The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (674 page)

“They think I am just a stupid old woman,” said Caroline to the darkness. “No one cares about my opinion.”

Caroline was furious. The tiny, elderly woman of ninety-three lay awake in bed for hours on that hot July night in 1971, in her home in Toronto. She who had been the model for the beautiful young Alayne Archer had lived nearly as long as Gran Whiteoak! And now she would dearly like to thrash someone with her cane, like Gran used to do.

“How dare they?” Caroline muttered. “And now nothing can be done to stop them! It’s a good thing that Mazo is dead! She would have been terribly upset!”

Suddenly Caroline felt a presence in the room. She turned her head toward the presence. It was Gigi, the honey-coloured cat that had arrived on their doorstep as a kitten when Mazo was still alive.

“Those people from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were so underhanded,” Caroline said to Gigi. “They plied me with flowers, talking books, and music cassettes. They sent my favourite music to listen to during the long hours that I am alone. I shall never listen to anything produced by the CBC again!”

Gigi jumped up on the bed to be petted.

“I lie awake at night quite often, Gigi, and I can’t read any more because my eyesight is so poor,” said Caroline. “That’s why I listen to CBC Radio. I’m awfully lonely, Gigi. I do wish Mazo were still with us.”

Gigi purred.

“But I didn’t go to the screening tonight!” exclaimed Caroline. “And I told the children and all of our friends not to go either. The CBC types thought I’d be flattered to be invited to the screening, but I wasn’t fooled this time. I told them I didn’t want to see their stupid pilot episode,’ or whatever it is called. There is to be hardly a thing from our Jalna books, Gigi.

“They didn’t tell me until after I’d signed the contract that they were going to invent new material for the Jalna television shows. They said they wanted to bring the Whiteoaks ‘up to date!’ Mazo always disliked and distrusted television, and she was right. It’s all about American commercialism. Oh, I am so angry!”

Beyond the grey stone crosses, side by side, green leaves rustle and yellow sunlight sparkles on gentle blue waves. On a summer’s day the graveyard is lovely. On Mazo’s Celtic cross is the traditional French motto of the ancient de la Roche family:
“Mon dieu est ma roche.”
This means “My God is my rock.” There is also another sentence: “Death interrupts all that is mortal.”

When Caroline died on August 3, 1972, Esmée and René buried her beside Mazo. On Caroline’s plain cross is the sentence: “Hand in hand we kept the faith.”

Mazo and Caroline rest beside their beloved Lake Simcoe. They are on the southeast side of the lake, as far as possible from where Caroline’s family was so unhappy in Orillia. They are near where they vacationed so often – even in old age. They are not far from where their ancestors pioneered. They are in the centre of where it all happened. In all directions of the compass took place the real and imagined events that, with Caroline s help, Mazo made into wonderful stories.

“My books are transmuted reminiscences,” Mazo said once. “Whatever I am I have put into my books.”

Gravestones of Mazo de la Roche and Caroline Clement.

For many decades many Canadian academics have been saying that the Jalna novels are flawed because the Whiteoaks and their way of life are not realistic.

“Mazo de la Roche is a romantic artist. It is her romanticism, I believe, that has made her such an embarrassment to Canadian critics,” said one professor, Desmond Pacey.

Mazo created “larger-than-life characters with exaggerated passions,” said another professor, George Hendrick.

Mazo created a “myth of a humane, harmless gentry – living in the Canadian Great Good Place,” said a third professor, Dennis Duffy.

Yet the Jalna novels have always had defenders among educated people.

“The creation of the Jalna books is the most protracted single feat of literary invention in the brief history of Canada’s literature,” said literary critic and novelist, Robertson Davies.

The Jalna series covered with “comprehensive detail” a century of enormous change in this country, said a biographer and broadcaster, Ronald Hambleton. The series documented “the decline of an era.”

De la Roche’s work “forms the transition” between the generation of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence and their “nineteenth-century foremothers,” Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, said another biographer, Professor Joan Givner.

“The world of Jalna is an integral part of the roots of Canada,” said novelist Scott Symons. “To lose it would leave us groping for an abandoned identity.”

Academics, literary critics, and creative writers may continue to debate the value of Mazo’s work for many more decades, but no one can deny that she was once popular.

By the time Mazo died in 1961, the Jalna series had sold eleven million copies in 193 English-language editions and 92 foreign-language editions.

And today, Mazo is still popular in France. In 1994, France 2, a Paris-based private television station with public-broadcast responsibilities, aired
Jalna
, a TV mini-series based on Mazo’s novels. The station spent sixteen million dollars producing the series.

The only other female writer of Mazo’s time who lived in Canada and who ultimately enjoyed comparable success to Mazo was Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of
Anne of Green Gables
and its sequels. Montgomery, born in Prince Edward Island, wrote for children, not adults: a traditional area of strength for women with literary ambitions. Mazo wrote for adults, and she was far more successful in this than most of her male colleagues.

The only
male
writer of Mazo’s time who lived in Canada and who ultimately enjoyed comparable success to Mazo was Stephen Butler Leacock. Leacock, who was born in England, was the author of
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
. He was another rich and famous Canadian writer who wrote too much too quickly but whose best work is of outstanding literary merit.

Strangely there is no national heritage site exclusively dedicated to Mazo and her work. L.M. Montgomery has a national heritage site: Green Gables Heritage Place in Prince Edward Island National Park. Stephen Leacock has a national heritage site: the Leacock Museum in Orillia, Ontario. Yet, although Parks Canada has officially designated Mazo as a person of national significance in the arts, only locally administered heritage sites commemorate her.

In 1995, the first local museum partly dedicated to commemorating Mazo was opened: Benares Historic House in Mississauga, Ontario. Benares is administered by the City of Mississauga. In 1996, the second local museum partly dedicated to commemorating Mazo was opened: Sovereign House in Bronte, Ontario. Sovereign House is administered by the Bronte Historical Society.

Perhaps some day a national museum or other such heritage site will be dedicated exclusively to Mazo de la Roche, her life, and her work.

Compiled by Clarence Karr