Ken Smith– The 1843 childhood home of noted journalist & poet Charles Mair in Lanark
Star Weekly
Toronto, Ontario, Canada • Sat, Nov 14, 1925Page 23
Ken Smith
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The HSMBC plaque is mounted on the front of the Lanark Post Office
Langley Advance
Langley, British Columbia, Canada • Thu, Jun 6, 1963Page 10
The Standard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada • Wed, Jan 22, 1930Page 4
Charles Mair is that of a man who has been almost forgotten by modern Canada. He is usually studied (when he is studied at all) by historians, mainly because of the part he played in the Riel uprising of 1869-70. However, during the nearly ninety years of his life Mair also made contributions to Canadian letters, including the first significant collection of Canadian verse, published in 1868, and it is with this aspect of his career that Professor Shrive is concerned.
A man with considerable faith in the future of his country, Mair lived long enough to see a good part of that faith justified; this fact provides an interesting contrast with other Canadian poets like Roberts and Carman who went to the United States, and with Lampman, whose early death prevented his seeing any fulfilment of his youthful hopes for himself, his country, or its literature.
Mair, on the other hand, offers an ideal illustration of the struggle of post-Confederation letters for survival and recognition. Even when he is revealed as a previous fool and a bad poet, Mair provides a singularly striking parallel to the aspiration and frustration, success and failure — even the tragedy — which marked that struggle.
In this critical study, which for the first time places Mair in perspective among other literary figures, Professor Shrive strikes a balance between those publications which have tended towards the extreme of regarding Mair as “a great singer of Canadian nationhood,” and the other extreme which ignores his literary achievements and concentrates instead on his relatively brief involvement in a political struggle.
Hamilton Times
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada • Wed, Feb 18, 1863Page 2
The Pines
by Charles Mair
O heard ye the pines in their solitude sigh,
When the winds were awakened and night was nigh?
When the elms breathed out a sorrowful tale,
Which was wafted away on the wings of the gale;
When the aspen leaf whispered a legend dread,
And the willows waved darkly over the dead;
And the poplar shone with a silvery gleam,
And trembled like one in a troublesome dream;
And the cypresses murmured of grief and woe,
And the linden waved solemnly to and fro,
And the sumach seemed wrapt in a golden mist,
And the soft maple blushed where the frost had kissed;
And the spectral birch stood alone in the gloom,
Like an unquiet spirit uprist from the tomb;
And the cedar outstretched its lone arms to the earth,
To feed with sweet moisture the place of its birth;
And the hemlock, uplifted above the crowd,
Drunk deeply of mist at the brink of a cloud;
And the balsams, with curtains of shaggy green,
Like tents in the distance were dimly seen.
I heard the pines in their solitude sighing,
When the winds were awakened, and day was dying;
And fiercer the storm grew, and darker its pall,
But the voice of the pines was louder than all:
The VOICE OF THE PINES .
” We fear not the thunder, we fear not the rain,
For our stems are stout and long;
Or the growling winds, though they blow amain,
For our roots are great and strong.
Our voice is eternal, our song sublime,
And its theme is the days of yore —
Back thousands of years of misty time,
When we first grew old and hoar!
” Deep down in the crevice our roots were hid,
And our limbs were thick and green
Ere Cheops had builded his pyramid,
Or the Sphinx’s form was seen.
Whole forests have risen within our ken,
Which withered upon the plain;
And cities, and race after race of men
Have arisen and sunk again.
” We commune with the stars thro’ the paly night,
For we love to talk with them;
The wind is our harp, and the marvellous light
Of the moon our diadem.
Like the murmur of ocean our branches stir
When the night air whispers low;
Like the voices of ocean our voices are,
When the hurtling tempests blow.
” We nod to the sun ere the glimmering morn
Prints her sandals on the mere;
We part with the sun when the stars are borne
By the silv’ry waters clear.
And when lovers are breathing a thousand vows,
With their hearts and cheeks aglow,
We chant a love strain ‘mid our breezy boughs,
Of a thousand years ago!
” We stand all aloof, for the giant’s strength
Craveth naught from lesser powers;
‘Tis the shrub that loveth the fertile ground,
But the sturdy rock is ours!
We tower aloft where the hunters lag
By the weary mountain side,
By the jaggy cliff, by the grimy crag,
And the chasms yawning wide.
” When the great clouds march in a mountain heap,
By the light of the dwindled sun,
We steady our heads ‘gainst their misty sweep,
And accost them one by one.
Then our limbs they jostle in thunder-mirth,
And the storm-fires flash again;
But baffled and weary they sink to earth,
And the monarch-stems remain.
” The passage of years doth not move us much,
And Time himself grows old
Ere we bow to his flight, or feel his touch
In our ” limbs of giant mould.”
And the dwarfs of the wood, by decay oppressed,
With our laughter grim we mock;
For the burden of age doth lightly rest
On the ancient forest folk.
” Cold winter, who filches the flying leaf,
And steals the floweret’s sheen,
Can injure us not, or work us grief,
Or make our tops less green.
And spring, who awakens her sleeping train
By meadow, and hill, and lea,
Brings no new life to our old domain,
Unfading, stern and free.
” Sublime in our solitude, changeless, vast,
While men build, work, and save,
We mock — for their years glide away to the past,
And we grimly look on their grave.
Our voice is eternal, our song sublime,
For its theme is the days of yore —
Back thousands of years of misty time,
When we first grew old and hoar. “
Dr. Charles Mair who has always been a living definition of the term comes as a refreshing breeze. Poet patriot pioneer and intense idealist this dignified white-haired old Canadian with the bright blue eyes and the ruddy countenance is now quietly passing the last years of his life in semi-retirement. The dominion owes him much and the west more.
He was Canada’s first poet since a volume of his verse dealing with Canadian nature themes appeared the year after Confederation. He was one of the country’s early dramatists and his “Tecumseh” still has admirers. But it was a generation that was a mere infant when he was at the beginning of his career that Charles Mair did his greatest work.
Born in Lanark, Ontario in the fall of 1838 he was a son of one of the old timber trade pioneers of the Ottawa Valley. A serious scholar, but a poet and a dreamer too he passed through the Perth Grammar school, Queen’s University and in the year of Confederation returned to Queen’s College to study medicine.
Thrilled and inspired by the fact that Canada had just become a nation he was particularly lured by the adventure that awaited the pioneer in the far west. He became an outstanding worker for the Canada First Association eagerly devouring every written word concerning the outlying sections of the country and particularly Prince Rupert’s Land then taken over from the Hudson’s Bay Company.
At the request of Hon. William MacDougall the first minister of public works, Charles Mair was to collect data for the minister’s use to the Canadians of the east the west was a sealed book. They knew nothing about it save for the Red River Settlement with its offshoots at Portage La Prairie and Prince Albert. The territory was a vast and uncultivated wilderness known only to a few traders missionaries and some English sportsmen. Hon Mr. MacDougall was starting work on the first immigrant road from the Lake of the Woods to a point thirty miles east of Winnipeg. Charles Mair was made its paymaster in order that he might gather and distribute through the Canadian press informative articles encouraging settlers to come to the then unknown region.
Until the Riel Rebellion put a stop to them the Ietters of the “Red River Correspondent” were one of the most distinctive features of Canadian journalism of that day. During the later years of his life he had lived with his daughter Mrs E J Cann in Calgary until last year when the severity of Albertan winters forced him to move to Victoria B C.
He deplores the flippancy of the present age. “Never has Canada had greater need of serious-minded young men he says–and what do I see-— crowds in front of baseball scores. ‘Besides’ he adds “cricket is the only real man’s game”. The modern flapper he terms a painted Jezebel lacking the sweet womanly qualities that are her birthright. The fast-moving automobile he dislikes and the noise of the typewriter. Life in this Industrial era is becoming too fast for him. But, he has lived to see the dreams. Of the fathers’ of Confederation realized and the country he loves becomes prosperous and settled. Charles Mair may soon pass on but his work will always remain as his monument .
The Kingston Whig-Standard
Kingston, Ontario, Canada • Wed, Mar 19, 1975Page 7
The Sault Star
Sault St. Marie, Ontario, Canada • Fri, Jul 8, 1927Page 3
Read more- From Gemmil’s Creek to the Riel Rebellion
From Gemmil’s Creek to the Riel Rebellion
From Carleton Place to Fish Creek –North West Rebellion
Working the Land Out West –Threshing Steam
Travelling with Ken Smith — Have You Heard of Furnace Falls?
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