HomeMy WebLinkAbout140Duotang bound article written by Andrew Glen about Alexander Stewart.
REF
929.2 Stewa-G
A Native Son
By
Andrew Glen
This is a brief memoir of a lad who was born in the Greenwood district in the year 1867.
Alexander C. Stewart was the son of an Irish pioneer named Samuel Stewart who had a small
farm on what is now called the Paddock Rd, North of No 7 Highway in Pickering Township.
Aleck worked on the farm till he was old enough to get a job with a track-laying gang when the
railroad went through. When he went to Toronto he became a bread salesman, a hod-carrier,
and eventually in the building industry he worked his way up till he had his own contractor’s
business. He it was who built the coffer dam at the White Horse Rapids, for the power plant at
Niagara which supplied the first Hydro current to Toronto. Later he wrote a book called
“The Discard”, a 1000 copies of which he
had privately printed by George and David Rose in 1919. This was, in substance,
an autobiography in which he castigated some of the politicians of the day with whom he had
difficulties. From Port Dover he sent me his last copy, which unfortunately, was lent and lost.
It was a fine piece of strong virile writing and through his literary friends warned him of libel suits,
nothing happened, because it dealt with truth and it deserved much wider recognition than it
received. Stewart with his independent spirit and sense of justice naturally gravitated to the
radical movement and for three years was President of the Ont. Independent Labor Party which
later merged with the C.C.F.
During the depression he moved further left and wrote many poems which appeared in The Globe
“Bystander” column and also various other journals. He was the forerunner of the crop of protest
poets so numerous today. Here are a few verses wrung from the heart
of this clever, capable sensitive human who was not a failure in any real sense;
but one of whom some record should be preserved by the community which nurtured him.
Rhyme of the Road
I’m one of the Idle Rich begad
Stripped of a hopeless load
No beggared serf on my mortgaged mud
But a maverick of the road
Chance flung me clear of a madman’s cell
I’m free to hike and hitch
To the end of the world, to the end of the trail
I’m one of the Idle Rich
I once had thought my heart would burst
To end the usurer’s dole
And in savage anguish nursed
My prides revolting soul
But crumbling slow that idol fell
From its exalted niche
Habituated to my Hell
I’m one of the Idle Rich
"
I can pity the storm-whipped parasites
As I plod through rain and snow
They’re smote with their self-created blight
Like leaves when the ice-winds blow
Let them quail at their duns and bankers’ can’t
At the blear-eyed bailiffs twitch
My futures safe in my wealth of want
I’m one of the Idle Rich
I halt where the still green moulds are raised
To dream what earth had been
Had men obeyed, not merely praised
The Greek and the Nazarene
But the great luxurious cars whiz by
And I dodge for the friendly ditch
While the liveried slave but proves that I
Am one of the Idle Rich
A tramp, yet in my dreams I’m more
A beacon tender I
Who poised aloft on the granite shore
Behold the fleets go by
But the Storm King bursts in his savage power
And the seas leap at his frown
Lone, helpless, hemmed in my shaken tower
I watch the wrecks go down!