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Tom Monto

Garneau school's 100th anniversary: Charles Lewis Shaw's evening with Laurent Garneau

On June 2 I attended an event held at the Metro Cinema. This is the historic Garneau Theatre across the street from the Garneau School, celebrating its 100th anniversary.


A fellow there read this old (1907) newspaper account written by Charles Lewis Shaw, at one time said to be one of Canada's foremost "literary workers."


I figure it may be of interest to some who were not at the event.

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[Charles Lewis Shaw recounted spending an evening with Laurent Garneau] Few of us even in these days of social communism ever really understood the complex character of the half-breed. The lights and shades of his variable nature were not clearly enough defined to admit of clear comprehension and certainly not of definition to anyone accustomed only to the clear-cut racial distinctiveness of world-old peoples, for the point of view of the half-breed is to be sometimes felt but never described. Once only it was given to me and then by the master hand of one of the race through the magic music of his violin, for few men, I have been told, could play the violin as could Larry Garneau, the finest example of the French half-breed it has ever been my fortune to meet. The long summer day of the Saskatchewan had closed and we sat in the coolness of the evening looking out over the river where high above the feeble flickering lights of the little settlement on the northern bank, shone the bright glimmering stars of the universe and the words of the intellectual man at my side were in harmony with the scene. He talked ethically of the rights of man, the duties of government, personal freedom, etc. And the desultory conversation gradually drifted from wonderings at the purpose of creation, the law of the powerful, the injuries of the weak, and the abstract theories as to man's relations with the Infinite, until as the shadows deepened the soft, deep voice of Larry Garneau spoke directly of the rights and wrongs of his people. Unconsciously I must have assumed the mental attitude that a legal training and the teachings of my race would once beget. With keen intuition my companion understood. Sympathy and feeling, human qualities as necessary in the judgement of worldly things as they are in religion, should be brought to bear on the question of half-breed rights and wrongs,” said he, quietly reaching for his violin. “Let me tell you the story of the half-breed.” And with the stars glimmering down upon us, with no sound to break the quietness of the night but the soft swishing flow of the mighty Saskatchewan, the notes of the violin, now vibrating with the swirl of the buffalo hunt and the mad merriment of the dance, then softening to some old French love song brought over seas and prairies from Brittany, now murmuring the quaint, sweet lullabies of childhood, then breaking into the fierce chants of war and revenge at last died away in the wailing sadness of a requiem that told of a dying race. Only the other day I heard a great military band of world-wide repute tell the awful story of Bonaparte's most disastrous campaign, with blare of trumpet, the shriek of shells and the groans of the wounded, and some at least learned something of the horrors of war. From the throbbing notes of the singing, sobbing violin pressed under the strong chin of Larry Garneau, from his deep chested words of rapid explanation uttered now and then during the recital, from his softened or flashing eyes, and the mobile features of his expressive face in the clear northern starlight, I learned the tragic story of the Half-Breed.”   


(Shaw's account of his evening with Garneau was originally publshed in the May 6, 1907 Strathcona Evening Chronicle.)


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