Attachment to Place: Pat of Silverbush (1933)
I have a confession to make. I am in love with a pub. Can you be in love with a pub? Do pubs deserve love? To you , they may be just places of dining and a couple of pints....but my pub is so much more.
One of my favourite sounds in the world is the sound of footsteps ascending the staircase outside of the Wolf and Firkin on Elm Street in Toronto. One block north of Edward Street and my old haunt, the World's Biggest Bookstore.
You sit in our corner and wait and wonder, as you hear nearby footsteps through the window and then through the doorway, who will join you next!
It's not that the food is extraordinary----it is your typical Canadian import British pub fare and the atmosphere is that UK melange of Brit and Scot flags and tartans and plush seats and dark mahogany that so many Toronto pubs ascribe to. But, the company and the atmosphere and the remembrance of our laughter ringing to the rafters makes this place my favourite. Another home, per se. Another refuge.
I cannot think of a topic not discussed here over the rims of twinkling glasses laden with amber beer. I would be hardpressed to find a subject not delved into at full force --
Hockey games, Christmas and Birthday parties, a casual dinner with a few select people, I LOVE the FIRK
Last Sunday, I escaped the chill and settled into our booth a little earlier than the rest of my party. I sometimes love the moments approaching the Wolf and Firkin on the street --- the Elm lights casting odd little shadows and the lead up to the white-washed brick fortress, its merry yellow light inviting from the inside.
I love to steal inside. I love hidaways.
This same sense of place is vital to Pat in Pat of Silver Bush. Every nook and cranny is magical to her. Sure, the Wolf and Firkin fails to host the aesthetic pleasure of emeral d fields, russet roads and a sandy spanse of opal and blue ocean but it is not so much, for Maud and for the reader, the actual place as the conceptualization of how that place effects you.
I think one of life's most natural wonders ( miracles ) is one's ability to adapt, settle and appropriate their own decided home.
This home feeling may not strike two of the same people. What feels like home to me... a little pub on Elm Street, perhaps...will decidedly not grab you. But that, I argue, is part of the miracle.
The need to appropriate and fit into a place in an intrinsic human need. A sense of belonging has, for centuries, spurned wars, unravelled love and prompted combat and fighting.
In Pat of Silver Bush the reader best understands this notion not through Pat ( whose passion for Silver Bush will leave some readers confused with thoughts of you have to leave your house sometime!) but through Jingle and his soul's longing for a place he doesn't have.
Pat's love of Silver Bush is grounded, self-assured, flamboyant. Jingle's is heart-tuggingly graceful and ever so vulnerable. Jingle has to take what bits of Silver Bush are thrown to him. Jingle is relegated to slinking to the sidelines, like us, as an observer.
I feel Jingle is our mediator. Like the great literary mediators before him ( I think particularly of Watson in the Sherlock Holmes canon). Jingle links us to Pat and her intricate and tightly-woven Silver Birch world.
I love Jingle. He loves Pat for her love of home and decides, very early on, to ensure she always has a home. Even if he has to build it himself.
Jingle is one of Maud's heroes who shares a pension for place. Barney and Andrew Stuart being the other two who spring to mind.
In fact, Jingle is an anomaly as he is given the rare opportunity to christen a place... something usually afforded the heroine of a Montgomery tale.
Jingle is the one who christens their secret getaway, Happiness.
Like Perry Mlller of the Emily novels, Jingle introduces us to a complex sense of socal divide in turn-of-the-century PEI, but this only makes his long for home felt in a more acute sense.
I am eager to see how Mistress Pat makes me enjoy the "homes" I make for myself even more!
One of my favourite sounds in the world is the sound of footsteps ascending the staircase outside of the Wolf and Firkin on Elm Street in Toronto. One block north of Edward Street and my old haunt, the World's Biggest Bookstore.
You sit in our corner and wait and wonder, as you hear nearby footsteps through the window and then through the doorway, who will join you next!
It's not that the food is extraordinary----it is your typical Canadian import British pub fare and the atmosphere is that UK melange of Brit and Scot flags and tartans and plush seats and dark mahogany that so many Toronto pubs ascribe to. But, the company and the atmosphere and the remembrance of our laughter ringing to the rafters makes this place my favourite. Another home, per se. Another refuge.
I cannot think of a topic not discussed here over the rims of twinkling glasses laden with amber beer. I would be hardpressed to find a subject not delved into at full force --
Hockey games, Christmas and Birthday parties, a casual dinner with a few select people, I LOVE the FIRK
Last Sunday, I escaped the chill and settled into our booth a little earlier than the rest of my party. I sometimes love the moments approaching the Wolf and Firkin on the street --- the Elm lights casting odd little shadows and the lead up to the white-washed brick fortress, its merry yellow light inviting from the inside.
I love to steal inside. I love hidaways.
This same sense of place is vital to Pat in Pat of Silver Bush. Every nook and cranny is magical to her. Sure, the Wolf and Firkin fails to host the aesthetic pleasure of emeral d fields, russet roads and a sandy spanse of opal and blue ocean but it is not so much, for Maud and for the reader, the actual place as the conceptualization of how that place effects you.
I think one of life's most natural wonders ( miracles ) is one's ability to adapt, settle and appropriate their own decided home.
This home feeling may not strike two of the same people. What feels like home to me... a little pub on Elm Street, perhaps...will decidedly not grab you. But that, I argue, is part of the miracle.
The need to appropriate and fit into a place in an intrinsic human need. A sense of belonging has, for centuries, spurned wars, unravelled love and prompted combat and fighting.
In Pat of Silver Bush the reader best understands this notion not through Pat ( whose passion for Silver Bush will leave some readers confused with thoughts of you have to leave your house sometime!) but through Jingle and his soul's longing for a place he doesn't have.
Pat's love of Silver Bush is grounded, self-assured, flamboyant. Jingle's is heart-tuggingly graceful and ever so vulnerable. Jingle has to take what bits of Silver Bush are thrown to him. Jingle is relegated to slinking to the sidelines, like us, as an observer.
I feel Jingle is our mediator. Like the great literary mediators before him ( I think particularly of Watson in the Sherlock Holmes canon). Jingle links us to Pat and her intricate and tightly-woven Silver Birch world.
I love Jingle. He loves Pat for her love of home and decides, very early on, to ensure she always has a home. Even if he has to build it himself.
Jingle is one of Maud's heroes who shares a pension for place. Barney and Andrew Stuart being the other two who spring to mind.
In fact, Jingle is an anomaly as he is given the rare opportunity to christen a place... something usually afforded the heroine of a Montgomery tale.
Jingle is the one who christens their secret getaway, Happiness.
Like Perry Mlller of the Emily novels, Jingle introduces us to a complex sense of socal divide in turn-of-the-century PEI, but this only makes his long for home felt in a more acute sense.
I am eager to see how Mistress Pat makes me enjoy the "homes" I make for myself even more!