Postcards to Jon

remembering poet, Jon Whyte

Jon and I were both born in March, I’ve been thinking of him as spring creeps up on us once again.

Jon Whyte at Opabin Plateau, 1979

I’ve been reading about the history of Canadian publishing for the past several months. Or I should say the brief flourishing and demise of Canadian owned publishers as company after company either folded or was taken over by multi-national conglomerates, beginning in the 1980s and continuing today.

Starting with McClelland and Stewart, a spring bouquet of Canadian publishers, large and small, launched Canada’s bright burst of authors in the sixties and seventies.

Today I remember one of those authors, Jon Whyte of Banff, who died in 1992. You can still order Jon Whyte. Mind Over Mountains, a selection of Jon’s work from Chapters Indigo. He deserves to be better remembered.

Postcards to Jon

Life seems so direct, like sunlight in yellow fields, white pebble road; then you aren’t here and I don’t know your language—the other one. Secret as bat wings which swoop so close. 
	Improbably I write you postcards, one about the scream in my chest when I hear you are dying. That’s a frontier we all will cross, refugees questing for home, sniffing green fields in hope some herb of grace will lead us.
	Remember the letters you wrote me the year I lived in Paris? You praised full moon over Mt. Rundle, larch trees brightening to gold.
	Here’s a postcard from 1980. We pick our way through dense shrubs, 60 degree slope; words breeze over your shoulder naming, always naming. I, in obstinate refusal to pin things down, refuse to remember the names.
	I’ve just been gifted your concrete poem, Mountain Tartan. Penstemon, clematis, forget-me-not criss-cross tiger lily, monkey-flower, fireweed. Wildflower names. The warp and weft of words is silk-screened in buttercup yellow, gentian green, and indian paintbrush orange inks.
	You railed at the world in your Crag and Canyon articles. These days I see world as porcupine—vulnerable body, barbed quills at full alert. I have photos of you and Brandy, his floppy ears and long dachshund snout bristling from the sleeve of your buckskin jacket as you yanked out porcupine quills.
	After you died I wrote: Your words flowed down creeks, through krumholtz, up scree slopes. You remembered everything about Banff when you were young; coaxed and demanded memories of Banff I thought I’d forgotten. You knew the secret heart of everyone, changed costume with every cup of coffee. You chose family roots to anchor your art, left us richer for this growing tree in spoken and silent ways. You knitted a sweater of words to keep us warm, stripped complacency from our bones.
	I remember you as low lying brume over fens. Now you’re in fells of brightness. I hope they speak your language there. 

With Jon Whyte on Panorama Ridge, 1979. photos by Stephen Hutchings (left and centre) and Carole Harmon, (right)