Charles Mair
Encyclopedia
Charles Mair was a Canadian poet
and journalist
. He was a fervent Canadian nationalist noted for his participation in the Canada First
movement and his opposition to Louis Riel
during the two Riel Rebellions in western Canada
.
, to Margaret Holmes and James Mair. He attended Queen's University
but did not graduate. On leaving college, he became a journalist.
In Ottawa in 1868, Mair was introduced by civil servant and writer Henry Morgan to young lawyers George Denison, William Foster, and Robert Haliburton. "Together they organized the overtly nationalistic Canada First movement, which began as a small social group."
Mair "represented the Montreal Gazette
during the first Riel Rebellion, and was imprisoned and narrowly escaped being shot by the rebels."
Mair was a Freemason
Mair "was an Officer of the Governor-General's Body Guard during the second Riel rebellion in 1885, and was later employed in the Canadian civil service in the West." He died in Victoria, British Columbia
.
, "the volume gained interest when Mair escaped after being captured by Louis Riel during the Red River disturbances of 1869-70."
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography
(DCB) states that Dreamland "demonstrates a conventional colonial approach to poetry. Such poems as 'August' succeed in their attention to natural detail: descriptions of the blueflies, the milkmaids, and the 'ribby-lean' cattle in parched fields anticipate the mature nature poetry of Archibald Lampman
. But too often he wrote not of the timberlands he knew but of a dreamland weakly modelled upon the romantic flights of Keats
." However, the book was praised by "the established poet Charles Sangster
, who referred to Canada's sophisticated literary tradition as one that was habitually overlooked in the popular press."
Writing later in the Ottawa Journal, William Wilfred Campbell
saw Dreamland as a precursor to the nature poetry later popularized in Canada by the Confederation Poets
: "The thirty-three poems constitute the first attempt to deal with Canadian nature, in the manner of Keats and the other classic poets, and many of them in theme and treatment are similar to the verse of Lampman
and Roberts
.... And there are strong evidences in Mair's work that he influenced these poets to a great extent."
Mair published Tecumseh, a historical drama mainly in blank verse dealing with the War of 1812
, in 1886. Canadian critic Alan Filewood wrote of the political and philosophical ideas expressed by Mair in the poem:
The DCB calls Tecumseh "a major contribution to our 19th-century literary heritage, wherein the War of 1812 is the central event of Canadian history. Among the many literary treatments of this war, including works by Sangster
, John Richardson
, and Sarah Anne Curzon ... Tecumseh stands as the most accomplished." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that the poem's "blank verse is pedestrian and untheatrical", but it also tells us that "Tecumseh was important in the development of Canadian drama. It presents a vision of Canada as a co-operative enterprise in contrast with the self-seeking individualism of the United States."
In 1937 he was designated a Person of National Historic Significance.
Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot
adapted a line from Tecumseh, "There was a time on this fair continent," for the first line in his 1967 historical ballad, "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy
" ("There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run").
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. He was a fervent Canadian nationalist noted for his participation in the Canada First
Canada First
The Canada First movement was organized in Ottawa in 1868 to promote the expulsion of traitors in the nation. It was at first supported by Goldwin Smith and Edward Blake...
movement and his opposition to Louis Riel
Louis Riel
Louis David Riel was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political and spiritual leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies. He led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first post-Confederation Prime Minister, Sir John A....
during the two Riel Rebellions in western Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Life
Mair was born at Lanark, Upper CanadaUpper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
, to Margaret Holmes and James Mair. He attended Queen's University
Queen's University
Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
but did not graduate. On leaving college, he became a journalist.
In Ottawa in 1868, Mair was introduced by civil servant and writer Henry Morgan to young lawyers George Denison, William Foster, and Robert Haliburton. "Together they organized the overtly nationalistic Canada First movement, which began as a small social group."
Mair "represented the Montreal Gazette
The Gazette (Montreal)
The Gazette, often called the Montreal Gazette to avoid ambiguity, is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with three other daily English newspapers all having shut down at different times during the second half of the 20th century.-History:In 1778,...
during the first Riel Rebellion, and was imprisoned and narrowly escaped being shot by the rebels."
Mair was a Freemason
Mair "was an Officer of the Governor-General's Body Guard during the second Riel rebellion in 1885, and was later employed in the Canadian civil service in the West." He died in Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
.
Writing
Mair published the first book of poetry in post-Confederation Canada, 1868's Dreamland and Other Poems. "Negligible as verse," says The Canadian EncyclopediaThe Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada. It is available online, at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia is available in both English and French and includes some 14,000 articles in each language on a wide variety of subjects including history, popular culture, events, people,...
, "the volume gained interest when Mair escaped after being captured by Louis Riel during the Red River disturbances of 1869-70."
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography is a dictionary of biographical entries for individuals who have contributed to the history of Canada. The DCB, which was initiated in 1959, is a collaboration between the University of Toronto and Université Laval...
(DCB) states that Dreamland "demonstrates a conventional colonial approach to poetry. Such poems as 'August' succeed in their attention to natural detail: descriptions of the blueflies, the milkmaids, and the 'ribby-lean' cattle in parched fields anticipate the mature nature poetry of Archibald Lampman
Archibald Lampman
Archibald Lampman, was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in...
. But too often he wrote not of the timberlands he knew but of a dreamland weakly modelled upon the romantic flights of Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
." However, the book was praised by "the established poet Charles Sangster
Charles Sangster
Charles Sangster was a Canadian poet whose 1856 volume, The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, "was received with unanimous acclaim as the best and most important book of poetry produced in Canada until that time." He was "the first poet who made appreciative use of Canadian subjects in his poetical...
, who referred to Canada's sophisticated literary tradition as one that was habitually overlooked in the popular press."
Writing later in the Ottawa Journal, William Wilfred Campbell
William Wilfred Campbell
William Wilfred Campbell was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott...
saw Dreamland as a precursor to the nature poetry later popularized in Canada by the Confederation Poets
Confederation Poets
"Confederation Poets" is the name given to a group of Canadian poets born in the decade of Canada's Confederation who rose to prominence in Canada in the late 1880s and 1890s. The term was coined by Canadian professor and literary critic Malcolm Ross, who applied it to four poets Charles G.D...
: "The thirty-three poems constitute the first attempt to deal with Canadian nature, in the manner of Keats and the other classic poets, and many of them in theme and treatment are similar to the verse of Lampman
Archibald Lampman
Archibald Lampman, was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in...
and Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......
.... And there are strong evidences in Mair's work that he influenced these poets to a great extent."
Mair published Tecumseh, a historical drama mainly in blank verse dealing with the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
, in 1886. Canadian critic Alan Filewood wrote of the political and philosophical ideas expressed by Mair in the poem:
Mair's projection of Canadian nationhood is embodied in the character of Lefroy, a Byronesque poet who flees civilization to seek solace in nature's genius.
He learns – tragically – from the British General Brock that natural law finds its outward form in the monarchic principle, and from the Indian chieftain TecumsehTecumsehTecumseh was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812...
that nature must be defended against the perversion of American materialism.
The dying Tecumseh legitimizes the proto-(Anglo) Canadians as the natural guardians of the land, and Canadian manhood finds mature expression in a race of armed poets.(...)
Mair looked to the day when the dominions would assume the responsibilities of adulthood: Then shall a whole family of young giants stand 'Erect, unbound, at Britain's side-' her imperial offspring oversea, the upholders in the far future of her glorious tradition, or, should exhaustion ever come, the props and supports of her declining years.
The DCB calls Tecumseh "a major contribution to our 19th-century literary heritage, wherein the War of 1812 is the central event of Canadian history. Among the many literary treatments of this war, including works by Sangster
Charles Sangster
Charles Sangster was a Canadian poet whose 1856 volume, The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, "was received with unanimous acclaim as the best and most important book of poetry produced in Canada until that time." He was "the first poet who made appreciative use of Canadian subjects in his poetical...
, John Richardson
John Richardson (author)
John Richardson was a British Army officer and the first Canadian-born novelist to achieve international recognition....
, and Sarah Anne Curzon ... Tecumseh stands as the most accomplished." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that the poem's "blank verse is pedestrian and untheatrical", but it also tells us that "Tecumseh was important in the development of Canadian drama. It presents a vision of Canada as a co-operative enterprise in contrast with the self-seeking individualism of the United States."
Recognition
Mair was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1889.In 1937 he was designated a Person of National Historic Significance.
Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr. is a Canadian singer-songwriter who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music, and has been credited for helping define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s...
adapted a line from Tecumseh, "There was a time on this fair continent," for the first line in his 1967 historical ballad, "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy
Canadian Railroad Trilogy
The "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" is a song by Gordon Lightfoot that describes the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.This song was commissioned by the CBC for a special broadcast on January 1, 1967, to start Canada's Centennial year. It appeared on Lightfoot's The Way I Feel album later in the...
" ("There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run").
Publications
- Dreamland and Other Poems. London: S. Low, 18681868 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:* James Anderson. Sawney's Letters, or Cariboo Rhymes.* Charles Mair, Dreamland and Other Poems, Canada-United Kingdom:...
. Montreal: Dawson, 1868, - Tecumseh. Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Co., 18861886 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Frederick James Furnivall founds the Shelley Society...
. London: Chapman & Hall, 1886. - Through the Mackenzie Basin: A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 . London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1903.
External links
-
- Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
text of his blank verseBlank verseBlank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
drama http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6843Tecumseh (1886)
- Project Gutenberg
- Charles Mair fonds at Queen's University Archives