COLUMN Title: Covering the Language Bridge Version française : A collection of weekly columns on relations between the English- and French-speaking communities mainly in Quebec. Partly in English, partly in French -- not translations, but rather complements to one another.
Price: TBA
|
Covering the Language Bridge Excerpt Doug Jones lives with his wife Monique on the fabled west side of North Hatley, where short narrow streets have civilized the hillside with the former summer homes of Hugh MacLennan and Frank Scott, the stately residences of Jean Charest and Sam Pollock, and the long-time homes of the Sutherlands and Gustafsons. This is where Americans built large summer cottages, and still seek our northern respite on the shores of Lake Massawippi each year. Many of those large cottages were battened down for the winter last week, as I made my way up the lane to an interview with Doug Jones, 40 years after he founded Ellipse magazine. The ink wasn’t yet dry on Canada’s Official Languages Act when the North Hatley poet and professor approached his French-speaking colleague Joseph Bonenfant at the Université de Sherbrooke and proposed a fully bilingual magazine of poetry in 1969. Ellipse continues to be published today, while D.G. Jones, as he’s known in anthologies of Canadian poetry, celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year. “But I almost didn’t make it,” he said after receiving me at his home almost as warmly as did the family’s new pup, recently rescued from the animal protection society. Jones said he took about three months to recover from the flu, apparently not H1N1, last January. |
|||
Author Scott Stevenson
|
Publisher Townships Cantons Publications,
|
|||
