GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

23. Gadflies come in different styles

AS I LEARNED TO WRITE FASTER, FR. HANLEY and Bill assigned more and more topics. By Christmas of 1961 we had a bank of items which were not time-sensitive while my byline appeared weekly, including a review of a high school's presentation of Pride and Prejudice, a survey of RC students at McGill, and a report that biased Canadian immigration policy, not regulations, had kept a Kenyan student from taking advantage of a scholarship to the Jesuits' Regiopolis College. There was also this:

FEBRUARY 17, 1962

"Apostolate of the press in interview

"TORONTO - The apostolate of the Press will be the subject of an interview Sunday, Feb. 25, at 12:15 p.m. between interviewer Paul MacDonald and WandaS, staff writer of The Canadian Register, Kingston. This program will be heard on CJBC's THE WORLD OF RELIGION in a current series entitled The Lay Apostolate and the Church. This series of radio broadcasts is sponsored by the Radio League of St. Michael."

(In those days Toronto's CJBC was an English-language station of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.)

That brought more readers' wrath down on our heads.

On a crisp, sunny winter's weekday I arrived at Father Frank Stone's National Center for Radio, Television and Movies at St. Peter's Church in central Toronto, and soon afterward was seated in front of a microphone. There were no advance questions, no rehearsal, but the interview was taped, not live.

After Paul asked "Do you think every Catholic home should have a Catholic newspaper?" and I replied "Only if it's worth reading", he stopped the tape. "Do you want to leave that in?" I said "Yes".

His antennae toward his audience sensed that my answer would displease certain people. Monsignor Hanley was not among the offended, but a few bishops called to scold him, and the six who subsidized regional editions apparently ordered the priests they had appointed to "edit" (meaning to gather and mail items for their editions to Fr. Hanley every week) to complain about my "betrayal of the Catholic community."

On the other hand, there were letters from lay people about my contributions making The Register more interesting than it had been. Bill didn't seem amused, or even much interested, but I was too busy keeping a grip on my life to wonder why.

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Queen's University's new Dunning Hall was a favourite performance and lecture venue in Kingston at that time, large enough for a significant audience yet small enough for first-class Q&As (without microphones because that was still the age of trained voices). There, Charlie and I enjoyed humorist Cornelia Otis Skinner, pianist Victor Borge, comedian Anna Russell, all with sold-out attendance.

I covered Douglas Hyde and other speakers there, including one of French Canada's most important thinkers, Andre Laurendeau. A journalist speaking in his second languageabout a vital national topic, he provided reporters with an official English text. 

FEBRUARY 3, 1962

"POTENTIAL FOR GOOD

"Separatist trend has deep roots in past history of French Canada

"KINGSTON - Separatism is not yet an organized movement in Quebec, according to Andre Laurendeau, editor-in-chief of Montreal's French-language daily Le Devoir. He gave the annual address sponsored by the Newman Alumni Club of Kingston on Jan. 24. He predicted that separatism will grow as a creative force which may lead to improved relations between Canada's two official cultural groups.

"Mr. Laurendeau, not a separatist himself, addressed some 40 persons* in Dunning Hall of Queen's University on 'The significance of the Quebec separatist movement.' He carefully traced its history from the time when it was 'a remote ideal,' through its definition around 1935, its death during World War II, its recent revival, to its present-day meaning.