By Bernie Krewski “Krew Kuts”

Teen-years in a small town, now recognition nationally. Good fortune? Predictable? Or simply hard work? What would a retired professor of English Literature do to receive an award of this magnitude?

Among the new appointees to the Order of Canada announced on December 30, 2020 is Stan Dragland, a schoolmate. His family lived in Oyen from 1956 to 1962. Stan’s mother, Mydra was a school-teacher. Ken, his father, managed the Beaver Lumberyard, now the site of the town office (Many Trails Crossed Here, 263-264).

For those unaware, the Order of Canada was established in 1967 to commemorate Canada’s 100th anniversary of its confederation. It is this country’s highest civilian (non-military) honour. Membership is awarded to those who exemplify the Order’s Latin motto “Desiderantes meliorem patriam,” meaning “those desiring a better country.” It recognizes the lifetime contributions made by Canadians who through great dedication and service have made a major difference in their community.

“Community,” from the Latin “communitas,” so important in this respect, means public spirit, commonality, affirming a sense of place, and shaping the identities of who we are.

Stan’s life and mine took different pathways from our shared experience in school, sports, and breathing the fresh air of rural Alberta in the late 1950s. We connected again in 2012 during my visit to St. John’s Newfoundland where he now resides. His house, often affectionately called “Jellybean Houses” because of their colour, has a stunning view of the 500-year-old harbour. His home and Stan himself, it seemed to me, have an established, profound “sense of place,” now captured in song.

Ron Hynes, who died in 2015, was a Newfoundland and Labrador songwriter and folksinger. His song, “Sonny’s Dream,” familiar to many, has been recorded around the world. Stan wrote the lyrics for another song called “House,” recorded by Hynes, accessible on the Internet by entering “Ron Hynes – House.” Stan’s lyrics and Ron’s voice are my version of “soul music” - needing no further elaboration.

Stan explained during our conversation why he moved to St. John’s in 1999. Visiting there in 1997 while on sabbatical leave from Western University in London Ontario, he was drawn to the city’s refinement, its culture, “following in love with it.” He decided to retire early from his professorship in Ontario and continue his writing there.

Having visited every province and territory in Canada during my lifetime and being well-versed in Canadian history, I discovered this land has many special places. It is not “my land,” in the words of a famous folksong - it is “our” land.

I am a first-generation “Canadian,” legally and politically regarded as a “British subject” until legislation establishing Canadian citizenship was finally passed in 1946 – 1948, when I was in elementary school. I know a lot about my ancestral roots in the “Bloodlands” of Eastern Europe. And as a former graduate student in American history, recent developments in the United States are of no great surprise to me. These experiences have shaped immeasurably my view on this fundamental question: “What is a Canadian?” (McClelland & Stewart, 2006).

Historian Margaret MacMillan says this in her essay: “To be Canadian is, too often, to take Canada for granted and not to recognize what a success it is in a world where so many people are at odds with each other. For the most part we have lived peaceably” with one another.

Former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson focuses on the importance of “Belonging” in her 2014 CBC Massey Lectures: “We can be both part of Canada as a country, and part of every other person who shares our land and our history.”

I believe that sometimes as individuals and as people, we “fit.” Sometimes not so.

I asked Stan in a recent email if he had any memorable thoughts about his youthful days in Oyen. “I remember those years fondly,” he said, “the mark they left on me goes deep.”

“It was plenty intense,” he mentioned, “just as high school days are meant to be” (yes! I wrote a thesis on that subject). But “I remember the sort of society we shared in high school as democratic - there were no barriers of class or any other kind. I don’t remember any rivalry,” adding this was not the case with his sons attending larger schools in Ontario. “All of us had to be everything, as much as was possible. To make up basketball teams, for instance, some had to play who might not have had the opportunity in larger schools, and they developed their skills accordingly.”

I wondered how Stan was viewed by his schoolmates, as reflected in our school’s yearbooks.

“Percy,” his nickname, “is Oyen High’s cherished all-round athlete, a whiz at track, baseball, basketball, hockey, and curling. He has a shy sense of humour. His phoney legal documents and practical jokes help to lighten the seriousness of school drudgery.”

One hint of Stan’s future writing ability is recorded in the 1958 yearbook, entitled “How to Paint a Picture.” He describes the equipment needed to produce a masterpiece: oil paints, smock, canvas, half-dozen eggs, several rotten tomatoes, and a couple of mildewed oranges. The painting process was detailed but simple – these items were thrown on the canvas and left to dry overnight. In granting Stan’s work a first prize, the judges commented “not only on the originality of his effort but on the smell – unique in artistic circles in the world.” Invigorating satire I would say, much healthier than teen-age social rebellion!

Margaret MacMillan eloquently characterizes Canadian humour: “We poke fun at our leaders, but we also laugh at ourselves. The Canadian sense of humour is gently satirical rather than savage, clever rather than crude. No wonder we produce so many great comedians.”

Think of Eugene Levy of the TV series, Shitt’s Creek; John Candy, and the “Hoser Brothers,” Bob and Doug MacKenzie and the Great White North.

His biography in the Canadian Encyclopedia describes Stan as a literary critic, editor, novelist, and poet whose “extensive work creating, publishing, critiquing and teaching Canadian writing has made him an influential figure in Canadian letters.”

Being a “critic” is a term poorly understood in our time, considering our lust for rants on social media and profoundly polarizing opinions. A critic in the literary world is a person who comments and assesses the qualities and character of literary works, like a scholarly detective, unearthing and authenticating their merits and limitations.

Stan’s official biography reads like this: Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Western University (1970-1999); teacher of creative writing at the Banff Centre and at Los Parronales, Chile; founder of Brick magazine and Brick Books, a poetry publishing house, which he served for over forty years; poetry editor for McClelland & Stewart between 1994 and 1997.

The breadth and grasp of his writings say much more: Peckertracks (1979), shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (1994) won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian literary criticism. 12 Bars (2002) co-winner of the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Apocrypha: Further Journeys (2003) won the Newfoundland and Labrador Rogers Cable Award for nonfiction. Stormy Weather: Foursomes (2005), shortlisted for the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award. Strangers & Others: Newfoundland Essays (2015), shortlisted for the BMO Winterset Award. Journeys Through Bookland and other Passages (1984). The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in Contemporary English Canadian Writing (1991). The Drowned Lands (2008), a novel. Deep Too, a prose oddity, appeared in 2013. The Bricoleur and His Sentences was published in 2014. Strangers & Others 2: The Great Eastern in 2016, and Gerald Squires in 2017. The Squires book, about the career of one of Newfoundland’s finest visual artists, won the Newfoundland and Labrador Nonfiction Award. A new book of literary criticism, The Difficult, appeared in 2019. Stan is at work on a second Squires book, this one featuring the artist’s own writing.

Part 2 of this article will follow. It opens a small window to the depth of Stan’s work, focusing on public spirit, commonality, a sense of place, and the significance of identity. Hopefully, it will furnish Echo readers with a greater appreciation of Stan’s life-long work, even if their reading habits do not usually include award-winning Canadian literature.

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