I had tea with an old friend the other day, Erica Burton, who informed me that her late husband’s book had just been published. It’s been in the works for years.

I grew up knowing the Burton family. It’s a third generation friendship; Ted’s father and my grandfather were schoolmates at boarding school in England a century ago or more, then coincidentally found themselves homesteading in the same township in Saskatchewan years later, and it was Ed Burton who signed my grandfather up for the RAF when WWI broke out. My parents were nudged together by Ted’s parents. And Ted and Erica’s three children and my brother and I often found ourselves playing or getting into mischief of some sort together throughout our childhood.

So, I had been eagerly anticipating the conclusion of Ted’s memoirs, begun in Journal of a Country Lawyer.

The Burtons moved away from Kenora to live in Thunder Bay while I was in university. The only time I got together with Ted as an adult was when I hosted the Kenora launch his first collection of memoirs. As I read Shaking the Feather Boa, I found myself wishing he was still around, wishing that I’d got to know him better while I was an adult. I would have enjoyed talking to him more about some of the experiences he had and some of the philosophical points of view he brings out in this new collection.

Where his first book was full of stories about interesting events in his career as a defense lawyer, crown attorney and later district attorney, Shaking the Feather Boa is more general in scope, full of anecdotes from his childhood through to his retirement. It is a collection of memories of events that manufactured a life, of happenings that pushed him to the edge of change. Through these reminisces, readers can see the influence of circumstance on a life, how people, places, and events conspire to provide one with the tools and experience to make the decisions (or form the circumstances) that create an individual.

It’s interesting to read what Ted thinks those events were in his life and how he feels they conspired to change or strengthen him. And from another point of view, it is interesting to see how some of those stories he tells may have helped him do the job he ended up doing in a far more effective manner.

Even if you didn’t know Ted Burton, you will find his memoirs engaging. His was a life lived on the threshold of many opening and shutting doors – aviation history, the Great Depression, the old lumber camps, First Nation/White relations, and the lives of those caught up in crime as both victims and offenders. Here was a man who believed in experiencing the fullness of what life had to offer, and in using that experience to help improve the lives of those he met!

I was sorting through some books the other day when I found, to my great joy, another Paul Gallico book. This one is a departure from fiction in the form of a biography of St. Patrick. Rather fitting I should find it this month…

In The Steadfast Man, Gallico attempts to reveal the real man that St. Patrick was. This is quite a challenge given that only two documents written by this Primate of Ireland have survived the fifteen centuries since he set them on paper. Both are appended at the end of the book. Although Gallico refers to works about St. Patrick from time to time in his narrative, he indicates that, although there may be a grain of truth to some of the legends surrounding the saint, most of them are sensational beyond the believable. And, yes, that includes the story about him driving the snakes from Ireland.

There is a fair bit of repetition in the text, something I found mildly annoying. But I think I would read it again if I were travelling to Ireland, as it gives a lot of useful advice to the Patrician pilgrim. I enjoyed sampling a bit of Church history, too, for a change. Even if I don’t agree completely with their messages, I still find many of the great individuals in the history of Christianity inspiring for their faith, their tenacity and their courage.

Sometimes it is impossible to find a copy of the out-of-print book/periodical that you REALLY NEED for that research project you have underway.

I found such a thing on Google Books, but it would only give me a snippet view. It looked to be an obituary article or a biography of one of my ancestors – Samuel Brandram, grandson to the Samuel I wrote about in Parallel Lives? Samuel the younger was a famous reciter who had committed Shakespeare’s complete works and many other literary works to memory. An amazing feat! The article I wanted was in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine of 1893, and covered almost seven pages. I had to have it.

I couldn’t find a copy for sale anywhere on the Internet. My next best chance of obtaining it was through Inter-Library Loan. Marg at the Kenora Public Library has come to know me pretty well over the last couple of years as an Inter-Library Loan client. Only rarely has she been unable to help me. A week or so after I had ordered the periodical, she phoned to tell me that she had found a copy, but the National Library would not send it through the system. But (sometimes buts are good…) they could photocopy the pages I required and send them!

The other day I got Marg’s call to say that the copies were at the Library waiting for me along with another book I’d ordered through Inter-Library Loan. There was no charge for the service.

The happy news was that the article had some great gems of information in it, and I learned more about Samuel than I had previously known. Samuel used to perform at Justice Talfourd’s house in Russell Square, where he met Charles Dickens. Dickens was so impressed by Samuel’s rendering of the great novellist’s work that he stated that Brandram was “a man who interprets me better than I can interpret myself.” With recommendations like that, the reciter was in high demand!

So, if you reach a brick wall in finding that tome you require, visit your local library and try out Inter-Library Loan. It doesn’t always work, and there may be a fee sometimes, but it usually brings good results!