Jacktar

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

“I am Alexandre Murphy,” states the narrator. “Jackytar.
Newfoundlander. Educator. Brother. Son. Fighter. Survivor. Lover. And I
have many silences yet to break.” Breaking silences is what this novel
is mainly about: silences about what it is to be gay and a
“jackytar”—a Newfoundlander of Micmac and French ancestry. Murphy,
taken back to Newfoundland by the death of his French-Micmac mother,
confronts his own silences and those of his mother, at first believing
with her that perhaps the best response to the insults he endures is her
favourite saying: “on répond aux imbeciles par le silence.” But
Murphy, by dint of much reflection on his own early life and seeking
revelations about his mother’s, later puts that maxim aside, accepting
that one must live the truth, openly and with pride.

The novel is a very good one, its characters fully realized, and its
style quite engaging, though the dialect seems a little forced. The main
drawbacks are its length (it becomes somewhat tedious toward the end)
and the fact that its theme is a little too overt (“methinks he doth
protest too much”). At times, we feel we are being preached at rather
than confided in.