Visit to poet Al Purdy’s home stirs up more than a few old ghosts
By Eric Hill • Nov 2nd, 2009 • Category: Editor's Picks, Essays, From the Interweb
In Canada, looking for ghosts is a mug’s game. You don’t have to look far. Places disappear after getting rezoned into bigger places, losing their borders and their names. Old brick buildings mortared with history fall to developers. And the only public recognition of past lives comes whenever city council or its heritage wing can agree on the weight of a person, place or event. John Lennon played his first concert without The Beatles at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, and Errol Flynn died on the steps of the Hotel Vancouver, but you wouldn’t have remembered these events if I hadn’t just mentioned them. In an empty country without many people, the forgotten often outnumber those who have failed to remember them.
Read the rest of this article at The National Post.
Eric Hill is the editor of branta.
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