A HIDDEN LITERARY GEM
Downtown Montreal church contains a little- known landmark honouring Montreal's great English- language literary figures: The Writers' Chapel
If you’ve spent any time at all on the stretch of Ste- Catherine St. near Concordia University, you’ve seen St- James the Apostle Anglican Church.
A fixture between Bishop and Mackay Sts. in various architectural incarnations since 1864, the building and its rectory now constitute an island of limestone and stained glass in a sea of 21st century concrete. Situated in a part of the downtown core with precious little green space, in the warmer months the church’s front lawn provides a welcome area of repose, both for downtown office workers who fancy an al fresco lunch and for area habitués more down on their luck, who can frequently be seen catching a few winks.
Something very few of these people know is that inside, the church contains a literary landmark that is, in its own modest way, as evocative as Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.
Observant travellers in the great cities of Europe will be familiar with the Old World practice of publicly honouring artists and writers. As a young backpacker, this reporter was spellbound by Paris’s profusion of writer busts — Flaubert, Hugo, Stendahl, Montaigne — in parks and squares, and by London’s ubiquitous and elegant blue plaques. Over here, it’s a little different: while francophone Montreal emulates the French admirably, anglo Montreal, it has to be said, has lagged behind. It’s something Simon Dardick has noticed in his perambulations near his home on Pine Ave., just off the Main.
“Every time I walk up Laval St. near our house, I pass Émile Nelligan’s old house, and there’s a bronze head that comes out of a wall, with an inscription that he had lived there,” said the co- publisher of Véhicule Press.
Dardick’s implication, clearly, is: “Why aren’t there similar tributes for the city’s English- language writers?” Now, thanks to Dardick and a group of like- minded locally connected literary lifers, there is: the Writers’ Chapel in St- James the Apostle, where seven Montreal writers and counting — the latest honouree being Mavis Gallant, inducted in a well- attended ceremony on Oct. 9 — are commemorated with plaques in a cosy nook of the church.
The chapel’s earliest stirrings date to the turn of the millennium, when Word Bookstore owner Adrian King- Edwards and writer Brian Busby found themselves musing that Montreal really should have its blue plaque equivalent. Nothing directly came of that idea, but the impetus was picked up again a few years later, when professor and poet Michael Gnarowski was determined to do something to commemorate John Glassco. The spur was that 2009 marked the centennial of the Montreal- born memoirist, poet, novelist, translator and bon vivant ( and, ahem, pseudonymous pornographer), who died in 1981. Busby, working at the time on what would become an acclaimed Glassco biography ( A Gentleman of Pleasure, published by McGill- Queen’s in 2011), had an idea for a venue.
“I suggested St- James the Apostle, the church Glassco attended as a child and later in life,” Busby said. “He was married there, twice, and it was there that his funeral was held. I thought this might be a tricky thing, so I offered to write to the church, taking care to drop the name of my late uncle, the Reverend Canon David Busby.”
It must have been a persuasive letter, because shortly afterward the church rector, the Venerable Linda Borden Taylor, gave the green light.
“At the time,” said Busby, “we had nothing in mind beyond placing a plaque honouring Glassco. Bad Anglican that I am, I wasn’t even aware that St- James the Apostle had a chapel.”
That initial plaque, erected in time for the Glassco centennial, was so well received that it was natural to extend the concept. Two more plaques were put up before the non- profit, privately funded Writers’ Chapel Trust, with a seven- member committee, was offi-
cially founded in 2011, since which time four more Montreal writers have been posthumously commemorated ( see sidebar).
The plaques themselves, as even the layperson will recognize, are built to last, having been forged by Karl Fiege, co- owner of Alloy Foundry in Merrickville, Ont., the oldest such establishment in Canada.
While Gallant is probably the best known of the seven writers thus far honoured, the chapel is not a conventional Hall of Fame, more a Hall of Should Be Famous. “I believe one of the purposes of the chapel is to try to raise interest in writers who are in danger of being completely forgotten,” said Busby.
Pressed to name a few more who would fit the bill, he nominates Thomas D’Arcy McGee (“Not the best poet, but an important figure, and I like the idea of honouring a Father of Confederation for the sesquicentennial in 2017”), the late John Buell (“The most unjustly neglected writer Montreal has ever produced”), and former St- James congregation member Frank L. Packard, whose lost early 20thcentury novels, many aimed at the American and British markets, are germinal examples of what came to be called crime fiction. Busby’s fellow committee members, no doubt, have ideas of their own. A. M. Klein is next on the confirmed list; beyond that it’s up for debate. “Let’s just say the meetings can get heated,” Busby said.
By its very nature the chapel is not a splashy thing. It’s a low- key gem, something people discover through word of mouth. Soon, though, a sign outside the church will apprise passersby of what’s inside; already, groups of students — from Concordia across the street, and from schools around the city — are coming on field trips. And it’s likely only a matter of time before some of the savvier compilers of Montreal tourist books put the chapel on their lists of offbeat destinations. The almost- forgotten may well be remembered.
While Mavis Gallant is probably the best known of the writers thus far honoured, the chapel is not a conventional Hall of Fame, more of a Hall of Should be Famous.