Brian Brennan - Rogues and Rebels: Unforgettable Characters from Canadas West

Rogues

and

Rebels

Unforgettable Characters
from Canadas West

Brian Brennan

2015 Brian Brennan

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.

Printed and bound in Canada at Webcom.

Cover design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press.

Text design: John van der Woude Designs.

Copy editor: Meaghan Craven
Proofreader: Courtney Bates-Hardy

Cover photo: Police photos of Jack Krafchenko, 1914 . (Archives of Manitoba, N 21204 ).

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Brennan, Brian, 1943 -, author
Rogues and rebels : unforgettable characters from Canadas West / Brian Brennan.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

isbn 978-0-88977-398-1 (paperback). isbn 978-0-88977-400-1 (html).
isbn 978-0-88977-399-8 (pdf)

. Rogues and vagabonds--Canada, WesternBiography. . Rogues and vagabondsCanada, WesternHistory. . Canada, WesternBiography.
. Canada, WesternHistory. i . Title.

FC3208.B68 2015 971.2 C2015-903836-7 C2015-903837-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

University of Regina Press, University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, s4s 0a2
tel: ( ) - 4758 fax: ( ) - 4699
web: www.uofrpress.ca

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. This publication was made possible through Creative Saskatchewans Creative Industries Production Grant Program.

To Charlene Dobmeier, who first encouraged me to write about western Canadas rogues, rebels, scoundrels, and scallywags.

Contents

Preface

So who are the rogues and who are the rebels? I leave that for you, the reader, to decide. How about Edward Arthur Wilson, the cult leader who is believed to have left behind $, in gold coins when he fled from Vancouver Island police in 1933 ? Was he a rogue, I hear you ask? I respond with the immortal words of Francis Urquhart, the central character in the British version of the popular television series, House of Cards : You might very well think that. I couldnt possibly comment.

Wilson, a.k.a. Brother xii , is one of the many colourful characters I came across while researching this sequel to Scoundrels and Scallywags , a book of short biographies I authored in 2002 . I didnt want to repeat myself immediately, so I spent the next few years producing full-length biographies (including my own) before returning to a literary form brief narrative thats still very close to my heart. I began my writing career as a journalist, and biographical profiles have always been among my favourite assignments.

This love of the brief literary form may also have something to do with the fact that Im Irish. Although Ive identified myself as a Canadian citizen for more than forty years, I was born and raised in Dublin and still keep a current Irish passport in my desk drawer for sentimental reasons. The Irish are particularly fond of short forms. Because Irish literature depends so much on the ear coming as it does from an oral storytelling tradition it seems to follow that it does best in the short story. So said Anthony Burgess: The short story is a form you may listen to, and its length conforms to the span of attention that a listener may give to an oral narrator. Quoting from Edgar Allan Poe, in his Preface to Modern Irish Short Stories (Penguin, 1980 ), Burgess said a piece of writing should be like a piece of music: brief enough for the single uninterrupted session. Poe didnt write novels and the Irish dont write them either.

Ill spare you much of what Burgess admitted was his harebrained reasoning for insisting the Irish dont write novels (he described Joyces Ulysses as a grossly expanded short story), but I will agree with one of his comments. Burgess noted that in the Irish short story a character is revealed, not through the imposition upon him of a large number of vicissitudes but in some single incident. The truth about human nature comes out whenever the individual responds to the fumes of the tenth whiskey, or a chance word about his sister Kate.

In this collection, I have tried to identify the particular point in time when each character had what Joyce called the epiphany , meaning a moment of sudden revelation or insight. Ralph Klein decided he could make a difference in politics when he realized hed lost his objectivity as a journalist. Will James decided he could make a future as an illustrator and writer when he was sitting in prison serving time for cattle rustling. Winnifred Eaton decided to assume a fake Japanese identity for her work as a romance novelist when she opted not to compete with her successful novelist sister who had taken on a Chinese identity.

Like the characters I wrote about in Scoundrels , all the people in this book are dead. One tongue-in-cheek reason I give for picking only the deceased especially those who fall into the rogue or villain category is that dead people famously dont sue. But I should also say I find it particularly satisfying to write biographical profiles of dead individuals because the pieces necessarily have a pleasing symmetry: a beginning, middle and end. Generally speaking, that is. In the case of Edward Wilson, theres some question as to how his story actually ended

As for the other characters in this book, you will note that some are fairly well-known (Ralph Klein) and others obscure (Claire Hedwig Chell). I chose the well-known ones because I wanted to explore aspects of their lives that received scant coverage in the media after their deaths. In Kleins case, I wanted to recall his achievements as a television journalist before he entered politics as mayor of Calgary in 1980 . With the more obscure individuals, it was a matter of focussing on particular contributions for which they should be acknowledged and remembered. Claire Chells singular achievement was that she earned a footnote in the annals of the Canadian hospitality industry when she helped her husband create the Bloody Caesar, the clam-and-tomato infused vodka drink that is now the most popular cocktail in the country.

So what then is the common denominator? What ties Claire Chell together with Ralph Klein, Edward Wilson, Will James, Winnifred Eaton, Peter Pond, Jerry Potts, and the other colourful individuals featured in this book? The simple answer is that, like the characters in Scoundrels and Scallywags , they dared to be different. They dared to disturb the universe. They threw away the rulebook, thumbed their noses at convention, refused to take other peoples advice, lived impulsively, and relished knowing they had left some distinctive markings on the wall. In the time-honoured words of Nellie McClung one of the featured individuals in this book they never retracted, never explained, never apologized. They got things done and let their detractors howl.