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BIOGRAPHY &
AUTOBIOGRAPHY /
Literary
May 2006
304 pages
ISBN-10: 0-88984-286-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-88984-286-1
$27.95
The Names of Things
David Helwig
David Helwig's recollection of Tiff Findley dealing with a wayward
shaggy dog on stage in the Straw Hat Players (Peterborough) production
of the `King of Hearts' is probably worth the price of admission ..., though
the story about Zal Yanofsky of the Lovin' Spoonful auditing a course
in introductory Russian at Queen's is interesting too, and
... then there's a bunch of other anecdotes that involve characters (A to Z) such as
Margaret Atwood,
Don Bailey,
Clark Blaise,
George Bowering,
Bonnie Burnard,
Jackie Burroughs,
Adrienne Clarkson,
Matt Cohen,
Robertson Davies,
Timothy Findley,
Barbara Frum,
John Glassco,
Peter Gzowski,
Marion Hebb,
Dennis Lee,
Gwendolyn MacEwen,
Michael Macklem,
John Metcalf,
Alden Nowlan,
Michael Ondaatje,
Al Purdy,
Mordecai Richler,
Leon Rooke,
Ray Souster,
Bronwen Wallace,
George Whalley and
Dale Zieroth.
The Names of Things is a book about a man and a generation. Born to a working-class family in Toronto,
David Helwig grew up in the haunted town of Niagara-on-the-Lake long before it became a fashionable
summer destination for charter coaches of American tourists.
David won a scholarship from General Motors to attend the
University of Toronto and launched himself into theatrical productions
at Hart House and mingled with such writers as John Robert Colombo,
Henry Beissel, Edward Lacey, David Lewis Stein and Edna Paris.
After working in summer stock with young actors including Timothy Findley, Gordon Pinsent and Jackie Burroughs,
he spent a couple of years in the suburbs of Birkenhead, then moved to Kingston
where, in the 1960s he shared the world of little magazines with Tom Marshall
and Michael Ondaatje and the world of prisons with the inmates he taught.
In the 1970s he worked under John Hirsch at the CBC. He edited books for Oberon Press.
He was part of the generation of young Canadian writers who believed
they could try anything. He also shares a touching account of family life,
of learning to be a father. Poetry, some of it never before published, catches
the echoes of the life he lived. From childhood during the Second World War to becoming
a grandfather at the millennium, this is the story of one man and his connections
with the history of Canada in the latter part of the twentieth century.
A prolific author, David Helwig's many publications include
Atlantic Crossing (1974), A Book of the Hours (1979),
Catchpenny Poems (1984), The Bishop (1986),
The Hundred Old Names and Postcards From Rome (both published in 1988),
Old Wars (1989), Of Desire (1990), Just Say the Words (1994)
and The Child of Someone (1997). Recent publications include Telling Stories (2000),
The Time of Her Life (2000), Living Here (2001),
This Human Day (2001) and The Year One (2004).
`The time is coming when the generation of Canadian writers
that began publishing in the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s will start
to pour the coffee on the campfire. Already their numbers have thinned a bit. Those still
active are fading into respectability: the land of Festschrifts and honorary degrees, of diminishing
pensions and persistent disease. In the future story of this drift towards infinity, David
Helwig's memoir The Names of Things could well become a significant primary document.'
-- George Fetherling, The New Brunswick Reader
Photo by Judy Gaudet
He lives in Belfast, Prince Edward Island.
