The Visual Inspiration for Honourary Canadian–Percé Rock in Eastern Quebec

Map of Atlantic Canada + Perce RocheOver the past couple days, I’ve been looking at old photos I may scan and use to illustrate posts I plan to publish on the two blogs I manage–it’s rewarding work, especially the more I really dig in to the task and decide what to post. Even with the pictures I’m unlikely to use, it’s fun to be reminded of things I’ve done and places I’ve been over the years.

As an example of the sort of images I’m looking at, here are pictures I took on a three-week solo road trip I made in autumn 1988 to Atlantic Canada, with a culminating day at the majestic Percé Rock (aka le rocher percé or ‘pierced rock’) or in eastern Quebec along the Gaspé Peninsula, a veritable lobster tail jutting in to the Gulf of St. Lawrence where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, as shown on the above map. The rock face sits like the prow of a massive ship, towering nearly three hundred feet above the water. It is approachable on foot at low tide, but even then you have to keep on your toes as winds can shift the waves unexpectedly. The same vacation I also visited nearby Bonaventure Island and Parc Forillon, a serene national park. I toured this area only once, as subsequent trips to Quebec with my with my wife and son never brought us this far east. I would love to return with them some day.

The wikipedia entry about Percé Rock includes a lot of fascinating information, such as the fact that more than 150 fossil species have been found in the locale, with some of the fossils dating back more than 310 million years. Bonaventure Island, which I visited by boat, is home to huge flocks of noisy seabirds, including northern gannets, snowy gannets, and black cormorants, with the pungent tang of their guano filling the air, which in past times local farmers would gather to spread across their fields.

This region left a great impression on me, for as you can see, I chose the image of the pierced rock as the motif for this site when I started it last year, similar to when I chose an image of the George Washington Bridge, aka The Great Gray Bridge, for my first blog, established in 2011. Unsurprisingly, I am not alone in having been captivated by Percé Rock. The wikipedia article reports that French poet André  Breton, an exponent of surrealism and friend to Dada artists, visited the rock in 1944, while global war still raged, including at home in France. His sight of the rock inspired a poem, “Arcanum 17,” which he called “a hymn of hope, renewal, and resurrection,” adding that Percé Rock is a “razor blade rising out of the water, an image very imperious and commanding, a marvelous iceberg of moon stone…to a distracted observer though to a common man it is just but a resting place of birds.”

Possible Photo of Lincoln’s Funeral Procession Prompts Personal Reflections of a Missing Friend


When I had my bookstore, Undercover Books, we stocked and sold a majestic photography book called The Face of Lincoln, which collected every known photograph of Lincoln. It came out in 1979. Face of LincolnA few years later, I gave it as a wedding present to my Franconia College classmate and close friend Robert Henry Adams, who after college in New Hampshire had moved back to his hometown of Chicago where he became a dealer in rare books, prints, and fine art. The third member of our troika of friendship was Karl Petrovich, a dear friend to both of us. A few years after that, by which time I had moved to NYC, Rob gave me an original Lincoln photograph by Alexander Gardner, a contemporary of Matthew Brady. Sadly, Rob died in 2001, a dear friend whom I still miss all the time. Karl died a few months after Rob, early in 2002.Lincoln by Gardner

I thought of Rob yesterday when I heard CBC As It Happens’ interview with a US archivist who believes that a fellow staffer of his recently discovered a photograph of Lincoln’s funeral procession as it passed in front of Grace Church at Broadway and 10th Street in Manhattan, near where Matthew Brady had his photographic studio. It’s a segment that would’ve fascinated him, and he would have had an educated opinion about whether these pictures do show the Lincoln funeral. You may listen to the story about the discovery via this link. Along with pictures of The Face of Lincoln and the Lincoln photo Rob gave me here are some more shots: of Rob himself, with me; Karl Petrovich; his wife Sandra Adams; his sons, Jesse and Sam; and my wife Kyle Gallup. Cross-posted at The Great Gray Bridge.

Via Aux TV, Nine Keen Musical Artists Playing ‘Canadiana’ + a Tour of Cameron House

An excellent round-up by AUX TV’s Ivan Raczycki of nine superb acts playing what he dubs “Canadiana.” Includes ‘Play’ buttons for good tunes by each of the artists mentioned, only a few of whom I had known of before: Scarlett Jane, the Devin Cuddy Band, Sam Martin and the Haggard (perhaps a play on the name of longtime country & western player, Merle Haggard?), Al Tuck, Fiver (new project of Simone Schmidt, formerly of alt-country band One Hundred Dollars), Donovan Woods, New Country Rehab, Steve Dawson, and Weather Station. Happy to link to Raczycki’s piece and offer screenshots of it below. I like the work of these musicians. See the story on AUX TV’s site, enjoy the tunes, and the sites of the artists (all linked to above). If you’re not familiar with Toronto’s music scene–often infectiously enjoyable and down-home–I suggest you watch this video with Devin Cuddy, who walks the camera through Cameron House on Queen Street West, a funky old building that combines Cuddy’s home (he lives in the boarding house style accommodations); a couple of bars; two separate performance spaces; and Cuddy’s indie record label, Cameron House Records. I’ve seen several shows at Cameron House during my visits to Toronto for NXNE, and always have a great time there, like when I heard Dear Sister there last June, shown here in a photo with a bit of the Cameron House name behind them. AUX 1 AUX 2 AUX 3

Dear Sister

#FridayReads, March 14–Jan Wong’s Memoir of Depression, “Out of the Blue”

Out of the Blue


Triggered by a death threat targeting her for a story she wrote, Wong–a career reporter–does a superb job investigating and striving to understand her own illness.

When a Media Baron Becomes a Candidate

Attacks on Olivia Chow Show How Formidable a Mayoral Candidate She Is

Lee Lorch, an Exiled American Hero Who Found a Haven in Canada

Until reading this March 1 obituary by David Margolick about Lee Lorch I had not known about this brave man, or the vital role he played in ending racial bias in publicly-subsidized housing in New York City and the rest of the United States.

A WWII vet, Lorch came home from the war amid a nationwide housing shortage that was particularly severe in New York City. Then living with his wife Grace and daughter in what the NY Times reports Lorch called “‘half a Quonset hut’ overlooking Jamaican Bay in Queens,” he applied to live in the housing complex of Stuyvesant Town then being developed on the east side of Manhattan by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company with generous subsidies and accommodations from the city. He learned that African-Americans were explicitly barred from living in the development, as Met Life’s chairman Frederick Ecker told news media, “Negroes and whites don’t mix. If we brought them into this development, it would be to the detriment of the city, too, because it would depress all the surrounding property.” The Lorches and fellow tenants invited African-American families to come stay in there apartments as their guests, a move that drew Met Life’s ire and threats of eviction.

As a result, Lee Lorch lost his job teaching math at City College, and was made unwelcome at other universities where he applied to teach, including Penn State, which hired and then fired him in less than a year. For a time, he and his family were in Little Rock, Arkansas, where in 1957 Grace famously comforted Elizabeth Eckford, one of the “Little Rock Nine,” as she tried to attend Little Rock Central High School.Grace Lorch and Elizabeth Eckford

In addition, Lorch’s unapologetic membership in the American Communist Party caused civil rights leaders, including Thurgood Marshall, to keep their distance from him. After years of erratic employment in the States, in 1959 Lorch was offered a teaching position in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and later York University in Toronto. The Lorches emigrated and much like young draft-age American males of the Vietnam era, the Lorches found a new home and haven north of the 49th Parallel.

Lorch lived a remarkable life, and one that should be remembered. In addition to the March 1 NY Times obit and a 2010 article, here are other Web resources:

1) Video with a 2010 interview of Lee Lorch

2) A segment with Lee Lorch’s daughter Alice from CBC’s As It Happens, remembering her father and the family’s life in Canada.

3) A review of David Margolick’s book Elizabeth and Hazel, on Elizabeth Eckford, of the Little Rock Nine, and Hazel Bryan, a white woman who yelled at her as she tried to enter Central High School in 1957.

4) An Arkansas Times Web feature with lots more information on the Little Rock Nine.
Cross-posted on my blog The Great Gray Bridge.