Symons - Combat journal for Place dArmes: a personal narrative

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BOOKS THAT EXPLORE CANADA

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The Dundurn Group presents the Voyageur Classics series, building on the tradition of exploration and rediscovery and bringing forward time-tested writing about the Canadian experience in all its varieties.

This series of original or translated works in the fields of literature, history, politics, and biography has been gathered to enrich and illuminate our understanding of a multi-faceted Canada.Through straightforward, knowledgeable, and reader-friendly introductions the Voyageur Classics series provides context and accessibility while breathing new life into these timeless Canadian masterpieces.

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VOYAGEUR CLASSICS

BOOKS THAT EXPLORE CANADA

COMBAT JOURNAL FOR
PLACE DARMES

A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

SCOTT SYMONS

INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER ELSON

DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO

Copyright the Estate of Scott Symons, 2010
Introduction copyright Christopher Elson, 2010
Originally published by McClelland & Stewart in 1967.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Project Editor: Michael Carroll
Copy Editor: Nicole Chaplin
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Symons, Scott, 1933
Combat journal for Place dArmes : a personal narrative / by Scott Symons ;
introduction by Christopher Elson.

(Voyageur classics)
Originally publ.: Toronto : McClelland & Stewart, 1967.
ISBN 978-1-55488-457-5

I. Title. II. Series: Voyageur classics

PS8537.Y523C6 2009 C813.54 C2009-903250-3

1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Exportof Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers TaxCredit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

The photographs on pages 42 and 400 are by Chirstopher Elson.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.
www.dundurn.com

To T.W. and J.S.

without whose love

this book would not have

been possible

And to all those who have
made this book necessary

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Siting L a Place

BY CHRISTOPHER ELSON

Its all a question of seeing of eyesight on site.
Place dArmes (125)

I left several lives behind ...
Interview with Tim Wilson

S cott Symons, one of Canadas most remarkable and controversial cultural figures, passed away on February 23, 2009. He was seventy-five years old. My life is a sketch toward a life Ill never have time to live is a phrase he often used with his friends and in interviews. Symonss life was indeed a remarkable one abundant, excessive, troubling, exigent, and colourful in the extreme. The fruitful and destructive tensions between his lived experience and his artistic project lie at the very heart of his literary reflection. Combat Journal for Place dArmes, first published in 1967, was the inaugural statement of this unique sensibility, a work worthy of republication and reappraisal.