Earlier this week, I wrote a piece called Looking at our past through rose-coloured glasses about the false perceptions we so often have of our country's past. Things were not as rosy as we remember them.
After I published that piece, my cousin, the author Dale Estey (he blogs right here), left me a poem on my Facebook page where I had let people know about the piece.
The poem was by the late Fred Cogswell. Fred was a distinguished poet, mentor to younger poets, long-time editor of The Fiddlehead literary magazine, and an old friend.
Fred CogswellFred's own life (as described in some detail at the link) is a good illustration of some of the very prejudices I was writing about. His father's side of the family had come to New Brunswick from New England and was granted land that used to belong to the expelled Acadians. His mother was of Acadian ancestry.
From the profile that I linked to just above:
Fred was aware of his mother’s Acadian ancestry when growing up; however, in deference to his father, he never investigated that part of his background until after his father’s death. The irony of those sorts of denials, and the limitations they placed on provincial autonomy, are still typical of the peculiar sociology of New Brunswick.
The complexity of his own life is reflected in his poetry.
I was glad to see this poem again because it's one of my favourites of Fred's. As I remarked to Dale, it is full of such seething anger and contempt.
Ode To Fredericton
White are your housetops, white too your vaulted elms
That make your stately streets long aisles of prayer,
And white your thirteen spires that point your God
Who reigns afar in pure and whiter air,
And white the dome of your democracy-
The snow has pitied you and made you fair,
O snow-washed city of cold, white Christians,
So white you will not cut a black man's hair.
I remember Fred fondly. He was a mentor to Al.
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