Deafening (50 page)
“Word was getting out: people began to…tell me where I could find one more journal, one more photograph album, a rare book or pamphlet.”
For the Deseronto research, I began to visit and walk around the small town, staying at a local bed and breakfast close to the hotel which my great-grandfather once owned on the Bay of Quinte. Although much changed, the old part of the building is still standing. I was permitted by the then owner to go inside the sealed-off original section. The staff at Deseronto’s Town Hall provided much help, and gave free access to old documents and town photos. I was even taken up into the
clock tower of the beautiful old post office building on Main Street, and learned, along the way, that my deaf grandmother’s aunt and uncle had once lived in the now empty tower apartment. I interviewed a 100-year-old woman who was a first cousin of my grandmother, and she described the apartment as it had been in the early 1900s. I was so taken by this, I decided to set several important scenes of the book in the apartment as it was described to me.
Throughout the six years of researching and writing the book, I knew that I was working with two parallel and separate worlds—the war experiences of the stretcher bearer and the inner world of a young deaf woman at the turn of the last century. I trusted my instincts, hoping that the two worlds would intersect. Sound and silence, words and language, love and loss—in particular the love between the two main characters, Grania and Jim—eventually provided the connections I was seeking. But I was also exploring other kinds of love: between sisters, between child and grandmother, between war buddies, parents and family members, and school friends who were deaf.
“I knew that the larger story would tell itself if I could get the fine detail right.”
The way I approached my story was to use densely layered detail that would drop the reader into the world I was trying to create—one that might have existed a hundred years ago. I used every level of experience I could muster from my own life and from lives overheard, and I worked very hard to recreate this world. I knew that the larger story would tell itself if I could get the fine detail right. Always at the back of my mind was my love for my late grandmother, whose life I hoped to honour.
This is a small sampling of the many books I read for research purposes.
Books on the First World War
Letters of Agar Adamson
(1914-1919), ed. N.M. Christie
These detailed letters from Adamson to his wife provide a remarkably intimate portrait of the war.
Other books by N.M. Christie helped to fill in details of battles and battlefields:
The Canadians at Mount Sorrel, The Canadians at Ypres, The Canadians on the Somme, The Canadians at Cambrai, The Canadians at Vimy, The Canadians at Amiens
The Great War As I Saw It
by Canon Frederick G. Scott
This book gives another intimate portrait of the war, particularly of Canada’s loyalty to the Empire and to Mother England.
Ontario and the First War
, ed. Barbara M. Wilson
This publication by the Champlain Society permitted me to check historical documentation and social conditions of early twentieth-century Ontario.
Letters of a Canadian Stretcher Bearer
by R.A.L. (1918), ed. Anna Chapin Ray
History of No. 1 Canadian General Hospital: Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919
by Kenneth Cameron A wonderfully documented, detailed medical history.
The Great War in Verse and Prose
, ed. J.E. Wetherell
Canadian Poems of the Great War
, ed. John W. Garvin
These are two examples of the kind of language, rhetoric, propaganda, sentimentality and public pain in Canada at the beginning and during the long years of the First World War.
A Diary Without Dates
by Enid Bagnold
Good-bye to All That
by Robert Graves
1915: The Death of Innocence
and
The Roses of No Man’s Land
by Lyn MacDonald
Books about hearing and deafness
Seeing Voices
by Oliver Sacks
This moving and informative book provided me with an extensive and important bibliography when I was beginning my research into the deaf community.
Deaf Heritage in Canada
by Clifton F. Carbin A well-researched history, which includes a lot of information about the Belleville school and about political and social conditions during the last century, conditions that profoundly affected the education of deaf children.
The Sign Language: A Manual of Signs
by J. Schuyler Long
This rare book provided me with proof of authentic sign language of the period. Sign language is always changing, and these early signs are often considerably different from today’s ASL (American Sign Language).
Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard
by Nora Ellen Groce
Ear Cleaning; When Words Sing;The New Soundscape
by R. Murray Schafer This collection of writing on music education helped with my investigations and understanding of sound.
Wired for Sound
by Beverly Biderman
Novels and Memoirs
The First Man
by Albert Camus
Ghosts Have Warm Hands
by Will R. Bird (memoir)
Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road
, a trilogy by Pat Barker
Birdsong
by Sebastian Faulks
My sincere thanks to staff members of Sir James Whitney School (former Ontario School for the Deaf), Belleville, Ontario, for welcoming me and permitting archival access to school newspapers of the period 1900-1919. Excerpts from
The Canadian
are, by and large, as I found them. Special thanks to Keith Dorschner, Archival Coordinator, and his wife, Christina, who responded to my many questions and arranged to meet me each time I travelled to the school; also to Cheryl Manning and former Superintendent Paul Bartu.
I acknowledge the generosity of Louise Ford, Executive Director of the Ottawa Deaf Centre, who arranged for me to work within the volunteer program and directed me to important resources; and Jon Kidd, President of ODC, and head of Sign Lines Canada, a skilled and insightful teacher of American Sign Language. Many others tolerated my barrage of questions as I struggled to learn ASL. Among these, Bonet Hebert, Les Sicoli, Maria Bossio and Carol Fowler. Warm thanks to Sherri Cranston for sharing her many insights during our weekly interviews; and to Oliver Sacks, whose
Seeing Voices
was helpful for its extensive bibliography.
Some of my accomplices as I researched Irish settlement in Tyendinaga Township: Bernard and Annie Freeman, octogenarians who responded to my ad in the
Napanee Beaver
and welcomed me to sessions around the kitchen table at their farm. Bernard’s amazing memory filled in gaps about the history of pioneer farms along the Ninth Concession and my great-grandfather’s Deseronto hotel. For help with Irish names, thanks to Dr. Mary Comerton, Barbara Lunney, Maura Strevens and Ronan Murphy. In Deseronto, Ontario, a big thanks to Bev Reid at the Town Hall for help at every turn. Thank you, Dennis Vick, Floyd Marlin, Stan Marek, Ken Brown (Archives Coordinator), and Irene and Tom Usher at the Town’s Edge B&B.
For First World War research I am indebted to many friends for sending or lending documents, among them Margery Dexter and Wendy Scott, and Karen Fee for permitting me to read the war diary of her grandfather, William George Oak. Michel Gravel and I swapped books, letters and information. Carol Reid offered her considerable expertise and goodwill at the Archives of the Canadian War Museum; documents read include “A History of No. 10 Canadian Field Ambulance.” I am especially thankful for permission to track the footsteps of Joseph H. Macfarlane of No. 9 Canadian Field Ambulance (Ref. 19800281) while I created my own fictional character Jim. Thanks to Jack Granatstein for permitting me to sit in his office and turn over my questions like slow stones, and Dennis Fletcher for his enthusiasm in locating war photographs at Vimy House. Thanks to Barbara Norman, Music Division, National Library of Canada, for her personal interest and remarkable expertise in First World War music. Lyrics from “Dear Hame hid awa’ in the Glen” are by A. D. MacIntyre, 1904. A special thanks to Norm Christie in Ottawa, publisher of CEF Books. Of the many helpful CEF books, I acknowledge
Letters of Agar Adamson, The Canadians at Mount Sorrel
, and
The Great War As I Saw It
by Canon Frederick G. Scott.
Thanks to Bruce Cherry of Back-Roads Touring, in London, England, who toured me through the battlefields of France and Belgium; Susan Zettell, Jane Anderson, Terry Gronbeck-Jones, Rita Donovan, Joel Oliver, Jean Van Loon, Merna Summers, Fran Cherry and Larry Scanlan for sending or suggesting materials. Jackie Kaiser, my agent, was first to read the manuscript, and her support and enthusiasm are appreciated more than she will ever know. Thanks to Nicole Winstanley, agent, for her energy and goodwill on the international front. I am very grateful to my American editor, Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove/Atlantic, and British editor, Carolyn Mays, at Hodder
&
Stoughton, for their helpful comments.
Important among the many books read and for quotations used, I acknowledge Alexander Graham Bell,
The Mechanism of Speech
(1916); E. B. Nitchie,
Lessons in Lip-Reading
(1905); M. I. Ives,
Illustrated Phonics
(1909); Martha Bruhn,
The Müller-Walle Method of Lip-Reading for The Deaf
(1915); and
Sunday 1894
, a children’s book published in London
by Wells Gardner, Darton
&
Co. I acknowledge Clifton F. Carbin’s
Deaf Heritage in Canada
; J. Schuyler Long’s
1910 Manual of Signs
; the Champlain Society’s
Ontario and the First World War
. Books about the Spanish flu by Richard Collier and Lynette Iezzoni were helpful, as were
Whisky and Ice
by C. W. Hunt, Kenneth Cameron’s
History of No. 1 Canadian General Hospital Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919
, Donald M. Wilson’s work on the Rathbun enterprises, and D. W. Griffith’s film
Hearts of the World
(1918). The children’s chant in Chapter 26 is a variation of “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!,” an American Civil War song by G. F. Root (1820-1895). Jim’s chant, “Infirtaris…” dates from circa 1450; this 1842 version was collected by Iona and Peter Opie in
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes
(1980). Every effort has been made to track original sources, but additional information about copyright is most welcome.
I acknowledge and thank The Canada Council for the Arts, Millennium Fund, and the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton for grants awarded during the writing of this book.
Loving thanks to my Mother and my Aunts and Uncles, the eleven hearing children of my late deaf Grandmother. Love to my husband, Ted, my daughter, Sam, and my son, Russell, for encouragement during the long, exhilarating and often sad journey; and to Aileen Jane Bramhall, soprano, for her expert explanations about voice and song. To Russell, thank you for sharing your extraordinary knowledge of music, sound and silence. To Sam, thanks for the careful proofreading of the final manuscript.
Last but not least, a huge thanks to Phyllis Bruce, my Canadian editor and publisher, who checked in along the way, who found and sent garage-sale books and First World War sheet music and who waited patiently for me to finish at my own pace. Thank you, Phyllis, for your steady belief in the book and for your editorial expertise.
FRANCES ITANI
is the author of five acclaimed short-story collections, including
Leaning, Leaning Over Water
and the forthcoming
Poached Egg On Toast
. She has also published three poetry collections and a children’s book, and has written features for CBC Radio. She has won many awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean region), the Tilden (CBC/
Saturday Night
) Literary Award for 1995 and 1996,
Canadian Fiction Magazine
’s Best Short Story Award, and the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award for Fiction.
Deafening
has been published around the world in many languages. Frances Itani lives in Ottawa.
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“This is a superb novel, worthy of all the hype, and well worth the read.”
—
Winnipeg Free Press
“As good a book as
Crow Lake
,
Deafening
provides more varied pleasures just as flawlessly…Itani creates as deeply affecting a central character in Grania O’Neill as Clarke’s Miss Mary-Mathilda or Gowdy’s Louise Kirk or Mary Lawson’s Kate Morrison—and that’s very good company indeed.”
—
The Globe and Mail
“Itani’s beautiful sentences catch the eye immediately…[A] grand achievement.”
—
The Edmonton Journal
“There’s not a single false gesture in Frances Itani’s
Deafening
…It’s a story of careful, measured emotion, bleached of all sentimentality…There are passages here so beautiful that we can’t help straining to hear more.”
—
The Christian Science Monitor
“Immerses us in both the world of the deaf and the world of WWI trench warfare…The result is an artistic triumph.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)