3.35 a.m. Good morning, and a special hello to new subscribers, or to anyone who might have been alerted to the diary via the interview with Shelagh Rogers on The Next Chapter. Substack accommodates media links; now and again, I post one.
Yesterday morning I had the good fortune to have a Zoom exchange, see above, with Nancy Baele (pronounced Bale). Nancy was for many years the art critic at the Ottawa Citizen and in that capacity met Mavis Gallant (MG). They became friends. When my happy labours here are over, when August 11 has come and gone and the MG Centennial is dusted and done, I may start up a new diary and devote it to Nancy who has many more tales to tell — not just about MG — than you’ll find here. She is smart, funny, and charming as the day is long, as you’ll see if you watch the video record of our conversation. I should say that a role at which I excel — casting directors, please take note — is “Codger Unable to Master Technology.” I apologize for the somewhat stumbly opening and closing of our little movie. I either have to learn how to edit, or we all have to agree that the goofiness is sweet. I prefer the latter plan. So much simpler.
SFU Podcast Grippes and Poche reading
A few quick notes of clarification. Nancy speaks about the portrait of MG you’ll see over her left shoulder, taken by MG’s friend Alison Harris — a gifted photographer with a vast portfolio — in 2012 when MG was 90. Nancy made a gift of an earlier Alison Harris portrait, from 1996, “Mavis Gallant at the Dome” to the National Gallery of Canada.
Also referenced is this photo of Chekhov and his dog. It’s framed on the sideboard, visible over MG’s left shoulder. (Not sure if this is one of the pair named Bromine and Quinine.)
The other photo, over the right shoulder, is of MG as a little girl. You can see it more clearly here in a picture taken by Nancy on what I think was her last visit with MG; this accompanied the appreciation Nancy wrote for the Ottawa Citizen after MG’s death in 2014. If ever you wanted to find a visual definition for “poignant,” this would be it. The link to Nancy’s beautiful writing is posted below.
Nancy Baele writes about MG, Ottawa Citizen
(I was struck by how closely MG, at this age, very near the end of her life, resembled Judy Pechet, my partner’s mother, who died in 2016. She shared with MG an ancestry that was, at least in part, Eastern European. Judy’s medically assisted death, one of the first enacted in British Columbia after the introduction of the legislation that made such exits legally possible, was what I had in mind when I wrote a book called Last Week. Billy P took this photo of his beautiful and brilliant mom not long before she stepped into mystery.)
Well. This is more cheerful than I’d intended! Enough said, I think. My thanks to Nancy for her time and generosity and to you all for reading / watching. xo, B
Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, June 26