Literary newspaper near a loss for words

Alan Twigg founded B.C. BookWorld in 1987.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 14, 2009

VICTORIA

At 11:21 a.m. yesterday, Alan Twigg sent an email in which he asked for help.

B.C. BookWorld, the quarterly newspaper he founded 22 years ago, needs money.

He found out a week ago that the provincial government was cutting the paper’s funding. This year he got $31,000. Next year he’s getting $0. That’s dollar sign, zero, decimal point.

Also known as zip and zilch.

He’s calling on writers to sign up for a $25 mail subscription. That’s four issues sent to your home or office by mail.

“It’s not a charity. It’s a good deal,” he writes in the email. “In essence, I am asking one thousand authors to collectively replace Gordon Campbell’s government.”

(While that may not be a bad idea, he wants the writers to replace the government’s funding.)

He points out the subscription costs the price of two movie tickets.

“Writers are notoriously quick to plead poverty,” Mr. Twigg acknowledged when reached by telephone. “But they’re also known to go to the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine.”

No one is about to mistake a British Columbia author for Rich Uncle Pennybags.

You know times are tough when you beg from paupers.

He would not have made the appeal were circumstances less desperate.

“We’re a freighter in the middle of the ocean. We’ve been hit by a torpedo. We’re bailing with a tin cup.”


Four times a year, some 50,000 copies of the newspaper are distributed from 900 locations, from libraries to bookstores to ferries. The current issue features on the cover Alice Munro, whose latest collection of short stories is reviewed by W.P. Kinsella. Inside, the Comox writer Shane McCune, a former newspaper columnist, reviews the latest work by Denman Island gardener Des Kennedy. Other features include a poetry page, a history of Holocaust literature, and an admiring letter from a librarian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Even a cursory read uncovers much information about books, writers, and publishing in the province. You can’t beat the cover price. B.C. BookWorld is free.

Mr. Twigg and his staff were working yesterday on the pre-Christmas issue, which is to be distributed next month. The office is located in a renovated garage on an alley behind a westside home. The list of paid staff consists of Mr. Twigg and David Lester, who first worked together many years ago on the Georgia Straight.

“For 22 years, just me and him,” Mr. Twigg said. “Our mindset is we’re public servants. We were trying to be useful.”

Asked his salary, he said, “Well under $45,000 after 22 years. Not to pull out the violin.”

His mother proofreads each issue, a service for which she is not paid.

Mr. Twigg, 57, launched the newspaper in what he describes as a partnership with the provincial government. The first issue featured on the cover Rick Hansen, the wheelchair athlete, and Jimmy Pattison, the entrepreneur credited with rescuing Expo 86. B.C. BookWorld is a rare legacy for a Social Credit administration not remembered for its contributions to the arts.

The publisher’s goal is to “get as much information as possible about as many books as possible to as many people as possible.” It is deliberately middle-brow, avoiding what the founder describes as the “literary aristocracy” whose “corrupt” reviews are either logrolling for friends, or hatchet jobs on enemies.

He has in his mind the image of a reader. “The guy who drives the bus onto the B.C. Ferries. He has an hour-and-a-half to kill. I’ve got to be able to communicate with that person.”

Word about the paper’s circumstance is just now reaching the readership, which can safely be described as dedicated.

“Everyone reads it, whether in Vancouver, or on a ferry to Prince Rupert, and I can’t imagine British Columbia culture without it,” wrote Renee Rodin of Vancouver, an author who has owned and worked in bookstores.

Myrna Kostash, a writer who lives in Edmonton, said the provincial government should be ashamed. “At the same time as running up B.C.’s flag for the Winter Olympics, presumably for the world’s admiration of our athletes, they have treated B.C.’s writers, publishers and readers with contempt,” she wrote.

Jack Whyte, of Kelowna, author of the wildly successful “A Dream of Eagles” cycle, described the cut to the newspaper as “errant, self-defeating stupidity.”

As he scrambles for funding, Mr. Twigg, himself the author of 15 books, including the recently published, “Tibetans in Exile,” likes to remind himself of an equation. B.C. BookWorld has 100,000 readers. “I keep thinking, 100,000 voters, 100,000 voters.”

Remembering an unassuming warrior

(Above) Elmo Trasolini sits on the wing of a captured German aircraft in his ancestral homeland of Italy in 1944. (Below) Norm Trasolini, the clown prince of Vancouver baseball, carries a lamb under each arm at the ball park. (Bottom) Pioneer aviatrix Tosca Trasolini (far left) poses with the Flying Seven.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 13, 2009

VICTORIA

Elmo Trasolini volunteered with the Boy Scouts and bowled in Vancouver’s city league. He spent his working life with the Vancouver waterworks department, rising to become superintendent. On holidays, he escaped to a cabin in the Chilcotin, where he liked to hunt and fish.

An ordinary life. On the surface.

Elmo Stanley Trasolini died last week, aged 86, the youngest and last survivor of five remarkable children born to parents from Italy.

He counted among his siblings a brother who was a star baseball player, a sister who was a wartime intelligence officer, and another sister who was a pioneer aviatrix.

Elmo was the youngest. During the war, at a time in which a son of immigrants invaded his parents’ homeland, it would fall to this young, unassuming man to make an emotional return to the family’s ancestral home as a conquering warrior.

“My father had seen some heavy action, but he never spoke about the war,” said his daughter, Mary Wood. “He opened up a bit in later years.”

Growing up a Trasolini meant she was encouraged to explore any interest. She raced pickup trucks and now works in the paint shop at Langley Airport. Her brother, Austin, is a newspaper deliveryman whose current quest is to visit a volcano on each continent. Three years ago, he appeared in a photograph in the Vancouver Courier holding a copy of the paper on Kala Patthar, a mountain in the Nepalese Himalaya.


Elmo encouraged his children to pursue their fancy.

“I was never told I couldn’t do something because it was a boy thing, or a girl thing,” Ms. Wood said. “There were never those boundaries.”

Elmo Trasolini had a lean physique, a result of a long struggle with what was eventually diagnosed as Crohn’s disease. He was an easy-going figure, a handsome man who grew a military regulation mustache beneath a prominent nose.

It is believed his father, Luigi, known as Louis, came to the New World in search of riches around the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. He eventually settled in Vancouver. Before the Great War, he and his wife, Raffaela, known as Rosa, posed with two infants at the Hollow Tree in Stanley Park.

Baby Norman grew up to become a fireman and a baseball catcher nicknamed Bananas. He was the city’s “clown prince of baseball,” performing stunts to entertain fans before a game, or posing for newspaper lensmen while sliding down a fire pole to raise interest in a charity game for flood victims in 1948. He once silently disputed an umpire’s call by sticking a long, lit wooden kitchen match into the dirt near home plate. The humourless umpire kicked out of the game for questioning his judgment.

Baby Tosca became such a tomboy her mother would later tell Elmo, “She should have been born a boy.”

Tosca Trasolini won renown as a sprinter, a ballplayer, a lacrosse player, and as a javelin hurler. She once humiliated the young men in the Italian community by climbing to the top of a greased pole to grab a cash prize that had eluded them. She drove motorcycles and flew airplanes.

She was a founding member of the Flying Seven, an all-female club that captured the imagination of the city in the fall of 1936 by staging a dawn-to-dusk flight. Despite drizzle and a dangerous ground fog, Miss Trasolini took off from Sea island Airport to begin the successful stunt.

After the outbreak of war, she was barred from joining the air force. Her contribution to the war effort included a “bomphlet” raid over Vancouver, during which 100,000 “Smash the Nazis” pamphlets were tossed from planes. (Alas, a brisk southeast wind blew many into English Bay.)

It was not easy to be an Italian-Canadian during the war years.

All the other Trasolini siblings spent the war in military uniform.

Norman served as an army captain, seeing action in northern Europe; Salvador was a staff sergeant in the medical corps; and, Fulvia, a sergeant in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, was assigned to the intelligence branch of the U.S. Army.

Elmo signed on with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

He invaded Sicily as part of Operation Husky, saw heavy action at the Battle of Ortona, survived the assault on the Hitler Line.

While overseas, he got a letter from his mother. She wanted him to visit her relatives, the Raino family, and the Trasolinis in Torrice, outside Frosinone, about 75 kilometres southeast of Rome. Young Elmo, 21, got permission from his commanding officer, who only insisted who do so in uniform and armed.

The quest is recounted by Raymond Culos in the first of his three volumes titled, “Vancouver’s Society of Italians.”

Elmo entered an osteria where he was eyed by men who sat drinking. He found an important-looking man in a white suit who spoke English.

“He took me to the town and said, ‘This is the Trasolini from Canada.’ Holy mackerel, things just exploded. People came from all over. ...

“I couldn’t speak Italian, which I really regretted. But I was treated as a god, the centrepiece. And everybody, including my cousins Eddy and Johnny, who were only around nine and 13 at the time, just stood there smiling, talking and looking at me.

“And the custom (was) the men sat down and the women stood behind. I had the best bed, full of corn husks. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay overnight. And I only had meagre rations. Cigarettes and chocolates. I gave them all I had.”

Elmo eventually returned to his Vancouver birthplace with news of the ancestral home. He got hired by the city, an unpretentious man who took it as his duty after the war to ensure the waterworks performed as expected, a rather ordinary duty for one from an extraordinary family.

A friendly smackdown between Victoria bookstores

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to The Globe and Mail

October 12, 2009

VICTORIA

This city has four seasons — winter, spring, summer, and book launch.

It is the time of year when authors are flushed from their writing quarters and readers gather to gaze upon wordsmiths in the flesh. It is also when the city’s two largest independent bookstores square off in a friendly smackdown.

Munro’s Books, the downtown emporium occupying a renovated bank, invites the poets Lorna Crozier and Brian Brett for an in-store book signing.

Bolen Books, a sprawling store anchoring a shopping mall, launches the Thistledown Press fall list with a poet and two novelists.

Bolen gets humourist Arthur Black, while Munro’s grabs Rex Murphy and Peter Mansbridge. (I’ll see your CBC personality and I’ll raise you one.)

Munro’s books Will Ferguson and Adrian Raeside for $5 events at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Bolen counters with Diana Gabaldon at the Alix Goolden Perfrmance Hall ($10 with $5 off the cover price of her latest in the Outlander series, “An Echo in the Bone.”)

This is what Robert Wiersema aptly calls “a gentlemanly competition.” Mr. Wiersema is events coordinator at Bolen. Asked the process for booking a writer into the store, he said, “Blatant sucking up to me.” He was joking. Sort of.

An author event is a rare meeting between creator and consumer. The relationship can be intense. When Jean Beliveau came to Victoria to sign copies of his autobiography four years ago, a Bolen customer rolled up his right pants leg to expose tattoos of the Stanley Cup, the Montreal Canadiens logo, and four portraits of goalies. Mr. Beliveau signed a bare patch of skin, which the fan intended to have permanently inked.

You never know who will show up.

On Saturday (Oct. 17), the band leader Dal Richards will be appearing at Munro’s for a signing. Joining him at the table will be the wordsmith Jim Taylor, who might be described as a “with-it” guy. He’s written “One More Time!” (Harbour) with the 91-year-old orchestra leader and he’s also co-authored books with a hockey player, with a football quarterback, and with a wheelchair athlete.

He pursued the legendary Mr. Richards for four years before getting him to sit down and recount his adventures. The goal early in the project was to capture the band leader’s nuances of speech.

“I put down every belch, hiccup and pause. After about five hours, I can talk Dal better than Dal.”

He needs to do so to ensure the book is given the voice of the subject.

“Rick Hansen can’t sound like Igor Larionov who can’t sound like Dal Richards, or I’ve screwed up,” he said.

Mr. Taylor suspects few customers will make the trek to the bookstore to get his John Hancock.

“It’s Dal’s book. Dal’s the story,” Mr. Taylor said. ‘Nobody there is going to want my autograph.”

He knows the as-told-to co-author is a second fiddle, a second banana, a sidekick.

He remembers a long lineup for a book singing with Wayne Gretzky’s father. A large cardboard cutout of the hockey player promoted the book. When the doors opened, the first kid through marched up to the older men and demanded to see the hockey god.

Told the book was by the father, the lad turned around to announce about The Great One: “He ain’t here and he ain’t coming.”

Mr. Taylor will never forget the scene.

“It was like somebody took a powerhose and flushed out the mall.”

Mr. Taylor, who began his career in Victoria and maintains a second home at Shawnigan Lake, was on tour last year to promote “Hello Sweetheart? Gimmie Rewrite!,” a memoir of his four decades in the press box as a sports columnist. Bolen booked him for that one.

If the author worries about attendance, the bookers worry about also satisfying author’s demands.

Early in his career, Mr. Wiersema was assigned to handle an event featuring Anne Rice, the vampire chronicler. He was excited by the prospect until temporarily flummoxed by a rider to her contract. She wanted Tab on ice. The problem? The diet soda was unavailable in Victoria. He purchased a six-pack in Seattle and had it shipped by courier north across the border.

Two years ago, Bolen snagged Chuck Palahniuk for a reading at the end of his tour for “Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey.” The author was booked into the Alix Goolden hall, a renovated church with an upper balcony.

The author, known for “Fight Club,” has a dedicated fan base as well as a reputation like few others. He’s a Springsteen among the literary set. He brings props, flits in and out of the audience, cracks wise during readings that are raucous affairs.

He sometimes has paramedics in attendance.

“He’s one of the few writers,” Mr. Wiersema noted, “known to have casualties at his events.”

He did not disappointment in Victoria.

He distributed inflatable reindeer heads, tossing some into the balcony.

He planted the seed that he might read the story “Guts,” about which the descriptive “notorious” hardly does justice. “Guts” is so vile — so transgressive — that it has an online body count — a total of listeners who have fainted during a reading.

“He started reading this story,” Mr. Wiersema recounted. “Then, from up in the balcony, you heard this thunk, crack!, thunk.”

A patron, made lightheaded by the subject matter of the story, had made the mistake of getting up from his seat to leave the building. He did not make it, striking his face against a door as he collapsed. The bloodied man was aided by audience members.

“Normally this would be a terrible thing, except for this author and this audience.”

Mr. Wiersema got to schedule an event earlier this year at which he was the featured author. His novella, “The World More Full of Weeping,” was launched at Bolen. He sold several copies and, better yet, there were no known casualties.

Lou Moro, trainer (1918-2009)

By Tom Hawthorn

Special to The Globe and Mail

October 8, 2009

Lou Moro, a sausage maker, moonlighted for 50 years as a sports trainer, often unpaid, earning honours in several halls of fame.

The success of Uncle Louie, as he was known, was all the more remarkable for his never having had any formal medical training.

Mr. Moro became an athletic trainer while serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War, a time in which he also saw duty as a cook aboard a minesweeper.

He played box lacrosse for a wartime Navy team in Victoria, but found he was more valuable in helping teammates recover from sprains and muscle pulls. He had become interested in the art, if not the science, of training from watching hockey players being treated in his boyhood hometown of Trail, B.C.

Born in Northern Italy, he immigrated with his family to British Columbia at age 11.

Mr. Moro worked as a butcher after the war, but sports remained his passion. He treated lacrosse and soccer players at all levels of competition.

Some of the highlights of his career included accompanying all-star and Canadian national soccer teams on tours of England, Germany and the Soviet Union.

At home, he was best known as trainer for the Vancouver 86ers and Whitecaps soccer teams.

During a losing streak, he once quipped: “We’ve got lots of physiotherapists with the club, but maybe what we really need is a psychiatrist.”

Mr. Moro was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1975; the Burnaby (B.C.) Sports Hall of Fame in 2002; and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 1995. He was one of the 11 inaugural builders to be named to the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame in 2000.

Luigi Paolo Moro was born on April 26, 1918, at Savona, Italy. He died at Burnaby General Hospital in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby on Sept. 30. He was 91. He leaves two sons, two daughters, seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by the former Virginia Maiani, his wife of 62 years, who died in 2005, aged 82.

Adieu to some fascinating characters

This is my debut column for Boulevard, a lifestyle magazine distributed in Victoria, B.C. The column, titled, simply, Hawthorn, will appear in each of the six annual issues.

By Tom Hawthorn
Boulevard Magazine
September/October, 2009


Older children stepped off the curb onto the street to gather candy. They returned with cupped hands offering cellophane-wrapped prizes to younger parade watchers.

It was this sight, while attending the Oak Bay Tea Party Parade on a weekend visit, that convinced us to abandon the Big Smoke for a new life across the pond in Victoria. Heck, where I grew up back east, the tossing of candies would have sparked a riot.

In time, both of my children appeared in the parade, the girl as a Girl Guide and the boy as a drummer in a high school marching band. He later won a contest to develop a website for the Tea Party. That is how I think of our city — a polite place of opportunity in which public events, even political protests, are conducted in a spirit of neighbourliness.
Many of us come to this city by birth, some by circumstance, others by choice.

Victoria produces homegrown talent such as the singer Nelly Furtado and the basketball star Steve Nash, while also luring here people accomplished in many fields. Some come here only in retirement, and we barely get to know them before they’re gone.

It sometimes falls to me to write their farewell, their swan song, their obituary.

To write a newspaper obit is to have an intimate encounter with a stranger. It is an awesome responsibility, not in the least ghoulish or maudlin. Many lived here in near-anonymity, yet achieved global fame in their circle.

I’d like to tell you now about some of the most fascinating people I never had the chance to meet.

In formal circumstances, the scientist was introduced as William E. Ricker, O.C., Ph.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.C., an entire alphabet of accomplishment. By all accounts, Bill Ricker was not one to stand on formality. He was a fisheries biologist whose great achievement was a formula for predicting future fish stocks, which was known as the Ricker Curve. He was also a noted limnologist and entomologist who wrote Sherlockian pastiches as a hobby. A stern trawler that conducts research carries his name, while the waterfront Pacific Biological Research station in Nanaimo, where he long had an office, is reached by a gently winding road named Ricker’s Curve.

Jack Winter was a sitcom writer who penned funny lines for Dick Van Dyke and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison in “The Odd Couple” (“I like ketchup. It’s like tomato wine”). He once published a celebrated comic essay for The New Yorker titled, “How I Met My Wife.” “I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner,” he wrote. “She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was travelling cognito.”

How he really met his wife was credible, but just barely. He was at an airport in Kathmandu when he struck up a conversation with a young Sudanese woman. She had studied at the University of Victoria, so they settled here after marrying in 2001. They bought a leafy property in Saanich that included a pond, which the writer had stocked with frogs, one of his boyhood obsessions. He had dated the actress Diane Keaton, played a weekly tennis match against retired basketball star Earl (The Pearl) Monroe, and had been the second youngest graduate in his Harvard class. The youngest later earned infamy — and a life sentence — as the Unabomber.

Experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, an avant-gardist regarded as a genius by cineastes and who influenced Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, died here, as did J. Lee Thompson, the director of muscular action pictures such as “The Guns of Navarone.”

Streetcar operator Lyle Wicks needed to get a small bank loan to afford a stay at the Empress Hotel after being elected a Social Credit MLA. The NDP’s Dave Stupich pleaded guilty to the misuse of charity funds in a scandal known as Bingogate that led to the resignation of NDP Premier Mike Harcourt, who later called his nemesis “an embezzler and a liar.”

I have chronicled the death of Bob Bierman, the editorial cartoonist sued for depicting Premier Bill Vander Zalm plucking the wings from flies, and the sad life of Frank Williams, given up for adoption at birth, who became a major-league baseball pitcher before winding up an alcoholic on the streets of Victoria.

We all have our losses. Since this magazine came into being, I have buried a father and helped move my mother to our city. I have mourned the untimely passing of two friends. The death of David Grierson, the host of CBC Radio’s “On the Island,” brought a touching display of public support. The station was inundated by well wishers, many bringing food, as though they knew personally a man whose voice they woke up with each morning. A quieter but no less painful loss was Dana O’Dowd, a neighbour on our street in a friendly nook of Gonzales, whose careening monologues sounded to my ears like improvisational jazz.

Of course, we all mourn Reena Virk, a teenager so cruelly killed. In their grief, her parents taught us much about grace.

And then there is the continuing puzzle of poor Michael Dunahee. The three syllables of his family name express loss, tragedy, mystery. He is missing now 18 years, plucked from our midst at age four. He is unforgotten. A Facebook page administered by his younger sister has 5,968 members. It is called “We will never forget Michael Dunahee.” I think about him often.

Jackie Collum, baseball player (1927-2009)

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 5, 2009

Jackie Collum, an athlete who escaped the notice of baseball scouts because of his diminutive physique, went on to pitch in the major leagues for nine seasons.

The left-hander also spent three seasons with the minor-league Montreal Royals before ending his playing career with the Vancouver Mounties.

Mr. Collum, or Little Jackie, as he was invariably described in newspaper stories, stood just 5-foot-7 and weighed 160 pounds. Globe baseball writer Gord Walker described him as “the southpaw who looks like a bat boy.”

He pitched in the big leagues for the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, and the Dodgers both in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

He had a record of 32 wins and 28 losses with a career earned-run average of 4.15.

Mr. Collum’s three seasons in Montreal began in 1957, when he recorded an admirable 12-7 record.

He went 9-10 with a weak-hitting Vancouver team in 1962.

Mr. Collum showed prowess at the plate, a rare pitcher capable of aiding his own cause. He had a .246 batting average in the majors, a sterling mark for a hurler. His lone career home run was a three-run shot off Ruben Gomez at the Polo Grounds in New York in 1954.

The greatest performance of his professional career came in Ottawa on Sept. 5, 1952, when he threw a no-hitter against the hometown Athletics. Pitching for the Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings, Mr. Collum retired 22 consecutive Ottawa batters before issuing a walk in the eighth inning. The only other Ottawa runner got on base on an error in the ninth.

His baseball career was delayed by service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, during which he was stationed for a time in the Philippines.

Following his baseball career, he worked in the automotive business in Iowa. He owned a Pioneer Oil service station at the time of his death.

John Dean Collum was born on June 21, 1927, at Victor, Iowa. He died at the Mayflower Health Care Center in Grinnell, Iowa, on Aug. 29. He was 82. He leaves his wife of 61 years, the former Betty Jo Belles; three sons; three daughters; 11 grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; two brothers; and, a sister. He was predeceased by a brother and two great-grandchildren.

In the name of the father, the son, and the holy goat

Animal House of God: Lynda Koenders brought Rusty, a Chinese silky hen, to the Blessings of the Animals ceremony on the Feast of St. Francis. Photograph by Deddeda Stemler.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
October 5, 2009

VICTORIA

They came on two legs and on four, on leashes and in crates, a menagerie seeking a blessing on their saint’s day.

Parishioners at St. John the Divine were joined in their Anglican service yesterday morning by a handful of household and barnyard pets.

The skies were sunny as the animals arrived in unmatched singles, not pairs, so one assumes the approaching fall rains will not be of Biblical proportions.

A shitzu, a dachshund, a couple of labrador crosses, and a hen and a rooster were among the critters assembled for the annual Blessing of the Animals.

Lo, we gazed upon them and they were good. For the most part.

The rooster squawked when removed from his crate and so was quickly returned to his roost.

The unfortunate Feasgar, a handsome black Labrador-German shepherd cross whose name is Scottish Gaelic for “evening,” yelped when his tail was stepped on accidentally as a worshipper tried to slip past in the pew.

The animals and their human handlers sat on the pulpit side of the church, while those with allergies found sanctuary on the lectern side.

The animals got along fine at St. John, while, on television, Bears and Rams and Colts and Jaguars and Panthers and Dolphins and Broncos and, yes, even Saints did unholy battle on the football gridiron.

The annual rite is eagerly anticipated by some.

Gretchen Brewin returned with Lucy, her eight-year-old female lab cross.

“Lucy has been here before and I’m sure the blessings have helped,” she said.

Ms. Brewin, a former Victoria mayor, is joined by her canine on jaunts.

“She rides shotgun when I travel the country. She’s not so good at reading maps, but she’s a terrific companion.”

Su McLeod, the family ministry coordinator, brought Feasgar, while Bernie Pauly and her son, Ethan, aged 8, came to church with Jacques, a two-year-old male shitzu, whose muzzle was petted by the smiling rector as he passed in procession.

The choir sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and the first reading came from Genesis: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.”

The Rev. Harold Munn delivered in spirited fashion a sermon about St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day was being celebrated.

He addressed the presence of animals in our midst.

“At one level, it’s cute,” he said. “Really, it’s not about being cute and fun.”

He told a story about being a boy alone with his terrier, conducting a theological inquiry into the existence of God by asking the dog. Of course, he could not answer.

“When we bring the dogs, cats and chickens into the church, we’re saying God loves those creatures for exactly what they are.

“It reminds us of our small place in creation.

“We have a special place, but it is a small place.”

He noted the Bug Zoo had brought exotic insects to the blessing in years past.

“God has enough love for every single whale, for every single ant, for every single cougar, for every single insect.”

The hen clucked approvingly throughout the sermon.

The Chinese silky had been brought by Lynda Koenders, the general manager at her family’s Beacon Hill Children’s Farm, a petting zoo.

Throughout the singing of hymns, Ms. Koenders clutched Rusty to her bosom

“Usually I bring a goat,” she said in a whisper, “but they were too heavy this year. I’ve got a bad back. A chicken I can carry.”

The misbehaving rooster, a Polish, was named Gene Simmons after a rock star known for his pursuit of ecstasies not likely to be found in a house of worship. It turns out he was a last-minute replacement.

“I had to leave Jimi Hendrix back at the farm. He’s too fast and I couldn’t catch him.”

Which may have a blessing in disguise for those who wished to hear the sermon.