CANADA DAY 2019 - JOHN BUCHAN

Today is July 1st and the only person around me who notices (!) that it is Canada Day is me.  Actually that is not quite true.  The HSBC bank sent me an email on June 29th ... as shown here:

I have actually had Canada in my mind lately as I am reading John Buchan's autobiography Memory Hold-the-Door. He was a name I learned at school; he was Governor-General of Canada from 1935-40. He died in Montreal, aged 65 years. He wrote this book in 1939; no one know from where this title is taken.

He was born in Scotland, educated at Hutchison Grammar School, Glasgow, Glasgow University and Oxford.  He was a prolific writer which is certainly evident in this book; a master craftsman with words.

Here is an example:.  He went to Oxford University in 1895. He was friendly with Raymond Asquith, son of Herbert Asquith, who became UK Prime Minister 1908-1916.

Of his friend Raymond (who was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916) he recalls:

"There are some men whose brilliance in boyhood and early manhood dazzles their contemporaries and becomes a legend. It is not that they are precocious, for precocity rarely charms, but that for every sphere of life they have the proper complement of gifts, and finish each stage so that it remains behind them like a satisfying work of art. Sometimes the curtain drops suddenly, the daylight goes out of the picture, and the promise of youth dulls into a dreary middle-age of success, or, it may be, of failure and cynicism. But for the chosen few, like Raymond, there is no disillusionment. They march on into life with a boyish grace, and their high noon keeps all the freshness of the morning. Certainly to his cradle the good fairies brought every dower. They gave him great beauty of person; the gift of winning speech; a mind that mastered readily whatever it cared to master; poetry and the love of all beautiful things; a magic to draw friends to him; a heart as tender as it was brave. One gift only was withheld from him--length of years."

[Guttenberg Project]

[1]  We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

From his address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937).

Iain showing Ishbel and Alastair how to use a compass on the West Highland Way.

[2] I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

Glasgow University Chapel