By Gillian O'Reilly, CCBC Board President
Writer, teacher, mentor, Brian Doyle died on New Year’s Day at the Wakefield Hospice in Wakefield, Quebec.
Many years ago, I read his book Up to Low with my older son. As the characters made their way up the Gatineau, his giggles turned to laughs until suddenly, “Stop! Stop! I can’t breathe.” He was laughing so hard that he was gasping for air. After a short break to recover, we resumed reading and a few pages later, I was weeping. That was Brian Doyle: the ability to make you laugh on one page and cry on the next.
Doyle set most of his books in a specific place—Ottawa and the Gatineau River—at specific times from the 1890s to the 1950s. Writing the particular, he made it universal, as evidenced by his sales in many countries. With honesty and respect for the intelligence of young readers, he talked about family, love, cruelty, unfairness, the sometimes unfathomable behaviour of adults and young people’s small acts of bravery. He believed that children could take in story and poetry and language, only to realize later what it meant and why it was significant. And when they did discover that, it “belonged” to them.
The third thing I remember about Brian Doyle is language—so much wonderful language—in his books and in everything he wrote. In a 1997 lecture at the Toronto Public Library’s Osborne Collection, Doyle recalled a teacher who disapproved of the word “fart” in You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy’s Cove and the reviewer who disliked the drinking in Up to Low (“Big No for Low”). He reflected on hearing the words and voices of his grandfather and other family members and discovering that same language in a book of Irish tales read by an Ottawa librarian. Then he turned to talk about what kids responded to when they heard him read from his books. “It’s the rhythm. Young readers appreciate rhythm. And imagery. And ellipses, and irony, and understatement, and sound, and syntax, and universal themes, and humour, and paradox, and all the poetic tricks. They don’t know it but they do.”
Brian Doyle’s first book, Hey Dad!, was published in 1978 by the fledging press Groundwood Books, and was soon followed by You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy’s Cove (1979), and then his wonderful series of books set in the Ottawa and Gatineau area: Up to Low, Angel Square, Easy Avenue, Covered Bridge, Uncle Ronald, Mary Ann Alice and Boy O’Boy. Patsy Aldana, founder and former publisher of Groundwood Books, said of Brian, “He wrote about people of all sorts with much love and understanding. And his mastery of the English language brought those people into our hearts.”
He won numerous honours and awards, including the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award (1983, 1989, 1997, 2004) and the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People (2004). He received the Vicky Metcalf Award for Body of Work (1991) and NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature (2005). His archives are housed at the Osborne Collection of the Toronto Public Library.
Celebrate Brian Doyle by reading one of his books—or all of them. Remember, enjoy and revel in the words.
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In the Winter 2006 edition of Canadian Children's Book News, the CCBC reprinted the speech that Brian Doyle gave at the 2005 NSK Neustadt Prize ceremonies. You can reach his speech here. Visit Groundwood Books' website for a list of Brian Doyle's novels.