September 21, 2005 Source: Mount Allison University:
http://www.mta.ca/news/index.cgi?id=813 The Father of Canadian Literature — Events planned to celebrate Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Sept. 25 SACKVILLE, NB — Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, widely known as the “Father of Canadian Literature” and Canada’s first man of letters will be celebrated in a series of special events to be held in the Tantramar area on Sunday, September 25. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada will place a monument and bilingual historical plaque to Roberts adjacent to St. Ann’s Anglican Church in Westcock, N.B. where Roberts’s father was rector from 1860 to 1874. The opening ceremonies begin at 2 p.m. and will include a poetic tribute to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts by Dr. Douglas Lochhead, Poet Laureate of Sackville, and Professor Emeritus of Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. It is most appropriate that this will take place in the old grey church in the woods that Roberts immortalized in his poem Westcock Hill. The site will be landscaped with an access path, shrubbery and a bench on which one can sit while admiring the granite monument. At 3 p.m. A Tribute to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts will be presented in Brunton Auditorium on the Mount Allison campus (134 Main Street). Designed to have a broad appeal, the program will examine the “Tantramar Landscape” through coloured slides, readings of Roberts’s poems interspersed with appropriate piano music, and a short talk on how the landscape influenced Roberts’s writing. Presenters include: Dr. Eugene Goodrich, Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Allison, who will show slides that will provide an aerial perspective of the Tantramar landscape; Dr. Robert Lapp, Associate Professor of English at Mount Allison who will team up again with Dr. Janet Hammock, Professor Emeritus of Music, to provide a presentation entitled Out of the Teeth of the Dawn: The Tantramar Landscape in Poetry and Music; and Dr. Gwendolyn Davies, formerly of Mount Allison, now Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of New Brunswick, who will deliver a talk on Roberts’s writings under the title of Tantramar Landscape: Painting with Words. A reception will follow at the Owens Art Gallery on the Mount Allison campus (61 York Street). Currently the Owens is hosting an exhibition entitled These Meadows Pale and Marshes by the Sea with paintings of the Tantramar landscape and Roberts books and other memorabilia. All these events are open to the public free of charge. Parking is available in Westcock next to St. Ann’s Church, and at various locations around the perimeter of the Mount Allison campus. The celebration is being presented by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and the Tantramar Historic Sites group. It is also part of the annual Sackville “Fall Fair” celebration being held from September 23 through 25 2005. —30— For further information please contact Dr. Charles H.H. Scobie, tel: 536-0247 (cscobie@eastlink.ca). Biography — Sir Charles G.D. Roberts While Roberts was born near Fredericton in 1860, his family moved to Westcock, N.B. when he was only eight months old; and his earliest memories were of the Tantramar area. Roberts was 14 when his family moved back to Fredericton where he attended the University of New Brunswick before embarking on a teaching career. From 1895 onwards he lived first in New York, then in Europe becoming widely known as a poet, historian, novelist and author of animal stories. In 1925 he returned to Canada to national acclaim and a series of cross-country tours. He was knighted in 1935. On several occasions during his career Roberts returned for visits to his beloved Tantramar. It was one such visit in 1883 that prompted perhaps his most famous poem, Tantramar Revisited. Though Sir Charles wandered far from Westcock, N.B., throughout his life he drew inspiration from his memories of the scenes of his childhood. Critics have noted how in so much of his later writings the influence of the Tantramar region is apparent. As a boy, Roberts explored the ruins of Fort Beauséjour (now a National Historic Park). This sparked an interest in history, including that of the Acadians, that surfaced later in his historical writings which included short stories, novels and A History of Canada published in 1897. >From his earliest years Roberts developed an interest in domestic and farm animals, then in the abundant wild life of the Cumberland shore and the Dorchester Woods. A vast fund of animal lore was accumulated which Roberts drew on in later life in his animal stories, a genre which he helped make popular. His animal stories also had an important influence on attitudes to nature and to the interest in wildlife conservation that developed during the 20th century. Roberts wrote a number of novels, widely varied in character. The Heart That Knows (published in 1906, but still available in reprint) gives a valuable picture of life in a shipbuilding and seafaring community at the head of the Bay of Fundy at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, and incorporates many memories of his boyhood years. The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900), though written in London, reflects Roberts’s memories of the Dorchester Woods and Tantramar marshes of his boyhood. While modern critics may vary in their assessment of Roberts’s poetry, most agree that his best work — poems such as Ave!, Tantramar Revisited, Westcock Hill, and Two Rivers, are those that reflect the Tantramar area. These poems are imbued with a sense of place and constantly refer to the marshes and meadows by the sea that Roberts knew so well as a boy.
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