Graham G. Harris
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Graham Gale Harris
(October 10, 1878 to April 4, 1958)
Early Life
Graham Harris was a quiet and unassuming man, and when he died in a fire in his Sapawe home in 1958, little was known of his background, other than the fact that he was English.
Harris, in fact, came from a wealthy middle class family. He was the son of Sarah and William Harris and was born on October 10, 1878 in Highgate in Hornsey Parish in north London. Highgate, situated at the top of North Hill with its sweeping views across the city, was one of London’s most affluent neighbourhoods. The Harris’s family home, “Helens,” on North Grove, was described as a single detached house with a spacious entry hall, four reception rooms, eight bedrooms and a magnificent view. The Harris’s servants included a cook, a nurse and a housemaid.1
Harris’s father, William, was a solicitor. He was a partner in the firm of Wordsworth, Blake, Harris and Parson, with offices located in South Sea House on Threadneedle Street in the City of London, the centre of Britain’s commercial district. Sadly, William died age 49 in 1884, when Harris was only five years old.2
Harris’s mother, Sarah, also came from a wealthy family. Her father, Joseph Sparkes Hall, was a bootmaker with premises on Regent Street. Joseph had been awarded a medal for his footwear at the Paris Exhibition in 1867 and was the official bootmaker to Queen Victoria. One of the few stories Harris told about his past was that, once, when he had been a young lad visiting his grandfather’s establishment, the Queen had placed her hand on his head.
Harris described his mother as literary and musical, but Sarah was also a practical woman and shrewd with her money. She inherited a sizeable legacy when her husband died, but having six children to raise on her own, she supplemented the family income by setting her home up as lodging house for young professional men.
Education was obviously important to Sarah and a significant portion of her income would have gone to school fees for her four sons. Harris attended the Merchant Taylor’s School in London until 1892 and, then, St. Edmund’s College in Ware, Hertfordshire.
St. Edmunds College was a Catholic school. Harris, his mother, and his brother, Harry, all converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1893.3 Anyone baptised or confirmed within the church is given the name of a saint and Harris was named for St. Paul, who coincidentally, is the patron saint of writers. When Harris enlisted in the army in 1915, he indicated that he was Roman Catholic. By the end of the war, however, he had reverted back to the Church of England (Anglican).
Emigration to Canada
Harris crossed the Atlantic numerous times, beginning in 1900 when he spent some time in New York State. But he considered Canada his home from 1905 onwards. Prior to settling in Sapawe in 1928, Harris spent three years in Montreal, a number of years in Toronto working for a newspaper, and at least nine years in Fort William. His only real absence from Canada after 1905 was during the First World War.
World War I
Harris was living in Fort William, Ontario when war broke out in 1914. The following year he returned to England and voluntarily enlisted in the British Army. He was thirty-seven at the time, and his army medical records indicate that he was five feet eight inches and weighed one hundred and thirty-four pounds; that he had brown hair, brown eyes, and a sallow complexion; and, that he had an overlapping toe on each of his feet. He was found fit for the medical corps, but not the services corps.
Harris was initially posted to the Army Reserve, during which time he had travelled with the horses being shipped across the Atlantic for use by the military on European battlegrounds (horses played a significant role during the First World War and more than a million were shipped over from Canada and the United States.) After the Reserves, Harris was sent to Blackpool in Lancashire for training in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was then posted to No. 7 Company at Devonport Military Hospital in Plymouth, where he spent two years on the wards.4
The Ford Military Hospital at Devonport had four hundred and thirty-five beds and Harris’s time on the wards couldn’t have been easy. The flow of casualties arriving in Plymouth Harbour from France, Mesopotamia and other theatres of war was overwhelming. Harris would have been witness to men suffering from head injuries, infected wounds, amputations and the symptoms caused by the poison gas used by the Germans. There were also infectious diseases – malaria, tuberculosis and influenza. Harris himself fell victim to the Spanish flu in 1918 and spent nineteen days in the hospital. The following year, he spent twenty-three days hospitalized with infectious enteritis.
Harris was demobilized from the medical corps in May 1919 and posted to Morn Hill Camp in Winchester for repatriation to Canada. However, rather than returning to Canada, he re-enlisted for another full year, during which time he was posted to the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. His last day of service was on July 28, 1920, following which he spent some time with his mother in Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire before returning to Canada that September.
The Sage of Sapawe
Harris arrived at Sapawe, which at that time was just a stopover on the Canadian National Railway known as Iron Spur, one damp October evening in 1928. He had been lured to the region by the promise of “an unexploited treasury of golden ore, of game abundance, of natural beauty and fertility of soil.”5 Harris was fifty at the time and what he saw must have appealed to him because not long afterwards he bought himself a small cabin and finally settled down.
It was there, in that remote, one-room cabin on Sabawi Lake that Harris began to put his literary talents to work; writing his column, “Sapawe Jottings,” contributing to the Fort William Daily Times-Journal, and writing articles and poems for the Atikokan Progress. He also had nine of his poems published in Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse in 1937. 6 A biography at the back of the book indicated that Harris had spent his life “demonstrating the force of environment over heredity.”
Harris died in a fire in his cabin on April 4, 1958 at the age of seventy-nine. 7 At the time of his passing, it was mentioned in the Atikokan Progress that it was not known whether or not any of his family was still alive. Harris had never married and had no children, but his brother, William, was alive and living in Australia.
Harris was the youngest member of his family, and while he didn’t reveal much about his early life, we can piece together some of his family’s history from public records, census data, and newspaper articles. His oldest brother, William Sparkes Harris, once owned a bulb growing business in St. Martin, Guernsey in the Channel Islands. He later emigrated to Maitland, New South Wales, Australia, where he died in 1962. His brother, Leonard Hastings Harris, was a naval engineer and was the chief of the London steamship, Rosefield, for many years. He died in Gibraltar in 1918 in an accident on a Government transport. Harris’s other brother, Harry Mitchell Harris, also immigrated to Australia. He joined the Australian Army (Infantry) during World War I and was killed in action at Gallipoli three months after he enlisted. Harris’s oldest sister, Annette, married and settled in Solihul, Warwickshire while his sister, Clare, settled in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire and became a nurse with the Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Nurses Institute.
Harris’s mother, Sarah, never remarried. She kept “Helens,” the family home, until 1895, and then moved to a smaller residence in Highgate. She eventually moved to Rickmansworth to live with her daughter Clare. By the time she died in 1927, Sarah had buried her husband and five of her children (three who died before Harris was born).
Harris sometimes spoke of inheriting £3,000 as well as having an annuity on which he lived. That would have come from his mother, who was quite a wealthy woman when she died.8
A Poetic Legacy
Graham Harris was remembered by those who knew him as a kindly and humble man and one who thumbed his nose at convention. There is no doubt that the “Sage of Sapawe” lived a diverse and unconventional life. He had been brought up in a wealthy home in Victorian London with its gaslights and cobbled streets – and ended his days in a small rural cabin in a Canadian forest. His diverse career had included being an office clerk in a London, a gardener in New Rochelle City in New York State, and a greenhouse keeper on his brother’s bulb farm on Guernsey Island. Besides his time spent on the wards in a military hospital, he had been a school teacher, lumberjack, postmaster, prospector, and a newspaperman in Toronto.
Harris’s most significant calling, however, was that of a poet. He left a beautiful legacy – his poetic tales of the mines and the forests and its creatures; of a Canada long since forgotten.
Harris died in a fire in his cabin in Sapawe on April 4, 1958 and was remembered locally as the "Sage of Sapawe."
Bibliography
Harris, Graham G. “All Fools.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, April 1, 1936, sec. Sidelights.
———. “An Amended Simile.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “The Army-worm.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 25, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “The Beaver.” Port Arthur News-Chronicle, December 19, 1928.
———. “The Birth of ‘The Bill and the Bear’.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 117–119. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “The Birth of Eva Lake.” Atikokan Progress, September 27, 1956.
———. “The Boomerang.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “Bridal Salute.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, November 20, 1947.
———. “By Lantern, Star, or Sun.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 12, 1937, sec. Sidelights; Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958; The Bell and the Book, edited by Andrew D. Clement, 147. Cobalt, Ontario: Highway Book Shop, 1987.
———. “Clear Grit.” Atikokan Progress, September 16, 1954, sec. Sapawe Jottings.
———. “Cranberry Moon.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Dear April.” Atikokan Progress, April 16, 1956, sec. Sapawe Jottings.
———. “The Deathless Duck.” Atikokan Progress, October 10, 1952, sec. Sapawe Jottings.
———. “December.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, December 2, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “The Dread Awakening.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “Eureka.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 76–77. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “The Fire at Hornet Lake.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 119–122. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “Fireflies.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Fort William Library.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, June 1, 1947.
———. “Glayshal Drift.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 139–140. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “Goblin Gold.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 115–117. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “The Gold Rush.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, October 5, 1934, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Green Gods.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “High-Top Johnny.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, January 31, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Highway to the Lakehead.” Atikokan Progress, August 23, 1951, sec. Sapawe Jottings.
———. “Jeanette.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “A Joy For Ever.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, September 10, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “A King is Crowned.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 12, 1937, sec. Sidelights; In The Bell and the Book, edited by Andrew D. Clement, 145. Cobalt, Ontario: Highway Book Shop, 1987; Atikokan Progress, May 3, 2023.
———. “Lake after Lake.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, April 18, 1958.
———. “The Leafy Lands of Earth.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “A Mild Remonstrance.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Miner’s Luck.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, April 30, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “The Mines of Might-Have-Been.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 185–186. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “The Motive.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, December 18, 1933, sec. Sidelights; In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 11–12. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “The Name in Vain.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “Northland Skylight.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Not Yet.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Of Mining Matters.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, February 28, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Only an Onion.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Paean of the Tempest.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. Poetry from the Woodlands. Museum of Atikokan, Ontario, Canada, 2023.
———. “Preface to Peace.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “The Prospector.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 83–84. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. Reflections from the Woodlands. Museum of Atikokan, Ontario, Canada, 2023.
———. “The Root of the Matter.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “Rosa Blanda War-Whoop!” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, January 21, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. The Sage of Sapawe, Woodland Writings. Museum of Atikokan, Ontario, Canada, 2023.
———. “Salute from the Absent.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, October 30, 1950, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Sapawe, A brief history of the settlement and its surroundings,” Seine River Lumber Co. 1947. Document stored at Museum of Atikokan.
———. “Sapawe’s Song of Summertime.” Manuscript, “Sapawe: A Brief Record of the Settlement and its Surroundings,” December 1947, Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “The School Car.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 18, 1935, sec. Sidelights; In The Bell and the Book, edited by Andrew D. Clement, 143–144. Cobalt, Ontario: Highway Book Shop, 1987.
———. “Song of a Soupmaker.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “St. Valentine.” Atikokan Progress, May 15, 1958.
———. “Sway Song.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “To a Chickadee in a Snowstorm.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “To a Garden Devotee in March.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “To a Hesitant Goddess.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, April 18, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
———. “To an Imaginative Acquaintance.” In Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 187. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
———. “To Betula.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, September 13, 1932, sec. Sidelights.
———. “To our Literary Guides.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, April 14, 1953.
———. “To Thomas - a Perfectionist.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 29, 1937, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Trans-Canada Highway.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, May 28, 1947, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Transfiguration.” Graham Harris and Other Poets, Box 44. Museum of Atikokan, Atikokan, ON.
———. “Undermining Observations.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, January 28, 1938, sec. Sidelights.
———. “Ware Wolf.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, February 14, 1949.
———. “Winter Weather Lore.” Fort William Daily Times-Journal, March 12, 1935, sec. Sidelights.
References[edit]
Sources:
- Advertisement in London Evening Standard, July 4, 1883, p8.
- Probate record for William Harris dated March 4, 1884.
- The census taken in 1893 by the Diocese of Westminster (St. Joseph Mission, Highgate North) indicates that Harris, his mother and brother had just converted to the Roman Catholic Church.
- Information from Harris‘ British Army pension records.
- Excerpt from Atikokan Progress, April 4, 1957, sec. “The Days That Are No More.”
- Rhymes of the Miner: An Anthology of Canadian Mining Verse, edited by Eugene L. Chicanot, 11–12. Gardenvale, Quebec: Federal Publications Ltd., 1937.
- “Sapawe’s Graham Harris Dies: Asphyxiated When Home Destroyed by Fire,” Atikokan Progress, 10 Apr 1958, p1.
- Probate record for Sarah Caroline Harris dated May 25, 1927
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