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EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS / CANADA
CONNECTION I
......
Part of our Edgar Rice Burroughs
Connections Series featured at ERBzine
1299
ERB and Canada by
John F. Roy
First Appearances of this Article:
Fantastic Worlds of Burroughs and Kline #1, mid-'60s,
published by Philip J. Currie.
Reprinted in Boreal Bulletin #2, 1968/03, published
by William Silvester.
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote of many countries and several worlds, ranging
from the mythical Kingdom of Lutha in southeast Europe to far off Poloda
in the star-system of Omos. At the same time his numerous Earth-born characters
were representative of almost every nation on the face of the globe – Abyassinians,
Belgians, Chinese, and on down the alphabet.
Just what part did Canada and Canadians play in the tales of this master
story-teller? To answer the second part first, there are only three Canadians
thus honoured, and they by their works alone. The first is Henry Herbert
Knibbs, for his poem “Out There Somewhere” which was used as a basis
for Part II of the The Mucker and for brief selections scattered
throughout the The Oakdale Affair. Quotations from the works of
Robert
W. Service also appear in these two books, thanks to Bridge and his
fondness of this style of verse. The name Mary Pickford, Toronto-born
star of the silver screen, will be found in The Girl From Hollywood.
As for Canada herself, there is a strong possibility that John Carter
roamed southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as in A Princess
of Mars he says he spent several years among the Sioux of the north.
In the early days of American history these Indians ranged through what
is now Minnesota, the Dakotas and the Prairie Provinces. As far
as we know, Tarzan did not visit Canada, never getting nearer than the
northern part of Wisconsin (Tarzan of the Apes). However, in Tarzan
the Magnificent (Chapter 19) mention is made of Medicine Hat (Alberta),
in Tarzan and the “Foreign Legion” (Chapter 5) reference is made
of Halifax (Nova Scotia), while in Tarzan and the Madman
(Chapter 15) the unfortunate Pelham Dutton said he had done a lot of mountain
climbing in northeast Canada.
In The Mucker, Bridge mentions having been "on the Yukon"
(River). While this could have been somewhere in Alaska, it also is
quite possible that he was in the Canadian Yukon as well, for the
river flows through both areas. In the opening remarks of The War Chief
we are told that Apaches from Northwest Canada migrated to Arizona
and New Mexico centuries ago. Thus it was that Canada had a direct, though
remote, hand in the raising of young Andy MacDuff, or Shoz-Dijiji as his
foster-folk called him. In
Beyond Thirty (Chapter 11) Jefferson
Turck, commander of the ill-fated aero-submarine ‘Coldwater’ tried to make
the port of St. John’s (Newfoundland) when his ship generators broke
down well over the Atlantic. Canada, by that time known as the Federated
States of Canada, was part of the relatively new Pan American Federation.
In Chapter 2 of Pellucidar we read, “gaunt, lean wolves – huge
creatures twice the size of our Canadian timber-wolves.” (Our thanks
to John Harwood for this paragraph). The most important reference to Canada,
however, will be found in The Moon Maid. In the prologue the narrator
is on an aircraft enroute from Chicago to Paris. This in all likelihood,
would take him over Eastern Canada. But in the little known prologue
to Part II (see The Moon Men, Ace Edition) we are told that Burroughs
himself went out hunting for polar bears on that portion of the Canadian
mainland in the vicinity of Herschel Island. With him were three
(presumably Canadian) Eskimos. Burroughs became separated from his
party and was attacked by the very bear he was hunting. He, in turn, was
rescued by the crew of the International Peace Cruiser.
On board the cruiser was Julian 3rd, Admiral of the Fleet, who was ranging
over the Canadian Northland in an effort to locate Burroughs at
the request of his president. It is to be presumed that the entire tale
of Julian 9th was related high in the air over Canada while the ship was
returning from Herschel island to Washington.Thus it is that Canada and
Canadians play a part — however small — in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
~ Submitted by Doug Denby
CANADIAN
TRIVIA by Bill Hillman
(Visit ERBzine 1428 www.erbzine.com/mag14/1428.html
to view reference links)
1. Harold
Foster spent his formative years in Halifax, NS and Winnipeg, MB:
2. As reported in the ERBzine
artist tribute, Russ Manning's father was Canadian.
3. One of the all-time great ERB scholars is the
late John F. Roy. Many of Mr. Roy's contributions listed in
our Illustrated ERB-dom
Bibliography. He was a longtime contributor and co-editor of this award-winning
ERB fanzine.
4. Doug
Denby of Unionville, Ontario -- host of ECOF
2005 -- is John F. Roy's nephew.
5. The H. H. Knibbs Tributes are featured
in
ERBzine 0950 and
ERBzine 0951.
6. There were a good number of Canadian authors
in ERB's personal library.
7. Many of the Canadian McClelland
& Stewart 1st editions are prized collectors items.
8. Brendan Fraser was star of the Tarzan
parody film, George of the Jungle, and host for the AMC
Tarzan marathon.
9. Actually the previous two references along
with Hal Foster made
up one of the TRI-via
questions in our ERB board game.
10. Among the guests Ed partied with in Australia
on January 3, 1943 was Ralph E. Smith, a Canadian government
official from Vancouver, BC.
11. And of course, the Ratnaz
Files parody serial is teeming with Canadians.
12. Another well-known SF writer, A
.E. van Vogt, was born and lived close to our Manitoba home when
I was a kid. (Alfred Elton Van Vogt ~ born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 26 April
1912 - died 26 January 2000). I regret never having met him.
13. ERBzine readers might be interested in knowing
that the current ERBzine prolific contributor, Nova Scotia-born Den
Valdron, is also a Manitoba Neighbour.
14. Another longtime ERBapa contributor and
well-known collector of ERB and original
art,
Raymond Cuthbert
is also a Manitoba neighbour who lives in Winnipeg.
15. There have been numerous other Canadian ERBapa
contributors over the years including BC's Nels
Myrhoj.
16. Alberta artist Jeff
Doten's Illustration Studio Website features a fine array of Mars
and SF art. Jeff has also designed logos for numerous ERB Conventions.
17. In his ERBzine
analysis of The Land That Time Forgot, ERB scholar Phillip
R. Burger writes: "Another possible inspiration for LTTF's plot (and
I have no proof except it simply sounds too intriguing to not mention)
is the sinking of the Canadian cargo ship Mount Temple by a U-boat
in 1916; the cargo the ship carried was dinosaur bones from Alberta."
18. Some of ERB nephew Studley
Oldham Burroughs most famous illustrations were of the RCMP:
See: Looking North: Royal Canadian Mounted Police Illustrations: Potlatch
Collection.
19. There is an interesting list of Canadians
associated with SF in an
ERBzine
Motes & Quotes issue at 0662.
20. Canadian artists are well represented
in the
ERB Artists
Encyclopedia:
21. A Canadian reference by ERB in
Pellucidar: "There
were the great cave bears in the timber, and gaunt, lean wolves--huge creatures
twice the size of our Canadian timber-wolves."
22. One of the many unreported trips taken by Ed
and Florence in the late '30s was aboard the Canadian Pacific Railway
ship: The Empress of Japan. This trip is described in the Florence
Gilbert biography in ERBzine. It included a cruise through the Panama
Canal to New York. They then drove cross-country back to Los Angeles
in the new Packard that had been stowed on the liner. In August of 1938
Ed and Florence sailed to Honolulu on the S.S. Lurline for a planned two-week
visit with Wayne and Mary Pflueger -- he was to dedicate a book to Mrs.
Pflueger a few years later. They returned on The Empress of Japan, arriving
in Vancouver in October. They then drove down to Tarzana along the Pacific
coast. Coincidentally, my father, CPO Jerry Hillman of the RCN served on
what had been a rival ship operated by the rival railway company, Canadian
National Railway. H.M.C.S.
Prince Robert was refitted a number of times and by the end of
WWII it was a state-of-the art cruiser. It sailed with a British and US
convoy to the Pacific where the oversaw the release of the Candian POW
as Hong Kong and accepted the Japanese surrender. In its long history the
ship was originally designed as a fast coastal ferry, she later became
a cruise ship, an AMC, an A/A cruiser, -- and then after the war a refugee
transport, and eventually cut in half and lengthened to serve as a luxurious
ocean liner -- finally it was sold to Mexico and then scrapped.
23. Dr. Philip Currie, a driving force
in the success of Alberta's famous
Royal
Tyrell Museum, where he served as head of Dinosaur
Research, published two excellent ERB fanzines in the '60s and '70s:
Fantastic
Worlds of Burroughs and Kline and ERBIVORE.
24. Pete Ogden, who is still editing the
longest-running ERB fanzine, ERBANIA,
published the first issues back in the '50s while residing in Canada.
25. Steve
Hawkes (Sipek) immigrated to Canada in 1959 where he learned and
eventually won 1st place in a Mr. Canada contest. He became a long distance
swimmer and swam Lake Ontario in the mid-'60s. He then starred as Tarzan
in two unauthorized Tarzan
movies:
Tarzan en la gruta del oro in 1969, also known as King
of the Jungle and in 1971, Tarzan Y El Arco Iris or Tarzan
and the Brown Prince. During the filming of the second movie
he was burned over 90% of his body. A lion on the set dragged him
to safety and from that time on he had an overwhelming love of animals
-- eventually opening a wild animal
park in Florida in which he provided sanctuary for mistreated tigers,
lions, leopards, cougars, etc.
26. Quotations from the works of Robert W.
Service, one of ERB's favourite poets, appear throughout ERB's books
The Mucker and
The Oakdale Affair.
27. Mary Pickford, Toronto-born star
of the silver screen, is mentioned in The Girl From Hollywood. ERB's
second wife, Florence Gilbert,
was a Mary Pickford look-alike and came to Hollywood at the personal encouragement
of Miss Pickford. Pickford actually came
out to Tarzana Ranch to look over the property on January 20, 1930.
28. In
Beyond
Thirty the ill-fated aero-submarine Coldwater
tried to make the port of St. John’s, Newfoundland when the generators
broke down over the Atlantic.
29. In the original prologue to Part II of
the Moon Maid Burroughs himself went out hunting for polar bears
in the vicinity of Canada's Herschel Island. With him were three
Eskimos.
30. Joe Lukes is an ERB authority and longtime ERB collector.
One result of his research is the booklet: "Bibliography of 'Pre-war'
Grosset & Dunlap Editions" published for the Sacramento ECOF 2004.
31. ERB also has a major Canadian Internet
connection. The Official Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Websites and Webzines
see joint publication from Brandon, Manitoba and Tarzana, California:
tarzan.com ~ tarzan.org
~ JohnColemanBurroughs.com
~ ERBzine.com ~ www.dantonburroughs.com
~ tarzana.ca ~ erbzine.com/edgarriceburroughs
~ johncarterofmars.ca ~ pellucidar.org
~ etc. These are huge and ever-growing sites containing many thousands
of Web pages devoted to the life and works of ERB. The sites are constantly
updated with the weekly ERBzine Webzine: www.ERBzine.com/mag
~ the monthly Tarzine Webzine: www.tarzan.com/tarzine
~ as well as breaking ERB news and press releases at: www.ERBzine.com/news
CANADIAN HARDCOVER EDITIONS
OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS BOOKS
by John F. Roy
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was the creator
of the famous jungle character, Tarzan of the Apes. Burroughs wrote twenty-six
books extolling the virtues of the apeman, and from these have sprung over
forty motion pictures, several radio and TV series, and countless comics
books, as well as daily strips and Sunday features. Some of his books,
as well as daily strips and Sunday features. Some of his books have been
translated into as many as thirty foreign languages.
As well as the Tarzan novels Burroughs wrote eleven
tales of adventure on the planet Mars, five on Venus, and seven in Pellucidar,
a land in the centre of the Earth. To this add another dozen science-fiction,
jungle, historical romance, and western stories and you have over sixty
titles by one of America's most popular authors.
Burroughs' U.S. first editions are always in demand
. . . but the same desire doesn't seem to exist for foreign editions, including
the few titles published in Canada. Unfortunately not too much is known
about the Canadian firsts. To my knowledge only seven have been accounted
for, six of them in the Tarzan series.
McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, Toronto,
was responsible for TARZAN OF THE APES in 1914, THE RETURN OF TARZAN in
1915 and THE BEASTS OF TARZAN in 1916. Oddly enough, while the M.G.&S.
name appears on the title page of these books the imprint on the spine
is that of A.C. McClurg & Co., the American publisher of Burroughs'
books up to 1928.
Book four, THE SON OF TARZAN, was distributed
in Canada in 1917 by The British Columbia News Co. Ltd., Vancouver and
The Toronto News Co., Toronto. One or the other of these companies is identified
on the title page but the spine is blank in this respect.
I have no record of a Canadian edition of TARZAN
AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR (U.S. 1918) or of JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN (U.S. 1919).
In 1920 McClelland & Stewart Ltd., published
TARZAN THE UNTAMED and in 1921 TARZAN THE TERRIBLE. These two books show
the M&S imprint on the spine as well as on the title page.
As far as I have been able to establish no further
Tarzan books were published in Canada. George J. McLeod, Ltd. of Toronto
was the Canadian distributor for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., between 1934
and 1940, but whether or not this firm's name appeared anywhere in or on
the books they handled is not known. Inquiries have show their records
to not go back that far.
I have a copy of Burroughs' adventure novel THE
MUCKER, which was published by M.&S. in 1921, and this firm's name
appears on both the title page and the spine.
I also have a copy of the 1925 agreement between
A.C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago and E.R.B. covering his story THE CAVE
GIRL, wherein mention is made of "royalties on the Canadian edition", but
I have neither seen nor heard of such a publication.
In review - it would appear that a Canadian edition
of an Edgar Rice Burroughs book would show the name of the Canadian publisher
on the title page, but that the spine may bear the name of that publisher
or of the American firm, A.C. McClurg & Co. or none at all.
If there were any other Edgar Rice Burroughs titles
published in Canada I would be most happy to hear of them.
Bill Hillman | hillmans@wcgwave.ca
www.hillmanweb.com
41 Kensington Crescent ~ Brandon, Manitoba
~ R7A 6M4 ~ Canada