By Dr. George Elliott Clarke

The late Alexa McDonough and I received our honorary degrees from Acadia University during Convocation ceremonies in May 2012. It was a great and distinct honour for me, and also memorable because Ms. McDonough, as Miss Shaw, was my Kindergarten teacher in Halifax, 1964-65.

I hope that you may find an appropriate spot for my homage to her on an Acadia University website. Many thanks for your gracious consideration.

Yours most truly,

George Elliott Clarke, OC, ONS, FRCGS, PhD, LLD

E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto, and 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-2017)

 

Elegy for Alexa Ann (Shaw) McDonough (1944-2022)

 

I

 

A Kindergarten is what a proper

Legislature is, where the Treasury

Is Sharing.  How else do humans prosper

If not by Charity beyond measure?

 

To parcel out fairly peanut butter

Cookies, sluiced down by lemonade, and teach

That Policy is Rhyme—never stuttered—

And Law is verses versus what pirates preach,

 

So the bee may hop-scotch, dipsy-doodle,

And songbird serenade (like Portia White),

And poutine mash well with apple strudel,

And finger paints mirror stained-glass delights….

 

II

 

So did you model such Wisdom, Beauty,

O Miss Shaw, sprightly and winsome, laughing

In your lessons, the chalked-letter duties

Lightning cross blackboards, sea chanteys puffing

 

From a record player, or flared spirituals

Hymning out of sing-song mouths and cherry

Or ebon cheeks?  Pure, Mother Goose minstrels—

Our alphabets sloppy, dictionaries

 

With crayon-crazed pages half-torn-out—

We well-versed citizens are, who do trust

That Magic is possible when we vote,

And abracadabra rhymes with must.

 

O my teacher, an essential element

Of the Superb, so you were—in plaid skirt,

Working daily such endless astonishments:

Crafts to soothe bruised egos, kiss-salves for hurts;

 

So intrinsically sensitive, or stern—

To cure misdeeds with sharp look or a hug,

As you could, so we civil rites would learn

And our human rights never would we shrug.

 

III

 

You always said I was a rascal boy

In that pre-school legislature of yarns,

Tall tales, short naps, where ideas were toys—

Pixie-dust dreams, such Nonsense that discerns

 

Better ways of thinking, being, doing,

While Charity ushers Euphoria.

(What’s a rainbow save all colours hewing

To-and-from gilt phantasmagoria?)

 

O my teacher, the first politico

To breathe my Poetry into Hansard,

News of your passing stirs my vertigo—

Til tear-cracked eyes and tear-wracked voice (censored

 

No more), now weep for you—liberator

Of gulag-tortured man or downpressed mom—

Opponent of each troop-backed dictator;

Sister to each feminist from-the-womb!

 

IV

 

O my teacher, to the assembly born—

The whole people’s parliamentarian—

You took my mom and me boating one morn

On waters smooth, egalitarian.

 

After, as the sun washed its beams in froth—

And you and my mom talked of schoolbook things—

I spooned clam-chowder’s buttered broth,

And chewed cookies, slurped juice, and soared on swings.

 

That was one day distinct from thousands since—

One moment of momentous radiance!

The lesson taught? O Joy is Insolence

Upsetting all vile, petty governments.

 

The House of Commons’ most uncommon Sense—

Intransigent, insurgent Eloquence—

O my teacher (Grammar all future-tense)—

You taught—I witnessed—deathless Magnificence.