On meeting Al

I recently met Al in the darndest of places. I mean I’ve heard him read his stuff at author’s nights. I’ve met him in the library—on the page that is. And from time to time my dog Cabot and I have ventured down Purdy Lane in Ameliasburg to visit Al’s monument. I still call it Purdy Lane even though someone decided the steep sloping gravelled path is a street and changed the name.

There’s a conservation area below the hill where the Roblin mill pond sits. And it’s nearby the pond where Al is remembered with a fine black marble stone. His partner in life, Eurithe, did it right for all of us I figure when she decided on ‘Voice of the Land ‘as an appropriate acknowledgement for the writer and poet when he passed on. She told me about it one day when I stopped in to see her at the Aframe. Then she made tea.

I was in my teens when I first stumbled over Al’s work. Back then I was convinced that poetry was only written by people in foreign lands about topics foreign to me. But reading Al’s work, The Cariboo Horses and Poems for All the Annettes, changed all of that. It shifted my take on the possibilities that words on a page held.

I also liked the way that Al learned life from a bootstrap approach. I mean riding out of town atop a railway boxcar one night in June was a lot more original than heading out of Dodge like in the westerns. Al left the past, at least his early years in Trenton behind that night. But he’d be back one day. In the time being he had a lot of figurin’ to do and being ‘out there’ would give him the space he needed to do just that.

Al didn’t write fancy poetry about love or sunrises or quiet rivers in the night. Well come to think of it, he did write about those things but in a hammer-down – quick as a typewriter key smashing onto paper – kinda way. Anything that was part of life was worth engaging. Like yellow flowers in the beer at the Quinte hotel; or reroofing the church spire in Ameliasburgh; or collecting the rural mail. Then again pig blood, hockey players the cosmos and how a dog felt to be old were all eligible. Al was scarce on patience for anyone – especially himself – making trivia out of the grit of day to day.

He admired D.H. Lawrence, Margaret Laurence, and Charles Bukowski, all writers of courage. And he loved Eurithe in the way that she loved him. And they would say it wasn’t always easy.

And so just before winter came I found myself along a pathway in Queen’s Park in Toronto. And there he was. Larger than life and seemingly quite content among university students and squirrels and traffic chasing the turnaround of Queen’s Park Circle. Set amongst museum and university architecture Al looks towards the east. Past Toronto Islands and Scarborough bluffs; down along the craggy shoreline of Lake Ontario; east toward the road that leads to the place he never left. The A-frame home built with “our last hard-earned buck to buy secondhand lumber,” patiently waits by the icebound shore of Roblin Lake.

Al Purdy is recognized for bringing authentic expression to a northern and hopeful people. And the reason why, a few blocks from where his likeness in bronze sits in Toronto, a recent gathering of 700 people celebrated Al and Eurithe and in the process raised $40,000 to put toward the effort needed to fix up the A-frame and provide a work retreat for writers into future generations. The thing about Al was that anyone with a hammer or a moment to spare was always welcomed. So why not keep on? Drop around and give the Purdy place a hand. You’ll be supporting the arts in the same way you’d ride the roof of a railway boxcar. You’ll never forget it.

Now boot soles dig into the lose skin of ice and dirt that leads below the treetops. Silent maples await the silent ground of March; a cardinal skirts a crack in the heavens; woodpeckers are loud at work. The porcelain lid of winter holds firm to the basin; shadows draw the land beneath my feet. I look over there: just beyond the farm gate that opens to the cemetery. Over there to one who gave a hand reminding us of who we are. Remembered for what was said. Told about the place he knew: Al Purdy.

More about the A-frame: www.alpurdy.ca