‘Heroes’ — Chimczuk Museum exhibit highlights Windsor literary history

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Windsor’s long, rich literary history reads like a who’s-who of prominent authors and publishers — Marshall McLuhan, Joyce Carol Oates, W.O. Mitchell, Adele Wiseman, Alistair MacLeod, Marty Gervais.

Gervais has known many of the well-known writers and poets who visited or lived in Windsor during his long local career as a journalist, poet, photographer, professor and publisher of Black Moss Press.

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“I had this idea that, you know, in Windsor, we don’t always pay attention to our own achievements,” Gervais said. “And we’re always surprised that people achieve something in Windsor, you know.

“And so, and it occurred to me that some people think that maybe in terms of literary excellence, you know, we only started a few years ago.”

Wanting to spread the word about Windsor’s diverse literary history, Gervais set out to organize and curate a public exhibit at the downtown Chimczuk Museum featuring stories and artifacts.

A Snapshot of the Literary History of the Windsor Region is the name of the exhibit that traces the chronology of what Gervais calls “a gallery of heroes.”

“I call it a gallery of heroes because, if you look down through our history, there’s a whole bunch of people who I look to as storytellers, who told Windsor stories,” Gervais told the Star ahead of Saturday’s launch of the exhibit.

“Just so many, so many other writers who I would consider heroes in our history.”

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Gervais recalled returning in 1968 to Windsor, the city where he was born, to work with his mentor Eugene McNamara, a poet, novelist and teacher, who had started a magazine called the Windsor Review and asked to publish one of Gervais’s poems.

“I came here because Windsor had a lively literary scene happening in 1968,” he said. “It was Eugene McNamara, there was (writer) Joyce Carol Oates, there was (poet) Len Gasparini.

“But it occurred to me that our literature didn’t just begin in 1968,” he said.

“It goes back to the 19th century, to the mid-1800s when people were writing about this community and I wasn’t aware of that.”

The exhibit highlights some of the area’s early writers, like steamship traveller Anna Brownwell Jameson and abolitionist Mary Ann Shadd Cary, as well as famous literary luminaries from the 20th and 21st centuries.

“The person who kind of inspired me the most from deep in the past was a fellow by the name of Raymond Knister. He actually wrote for the Border City Star (a precursor to the Windsor Star),” Gervais said.

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“He was writing book reviews but he was also publishing his poems in the magazines in Paris, alongside (Ernest) Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“And his poems were all about rural Southwestern Ontario. He was from, originally from Cottam, and he was writing about the farm and the farmland, because he grew up on a farm.”

Writer and actor Christopher Lawrence Menard was among the guests who spoke at Saturday’s launch, praising Gervais’s commitment to the local literary scene.

“This exhibit and this group of people is indicative of what you do so well,” Menard said. “Marty brings together publishers, writers, people who think they haven’t done it before or won’t be able to do it — he tells them they can.

“He encourages people to look at what’s going on in their lives and figure out what they want to say about it. And anyone who’s been lucky enough to work with you, knows that what they’re going to see in this exhibition, a lot of it wouldn’t exist without your influence in this area.”

The exhibit also charts the rise of the city’s literary magazines and publishing companies, some garnering such prestigious awards as the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award and the Giller Prize.

A Snapshot of the Literary History of the Windsor Region runs through Oct. 26.

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