The Macedonian Tendency: Book Review: Hugh Garner

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Book Review: Hugh Garner

By David Edenden

Hugh Garner is a famous Canadian novelist who lived and wrote about "Cabbagetown", an area of Toronto where the first "Macedonian - Bulgarian" church was built . He must have been aware of the "Macedonian Question".

There is a minor character named Mike, who is a restaurateur (naturally) in the novel. These are the only references to Macedonians in the novel. Mike is Toronto's first "Grkoman" in Canadian literature - good fun.

If anyone has more information on Garner and Macedonians, don't be a stranger!

Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner is "the classic novel of the Depression inCanada" first published in 1950. MCGraw-Hill Ryerson 1968 Trade Paperback

p 234

Before putting Mrs. Plummer on the Greyhound bus for Detroit Myra found a job as a waitress in a restaurant on Queen St. West. Her boss was a short chunky man of fifty with a nearly bald head. He was a Macedonian who claimed to be a Greek, or the other way around. He wore heavy tortoise-rimmed glasses when he checked the invoices or read his New York newspaper with the queer-looking print. His name was Mike.

p 238

He told her about Greece when he was a young man there, and about driving a mule team during the Balkan War. He had arrived in Halifax with twelve dollars in his jacket and had got off the train in Toronto without knowing a soul in the city. He had seen a Macedonian name above a restaurant, had gone in and had been given a job washing dishes for his meals, tobacco and a place to sleep in the cellar. Myra found his story fascinating.

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