MALCOLM LOWRY (1909-1957)
in
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE(1944-1945)
After a fire destroyed their water-front shack near Vancouver in June 1944, Malcolm and Margerie Lowry took refuge for a few months first in Oakville, Ontario, then in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where on Christmas Eve, 1944, Lowry claimed to have finished his work on his masterpiece, Under the Volcano, which was published in New York and London in 1947.
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. . . we went East after the fire. . . . The interminable golden bittersweet awful beautiful Eastern autumn (which I'd never experienced) restored Margerie... to some extent, but me it almost slew ... though the Noxons' Niagara-on-the-Lake is something to see: really beautiful.
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Ethan, . . . like someone plunging headlong into a bar, sought refuge in the little public library, which stayed open till 9:30 p.m....It was an interesting little library, in the old tollbooth, beneath the police station.
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This, all over again, was the beginning of a new life....Going to Niagara had been like that. And returning from Niagara to rebuild their house had been like that.
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. . . and always this first glimpse of their house was to be associated too, perhaps from memories of the carillon-sounding Sunday mornings of Niagara-on-the-Lake, with the unearthly chiming of a church bell through the mist.
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Malcolm Lowry's quotations are taken from Sursum Corda! The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, Volume , edited by Sherrill Grace; October Ferry to Gabriola, edited by Margerie Lowry; and Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, edited by Douglas Day and Margerie Lowry.
This recognition is dated Friday June 13,1997, the mid-point of a five-day international symposium sponsored by The University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Under the Volcano. This plaque was unveiled by His Worship Michael Dietsch, Lord Mayor of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
