urged me to proceed as soon as possible. They felt that as a for-mer president of the Association, the memory of Allen Fisher, as he called himself, would best be served by the publication in one volume of his many essays, speeches, letters and newspaper articles. I assured them that based on my preliminary work on his assembled material that even a representative sampling would be a major undertaking. We agreed to start with the smaller goal of this anthology of his Christmas poems. Since that time I have worked fitfully at all of the material that I have been able to gath-er. This was due in part to personal and family commitments as well as a feeling that I might be seen as a son trying to make too much of a case for a father, but in retrospect, this was more an excuse for indolence on my part. As time has passed, moreover, many of the friends, colleagues and students that knew his work have passed from the scene. Perhaps there would be too few who would be interested in what he had to say. Yet increasingly, as I have been drawn back to his words, I find that they stand the test of time and are worthy of publication.

My father’s association with poetry began with his childhood in Cobourg, Ontario. According to him his mother enjoyed writ-ing rhymes and verses for family gatherings, but he seemed rather embarrassed in talking about it, claiming that it was little more than doggerel. The few surviving lines, written by his mother An-nie Ash, certainly confirm his judgment. A much stronger influ-ence was George Herbert Clarke, a professor of English literature

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at Queen’s University. Clarke wrote poetry and encouraged my father to do the same while he was a student at Queen’s from 1926 to1929. The relationship continued after graduation with exchanges of Christmas poems as late as 1952.

Each December, over fifty years, “W. A.”—as he was familiar-ly known—set himself the task of composing a total of 45 poems for the festive season, following the recognized form of a sonnet, a rondeau or a ballad. I still have vivid recollections of him at a late hour, sitting before his ancient typewriter on the dining room table, searching for the elusive word to fit the self-imposed rhyme scheme or balance the necessary meter. At his shoulder loomed the printer’s deadline and I must confess there were a few years when Christmas cards arrived a day or two after December 25. No matter; they were all equally enjoyed by the recipients.

There was little use in starting earlier, for it seemed that the mood or the muse had to come upon him before he sat down at table and typewriter. The ideas may have been fomenting earlier, since hasty scribbles on envelopes at noon hour, or in the evening before band practice, hinted at the approach of the annual ritual. But it was the clack of the typewriter that indicated matters were now at a serious level.

Many people saved my father’s Christmas cards. The origi-nal poems served as a tangible connection to someone who had touched their lives, whether as a friend, a student of history or as a musician in the Barrie Collegiate Band. Verses such as “Decem-ber Incident 11:55” or “Heritage” still awaken all the memories of school days. Young or old who accompanied him on duck hunting expeditions, or building cottages at Rice Lake or Lake Nipissing, can still revisit these haunts with “Wings Over Nipiss-ing” or “Return Once More.” The beauties of nature are well represented with “In Spruce and Pine” and “Allegory.” Two of the poems, “Impromptu” and “Nativity,” have both a personal na-ture relating to family members, as well as a wider appeal. A few such as “Dining Out” take a humorous turn but still pose unan-swered questions. Those like “December ’76” or “Gifts” are more philosophical, dwelling upon the contradictions of the season,

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such as poverty amidst plenty or joy mixed with suffering, and often taking their cue from a current event, from the horrors of World War II to the misery of famine in Ethiopia or the threat of nuclear annihilation. That some poems stand out in my memory more than others, I think, is more a consequence of my personal preoccupations during a normally hectic time of year, but he was always solicitous enough to ask for another’s opinion. It has only been more recently, as I collected the poems together and read them over, especially at Christmas, that they assumed a collective impact surpassing the individual parts.

For each of the poems I have supplied background informa-tion, often pertaining to major world events. In other places I have written at length on more personal matters and have in-cluded supplemental material as well as photographs to give a fuller picture of my father’s life. I have chosen to present the poems in chronological order, thus showing the passing parade as he saw it and preserving the widely ranging subject matter. Taken together, these poems of W.A. Fisher reflect the ever in-quiring mind that many who knew him experienced personally, through good conversation and always lively debate. During my father’s final illness, at great effort, he managed to complete his last poem, “McLuhan Revisited,” a week before he died. He en-quired anxiously if it had been printed in the Globe and Mail, not for personal gratification but because the dramatic events of the previous few weeks, the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania and the impending collapse of communism affirmed once again his faith in humanity and his energetic approach to living life to the fullest. It is my hope that his poetry will con-tinue to serve both as a memory of the past, for those who knew him, and as a joy to anyone who may read “Return Once More” in the future.

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Literary NoteBy Elspeth Cameron

I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that received W.A. Fisher’s annual Christmas card. Its arrival was announced, and my father would read the poem aloud. There often followed a debate about what exactly “W.A.” meant for no one but “W.A.” went to such trouble at such a busy season. Others, including my family, were content to send cards of a generic nature that were easily purchased in any store. In composing his own poems “W.A.” offered an example of how the commercialism of Christ-mas, which he thoroughly disliked, could be countered. It cost nothing to compose a poem—nothing, that is, but the gifts of time, talent, and a desire to express his thoughts to friends and family.

W.A. Fisher chose well established verse forms for his poems. Most of his cards contained sonnets, or “little songs” as derived from the Italian; others presented complex rondeaus or simple ballads. Such traditional forms suited the occasion, which has so many traditions and rituals associated with it. The sonnet was especially appropriate, whether it was the older Petrarchan form or the Shakespearian type. Fisher composed four in the former style and six following the latter model. Both were restricted to only fourteen lines, written in iambic pentameter, or lines of ten syllables accented alternately. And both begin by stating a situa-tion, then conclude by commenting on it. The Petrarchan sonnet is neatly divided for this purpose into an octet of eight lines and a sestet of six lines. The Shakespearian type begins with three quatrains of four lines each, followed by a sort of punch line contained in the last two lines that must rhyme for emphasis. In both types of sonnet the turning point or “volta,” from situation to commentary, usually occurs at the ninth line.

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“W.A.” felt free to alter the rhyme scheme of the sestet since there were several recognized versions of the original Petrarchan model. Modifications were also introduced by later poets such as Milton, Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and even more recent writers. That is why this anthology contains a further fifteen Petrarchan sonnets with major or minor variations mostly of Fisher’s own devising, as well as three poems that modify the Shakespearian format. Additionally, he felt free to combine basic elements of both types of sonnet within five more of the poems. This is not surprising since it is safe to say that by the time he at-tended Queen’s University in the 1920s, the sonnet had become a general purpose form of great flexibility. This was, however, an outdated form through most of the twentieth century, although it has recently enjoyed a revival, perhaps as an antidote to the loose and disjointed style of the preceding 100 years, a develop-ment that “W.A.” would no doubt have relished.

The first forays into modernism were made by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in the 1920s, followed by Canada’s version of this movement in Montreal of the 1940s, though the free verse and imagism of F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, and Irving Layton, would not have suited Fisher. Modernists wrote in a disjointed way of a secular world in which the message of Christianity had given way to cynicism. Fisher certainly made pointed observations about nuclear weapons, global hunger, and wars, but there remained for him a glimmer of hope that mankind could respond to re-minders of the spirit of Christmas. Not a practicing Christian, himself, he nevertheless focused on the season’s underlying mes-sage, motivated as he put it by “the moral chalice of the mind.”

One cluster of poems revolves around the three figures of the Magi. As an outstanding teacher of history and music at what is now Barrie Central Collegiate, “W.A.” naturally identified with the wise men. He looked at the Magi from several different an-gles: sarcastically comparing their gifts to modern credit cards and suggesting that modern science though far superior is much more dangerous. In the only dramatic monologue that he wrote, in the manner of “My Last Duchess,” by Robert Browning, one of

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the Magi leaves a scroll for the other two, musing on the meaning of their journey and the significance of the lowly stable to which they were led. Comparing this poem to T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi,” another dramatic monologue, indicates how positive Fisher was about life. Elsewhere he celebrates fellow teachers who guide the natural impulse of children to learn as riverbanks chan-nel a stream. Not surprisingly, he honours the Jesuit priests who first taught the nativity story to the Hurons of so long ago.

Nowhere is he more positive than in a sonnet describing the birth of his first grandchild. The meshing of the biblical account of Christ’s birth with the warm domestic scene of the family, shut away from the world’s troubles and noise, kneeling unselfcon-sciously around the happy baby before the fire, conveys Fisher’s deep conviction that the meaning of Christmas is found in this tranquil sanctuary. Even his last poem laments the passing of Marshall McLuhan before he could fully realize the encompass-ing nature of the global village that he had identified. “W.A.” agreed with McLuhan’s condemnation of consumerism and me-dia-hype but also saw that the “crowds gathered in your global village square” would sanction increasingly those who would wield arbitrary power.

It is easy to see a progression over the years in Fisher’s skills as a poet. This is surprising, given that he only wrote poetry once a year. His early poems were modeled on those of George Herbert Clarke, a Queen’s professor of English Literature, who wrote son-nets and other structured poems in the florid Victorian style of an earlier time. At first “W.A.” followed the same tradition, and his earlier poems, like Clarke’s, are full of “poetic” language such as “up-gathered,” or “frantic plight,” and “history fraught.” But somewhere in the mid-1950s he became confident enough to write with authenticity in his own voice. It is tempting to date this change to 1955 when the vivid experience of a train wreck, while travelling with his school band, prompted his poem. Until then, he had written mainly on time-honoured topics such as the loss of youth, the solace of nature, and the transience of life compared to the immortality of art and true friendship. From the

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mid-1950s on, Fisher’s topics tended to arise from his personal experiences or the strong emotions he felt about specific political or social events, ranging from rampant drug abuse and genocidal conflict to the threat of nuclear catastrophe and ultimately the place of mankind within the cosmos.

Along with this more emotional subject matter went a much simpler use of language and grammar. At his best, he wrote as a man speaking to others, not as a “poet” displaying his technical skill. His revisions, which were mainly the tidying up of words and rhythms, almost always replace the ornate with the direct. He particularly disliked jargon, educational or otherwise, and over time this extended beyond slang to include “poetic” jargon as well. At his best he is hard-hitting, speculating on what the Christ child would think of “Biafra’s starving pawns of war/And Mai Lai’s gunfire-gutted broken dolls.” Here, as elsewhere, “W.A.” used the occasion of Christmas as a sort of moral compass, point-ing to the fundamental values of Christianity, in responding to “Madonnas holding waifs of mortal worth/Beseeching food with eyes and shrunken face.” In other poems that darkened with the years he feared the imminent catastrophe of “lethal toys/That kill from starlit battlefields above.” But supplanting all the global evils of society, he could still plead for “thy power/Compassion-ate, unerring to forbear—Now in this world of grave anxieties.”

“W.A.” believed that “the season’s message now is missed.” His Christmas poems were a gift to others: a reminder that Christmas is best celebrated by the “frugal gifts” of spending time with fam-ily, contact with good friends, reading books, listening to music, the ordinary joy of feeding birds or looking out the kitchen win-dow over wintry landscapes, knowing that they conceal living things that will surely return each spring. As always, set amid the seasonal frenzy of crass commercialism and against the back-ground of a world of strife and suffering he simply “turned to quiet rhythms of life/And found its poetry at home.”

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1940Memorabilia

After obtaining his teacher’s certificate, Allen Fisher took his first teaching position in Fort Frances Ontario, in the fall of 1931. He returned to Cobourg during the Christmas vacation to marry my mother, Eva Lucas. The following year they returned to Queen’s so that my father could obtain an Honours degree in English and History. Then, in the spring of 1933, his town band training on clarinet and years of playing saxophone in various dance bands paid off in the depths of the Depression. Appointed to Prescott Collegiate Institute, “W.A.” taught academic subjects and was responsible for a mixed group of string and wind musi-cians for the next three years. In the fall of 1936, the lure of a higher salary drew my parents north to a similar position in Tim-mins, but the isolation led to a resignation in the summer with the intention of returning to Cobourg. Purely by chance, in pass-ing through Barrie, my father answered an advertisement for an English and Music teacher and found himself re-employed. Prin-cipal A.R. Girdwood hoped to revive some element of music that had previously existed in the form of a cadet band in the 1920s. Whatever Girdwood’s vision was, the original seven members of what would become the famous Barrie Collegiate Band first gathered, under my father’s tutelage in September 1937, in the entrance alcove of the auditorium—there was no need to use the stage! Comprised of a handful of string and wind players, of dubious distinction, this group rapidly expanded into a full con-cert band by 1941. The coming of World War II also meant the addition of a marching band component in support of the cadet

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corps, with the concert band performing during Victory Bond concerts, as the war effort pervaded the life of the school. In all, 49 teachers, students and former students were numbered among the multitudes who failed to survive this great conflict. They were losses painful enough to cause my father to tell one group of stu-dents “Please, don’t come to say good-bye” if they felt compelled to enlist. No doubt it was the despair of such sentiments that inspired my father to compose this sonnet, “Memorabilia,” as the first of his Christmas poems.

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1940Memorabilia

At dusk, the tides of school will ebb, and thenA beach of desks, receding in the gloom,Will bare its random record of a room,

Initials traced with furtive knife or pen.Familiar seats will vaguely fill again

With other lads who thrilled to games, the bloomOf love, the storms of strife that, like a broom,

Sweep from the earth the homely joys of men. And we, with books up-gathered, touched with shame

For this day’s waste, its hollow word and deedAnd unconcern for all that it has cost—

Departing, we shall leave a school-boy’s nameAs witness to a generation lost

In ransoming our futile life of greed.

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1944Legend

There appears to be a gap in the poems between 1940 and 1944, for no drafts, typed copies or cards exist in my father’s records, nor have I been able to locate one for 1946. It is possible that he had not yet established a routine of composing a poem for each Christmas, but the course of the war in 1944 may have prompted him to write again. The promise and expectation of the Normandy summer had given way to the British debacle at Arnhem, followed by the bitter experience of the Canadians in the flooded islands of the Scheldt estuary and the bloody repulse of the Americans in the forests of the Ardennes. In the east the triumphant Red Army was breaching the walls of Nazi Germany, driving all before it in a relentless tide of destruction. All of this suffering was highlighted by ever more terrifying weapons, such as the V-2 rocket with its stratospheric flight and devastating plunge to earth.

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1944Legend

There was a time—one ancient mystic nightOf yesteryear, before War’s rockets sped

In lurid, parabolic orbits dread,Across the skies with devastating blight;Before Life’s refugees in frantic plight,

Choking beleaguered highways foaming red,Wept o’er their doll-like children, broken, bledFor fatherland and freedom, God and Right—

When lowly shepherds of the East, tis said,Heard choirs of seraphim in heavenly flight

Singing of peace on earth, good-will toward men,But like a legend is it now; the astral light

Has been eclipsed; the angelic sound has fledThat men still yearn to see and hear again.

The Fisher family at Rice Lake in 1945 withSylvia on the left, Joan on the right and myself in the center.

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1947Return Once More

In 1941 my father purchased several acres of land at Shearer’s Point on Rice Lake, just north of his hometown of Cobourg, Ontario. As a boy and young man he had spent many days fish-ing and duck hunting in the area and in 1941 it was still a sports-man’s paradise, although fast succumbing to increasing tourism. Construction of a modest cottage was begun with the help of friends and students during Easter breaks and summer holidays. This was followed by a sleeping cabin, several boathouses and an icehouse, the ice usually being cut from the lake over Christmas or Easter holidays. For me it meant secret summer places sucking on chunks of cooling crystal amid silent piles of sawdust.

Although I was very young I have vivid recollections of the last few years at Rice Lake before it was sold in 1951. The sum-mer heat was often intensified by my mother’s wood stove in the tiny kitchen where she canned vegetables and fruit. The daily walks with my sisters to obtain fresh Jersey milk from the nearby farm of Joe Kelly always provided time for play in the hay mow and the return home had to be ever so careful to ensure that the cream at the top of the bottle was not contaminated by the lower level of milk. The Friday night shopping trips to the village of Roseneath were a delight to a small child. The half dozen country stores held innumerable treasures to gaze at, always concluded by ice cream of myriad flavours, or on the hottest of summer days a glistening Orange Crush in its corrugated bottle of brown glass, pulled from the ice-cold waters of a softly humming cooler scarcely removed from freezing.

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In the evenings there was fishing for green bass in the rice-filled bay below the cottage, slowly paddling the canoe through the lily pads while dangling a long bamboo pole from side to side. An explosion of violence inevitably replaced this idyllic scene whenever a bass seized the baited frog on the surface, leaving only the chaos of a mere boy trying to land a big fish in a small canoe. All these remain as memories sucked up to the surface of my mind with an overwhelming whoosh from time to time.

“W. A.” much preferred hunting ducks to fishing and oth-er memories that crowd my consciousness are of misty autumn dawns, crouched in a canoe blind secreted in the bulrushes, at the foot of the bay. The lake at that time still had significant stands of wild rice, particularly at the mouth of the Indian River near the village of Keene, but all is gone today for the sea of rice recorded by Champlain in 1615 has disappeared, a victim of boat traffic and devastating blight. The bay is even devoid of water lilies and bulrushes but the original acreage and buildings still remain, though much improved with electricity and running water. I think my father sensed all of the coming changes when he sold the property, probably a wise decision in retrospect. The lengthy water snakes that I learned to swim with, the monstrous black snapping turtles in the swamp at the end of the bay and the giant bullfrogs that croaked all night had little appeal for my teenaged sisters. Moreover, it was all a vast breeding ground for swarms of mosquitoes and black flies. In spite of all this, I am sure that Rice Lake still served my father as an annual haven that could restore both body and mind just as much as it imprinted itself on me. This is clearly evident in the rondeau that he com-posed for Christmas 1947, “Return Once More.”

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1947

Return once more

Return once more—the days still endIn aromatic forest blend

And twilight cricket minstrelsy,The sky an iridescency

Beyond the rice-flanked river bend.

Here, with the sun, wild duck descendTo reedy beds, and days we spend

Trusting the moment’s solvencyReturn once more;

But when the snows of winter lendPerspective to the placid trend

Of time far gone in vagrancy, Only our dreams in tapestry

Of woven word now lightly pennedReturn once more.

W. A. Fisher in the rice-filled bay below the cottage.

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Pipe Dreams

The radiator hissed rhythmically with the even drone of the teacher’s voice. “The frog,” he said, “is an amphibious creature. It can breathe under water and on land….”

My experience with frogs was far from this stuffy classroom. In my mind I travelled back to the warm days of last July. A fishing trip had been planned for the opening day of the season. We had looked forward to the early morning when we would be on our way, but the persistent ringing of the alarm clock was an unwelcome din as we tumbled out of bed.

Last year it had rained; the year before we had motor trouble. Of course we had caught many fish later in the season, but there wasn’t the thrill that one gets on the opening day. The night be-fore we had listened closely to the weather reports and checked our equipment with great expectations for the coming day.

In the bright morning light, the water rippled softly as the paddle dipped gently into the widening pool. I could think of nothing but the exciting jerk from a bass grabbing the dangling frog that we used for bait. My thoughts were interrupted as my friend asked me to pass him the frogs.

“Frogs! Why I thought you put them up at the end of the canoe!”

“Me!” he cried, “Why I left them on the dock for you to put in!”

With a reproachful glance the Science teacher asked me to name the natural enemies of the frog.

“Bass”, I replied innocently.The sputtering radiator broke the tense silence.

Sylvia Fisher IXEOvertones, 1947-1948Barrie Collegiate Institute

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1948Migrants

As a young man my father spent many hours fishing and duck hunting with his brother in the vicinity of Rice Lake. My mother often commented that one of their uncles did nothing else but waste his time in similar pursuits, while producing little more than a large brood of offspring. Both boys grew up within the town of Cobourg, but there were many rural roots to Fisher and Ash relatives who farmed in the outlying areas of Cold Springs and the Rice Lake plains. My father only hunted deer once, in Haliburton, but found the killing of such a large animal too dis-turbing. I believe it was the agility and explosive speed of autum-nal waterfowl, revealed in the dawning mist, that led him to this annual ritual. “Migrants,” for 1948, also presents a contrast to the reverie of the previous year. The ducks that merely “descend to reedy beds” have now been energized into “throbbing dots….seeking flight-lanes….in a wind-washed waste.” Although he paused to reflect on the parallel between avian migrants and the destiny of man he did not fully develop this idea until “Wings Over Nipissing” in 1973. For now it was enough to savour “rare duck-hunting times” while draining “life’s cup.”

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1948Migrants

Three were winged as four we lostRising from the marshy river’s mouth,

Migrant ducks that safely crossed Our gunfire, seeking flight-lanes leading south.

Hunters, long we watched their haste,Throbbing dots above the hills of dawn,

Points upon a wind-washed wasteOf pastel-tinted sky—till they were gone.

Some would muse on ducks and men,Migrants both, who yearn for other climes

When the frost enshrouds the fen,But these, for us, were rare duck-hunting times.

Rather as I drained life’s cup

Brimmed with beauty from its amber light,Came, like migrant thoughts, “Heads up!

Between the islands, Look! Another flight!”

Trout fishing at Grafton near Cobourg.

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Allen Fisher in the garden of the family home on Orange Street.

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Glen Morley

One of the friends that my father entertained at Rice Lake was Glen Morley, a Canadian veteran of World War II. As a draftsman, Glen’s artistic skills were put to use making maps for the Royal Canadian Engineers, but his musical background as a cellist with the Vancouver Symphony, eventually led to a transfer to the “Tin Hats,” a war time entertainment troupe. He returned to play cello and act as the librarian for the Rochester Symphony when he appeared in Cobourg and at Rice Lake. My father may have met Glen when he was stationed earlier at Camp Borden, but for a time after the war he was frequently a family house guest. The arrangement was trying for my mother, although Glen did some coaching of my young sisters on violin. Inadvertently, the awarding of a nickel to my sister Sylvia, for a superior perfor-mance, caused her sibling, Joan, to declaim in the future that she would be studying piano, which she has done with accomplish-ment throughout much of her life. Indeed, my most vivid musi-cal memory of Rice Lake was witnessing my sisters, on violin and piano, hammering away on some advanced repertoire with my father shouting instructions while standing on the dining room table as he hammered away on the installation of a false ceiling. As for turning me into a cello player, Mr. Morley more than met his match, inclining my father to leave my musical education to a later date. Glen, however, continued to produce significant compositions, of which the hand written musical scores alone reflected his artistic abilities with pen and ink.

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In the Introduction to this anthology I made reference to the “method” employed by my father in composing his annual Christmas poem. It seemed to be jottings or short lines scrib-bled randomly and mostly in his head, but eventually there was a typed draft. This was often followed by several more drafts, on any of which he also made small alterations at some time, for he saved them, although I was not aware of it at the time.

Probably in 1980, at the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Professor Alec Lucas, he was thinking of publishing an anthol-ogy of the poems. At that time “W.A.” may have tinkered with the original Christmas cards or the drafts, since many of them show written alterations of words or phrases. Personally, I feel this was unnecessary since the substitutions rarely improved the final poem in its printed form. Whenever he made any changes, however, they show the poet at work on his craft as he sought for the balanced meter or just the right word to fit the rhyme scheme.

I have included two drafts of his poem for 1949 that illus-trate how “W.A.” developed his ideas. The first of these entitled “This Pagan Strife,” seems burdened with too many adjectives such as “supermarket miles” or “ shopping tide” and “ever-surg-ing throng” that break the even flow of the lines. Phrases such as “at times” and “once more” also appear superfluous.

The second draft of this ballad, entitled “Greetings,” is a much simpler and more direct version, followed by the final modifica-tions to the untitled poem as found on the Christmas card. The only major alteration of the second draft replaces “For cards with greetings they enfold” with the more forceful “For greeting cards we buy with gold.” In a moment of self-reflection the final line from the original card and the second draft are equally suitable, for there is no doubt that in writing “these simple lines” he found “its poetry at home.”

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1949This Pagan Strife

To-day I walked the supermarket milesOf crowded stores where costly gifts are sold

Seeking along the season’s tinseled aislesCommercial greetings that such cards enfold;

Breasting the shopping tide that sweeps alongEach customer possessed of ample purse,

Like flotsam from the ever-surging throngI paused at times to read their Yuletide verse

The ancient Christian story of good willOnce more I read in vain for on mine ear

Insistently there rang a money tillIn serenading audits of good cheer.

Quite spent at dusk I left cajoling strifeNor longer sought to shop or vainly roam

But found the long remembered scenes of life,Sincerest sounds beside the hearth of home.

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1949Greetings

To-day I walked the tinseled milesOf crowded marts where gifts are sold

Searching along commercial aislesFor cards with greetings they enfold,

Breasting the tide that swept alongEach customer with ready purse,

As flotsam from a surging throngI paused to scan the season’s verse.

Each antique story of good-willI read in vain for on mine ear

Insistent rang a money-tillWith modern carollings of cheer—

Quite spent at dusk and tired of strifeI sought no more to shop or roam

But turned to gentler rhythms of lifeAnd wrote these simple lines at home.

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1949 (To-Day, I Walked)

To-day, I walked the tinselled milesOf crowded marts where gifts are sold,

Searching among commercial aislesFor greeting cards we buy with gold.

Fighting the tide that swept alongEach customer with ready purse,

Like flotsam from a surging throngI paused to read a yuletide verse.

Its antique story of good-willI read in vain, for on mine ear

Insistent rang a money-tillIn modern carollings of cheer.

Unspent at dusk, I left such strife,Nor elsewhere sought to shop or roam,

But turned to quiet rhythms of lifeAnd found its poetry at home.

* Where a poem is untitled, part of the first line has been substi-tuted as indicated throughout the anthology by parentheses.

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1950Fantasy

For 1950 “W. A.” turned exclusively to a winter theme, leav-ened by a reference to his own poetic efforts, but concluding with thoughts of the joys of summer. In some ways this is a generic poem since there are no specific references to personal experi-ence. It may have been inspired by thoughts of his hometown of Cobourg and the rolling hills of Northumberland County—a vivid Christmas memory I have from childhood. Equally, it could have applied to Barrie, a similar town in which little had changed since 1900. With a population of around 12,000 the town still depended on several tanneries, flour mills, a shoe factory and the Ball Planing Mill smack in the middle of downtown, while nearby Allandale remained as a railway town unto itself. The four public schools plus a separate school supplied the one collegiate institute. No respectable person would be found in the half dozen “beverage rooms” of the local hotels, and culture existed largely in Toronto.

The surrounding countryside, however, which both my par-ents cherished, was more redeeming. The gravel concession roads were not yet fervid commuter routes. In summer they led through fields and meadows of prosperous farms, while the snow-draped landscapes of winter offered an equal celebration of nature for anyone inclined to look for it.

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1950Fantasy

Each year, when pines put on their cowls of snowAnd old rail fences wear a frosty tulle, When farmers chop the sounding woods for fuel

And northern lights perform fortissimo,When festive cottage-windows warmly glow

As adolescents holiday from school,And children take the fancied road to Yule

With folk who sojourned there so long ago, Who, then, is not enthralled by winter’s spell ?

The very landscape charms our flow of words;Yet we, in prose, must wish our neighbours well.

How mute we are before such fantasy Which is as lyric as a violin, or birds

In June that hymn the day’s nativity!

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1951Impromptu

Several of the Christmas poems depict family members. In this case the subject was my sister Joan Fisher Meyer. Both of my sisters, Joan on piano and Sylvia on violin, began formal music instruction at an early age, attaining a superior level of perfor-mance, and I am sure that my parents took great pride in the accomplishments of their twin daughters. In this poem he uses Joan as the vehicle to express his philosophical thoughts on art, the passage of time and immortality.

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1951Impromptu

Beyond my window ledge, enshrouding snowVeils from the world December’s dying sun,And here the light of room and day are one

As fireside flames abate in fevered glow;Beside a key-board palette, dimly seen,

A girl, with tonal brush, creates in sound,Staining the dusk in master-tints profound,

Using the silence for her easel screen.

Some wizardry impels her moving handsExceeding that of paint or puissant rhyme;With art, as fleeting as in snow-flakes caught

On window-panes, she limns forgotten lands,Impassioned seas, that surge on shoals of thought

And wash her footprints from the shore of time.

My mother, an expert seamstress, made all the clothes for my twin sisters for many years. Little old ladies in Barrie used to tell me when I was young that they could never tell my sisters apart. For those who are not sure Joan is on

the left and Sylvia is on the right.

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Coincidentally, in 1951, my father later recalled his best Christmas gift of 1933. This was before he began his annual po-ems and certainly long before medical technology removed all of the surprises associated with birth.

My Most Memorable ChristmasThe sights and sounds of every Christmas strike a responsive

chord in everyone who has known a happy childhood. Because of that each one is memorable. It is a birthday festival older than its name or the preserved scriptures of antiquity. The date of the birth we celebrate, set in the winter solstice rather than in the “lambing time” when it probably occurred, strengthens this as-sociation with the remote past. In these abortive times it is be-coming confused with the saturnalia of ancient Rome, another festival of the winter solstice. Yet should the family as a social unit continue to survive, so will Christmas, for the family is its fount-head.

In consideration of this I am certain that my most memo-rable Christmas occurred in the “winter of the great frost.” The water and sewer mains in eastern Ontario that year were frozen solid several times. Apple orchards were killed by the frost that set in by early October and the orchards had to be uprooted in the following spring. The thermometers rarely registered higher than 20 degrees below zero. Motor cars were so difficult to start that many motors were turned on intermittently throughout the night. Transportation became arduous and haphazard. But in spite of such conditions we made the hospital, on time and about 28 hours before Christmas.

I well remember the long wait near the information desk and the smiling nurse with her congratulatory message. It ended the long years of my youth and introduced me to the responsibility of parenthood as she said, “You have just become the father of twin girls.”

It was a Christmas in every sense.

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1952To My Colleagues

Using the simple ballad form, in 1952, my father turned to the different subject of his colleagues or teaching friends. He had a profound respect for many of them that he taught with in the 1930s and 1940s, when the school and staff of Barrie Collegiate were much smaller. He may not have agreed with each of them all of the time, but he was the first to recognize hard work and dedication. Some were women— invariably single and long serv-ing—such as Laura Young, Anastasia Hughes or Uriel Kelso. He equally acknowledged the accomplishments of other colleagues like Angus Ross, Doug Shepherd and Isaac Cutler. Some of them taught me in the 1950s just before retirement; others I knew through his reminiscences. As the school grew, his later colleagues ranged across the disciplines, from people such as Alf Parker the shop teacher, Mary Wase in music, Doug Fairbrother and John Wood in history, to Jim Savage in science and Nancy Smith in French. In all he saw them as a “goodly company” entrusted with the noble task of educating the young.

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1952

To My Colleagues

We are teachers, ones who labourIn the garden soil of truth

Growing plants whose petals savourOf the ambrosial wine of youth,

Plants whose fragrance lingers with usWhen the dusk has sheathed the thorn,

Or when Beauty wakens slumbrousIn her veils of early morn.

Think us not as poets dreaming,Nor as merchants marting gold,

Scientists in nuclear scheming—Think but this of us grown old:

We were banks to young streams flowing,We are life’s great river-bed;

Ours, the power, and glory, knowingOthers followed where we led.

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1953To an Old Friend

Continuing on a more personal theme, “W. A.”addressed the subject of friendship. I don’t recall any close personal friends of his own age, either in Barrie or his hometown of Cobourg. There was a hint of hero worship with regard to Winston, his older and only brother, a vigorous and athletic young man who died at the early age of 57. The closest connections for both my mother and father remained with some of the first of his students in Barrie, such as Dr. Bob Delaney with whom he shared a passion for the wilderness and duck hunting. Some like Jack and Wilda Mc-Caw and Jean and Vic Knox remained as life-long neighbours on Sunnidale Road. Other neighbours for many years included John and Grace Ough and Jack and Betty Nixon. I also have a vivid memory of hunting partridge, with an armed “W.A.” in the front seat of a Model A Ford, owned by Jack Nixon, while patrolling old logging roads near his cottage at Sundridge. John Ough, along with such others as Harry Young and Bill Garner were members of the infamous Black Bear Fishing Club that flourished in the 1950’s and existed for the sole purpose of an annual expedition to Algonquin Park every May. I, and several other sons, were invariably conscripted to portage enough gear, food and drink for a serious safari to darkest Africa.

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1953To an Old Friend

Although the hastening years leave little timeFor friends long parted, to recall the ways

Of youth, the sentiment of other daysIntangible as melody in rhyme,

When it was noon and life was at its prime,Yet am I moved again, in verse to phrase

These thoughts for you, not draw them from a mazeOf garish cards that market for a dime.

This is the season when all persons wouldBe free to leave the prosy paths of earth

And kneel, communicant, beneath the spellCast by the celebration of Christ’s birth;

Orison-like, to wish each other wellAnd drink the chaliced wine of brotherhood.

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1954(When Youth is Gone)

For this year “W.A.” reverted to the rondeau form that he so evocatively used in “Return Once More” (1947). The rondeau, based on an early form of French poetry, is regarded as chal-lenging, with a stylized pattern consisting of a total of fifteen lines. Thirteen of the lines consist of eight syllables but the ninth line contains only four syllables and is repeated as the final line. To complicate matters further the poet must employ only three rhymes in a prescribed order. Following this format in this un-titled poem “W.A.” addressed the themes of advancing age, the passage of time and the contrast of these with nostalgic thoughts of youth.

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1954(When Youth is Gone)

When youth is gone from us, or fled,Not always should we deem it dead,

For pealing bells at Yule uprollThe window blinds which veil the soul;

Then by a light that one time ledWise men to God, translucent shedOn mansioned self, we view, instead,

Elysian lawns where loved ones strollWhen youth is gone.

And homing paths from which we spedOur childhood memories gentlier tread;

On grounds without, close-pressed and droll,Their faces to the panes, they loll,

Dear urchins who have need of breadWhen youth is gone.

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1955December Incident 11:55

In December, 1955, the Barrie Collegiate Band made its second appearance at the prestigious Mid-West National Band Clinic held annually in Chicago. After successful performances and commendatory praise the band journeyed homeward by rail. At 11:55 am on Sunday, December 11, the trip was rudely inter-rupted by a major derailment near South Bend, Indiana. Fortu-nately, there were no serious injuries, even though the train broke apart between the two band coaches. Youthful ingenuity soon prevailed, combined with a yard engine that was dispatched to the rescue. Complete with instruments and baggage some band members backed into town perched on the yard engine and at-tached flat-car. Others joined the remaining passengers in hiking across a ploughed field to waiting buses. All of this excitement was followed by a four hour delay until another train could be arranged. In the meantime, the band set up shop in the elaborate railway station and performed an impromptu concert. For the student musicians it soon became a memory of another great adventure. For the anxious parents, as well as my father, I am sure the near disaster lingered in their minds, an event that also provided him with the subject matter for his annual poem

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1955December Incident 11:55

On tracks congruent sped we like the daysWhen we were young; our speech the humming coach

Made consonant, while passing poles our gazeBut marked as pickets in their swift approach,

Then sudden, unannounced, man’s techniques fail—A lurching train, a cry, and we are hurledPast tottering car and twisting tie and rail

Beyond the certain limits of this world.

Think not the incident unique: MankindImpelled likewise, is moved on wheels of fate,

the cargo dissonant from sword and pen,Its crew is scheduled to each scheming mind

And all in peril who now celebrateChrist’s birth yet have not peace, goodwill toward men.

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1956Lines From a Lost Scroll

Based on a biblical theme, this poem for 1956, also reflects the work of the nineteenth century poet Robert Browning. Browning produced well known dramatic monologues such as “My Last Duchess” and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” in which he assumed the voice of a character in what seemed like a casual conversation. “W.A.” chose Balthazer, the black King of Arabia, for his dramatic persona, since he speaks of returning to Samar-kand, an ancient Arab city now in Uzbekistan. Balthazer leaves a scroll (now lost) with his two companions, Gaspar the young King of India and Melchior the elderly King of Persia. The scroll is a record of the compelling, yet mystifying events that they have recently witnessed: the meaning of the star and its movements, the dream that warned them not to return to Herod and the per-plexing, humble stable to which these learned and royal figures were led.

As astrologers, it was the brilliant star that led them on in trying to determine its significance. Unable to solve this mystery, Balthazar even speculates that some cosmic catastrophe in the future might provide an answer only in retrospect. There seems to be a hint of foreshadowing here for “W.A.” viewed the “dread battlegrounds” of mankind as increasingly catastrophic. The an-swer for both the Magi and the poet could only be found in “the Prince of Peace.”

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1956Lines From A Lost Scroll

Farewell, Gaspar, farewell, the hour burns late;This scroll I leave you both at Hebron. Mute

It witnesses to those unborn that farWe journeyed once to keep a tryst with fate.

Now, as we slip through Herod’s net, pursuitCan no more hound our homeward paths. The star

That lately led us by its waxing brightRemains the only mystery and will

For long abide since we three Magi, grownFamiliar with the movement of the spheres

As pilots with their coastal channels knownFrom youth, can find no reason for its light,

Unless an orb celestial would fulfillIn one last conflagration, this event.

I cannot tell . . .perhaps in later years.

I leave for Samarkand in wondermentThat we have crossed frontiers of warlike states,

Dread battlegrounds where nameless hosts have bled,To this profundity—and here I cease,

How we went not to sounding hallsOf sophistry, nor court of potentates

Nor palaces girt by imperial wallsNor modest inn, but to a cattle-shed

And found what we long sought, the Prince of Peace.

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1957This Geo-Physic Year

The International Geophysical Year involved a series of obser-vations of geophysical phenomena associated with the solar-ter-restrial environment. First conceived in 1952, these co-ordinated studies were carried out by scientists from 67 nations, between July 1, 1957 and December 31, 1958, a period of maximum sun-spot activity. Technical advances in electronic computers, radar and rocketry now provided the tools for a closer examination of the earth and the space around it. Experiments were carried out in such areas as ionospheric physics, meteorology, geomagnetism, seismology and oceanography. In space, the Van Allen radiation belts were first detected, while accurate mapping of submarine ridges on the ocean floor confirmed the theory of plate tecton-ics.

Much of the research was carried out in Antarctica, because of its pristine environment and an international agreement set-ting this final continent aside for non-military use and scientific study only. Plans were also made by the United States to place an artificial satellite in earth orbit as a first step into outer space. Ironically, the Russian scientists who outdid the Americans with the launch of “Sputnik” on October 4, 1957, had a difficult time convincing the Soviet hierarchy of the military value in this achievement. It was only after the belated launch of “Explorer” by the Americans, and the resultant panic about the failure of western science, that the “space race” took on an ominous tone, overshadowed as it was by the Cold War. But for “W.A.” all of these achievements mattered little as long as mankind was unable to forgo its “brutish past.”

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1957This Geo-Physic Year

Should earthlings breach the battlements of spaceAnd man assault the citadel of time, By fate propelled up from primordial slime

Unto such engineering power, what traceOf brutish past will blotch his godlike face?

And should his ships then reach some astral clime,Will he commit again the olden crimeBegot of Cain, inbred in every race?

Count this not progress, marvels of the mind

In questing outer worlds for golden fleece,Or grasping an ethereal diadem

For all humanity despairing peace,Unless its cosmic argonauts should find

A long lost star, once set o’er Bethlehem.

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1958Nativity

In 1958 my father celebrated the birth of Tanya, his first grandchild, and the daughter of my sister Sylvia. Originally entitled “Miracle” this was the most personal of his Christmas poems, which suggests how moving it was for him to see the beginning of another generation. It was the start of a relationship that remained very close between him and his grand-daughter in later years. Here the birth of Tanya is merged with the Christmas nativity and the home, like the stable in Bethlehem, becomes a refuge wherein the firelight enfolds the joyful baby in “a crib of gold.” In his first draft of this poem he described her as a “gift in swaddling blankets we unrolled,” emphasizing that, at any time, the miracle of birth is the greatest gift of all.

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1958Nativity

With damask drapes, we hid the face of night,Concealed the fernlike bloom on windows cold,

Shut out the carolling from spires grown oldIn supplication for a world’s respite;Upon a rug, within the hearth’s warm light,

We cradled Tanya in a crib of gold,As gleeful gurgling measured manifold

Her joy in life, and love, and all things bright.

Here in this sanctuary, we call home,Where storms of doubt can rarely penetrate,

In worship, primal as a cry, or mirth,Enacting liturgy from ancient tome

Quite unaware, we knelt to venerateThe ever-present miracle of birth.

W.A. Fisher, with members of the Barrie Collegiate Band during the marching contest at the World Music Festival, Kerkrade, Netherlands, August 1958.

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1958Christmas Greetings From the Director

The Things We Did Last Summer

It would be presumptuous and difficult to write an article on the travels of the Barrie Collegiate Band were I not so indebted to them for their exemplary behaviour and their excellent perfor-mance in England and on the continent this August past. It has been said that youngsters are the same the world over, and that it is the tuition and the leadership that counts. If this be so, and I doubt it, then I have been extremely fortunate in enrolling only the best. I have never known the dreary hours of drudgery spent by some on the inactive and the inept.

The consistent winning of first awards at music contests over many years prompted us to consider an overseas tour for the present band. I was also aware of the fact that, by last February, the band had soloists, depth, and strength in every department, something that is not always revealed in a contest, but which, by its absence, is soon realized when one attempts a tour. By March the die was cast and we were entered in the Wereld Muziek Con-cours of Kerkrade, Holland. The miracle of raising the necessary $28,000 was accomplished by Mr. J. H. Rodgers, lumber mer-chant, and father of several past members of the band.

Visiting Europe with a band is like taking coals to Newcastle. Yet this can turn to advantage, for the people (European) not only listen to, but they are critical of, band music. To my aston-ishment, I found that a contemporary work such as Creston’s “Legend” (in the band idiom) received more accolades than a

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standard orchestral transcription such as “Euryanthe” or “Corio-lan.” I also found that better European bands accent articulation and clean playing; that they are “note-happy;” but that they are not as critical of sound quality as we appear to be. For example, a band in another class to ours received an extremely high mark for an excellent reading of the “Capriccio Italien” by Tchaikowsky, yet I was disappointed in the hardness of their clarinet sound, and the very busy oboist hardly rated as such because of the lack of quality in his tone and the over-nasal character of his instru-ment.

More than 100 orchestras and bands competed at Kerkrade in a tented auditorium that seated 8,000. It was indeed flattering to play in the evening concert of honour after winning a first in the afternoon. It was ironic that we should play Beethoven’s “Coriolan” and Rossini’s “Italian in Algiers” to 5,000 listeners in a foreign land only to return to the CNE contests to play the first number to a handful of people in a softball park in competi-tion with several distinguished Canadian bands and the intrusive noises of the “Ex.” Musical organizations thrive on winning such contests, but music will die without the critically appreciative audiences which we found in Holland. On the same evening that we played, two orchestras from Spain and one from Sweden competed. All received first awards because of their excellence, although they were in different classes. How astonishing that the enthusiastic audience that listened to our amateur music should return the next evening in capacity numbers to listen to one of Europe’s finest professional orchestras and choirs play and sing the Beethoven Ninth! Could this happen in Massey Hall or at Stratford? Is it possible that in this democratic land of America we are inclined to be musically snobbish? We shall never lack wind-players as long as dance orchestras are popular, but the lack of string-players could be that the amateur is ignored, or nearly so, in this country. In contrast, the National Youth Orchestra of Israel was the toast of Holland. It was unique in winning 360 points out of 360. An amateur orchestra and juvenile, it played

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better than many professional organizations.We also found the international panel of judges appreciative

but discerning. There was a wider range of marks and a greater difference separating superior organizations from good or medio-cre. Several groups that had come from distant European centres received no awards at all. Because the contests last for the month of August it was impossible to declare the highest point-winner in any class. Bands also submit the four numbers they wish to play and any band that chooses to play difficult works is at a handicap. At the last moment Barrie submitted four major works which would have moved the group into the top class. It was too late to change the grouping and the band was judged solely on its playing of these works. At the time of writing, and from those records we obtained, Barrie had the highest points in its two con-cert contests of the 19 bands in its class. Five firsts were awarded in this class to those bands receiving more than 288 points out of 360.

It is not what students do for music, but what music does to students that makes its study worthwhile. The Barrie Colle-giate Band enjoyed a rare educational experience as it toiled at its competitions. Free hours were given over to guided tours. Never was so much seen by so many in so few days. We rehearsed daily on the Empress of France for the enjoyment of the passengers. By the time we were able to fit our syncopations to the roll of the “Duchess” we were viewing the bomb scars of Liverpool. We travelled through the quaint town of Shrewsbury, home of Charles Darwin, to a sumptuous dinner in a Birmingham hotel, and the next day on to Warwick castle and the thatched cottage of Ann Hathaway. For hours we roamed the colleges of Oxford, then thought of Churchill as we glimpsed Blenheim House on our way to London. Three days we spent in London doing a re-cording for the BBC and playing on the Victoria Embankment. There we enlarged our horizons in history with tours to the Tow-er, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court and Madame Toussard’s. We saw the changing of the guard, we at-

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tended a service in St.Paul’s and whispered to each other across the famed gallery. Some even visited Nelson and Wellington in the crypt below. We viewed Wren’s wedding-cake steeple of St. Bride’s and Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, the haunt of Dickens, Gold-smith, Dr. Johnson and Boswell.

After waving goodbye to the white cliffs of Dover, we boarded (literally climbed aboard) a Calais train for Paris. We found every-thing that is said about it to be true, from the nobility of the Arc de Triomphe to the fleshiness of the Place Pigalle. Guided tours to Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre and Versailles en-riched our vocabulary and strengthened our interest in language study. We bivouacked in a French school and appreciated our own modern buildings through its austerity. We mingled with French high school pupils and savored the political scene in read-ing hastily scrawled signs on walls and bridges, denouncing or praising DeGaulle. We dined on the Champs Elysees at a swank inn and thought of Dumas and Lautrec. We wandered through the gardens of the Tuilleries and dreamed of the glories of the past as we gazed at the architectural wonders of the Louvre.

By bus we travelled through France, up to Vimy Ridge to meditate on the cost of war and the first page of world history ever written by Canadians. Down we came to Brussels and spent four brief hours among the modern architecture of the World’s Fair. Here we found that the Soviet is winning the propaganda war even though they demonstrate a motor car that is not even in production in their own country. Finally we arrived by Maas-tricht at Kerkrade, where we found that the Dutch have not for-gotten that the Canadian Army liberated Holland. The hospital-ity and kinship of these hardworking and intelligent people is something to be experienced. At Flushing we were more aware of the prowess of Canadian arms as the people told us about the bombing of the dykes and the valiant attack of the First Army on November 1 to 5, 1944. As we turned northward toward Rot-terdam we paused at a beautiful war cemetery where we read the names, Calgary, Essex Scottish, Hamilton, and Regiment de

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Maisonneuve on the grave stones, and here communed with the dead in a corner of a foreign field that is forever Canada.

On the island of Texel at a summer resort we played our last concert. Nearby were the abandoned cement bunkers of the Ger-man West Wall, built with the forced labour of Dutchmen who cannot forget. Our last day was spent in the delightful city of Amsterdam, where we boated on the canals of this Venice of the north. An all too brief viewing of the masterpieces of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Rubens in the National Museum, and we sat down to our last meal together in the airport. Even yet, the trip held wonders for us, for the gods were kind. Visibility on our CPA trip home was so good that we saw the dawn at Iceland, the snow fields of Greenland and icebergs and glaciers as we crossed the straits to Labrador with its tundra that gave way to the rich ev-ergreens of northern Quebec. For two hours we flew over virgin forests and lakes that we were proud to call our home. And as we sighted the broad St. Lawrence and Quebec Bridge we were more acutely aware than ever before that we were Canadians and that this was the land of our birth.

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1959Bridge to Sunnidale

In 1949 my father ended his days as a tenant at 31 Ross Street and decided to build his own home at 45 Sunnidale Road. This proved to be a financial strain given the teaching salaries of the time, but a substantial sum was realized eventually by the sale of the Rice Lake property. To further economize, he purchased from a Cobourg friend, the oak and pine that became flooring and siding. As a small boy I witnessed them using horses to cut and move the logs, which were then milled and transported to Barrie by my father. Unfortunately, his efforts were seriously hin-dered, for the summer, when he stepped on a large nail in the mill yard.

For his new residence he turned his back on waterfront prop-erty for Kempenfelt Bay, he claimed, was too cold and besides he wanted to be able to walk to work at the Barrie Collegiate. The location, however, was on the edge of town and Sunnidale Road was little more than that, with a gravel surface that wound to the north-west past the Barrie Country Club. Before that it passed several substantial mansions from the previous century, and the apple orchard of Alex Goldie, all very idyllic, with only a few more houses scattered through an area of mixed hardwood forest. I could number scarcely a dozen playmates that lived up this rural road, although the Catholic Cemetery and the Barrie Union Cemetery were more amply populated.

Parallel to Sunnidale Road and terminating at Cundles Road ran the most substantial ravine in Barrie, the valley of Kidd’s Creek—or the “Pine Bush” as we called it. From its spring-fed

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headwaters to Wellington Street, the creek and the steep-sided valley made the ideal playground for young boys, both in sum-mer and winter. But changes were rapidly coming. The building of Highway 400, by 1951, irrevocably filled in and bisected the valley and in anticipation of this Goldie had sold off his orchard lots below the new highway bridge, one of them being 45 Sun-nidale Road.

For most of the 1950s the four lanes of Highway 400 were relatively deserted compared to its present overuse. It was still possible for us to descend from Hillcrest Public School at the top of Toronto Street and cross the highway with our skis on in order to reach the hills of the golf course. For several years, on a pleasant Sunday evening, neighbours would gather on the Sunnidale Road bridge just to watch the phenomenon of cottage traffic streaming back to Toronto. But by 1959 the street in front of the house had been rebuilt with pavement, curbs and a sidewalk to access grow-ing subdivisions. In spite of this urbanization and the increasing lights and noise from the highway, the surrounding scene was still sufficient to provide the inspiration for the opening octet of this year’s sonnet. The concluding sestet, however, speaks to me of childhood memories of Cobourg, where Electa and Lulu, the two elderly sisters of my father still resided in the modest family home built in 1895. Although possessed of ample gardens, this humble abode built by my grandfather—a self taught carpen-ter whom I never knew—included an inefficient heating system, an obsolete kitchen and irregularly shaped rooms throughout. Nevertheless, my aunt’s canary seemed to sing endlessly and the flower beds of her sister were magnificent in summer, but during the Christmas holidays I was usually banished to the dreaded “north” bedroom, a small cell where ice was inclined to congeal on the inside of the window. When desperate enough, I could al-ways creep across the linoleum to the adjoining bedroom with its large grate on the floor, through which a few degrees of warmth and adult conversation ascended from the room below.

My mother’s parents, Bert and Emma Lucas, emigrated from

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England in 1913. Originating in the serving ranks of British society, they found employment in Cobourg with the Olivers, a wealthy American family from Pittsburg. Dungannon was their 1,000 acre summer estate where my grandfather was in charge of the numerous poultry and my grandmother served as a maid in the “big house.” They both retired to Cobourg in 1946, leaving me with misty memories not only of baby chicks, patient cows and flowered meadows, but cedar lanes covered in snow and the bridge over an ice-filled stream that led to a modest farmhouse in which they quietly passed their years.

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1959Bridge to Sunnidale

From dusk distilled, the streams of traffic flowBeneath us, serpentine, through vales outbound,

Where warder pines, engirt with drifts, impoundTheir iridescence in new-fallen snow;Upon bare highway shoulders, headlights glow,

And through the wooded hills, tiara-crowned,Like breaking surf, their speeding motors sound,

The folk of Christendom that homeward go.

To-night their beams will sweep down country lanesAnd finger every home’s ancestral face,

Caress the hands that wave from frosty panes,The whitened hair that waits in time and place.

For this, O Nazarene, had you but died,By all who love, you would be deified.

The garden of 92 O

range Street, the Fisher family hom

e in Cobourg.

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1960Christmas Eve, 1960

The juxtaposition of the brutality of man with the enduring nature of peace and love are frequent subjects throughout the po-ems of W. A. Fisher. By 1960, the growing intensity of the Cold War and the proliferation of nuclear-tipped missiles sharpened this paradox even more. In this perfect hard-hitting sonnet, he found the global situation analogous to the Greek tyrant Diony-sius, who dangled a sword by a single hair over the head of a com-placent Damocles, to remind him of the precariousness of life. It is probable that “W.A.” was also influenced by William Wordsworth’s sonnet “England” that addressed the threat of im-minent invasion by calling on the greatness of an earlier poet:

Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:England hath need of thee…

And just as Wordsworth called on Milton, “W.A.” invoked the moral power of the Christ child: “Compassionate, unerring, to forbear—”, as the only possible remedy for a world on the brink of an abyss.

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1960Christmas Eve, 1960

If ever men had urgent need of Thee,O Child of Bethlehem, that time is now;Not for the carolling, the tinseled bough,

The season’s merchandizing bursary,Nor shepherd vigil, nor the minstrelsy

Of seraphim above a fodder-mow,Nor gifts with which the givers teach us how

To covet in Thine own Nativity.

Instead, O Son of Man, we need thy powerCompassionate, unerring, to forbear—

Now, in this world of grave anxieties,Where hatreds bind, in this most parlous hour,

Mankind upon an alter of despairBeneath the nuclear sword of Damocles.

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1961Reflections on Christmas Eve

Expanding on the theme of the previous year “W.A.” painted an ever darkening picture for 1961. The growing crisis over the Berlin Wall was now heightened by the deployment of nuclear missiles with a destructive force of many megatons, each the equivalent of millions of tons of conventional explosives. By now he had mastered the sonnet form and made it a supple vehicle for a message that built towards a final climactic line. The searing indictment of the octet compares the technical achievements of mankind to the seeming inability to forgo the failings of waste, hate and war. With time running out there is salvation only in hearing the “angel choir.” Either that or face the global catastro-phe of “megatonic fire.”

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1961Reflections on Christmas Eve

Men learned to hate a million years gone by,Half-brute, with blood they tainted hill and plain

And fed their lust upon each other’s painBy looting valleys rich in husbandry.They learned to use their hands so cunningly

An upright posture did their kind attain,But none forswore the mortal deed of Cain

As infinite they grew in faculty.

Now, fearful, men must learn from hour to hourTo scan the lethal smile on heaven’s face,

And wait for wisdom, and supernal powerDivorced from acts of war; commune in grace

With this night’s message from an angel choir—Or be consumed in megatonic fire.

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1963*Reflections, 1963

The poem for this year bears some resemblance to the one in 1959 with its references to the lights of the city below 45 Sun-nidale Road, “engirt by hills.” Originally, the back of our house gave a clear view into the valley and across the grass-covered slopes and distant fields. Only a few scattered dwellings marked Toronto Street, stretching from Wellington Street—a mere cul de sac—to Grove Street at the top of the hill, where the 500 or so feathered inhabitants of the Coutts’ chicken farm provided most of the daily action. Within the valley of Kidd’s Creek, Alex Goldie had maintained an asparagus patch for some years as an adjunct to his apple orchard. It had now run wild and amply sup-plied anyone willing to walk the grassy slopes and valley bottom. The severing of this five acre property for Highway 400, caused Goldie to offer it for sale and so my father and four neighbours, Vic Knox, Lorne Cunningham, Jack Nixon and John Ough, purchased it for $500 in 1952. With the intent of creating an urban green space in perpetuity, we began a reforestation project in the following year. In retrospect, our efforts were rather hap-hazard for on the hillsides straight lines could become crooked. Seedlings were often planted too close to each other because they looked so small, while the truly small might be installed three to a hole thereby creating arboreal nightmares in the future. More-over, we usually planted undesirable species such as scotch and jack pine, simply because the government provided them free of charge, rather than hardwood seedlings at 25 cents a piece. I have often wondered what a valuable resource this acreage could

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have become if properly planted and maintained with black wal-nut or red oak. No matter, the trees that were planted managed to grow, even if they resembled little more than a jungle.

A few years later “W.A.” began the construction of two ponds located beside Kidd’s Creek. The first attempt involved Jack Nix-on on the winch of his war surplus Power Wagon, made by Dodge, and my father hanging on for all he was worth to the scoop shovel that slowly excavated the muck. A more success-ful venture was made the following year with a large mechani-cal dragline, leaving the onerous task of levelling banks, digging a parallel watercourse to supply the pond and the building of appropriate structures to maintain water levels. The only way in which I could mitigate my obligations, in this regard, was to cajole numerous friends into lending their assistance from time to time. Originally, the pond was deep enough to enjoy a cooling swim, if you could stand the frigid water and the muddy bot-tom, but by 1963 it had become a show place with dams, catch basins and spillways surrounded by tree-shaded grassy banks. The spring-fed waters harboured abundant trout and assorted am-phibians, surrounded by a growing forest, a haven for both birds and animals as well as a pleasant refuge to be enjoyed both in summer and winter.

* No poem has been found for 1962

The valley behind 45 Sunnidale Road in 1949 before reforestation and the building of H

illcrest Public School.

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1963Reflections, 1963

Below us lies the city like a poolOf light engirt by hills with darkness blent,The frosting snow in rare embellishment

Encrusts each home as though it were a jewel.So domiciled, we sip the wine of Yule

The bitter-sweet of Christmas merrimentFor family circles closed in sweet content

And carefree joys of youth released from school;And from our dwelling, as we gaze upon this scene

And conjure up scenes past and friends now lost,An ancient Chinese proverb comes to mind:“Who seeketh perfect happiness must find

Some threshold that by Grief was never crossed,A grain of rice where sorrow’s never been.”

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How Evergreen Is Our Valley

This variation on an old movie title I have chosen purposely as a subject for this paper, not so much because we reforested part of the valley some twelve years ago, but rather that evergreen is symbolic of life and in this instance of bird-life that is with us the year round.

In 1950 when the Department of Highways expropriated a strip of land (that is now Highway 400) from Sunnidale Road to Bayfield Street, Barrie, we had hardly finished the house in which we now dwell. Even as we chose the lot on which we built, lying as it does next to the highway, we viewed with deep appreciation the prospect of having a home situated on the side of a pine-clad valley with a brisk stream purling through it. We were greatly shocked when the highway construction gangs burst into it, at the number of mature trees which they slaughtered in the cause of modern transportation. It seemed that the wilderness place which we and four other householders had purchased for a few hundred dollars, the valley that lay at the foot of our lots, would be reduced to a barren backyard within the limits of creeping urbanization.

To prevent this we hurriedly resorted to reforestation of the barren east bank, coaxed a neighbouring school to fence off their area, hired a drag-line operator to excavate a small pond off the course of the stream, and watched our children growing up year by year as they romped through its five acres in mimic Indian warfare. And as the young seedlings grew into Christmas trees, and the Japanese larch reached up twenty feet in no time, we became aware of more bird-life, either because we became more observant, or the protected tree growth encouraged a larger bird

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population.Significant springs oozed out of the lower sides of the valley

emerging at the very roots of mature pine trees that had escaped the construction axe. They helped to saturate the rich humus of the floor of the valley and this results in an almost marsh-like condition where tall cat-tails grow and where each early April we hear red-wing blackbirds whistling their joy at the return of warmth and growth. Shortly after they return, a pair of mourn-ing doves that have some ancient hereditary right to the valley appear and nest in a large pine not more than a hundred feet from our kitchen window. Their somber mating call is in keeping with the pines, but their shyness makes it difficult to locate their nest from year to year, even though we have cleared a walking trail to the limits of the property allowing us a quiet approach to their habitat.

Our artificial pond lures the odd kingfisher and early spring goldeneye or lesser scaup, and with the melting of the snow each spring we have observed at dusk above the moist earth of the tiny marsh, the weird twilight flight, and the beep of a woodcock. Where the bird nests we shall never know, but his call we identify each spring at approximately the same time.

By May the clatter of mating flickers resounds throughout the days as they warm up. The fast-growing pines which we planted are now ideal nesting sites for robins, and a walk through the trails of their nursery rewards you with a severe scolding for such interloping. Less normal in an evergreen glade, but just as insistent is the “witchety-witchety” of the yellowthroat warbler that flits through dogwood and elder bush hard by the pines.

The pond attracts birds that otherwise might not be found in evergreens. As the setting sun glazes its surface with an amber hue a flight of tree swallows nightly fascinate us as they drop gracefully to its surface for insects or for a drink. On such af-ter supper walks we always hear, although do not as easily see, a twanging nighthawk and the plaintive killdeer whose nest we found one spring in the potato field on the other side of the val-

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ley. For several summers we heard a tireless whip-poor-will when the evening was well set and a moon lent romance to the warmth of night. But of late, residences have crept in around us and be-cause of that this Canadian nightingale has probably withdrawn in confusion.

The gossipy character of a July day in the valley, with a brown thrasher vieing with a cat-bird, or an occasional glimpse of a black-billed cuckoo is quite often disturbed by a nosey and noisy foray of a pair of crows arousing as much consternation as a traffic cop policing his highway beat. Instead of hiding at some cross-roads these busy-bodies make a sweep through the pines hoping to surprise some brooding female derelict in her incubat-ing duties. We have seen them ushered out of the valley more than once by enraged kingbirds that evidently have influence.

As the summer lengthens into August an occasional flash of yellow marks the swift flight of goldfinches among the ever-greens, and we discover ruby-crowned kinglets feeding on seeds that have reached maturity. And now the ripeness of autumn is touched with the melancholy call of the chickadee that is so sen-sitive to the season’s changes.

Soon the north winds sweep into the valley and stiffen the bulrushes and the migratory white-crowned and white-throated sparrows arrive in flocks for a brief hour or so before they are gone. With the coming of the snow and the icing of the pond the tempo of bird-life seems to falter. But where there is food there is life even in this wintry land of ours. We fill our feeding trays at the foot of the lot and not long after we are rewarded.

A veritable gang of rogues, six blue jays, make off with all the sunflower seed we can afford. They even boast of their good for-tune, calling every bird within earshot every time we fill the tray. They boss the timorous little tree sparrows, and the cedar wax-wings that shelter in the lee of the tray when the blasts of snow half obscure them. An occasional cardinal comes out of the pines but we regret that they grow more occasional in appearance.

As the winter deepens with the snow, downy woodpeckers

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and chickadees come for the suet we put out when we get around to it. The little black-caps are so venturesome they come to with-in a few feet of our kitchen window, and there I have caught their tiny figures on coloured film.

When the winter finally seems to have a death grip on the valley, and everything green has either died or is draped in snow, as a gesture of hope, out of the pines come flocks of juncos and crossbills, and not quite so often, flights of pine siskins and red-polls. And when out of a brief bluster of wind and snow came sweeping in from the sheltering pines, a happy flock of grosbeaks and purple finches, it set us thinking. We watched them gingerly picking at the grain until they left, and we both thought, now that they are here, can spring be far behind, and though the pines still wear their shrouds of snow, the abundant bird-life in this wilderness place within the limits of our young city bears witness to the fact that our valley is evergreen.

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1964Yule, 1964

In 1964 “W.A” introspectively considered the medium of the Christmas card itself. Writing earlier in “To an Old Friend” (1953), he had rejected “garish cards that market for a dime” and preferred to replace them in “Sonnet ‘74” (1974) with “simple greetings from some distant friend….[that] deck the mantle-piece with prose and rhyme.” But for now he was content to ac-knowledge that even the simplest cards were as “fortress sentinels of old” whose friendly greetings could “alchemize dull moments into gold.”

There were also times when my father felt compelled to add personal notes to close friends or relatives who had a literary background. These brief remarks that he made to my sister also show the energy and thought that he brought to each poem:

“Joan: This took two days! I must be slipping. Note the rhyme scheme of the sestet—a variant on the Petrarchan—with a reverse cddc.”

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1964Yule, 1964

Now comes the festal time when nights are longAnd boreal lights frame temples in the sky,When carollings announce the season’s nigh

For market-place to fill with gifts and song.

Now comes the time when postal greetings throngEach letter-box, and friends, no longer by,Remember us, and deeds that none deny

To youth when currents of our lives ran strong.

Now comes the time when cards that we unfold, Endorsed by ones we knew when noon was bright,

Become like fortress sentinels of old.They cry “All’s well” across the years of nightAnd keep the fires of amity alight

And alchemize dull moments into gold.

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1965Legend of Lindos

In 1965 my parents went on an extended holiday to Europe for seven weeks. The time was propitious, for the currency ex-change rates still favoured North Americans. My sister Joan, who was teaching in Germany for the Department of National De-fense, joined them in London for a tour of southern England and a visit with my mother’s relatives in Kent. These she had not seen since 1927 when she returned after immigrating to Canada in 1913 as a girl of eight. Once back on the continent, they travelled in Joan’s new Mustang convertible through France, Ger-many, Austria, Yugoslavia, Egypt and Greece. For my father es-pecially, the journey to Athens and various Greek islands was the trip of a lifetime, given an education that had stressed the verities and literature of the classical world. Their cruise through the is-lands included a stop at Rhodes, long associated with the giant statue or colossus of Apollo that once watched over the harbour, although the mediaeval Knights of St. John left a more lasting legacy in the massive fortifications that still dominate the city. But it was a short distance to the south of the island, near Lindos, that captivated my father’s imagination. In 59 A.D. the apostle Paul was sent to Rome to answer charges of fomenting dissent among the Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean. The voyage proved difficult and dangerous, with the ship being stranded on the coast of Crete and culminating in a shipwreck on the island of Malta, as vividly described in Acts 27:1-26.

The apostle Luke earlier recorded that on his third mission-ary journey to Greece Paul had returned by way of Rhodes, but

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there is no mention of a shipwreck in Acts 21:1. Before being sent to Rome, however, Paul himself recounted in 2 Corinthians 11:25 that he had survived many travails including three ship-wrecks. Whatever the evidence, local legend associates Paul with a journey to Rhodes that almost began in disaster. Unable to enter the main harbour of Lindos, because of storms, his ship was saved by a miraculous bolt of lightning that split asunder the coastal rocks and opened the way to a safe refuge. It was the exquisite beauty of this tranquil bay, named after the apostle, and the charm of the white-washed chapel dedicated to his name that led my father to acknowledge the mystical power of a new faith in an ancient world.

Eva and Allen Fisher on the Greek island of Santorini, 1965.

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1965Legend of Lindos

Last summer was our time of sweet content—By jet, and car, and tourist argosiesWe traversed Europe, viewed the Cyclades

And read the past in every lineament;And now we muse on that one hour spent

On Lindos rock, enthroned by azure seas, Lost citadel of Greek antiquities

Where stands sun-drenched Apollo’s monument:For gazing at its littoral below,

We heard our native guide in accents grave,Repeat a wondrous tale of long ago,How shipwrecked, Paul was beached there by a wave…

Long were we held in legendary spellUntil the distant chime of chapel bell.

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1966Allegory

On a December night in 1966, a major ice storm blanketed much of southern Ontario. There followed a cold but still morn-ing, the brilliance of the sun matched only by a sky of deepest blue. The four apple trees on our front lawn, the maples and elms across the road, all encased in a sheath of ice were enflamed with an unmatched intensity. My father needed to look no farther for a poetic subject, confirming that the joys of life could shine through the doubts of any storm.

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1966

Allegory

All night the wintry storm congealedOn post, and leafless limb, and field,

And cased in warmth of home and bedI dreamt of life outside as fled

This present world where God seems dead….

Grandchildren woke me on the mornTo celebrate the Christ new-born

Impatient for the coming light,They whispered round a tree made bright

With gifts of love and their delight.

Then fully roused to meet the dawnI looked abroad: By street and lawn

In mystic beauty stood each treeA flowering incandescently

A living thing in ice concealed.

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1967To Old Friends

My father was not one to be burdened with nostalgia. In his daily living he was far too busy with one project or another, even after “retirement.” I only recall him musing once, on the occasion of a later birthday, “Where have all the years gone?” While still relatively young in 1948, he had been content with “Rather as I drained life’s cup” and in the following year had written of the “quiet rhythms of life.” The “sentiment” in “To an Old Friend” of 1953 was “Intangible as melody in rhyme,” while the more hu-morous emphasis on the “Dear urchins who have need of bread” in “When Youth is Gone” in 1954, does not reach quite as deep as the reflections he expressed in 1967. Perhaps, at the age of 62, it was the presence of two young grandchildren and the growing loss of old friends that led him to write of “the swiftly passing years” and “salt of tears.”

As he often did, “W.A.” would include a personal note with his Christmas card. In this case he wrote briefly to an old friend from his days at Queen’s, in the hope of keeping tenuous ties alive. Ironically, this card, found among other surplus cards at 45 Sunnidale Road, does not appear to have been sent, only adding to the poignancy.

George-Just a note across the space of land and time. We are leaving for Chicago with an excellent music group—my finest. What a far cry from the days of my tootling on the clarinet at Sydenham St. I hope you like the verse. We are well and our children now in adult life, as yours must also be— The Best Allen

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1967To Old Friends

There never rings for us a Christmas bellThat does not toll the swiftly passing years

Nor ever comes this festal time, this spell,But seasons merriment with salt of tears.

In every child we see ourselves, once so,When we were unaware that loved ones part,

When dreams were currency as free as snow,And we its youthful spenders in life’s mart.

O Yule, so bitter sweet! for some the start,For most—nostalgic thoughts of long ago.

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1968In Spruce and Pine

In the poem for this year W.A. Fisher adopted an avian em-phasis, based more on the preservation of surrounding bird life than the destruction of the autumnal duck hunt. By now, the maturing pines of the valley behind the house on Sunnidale Road, provided a sheltering refuge for a multitude of wintering birds. They sought the nourishment not only of our backyard feeders, but the berries of a nearby mountain ash, while ruffed grouse lacking a pear, contented themselves with the frozen fruit of our apple trees. My mother’s interest in birds, derived from a rural childhood, was further enhanced in 1951 when she be-came a founding member of the Brereton Field Naturalists’ Club, along with such stalwarts as Fran Westman, Anastasia Hughes and Bill Bell. I recall several birding expeditions with this group in my early teens, especially the annual Christmas bird count, followed by a warm social evening and dinner as the day’s totals were added up.

My father occasionally joined in these activities, but he was too preoccupied with his school activities in those earlier years. In retirement, not being an avid birder himself, he enjoyed the weekend rambles and drives through the countryside as much as anything else. Nevertheless, he consented to act as president of the Breretons in 1974. But for 1968, in the depths of winter, it was sufficient to acknowledge even the smallest of winged visi-tors as symbols of “vernal quietness” and “summer solitude” that would surely follow.

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1968In Spruce and Pine

In spruce and pine, each year, we dressOur yuletide hearth, with gifts impress

Our kind, and send a multitudeOf cards like this in festive mood

To bear the greetings we profess.

And when the frosting panes distressOur peace of mind, with food we bless

The neighbouring winter birds that broodIn spruce and pine;

And dream of vernal wilderness,Of streams that purl through rock and cress,

The white-throat’s plaintive interludeReborn in summer solitude

Charming its holy quietnessIn spruce and pine.

Skiing behind 45 Sunnidale Road in 1952.

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1969Inasmuch

The cyclical nature of this poem with its startling contrasts causes me to reread it frequently. We swing from lunar dust to credit cards, between mice and ancient gods and all pervaded by the sarcasm of “our civilizing trend.” The critique of the drug culture of this era is equally damning. My father was outspokenly contemptuous of the Timothy Learys and other “prophets” of the mind, who masqueraded under the guise of “education” in sup-posedly expanding awareness. In this momentous year we reached for the cosmos, with Armstrong’s “small step for man” on the moon, but suffered the agonies of civil war and mass starvation in Biafra and witnessed the depths of the brutality perpetrated at My Lai. The horror of this slaughter of over 300 men women and children, by an American army unit in Viet Nam, merely served to underscore once again the words of Christ: “Inasmuch as you have done unto these you have done unto me.”

The notation that my father made on the Christmas card sent to my sister, Joan, clearly illustrates the intensity that he brought to each poem.

Just a short note and my annual bit of verse— Petrachan son-net. You could teach a lesson on it….There is alliteration, irony, even strong emotional impact in the last two lines. You also can find vivid contrast not only within lines but also between the octave and the sestet— “gunfire-gutted” was purposely placed against the word “dolls” to heighten the impression of brutality.

P.S. Ancient gods were notorious for infidelity and deceitful-ness.

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1969Inasmuch

If Christ were born today, gifts would we sendTo Bethlehem: not myrrh and frankincenseBut present proof of our omnipotence

Like lunar dust, or credit card to mendHis low estate, perhaps a drug to bend

His mind, expanding such omniscienceBeyond creation’s farthest firmaments,

In keeping with our civilizing trend.

But would this child be pleased with what enthrallsOur kind, running each mercenary maze

Like mice, or apeing ancient gods beforeHis birth? Or would his tiny hands upraise

To touch Biafra’s starving pawns of war,And My Lai’s gunfire-gutted broken dolls?

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1970Sermons in Stone

In 1970 W.A. Fisher marked the apogee of a lifetime spent in school music. The foundations laid so well in the 1940s and the 1950s had expanded with increasing excellence in the succeeding decade. Membership in the senior concert band was now based on a minimum of grade 6 Royal Conservatory exams, with many students attaining grade 8 and even grade 10 levels of accom-plishment. Appearances at Expo 67 in Montreal and the presti-gious Mid-West National Band Clinic in Chicago, during 1967, culminated in a tour of Europe three years later. The perfor-mance of this magnificent Eurotour Band, 87 members strong, at the World Music Festival in the Dutch city of Kerkrade, was the highlight of my father’s long career. As always, he ensured that such a tour included an ample educational component for the rich history of Europe was sufficient to satiate both students and teacher

From Vienna the Band travelled through Switzerland, dip-ping south across the Alps into the ancient history of Rome, by crossing the St. Bernard pass and descending to the green and fertile Val d’ Aosta. This small city of the same name, ringed by towering mountains, immediately enthralled my father with its historical significance. As a guardian of several Alpine passes it had witnessed the elephants of Hannibal’s legions, the mailed knights of the medieval crusades and even the revolutionary armies of Napoleon. It was this strategic imperative that led Cae-sar Augustus to establish a military colony in 25 B.C. in order to bar the barbarians at the gates. Roman efficiency decreed a per-

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manently walled encampment that encompassed a rectangular grid of streets with only pedestrians permitted today. The massive walls are still entered through the Arch of Augustus while an en-during legacy is further provided by an intact amphitheatre and a restored forum. For my father, Aosta may have lacked the syba-ritic pleasures of Pompeii or the massive scale of the Coliseum, but as a still lived in monument it was surpassed by few others. This experience, wondrous as it was, was overshadowed by an en-vironmental blight that he now acknowledged for the first time in his poetry, for modern industrial plants had created a blanket of smog trapped within the valley.

On his return from Europe he no doubt relished the serenity of his summer retreat on Lake Nipissing. Here he could reflect on stones more ancient than those that had built Aosta. The “lichen-covered” granites crowned with “aisles of wilderness” reached back to the beginning of time, giving him a subject that spoke of purity and longevity as yet untouched by the “toxic mills” of a far distant land.

Canot du Maître(Eurotour Programme)

One could say of the high school band development in edu-cation that it is as indigenous as the native canoe first designed for individual travel, later to take on proportions of the canot du maître carrying as many as twenty men.

Although bands and orchestras were burgeoning in Ameri-can schools before Canadian schools recognized them in the cur-riculum, yet the tiny hamlet of Barrie was able to use school-boy musicians in 1853 to serenade Lord Elgin on his visit to this community. Linked to the prolific town band movement of the first quarter of this century, a short-lived “cadet” band domiciled in the former Barrie Collegiate Institute, enlivening the commu-nity with its noon-hour marching.

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The Barrie Collegiate Bands, as such, were born out of an experiment in orchestra-building, begun by the present director at the time of his appointment to the staff of the Collegiate In-stitute to head its history department. Borrowing violin talent from Toronto, the orchestra enjoyed a brief but significant life of three years and then conquered its insufficiencies by becoming a wind band. The orchestral lustre, however, has never been lost for after twenty years of schizophrenic existence as both marching and concert band the organization left the marching field with the dissolution of the all-school concept of the cadet corps. Its present instrumentation reveals it as a concert band, sometimes called a wind ensemble, or in Europe referred to as harmonie or wind orchestra.

During the last thirty years the Barrie Collegiate Band has competed annually in music competitions with the exception of the year 1947 when it was chosen to represent Ontario at an In-ternational Music Festival for schools. Its performance, on that occasion, was declared the highlight of the Festival by the co-or-dinator, Irving Cooper. Gradually the group has become an insti-tution acquiring honours, accolades for its disciplined approach, and seventy-five first awards and trophies for proficiency.

Three decades have brought an interesting change in person-nel. Sons and daughters now perform where thier parents first won distinction, a fact that illustrates the influence of family in shaping the educational environment of the child. These parents now sponsor professional music concerts annually in the young city of Barrie, which boasts a population of twenty-six thousand. And although its population reflects the ethnic diversity of that of Canada, the personnel of the Band is drawn from long-stand-ing families in the community as indigenous as the birch bark that once sheathed the canot du maître, symbol of the past and present.—WAF

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1970Sermons in Stones

On granite islands here the lichens growProfuse in microcosmic symmetry

Surviving summer heat and arctic snow,Weaving in biologic tapestry

A mantle for each prominence of stoneOr carpets for the aisles of wilderness

While lunar cycles measure time aloneAbove this lakeland virgin loveliness,

And far yet near Aosta’s ruins stand,Great Alpine gates once barred with Caesar’s power,

Facades we viewed but recently, quite bareOf life and lichen, where on every hand

Among the shards from Rome’s imperial hourThe valley’s toxic mills now choke the air.

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1971Orison

As my father’s long career in education began to wind down, he chose to celebrate the world of books—the tools of the trade as it were—that allowed the transmission of knowledge through the generations. For him, personally, such treasures always cast a spell of wonder that led to creative thought. Both of my par-ents were fortunate enough to enjoy the blessings of good health throughout their lives. In his eighties my father was still wielding a hammer, adjudicating music festivals or serving on the local school board, but it was the world of books that inspired his historical and literary pursuits, a fact he freely acknowledged in this poem for 1971.

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1971Orison

I cannot think of Christmas without books,These children of the mind, that dwell on shelves

Or stand about the fireplace, or in nooks,And wait the gentle reading of themselves.

Ephemeral is the spell of Noel-tide,The saturnalian fellowship of Yule,

But these communicants year-long abideTo give fulfillment of spent youth at school;

And though the bairns of marriage long have leftOur homely hearth to seek inquiring power,

Of company not all are we bereftWith such as these to fill each leisure hour:

So grant, though other pleasures be forgotThat health of sight and mind forsake us not.

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1972(Though Gardens Die)

In June, 1972, my father retired from 42 years of teaching, allowing him to spend more time at his cottage retreat on West Bay and to indulge his deep interest in the local history of Simcoe County. He had added reason for celebration in September with the birth of Allen Middlebro, his third grandchild and namesake, probably inspiring him to compose this untitled poem. World events were preoccupied with the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam, which was massively renewed in Decem-ber, but for this time and in the simplest of terms, “W.A.” was content rather to write of the renewal of life “through each infant child” even though “the times abortive grow.”

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1972(Though Gardens Die)

Though gardens die in wintry snowsAnd change afflicts our simple ways,

The homely hearth of Yule still glowsIn celebration of its days,

The treasured place of childhood play,Remembered domicile of joy,

With family ties that age can frayBut errant years cannot destroy.

And if the times abortive growIn birth to death unreconciled,

Upon this natal day we knowHow precious is each infant child.

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1973Wings Over Nipissing

After the sale of the Rice Lake cottage my father gave up duck hunting. This was a result of an earlier accident when a stu-dent, Don Bates, was severely wounded in the thigh. Fortunately, a frantic drive into Cobourg and then by ambulance to Toronto saved his leg. By chance one of the surgeons happened to be Bob Delaney, a former student. In the early 1960s, Mike Henderson, a current Barrie band student, invited “W.A.” to join his brothers and step-father, Ted Twiss, at their cottage on the Magnetewan River. They were all expert marksmen and my father enjoyed many fall days under their tutelage. In 1967, however, my father acquired the island property in West Bay of Lake Nipissing. Dur-ing the next five years, many friends joined him each September for the annual ritual. The waterfowl were abundant, although they never took that many birds. My friends contended that it was because “W.A.” missed more than he hit. In some ways I think he was just as happy when he missed for he frequently regretted that such creatures had to die so hard in the strength of their migrating flight. His thoughts were turning more to conser-vation which led to us planting giant wild rice from Minnesota in Birch Bay. As a supplement to the local rice, for several years, it attracted wild ducks in droves, but more recently has tended to die out. My father soon gave up hunting entirely, content to watch the surrounding wildlife in summer and in the Christmas of 1973 to reflect on the ever present disparities of the season.

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1973Wings Over Nipissing

Wind-driven specks upon November’s skyA wedge of geese, spewed out of Arctic storm

Invades our dormant bay with gaggling cry,Inscribes its gelid surface with their form:

By instinct older than recorded timeOr glacial drift or oceanic stream

They seek a flyway to a fairer climeUnerring as a flight by radar beam.

Soon will they skirt the settled haunts of manAnd cities soon to celebrate Christ’s birth,

Where those who have, yet have not, strive to spanA greater gap with gifts of doubtful worth.

Migrants all, bound for some summer sea,These are more certain of their destiny.

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1974Sonnet ‘74

The social and political upheavals of the 1960s gave W.A. Fisher much food for thought. He also sensed rapid changes coming in his own chosen field of education, as reflected in the world of commerce and communications. A particular irritant was the way in which people—especially young people—spoke. “W.A.” despised jargon and viewed it as little more than a sign of mental laziness or the poorly educated. The rapid increase in the use of slang expressions provided the subject for this sonnet, originally entitled “Remembrance.” In it he condemns the de-basement of the English language, which had been refined over centuries, to the point where it was no longer a clear articulation of ideas. Perhaps, reflecting on himself, he found more merit in the simple poetry of seasonal cards that spoke of the remembered warmth of family and friendship at a festive time.

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1974Sonnet ‘74

Familiar words through centuries refinedArticulated sound with meaning fraughtLinguistics coined in currency of thought

The ever solvent issue of the mindThe certain mark of species for mankind

We now debase with sophist polyglot,Debilitate with verbal tommy-rot

Inflate with jargon of the ill-defined:

Yet unpretentious at this festal timeAre simple greetings from some distant friend

Or kindly neighbour in our homely fold.They deck the mantle-piece with prose and rhyme,

Remembrance in the message they intendThat has the minted quality of gold.

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1975(When Winter Solstice)

Reverting to a nature theme in this year’s untitled sonnet “W.A.” dwelt again on the winter visitors that frequented our backyard. In contrast to the pastoral quietness of “In Spruce and Pine” (1968) this poem recalls the frantic activity that sur-rounded our bird feeders on a daily basis. At the low point of the year, their daily arrival was as eagerly anticipated as the Christ-mas cards that renewed warm thoughts of “mutual memories.” For both the givers and the recipients, he concluded, a mutual benefit was conferred through this “eucharist of friendship.”

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1975(When Winter Solstice)

When winter solstice marks the shortest dayAnd lightens our ravine of pines below

Arousing birds on dormant boughs of snowNut-hatch and chickadee, junco and jay,

They dart to suet-post and window trayFrom drifting winds, and soon their numbers grow

Anticipating all that we bestowIn changing their December into May.

These are like harbingers that come by mail,The season’s couriers that we employ

Sustained on thoughts of mutual memories,Or mute communicants who seldom fail

The eucharist of friendship we enjoyWho give the least in doing unto these.

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1976December ‘76

In “December ’76” W.A. Fisher chose to criticize the ever growing consumerism that was so apparent at this time of year, an attitude no doubt rooted in the relative poverty of his youth. While he was just a teenager, he lost his father Mark Fisher, who died unexpectedly in 1918. He had been an indifferent farmer just north of Cobourg, Ontario, who moved to town and estab-lished a small family dairy behind the house he built on Orange Street. His early death left my father, eighteen-year-old Win-ston and two older sisters to eke out a living with Annie Ash, their widowed mother. As the youngest of the family there were many sacrifices made for my father, especially in sending him to Queen’s University. An inheritance of several farms was also frit-tered away in a fruitless legal battle, followed by the death of his mother in 1930.

Acquainted with “frugal gifts” and “toiling greatly,” he pro-ceeded in this sonnet to point out the paradox of those who sought to ease their insecurities by the profligate giving of gifts to friends and relatives. In the meantime, surrounded by plenitude and sated with food and drink, it was all too easy to ignore those truly in need.

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1976December ‘76

Month of market productivity,Its index will appear on Christmas mornIn presents heaped beneath each radiant treeTo re-assure ourselves that Christ was born;

No frugal gifts such as our parents gaveSo long ago with love and tender careAnd little idle time to spend or saveFrom toiling greatly for their daily fare.

Somehow the season’s message now is missedBy those who live possessed of some estate And think their festal hour becomes a eucharistAs though to give were but to celebrate.

How soon engorged, we sink in dreamless sleepAnd cannot hear the hungry ones who weep.

Allen Fisher in 1911 with his father Mark Fisher and his brother Winston.

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1977Jesous Ahatonnia(Jesus Has Just been Made)

For 1977 W.A. Fisher turned to a subject that reflected the research that he was doing on Simcoe County, its pivotal role as a crossroads of the Great Lakes region and the eventual formation of a Canadian nation. The drama of the Jesuit martyrs of Hu-ronia fascinated him not for their religious piety but more for the devotion and perseverance that they daily demonstrated. For all of the French, who came to Canada in the seventeenth century, the problem of the many native languages proved the greatest obstacle, whether in search of furs or souls. It was for this rea-son that Cartier kidnapped two young inhabitants of Stadacona, in hopes that they would master French while residing in Paris. Champlain tried a more practical approach by placing his jeunes garçons with various tribes so they could learn both language and customs and so insure trade and military alliances. Etienne Brûlé, as the prototype coureur de bois travelled to Ouendake, the home-land of the Hurons in 1610. As a truchement or interpreter he rose to a position of eminence in his adopted home, although his personal morality was an affront in the eyes of the Jesuits. This band of priests faced the added difficulty of translating the mysteries of their Christian faith into the Huron tongue, as well as trying to convince their charges of the merits of their faith. Some, like the tragic Chabanel, found the intricacies of the ab-original languages impossible, though he swore a solemn vow to remain forever in his chosen mission field. Others, like the impressive Brebeuf, became the physical and spiritual exemplars

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of these devoted servants of God who cast their lot in the Cana-dian wilderness. Indeed, Brebeuf mastered the Huron language sufficiently so to devise a script that could be used as an aid in instructing his native communicants. Thus, about 1643, he in-scribed in the Ouendat language what has become known as the first Canadian Christmas carol.

Brebeuf ’s Huron words, possibly set by him to the haunting music of a French folk song, “Une Jeune Purcelle” or “A Young Maid,” were retained by the remnant Hurons who settled at Lo-rette, near Quebec, following the final destruction of Ouenda-ke by 1650. There, it was still heard and translated into French during the eighteenth century, leaving Jesse Edgar Middleton a Toronto journalist, music critic and poet to produce “Twas in the Moon of Wintertime” in 1926, music arranged by H. Bar-rie Crebena. Middleton’s lyrics, more an interpretation than a translation, have been criticized for their non-Huron references and an air of condescension, but they remain popular. A more ac-curate translation of Brebeuf was made in 1977 by John Steckley, an anthropology professor, who immersed himself in the extinct Ouendat dialect by deciphering the dictionaries compiled by the Jesuits. I think that it was not only the authenticity and the power of these words that inspired my father’s annual verse, but the physical and mental struggle of Brebeuf and his brethren, for “Jesous Ahatonnia” as Steckley so aptly put it, “speaks to us of a man in an alien land, writing in a foreign tongue, trying to re-late to an unknowing people what to him was one of the greatest stories of all time.” (Toronto Star, Dec 24 1977, Dec 24 2007)

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1977Jesous Ahatonnia

The first Noel in this ancestral landWas not proclaimed by star and angel choirUnless the light of borealic fire

Revealed more clearly old Huronia’s strand:It was designed, instead, by priests—a band

Of dedicated servants, to inspireEach native tribe to cherish peace; desire

What they, in warring France, could not command.

These came not to receive but rather giveTo learning words they scarce could conjugate,And saintly in their chosen brotherhood

They gained the knowledge to communicateWith aborigines on rectitude,

And kept the faith—and died that it might live.

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1978Heritage

By 1978 the city of Barrie was growing in all directions. To the north-west of Highway 400 a sandy upland, formerly a to-bacco farm, was transformed into the suburb of Letitia Heights, while above Cundles Road a growing development boxed in the headwaters of Kidd’s Creek. Sunnidale Road, now widened and paved, became a busy urban artery. Down this street, past my parents’ home, streams of elementary and secondary students walked their daily route, either across the valley to Hillcrest Pub-lic School or along Parkside Drive to Central Collegiate. In do-ing so they provided a youthful parade of energetic levity, an apt description that “W.A.” used in acknowledging the role of formal education in the development of the imagination.

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1978Heritage

Retired, yet living busily, we dwellOn Sunnidale, a road near Hillcrest School

Where younger folk who troop or slide pell-mellDown snow packed walks are harbingers of Yule;

Their droll-like antics make our mornings bright,These little pilgrims gambolling to class

A rendezvous in which they learn to writeWho frolic now so carefree as they pass.

Of such was once the promised realm of heavenWhen children merely worked in antique climes,

But now, twice blessed with home and school, the leavenOf daily bread to nourish present times,

These gain their heritage from learning soughtIn passing to untravelled worlds of thought.

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1979Fantasy

Over the years it is not surprising that my father revisited some of his previous poems. Themes such as the nostalgia of youth or the memories of old friends frequent his verse, as do the subjects of learning and the imagination. Equally important are the poems set against the backdrop of the world of nature with its wild inhabitants. Increasingly, he viewed them within the context of the island retreat on West Bay where unceasing activity had created another major cottage, a sleeping cabin, two additional boat houses and attendant docks and tool sheds. In the presence of bear, deer, mink, beaver, osprey, herons, ducks, geese and assorted amphibians the island held a fascination for all given the relative scarcity of other people.

Christmas is, of course, a time of great joy, but a joy that can be bitter sweet as “W.A.” often pointed out. He found that it could be a time of reverie, of dreaming, of fantasy, as he clearly shows in the cyclic form of this poem, from the warmth of sum-mer to the letting go of autumn, through the long wait of winter and inevitably the hoped for renewal of spring.

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1979Fantasy

Before the snow enfolds autumnal flowersOr fingered frost strips leaf from bush and treeOr laggard sun sinks low in perigee

And winter solstice shortens daylight hoursWe leave our bay of isles, its woodland bowers,

To dwell in urban domesticityAnd visit only lands of fantasy

That lie in books within our reading powers.

Yet sometimes in our fireplace, flames appearLike serrate pines to ratchet up a moonOf lustrous size that floods each dark lagoon

Now frozen in this twilight of the year,Then dreaming by our glowing hearth we hear

The natal cry of spring from mating loon.

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1980Rondeau

It is probable, at 75, that advancing age led my father to re-flect on the writing of his annual poem as well as the swiftly pass-ing years. The poem “Dining Out”(1984) later refers to writing “in quaint iambic verse,” but for this year he almost wearily refers to his “specious talent” in writing once again in “verse confined.” Reverting to the rondeau form of “Return Once More”(1947), he replaced the earlier reverie with a more positive message of hope of redemption through the brotherhood of mankind.

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1980Rondeau

So many times, with pen in handAnd hours too few for what is planned,

We’ve written greetings much inclinedIn chosen word and verse confined

To gentle folk who understandThe specious talent these demandNow prose seems alien to the land

And thoughts nostalgic come to mindSo many times.

When past with present then is spannedWhile dreams of brotherhood expand

Inspiring men of every kind,Above their brutish strife we find

Love is reborn in its commandSo many times.

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1981Feeding Tray

Continuing with the rondeau form of the previous year, “W.A.” chose once again to write about the natural world of our backyard in 1981. Although our garden was as moribund as any other in December, it certainly flourished during the summer months, located on three terraces extracted from the hillside over several years. I don’t recall my parents as fastidious gardeners, but they produced both vegetables and flowers each year, on the terraces and around the house. Based on their rural upbringing and not on a library of books, they each seemed possessed of a “green thumb.” Indeed, the last time I saw my father he was working among his tomato plants. His secret lay in obtaining a good trailer load of manure, each spring, from the farm of Don Cameron on the 7th concession of Vespra. Spread liberally over the garden, it was probably not appreciated as much by the near-by neighbours.

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1981Feeding Tray

When gardens die and raindrops freezeOn empty nests in leafless trees

And dusk, too soon in northern climeBecomes a treasure chest of timeIts coin the sum of memories;

When snow conceals all shrubberiesAnd seed is lost that might appease

The hungry birds in winter’s primeWhen gardens die

Then we, in doing unto these,An eager troupe of chickadees

May catch a glimpse of light sublime,Reveal in rondeau-patterned rhyme

The need for human charitiesWhen gardens die

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1982Gifts

In his annual poem for 1982, “W. A.” wrote about those blessed with good fortune, in contrast to the multitudes suffering in need and want throughout the world. My father certainly in-cluded himself in the former category, for whatever the financial struggles of his early life he was cognizant of the greater values of successful career, good health and family. In his conversation he often spoke in these terms, using such familiar phrases as “the way the cards are dealt” and “there but for the grace of God go I.” Once, when reporting to him some modest achievement in my own career in school music, he was full of commendation, but also added “You’re a lucky man.” Simple words that have remained with me, but demonstrative of an empathy that he al-ways held for the less fortunate.

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1982Gifts

Give us the will in time of growing needTo look beyond our well-stocked homes and pause

As we endow our own with gifts, to heedThe little ones who know not Santa Claus.

Give us such pleasure in our gifts to seeIt is more blest to give than to receive,

To meet the challenge of humanityBy feeding hungry mouths of those who grieve.

With our good fortune in the race we runFor wealth or health by everybody sought,

We cannot count what we have earned or won,Whose conscience is untroubled by the thought:

But for the way the cards of life are dealtWe still remain as helpers, not the helped.

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1983Quo Vadis

In 1983, the administration of Ronald Reagan increased the possibility of global annihilation by proposing to establish nuclear weapons in space. Popularly known as “Star Wars,” this program was designed to destroy incoming enemy missiles. Technical dif-ficulties and enormous costs eventually led to abandonment, but not before the spectre of global doom brought fear to millions teetering on the razor edge of the Cold War. In composing this year’s sonnet “W.A.” no doubt reflected on his poem “Christ-mas Eve, 1960” with its “nuclear sword of Damocles,” as well as his vision of “megatonic fire” in “Reflections on Christmas Eve, 1961.” New advances in technology had now raised the stakes even higher, yet my father remained committed to his concept of “a moral chalice of the mind.” Such a phrase certainly reflected his personal philosophy, allowing him to express his belief in the ultimate power of “hope and love” in such perilous times.

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1983Quo Vadis

Through countless conflicts waged in seizing powerBy fratricide inflamed with hate and greedOf centuries, through clouds of cant and creed

Appears the star of Bethlehem this hour.

Surviving creatures of embattled EarthWe still remain as heirs of all mankind,Possess a moral chalice of the mind

To celebrate each year the Christ-child’s birth—

But now, aggressive men can play, like boys,A game to end all games they’ve played before

Not with lead soldiers but with lethal toysThat kill from starlit battlefields above.Abiding light of faith in hope and love

Shall we survive one hour of nuclear war?

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1984Dining Out

“W.A.” found the motivation for this year’s poem in the hu-manitarian crisis that had developed in Ethiopia. The Marxist regime of Mengistu Mariam overthrew the government of Haile Selassie in 1974, but was unable to deal with a spiraling crisis of drought, crop disease and bloody civil war. By December, 1984, millions faced the threat of famine and starvation as graphically depicted in television reports. Despite huge stockpiles of food, western governments were slow to act, fearing that relief supplies were being diverted to the military forces of Mengistu. Ironically, it was the widespread success of Bob Geldof ’s “Band Aid “ cam-paign and the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” performed by a collection of popular music stars that raised over $200 mil-lion in public donations.

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1984Dining Out

“You’ll relish sole on rice” the hostess said,“Aperitif perhaps to change your mood

Carafe of wine and oven-freshened bread…”And so we surfeited on gourmet food.

Returning home to pen this note of cheerThat we still write in quaint iambic verse

How could we be both merry and sincereComposing lines for better or for worse.

The wassail bowl befits our fertile landEach year we celebrate the virgin birth,But television scenes now cover space,

Reveal poor folk encamped on sterile sand,Madonnas holding waifs of mortal worth

Beseeching food with eyes and shrunken face.

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1985Halley’s Comet

Halley’s Comet, first predicted by Edmond Halley in 1758, recurs every 76 years. There was widespread publicity and antici-pation surrounding the return of this celestial visitor in 1985. Its appearance, as I recall, was somewhat anti-climactic, with the comet little more than a faint glow. Earlier recurrences have been recorded as much brighter, but in this case it failed to meet ex-pectations. Whatever the visibility of Halley’s discovery, “W.A.” found its apparent indifference to the affairs of mankind a stark contrast with the Reaganite obsession of establishing nuclear warheads in earth orbit. The detonation of these weapons en-visaged a curtain of laser beams that would eliminate any inter-continental missiles aimed at the United States. Ironically, the end result could have been a poisoned atmosphere of radioactive fallout from the atomic battlefield above that would terminate all life below.

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1985Halley’s Comet

This object seen on parabolic flightNow nears the sun once more and disappears

Unfathomed in the cosmic chill of nightScarce measured by our little span of years;

Unlike the star that marked a humble birthRevealed but once to shepherds long ago—

Mere gentle folk of planetary earthWho found a message in its astral glow,

This visitor at our festivitiesDeparts our callous world that breeds in waste

And hate engendered by old enmitiesPerhaps to darkness with our kind erased

By harvesting in space with nuclear shieldsThe fall-out from the dew of killing fields.

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1986Gifts of 1986

By 1986, technological advances in space and a growing en-vironmental movement increased awareness of the uniqueness of the earth and its precious resources. Yet, this decade also marked the culmination of the Reagan inspired arms race and the cre-ation of ever more nuclear warheads capable of destroying the world many times over. Faced with bankruptcy, Mikhail Gor-bachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, dramatically proposed the elimination of all nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik Sum-mit in October. The collective world held its breath only to end in disillusion and no agreement because of American insistence on establishing “defensive” nuclear missiles in earth orbit. Re-calling once again the Magi, who sought the mysteries of the star of Bethlehem, “W.A.” questioned this perilous direction of mankind, full of dissent while perched at the edge of the abyss. Fortunately, the tantalizing glimpse of a more peaceful world, envisaged at Reykjavik, would lead within five years to a major reduction of nuclear stockpiles and the end of the Cold War.

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1986Gifts of 1986

Symbolic is the story still retoldOf Bethlehem and kings who travelled farUniquely guided by a transient star

With gifts of frankincense and myrrh and gold.

For them the universe was undefined,Unknown the orbiting of planet Earth,This one time product of galactic birth

The very present home of human kind.

Our spatial ship with gifts for every needIs manned by crews impelled by discontent;

In many tongues they sway vast multitudesWhose civilizing faculties invent

A world of nuclear arms and hostile moods,All life imperil with their fears and greed.

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1987“Where your treasure is…”

For Christmas 1987, W.A. Fisher elected to pay a final trib-ute to his teaching colleagues, many of whom were passing from the scene. Composed in ballad form, this poem has a drill like character to it that hammers home the message, while closely paralleling the similar lines of “To My Colleagues” (1952). Taken together they make an interesting comparison, with the earlier ballad written in the present and this one recalling the past, while both poems clearly reflect his view of himself and others as edu-cators.

My father would never have disparaged the extraordinary achievements of any teacher, either within or outside of the school setting. Equally, he admired the achievements of earlier graduates of Barrie Collegiate such as the distinguished histo-rian A.R.M. Lower or the eminent Dr. Edward Gallie, as well as students he had known or taught such as Dr. Ewart Bertram or professional musicians like Bob Livingston on trombone and Gerry Robinson on bassoon. But he also placed equal value on those who laboured as “shepherds for the fold,” often attributing his own success in school music to being more of a “drill master” when questioned by those with more expertise than he. Simply put, he knew the value of hard work and long hours, a fact any former member of the Barrie Collegiate Band can attest to. When I enthusiastically informed him of my own appointment to teach school music, he bluntly replied “Well, now you will have to get serious with your life.” As for his dedicated colleagues, he had nothing but admiration for long serving principals such as Ar-

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thur Girdwood or the commitment of A.B. Cockburn. He may have differed philosophically, but as he stated in his retirement remarks, “A.B. was usually leaving the school when I was arriving for a 7 p.m. band practice.”

What more can then be said about the success of “W.A.”? No one would deny the unending energy that he poured into any manual project or intellectual task. It was, however, the indefin-able element of his personality that engaged you whether in the discussions of a history classroom or the dialogue of a friendly encounter on the street. There was always an unquenchable in-terest in debating, discussing or conversing on any subject at the drop of a pencil. In the best of the Socratic tradition he saw this as the true role of a teacher. As such, both “To My Colleagues” (1952) and “Where your treasure is…” (1987) remain as a trib-ute to himself as much as to those he admired and respected.

Miss. K

issick’s cottage, Lake Simcoe, June 17, 1952.

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Barrie Collegiate InstituteStaff Picnic

June 17, 1952

Left to RightSeated on the GroundArchie RossR. Kissick M. Ronald

StandingA.R. GirdwoodAllen FisherH.J. HeathLaura YoungBob MitchellMary Mitchell

Seated Clockwise from the Front Doug Shepphard with back turnedMrs. SheppardFlorence MacDougallMrs. MorrowA.S. MorrowF.C. FarrMrs. Watt with babyJ.J. WattVic KnoxNorm SynnottMrs. RossJean Knox Miss JoseKay CockburnJessie HunterDalt NesbittAnastasia HughesAngus Ross

W. A. Fisher 1970

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1987“Where Your Treasure Is…”

You were teachers once who labouredIn life’s vineyards tending youth,

Pruning plants whose nature favouredGrowing sunward seeking truth;

You were not like poets dreaming,Alchemists refining gold,

Mercenaries apt at scheming,You were shepherds for the fold;

You were banks to brooklets flowingFrom the bog to river bed,

Yours the heart’s desire in knowingOthers followed where you led.

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1988View From the Kitchen Window

Reworking the theme of environmentalism in 1988, W. A. Fisher paid a final nod to the winter birds that continued to fre-quent our backyard and the valley beyond. They brought not only warmth during winter’s cold, but also represented an un-ceasing cycle of renewal. In contrast, it was thoughtless humans that increasingly played havoc with the natural world through exploitation of resources, mass consumerism and endless urban-ization.

In its own small world the valley of Kidd’s Creek was equally affected through abuse and neglect and more simply the passage of time. The mature pines of the earlier reforestation project suf-fer an annual bath of road salt from Highway 400 and occasional vandalism does occur. Some changes have been natural as the more dominant of the too closely spaced trees have choked out the less hardy. Alterations of water courses have drowned out many of the poplars around the pond, although they now pro-vide excellent homes for families of hairy and downy woodpeck-ers. The weeping willows that we started from green sticks stuck in the ground grew into gnarled monsters, splitting and littering large branches along the banks. There is an air redolent of deca-dence as catch basins have disintegrated, banks have slumped and the main dam has gradually subsided beneath layers of black muck.

Sandy silt, carried by the creek, was always a problem wher-ever still water was located. For a time this proved beneficial since we used the sand and gravel to make concrete, even if it did not

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produce the best product. When I was young and foolish, my father persuaded my teenage friends and me to haul gravel by wheelbarrow and tow rope up the steep hill to the backyard. Some of this material even found its way by trailer and bucket to the island cottage in West Bay! The remainder was used to construct a sizable pond in the garden, with water pumped up from the creek, a project now in need of restoration since it only operated for several years.

Since that time the silting of Kidd’s Creek has been more de-structive—or should I say the silting and litter caused by rampant urbanization has created an environmental disaster. Major subdi-visions above Cundles Road funnel torrents of odoriferous water into the creek with every rainstorm, all amply laced with the plas-tic detritus of our society. The headwaters have been obliterated, the banks eroded and the streambed widened irreparably.

As for the pond it has largely filled with sand and silt, a sorry sight compared to what once was. And yet, nature adjusts and persists for given half a chance the creek clears itself between rainstorms. Watercress appears in the cold running water and brook trout can still be found, a testament to their hardiness little short of a miracle. Toads, green frogs and mallard ducks are quite happy with the remnant pond that remains. A beaver colony put up their own dam just downstream for a couple of years and I have seen both mink and muskrat patrolling upstream as well as deer, owls and wild turkeys sheltering in the headwaters forest. In short, it is an urban oasis that needs to be treasured and restored within the setting of an encircling city.

And what of the birds that “W.A.” wrote of over the years? They are still there, although the species have changed over time. The evening grosbeaks and cedar waxwings are now rare and the flickers few. The nighthawks have disappeared from all of Barrie, since pesticides took care of the June bug population, and the beep of the woodcock is no more in the valley. But the mourn-ing doves have proved prolific and the red-wing blackbirds, in the bulrushes around the pond, still herald the advent of spring.

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In the winter the backyard feeders support dozens of regulars: goldfinches and juncos, handsome cardinals and noisy jays, up-side down nuthatches and persistent woodpeckers, and on the coldest of Christmas days when all else fails, faithful flocks of chickadees will warm the pen of any poet. That’s why I moved all of my feeders to within six feet of the kitchen window, the better to view the recurring scene so loved by both my parents over the passing years.

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1988View From the Kitchen Window

When snow lies deep on berry bush and weedThese residents frequent our feeding tray

Black cap and junco, cardinal and jayLeaving a summer shyness in their need;Such tiny actors jousting for their feed

Return as air-borne troupe each break of dayPerforming parts in ecologic play

Renewing earth where they deposit seed.Unlike the market-place which justifies

The death of forests and polluted seas,The awesome waste from our frivolities

That mark the birth of Him once heaven-sent,These mendicants who drop from morning skies

Bring cheer in winters of our discontent.

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1989 To Marshall McLuhan

W.A Fisher began work on his final poem in the last week of November, 1989. A recurrence of cancer in the previous summer brought the realization that his time was very limited, so much so that the final version was sent out in letter form, rather than on a printed Christmas card. His haste was also driven by the flood-tide of change sweeping through eastern Europe. In Po-land, in Czechoslovakia, in East Germany and throughout all of the Soviet Union the monolithic structure of communism began to implode. The initial fault in the façade appeared in Romania, with open defiance in the streets, leading to the overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Everywhere, peo-ple sensed momentous changes as witnessed daily on television screens throughout the world, which only confirmed Marshall McLuhan’s assertion of the pervasive importance of the global media in determining world affairs. McLuhan was a controversial thinker of the 1980s whose theories “W.A.” found questionable, but philosophical to the end my father chose to emphasize the “message” itself—no matter how it was conveyed—that the best hopes and aspirations of mankind, no matter how challenged, will always triumph over evil.

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1989To Marshall McLuhan

One time prophet of our global villageWith communication by T.V.

You claimed the medium becomes the messagePotential region for frivolity

The media scam, its hype, its awesome greedIts endless search to master and command

The market-place that served our simplest need,Consuming all in air, on sea and land.

You left this scene too soon; a brighter sideEmerges in our recent glasnost hour,

Crowds gather in your global village square,The conscience of a watching world is there,

The pride of nations in the rising tide,While Caesars fall within their people’s power.