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Messages - jmv

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Banffshire / Re: McGregor/Grassick in Tomintoul
« on: Monday 21 January 13 05:38 GMT (UK)  »
Oh, wait - I now see my previous quotation is actually an abbreviated/paraphrased version of this article in the Vancouver Star from Monday, November 16, 1931. From p 149-150 of Early Vancouver Vol 1:

Quote
    ...The season having ended, he left railroading and joined the staff of "Prairie Illustrated" as cartoonist and engraver.
Stranded in New Westminster
    This paper was created for election purposes. The election won, it silently gave up the ghost, so Innes painted and journeyed hither and yon until he received a call to New Westminster to illustrate the Ledger under William Bayley. With the easy grace that characterized the papers of those days it became defunct and Innes was left stranded, with an engraving plant on his hands.
    The only thing to do was to launch another publication, and thus the "Hornet" was plunged into the maelstrom of public opinion. The editor was the late A. M. R. Gordon (MacGregor Rose), a particularly brilliant writer. It was in the "Hornet" that his much quoted verses on the Kaiser "Meinself und Gott," were printed. The only thing wrong with the "Hornet" was that the staff had appetites and the advertisers a penchant for delayed payments. So, Innes painted more pictures, some of which sold, many more did not. However, he was awarded a silver medal in 1893 and carries it as a pocket piece.
    Toronto lured him away from the wild and woolly west, where he free-lanced, till Mr. Bernard Mc-Evoy (Diogenes), at that time editor of the weekly edition, gave him the position of staff artist and special writer on the Mail and Empire. It was then his pictures began to he shown at the Royal Canadian Academy and Ontario Society of Artists exhibitions...

You can see the entire article here: https://archive.org/details/EarlyVancouverVolume1

The Vancouver Star - such a great paper!

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Banffshire / Re: McGregor/Grassick in Tomintoul
« on: Monday 21 January 13 05:08 GMT (UK)  »
Oh, by the way, I came across a passing reference to one Alexander McGregor Rose, aka A.M.R. Gordon in the book "John Innes, Painter of the Canadian West" (1945) by John Bruce Cowan. About John Innes' early career, Cowan writes on page 11:

Quote
At New Westminster, the late A. M. R. Gordon (McGregor Rose) and Innes launched a paper called The Hornet.  Gordon was a particularly brilliant writer—he was the author of that well-known satire, "Meinself und Gott"; but as editors needed to eat occasionally, printers demanded wages regularly, and advertisers did not pay their bills promptly, The Hornet, in spite of brilliance, didn't buzz about for long.

Is that him?

I am interested in the work of John Innes, as we both lived in the same towns (three times!) and he's a rather under-appreciated artist for his era.

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