The Obscure Champion of Francophone Writing Who Called for Canada to Join the U.S.
Prosper Bender.
Bender’s premature death announcement in some ways prefigures his eventual eclipse in the history of Canadian imagination.
Scalawags
Before the Tiger King, There Was the Rat King: Charles Waterton’s Bizarre Mansion and Game Reserve
A natural oddity.
Charles Waterton only spent a few days in Canada, in 1824, visiting Quebec City, Montreal, and Niagara Falls; although there are lakes and a national park in southern Alberta named after him, he never actually ventured that far.
The Yule Lads of Iceland: 13 Christmas Trolls
A dark and strange Christmas story.
The brutal winters did little to chill Icelanders’ spirits, instead it sparked a dark and strange literary imagination that has endured for more than 1000 years. The Yule Lads began as thirteen evil ogre brothers which parents used to scare children into behaving around Christmastime.
Perpetual Bride and Cultural Icon: Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel
The source of her appeal.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: She lived a long, well publicized life. She knew and loved, was married to or had affairs with, some of the most famous men of her time. Now, decades after her death, she is still, if not famous, then legendary.
Artist Suzanne Valadon Was (and Still Is) the Heart of Montmartre
Artist, mother, muse, and lover.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: Suzanne Valadon has been associated with the streets of Montmartre— from the days of the Paris Commune in 1871, far beyond her death in 1938, to the present day.
The Roguish Achievements of Expert Scam Artists
Frederick Emerson Peters and Stephen Jacob Weinberg.
Move over Catch Me If You Can, because real-life scam artists Frederick Emerson Peters and Stephen Jacob Weinberg were born to be outrageous miscreants.
William Seabrook, Author, Adventurer, and Fine Young Cannibal
You are what you eat.
I thought it might be interesting to find one anecdote to best encapsulate the strange life of William Seabrook. But, then, his life was so full of incident and he knew so many of the kind of people who are ornaments to any reminiscence that it seemed too daunting a task.
Lord Buckley Takes the Stage
One groovy flower.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: Richard Myrle Buckley, a former logger, was not only decades outside his time, he was untamable and unclassifiable. Some other way lies fame and fortune, his way lies legend.
The Most Notorious Female Spy: Mata Hari
A tragic beauty.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: The most notorious of all female spies, the personification of the femme fatale, the mysterious exotic and erotic dancer from the East, Mata Hari was really Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, who broke away from her Friesland home in the Netherlands by answering a personal ad in the newspaper.
