folio :Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
There’sa blue plastic-covered binder in my workshop. On the spine, in a clear plasticpocket, is a rectangular card with hand-printed, very tidy block letters thatreads, “Printing Notes/AB Dick Manual/Letterpress Notes Etc.” The first pageinside the binder is a receipt, inkjet printed on a loose sheet of 8 1/2 x 11paper, dated November 1, 2004: “Received from Simon Thompson - the amount of1500.00 for a 10 x 15 Chandler & Price Letterpress, all cases, variablespeed motor, chases, inks, extra rollers and parts. Thanks Simon.” The longtrailing tail of Barry’s signature reminds me of awell-cast Spey line.
20years ago, I drove the 600 km from Terrace to Prince George to disassemble andtransport this significant piece of equipment, then sitting in Barry’s basem*ntat 1420 Gorse Street. I had been to his house a few times before this; I thinkon one of these previous trips he had convinced me to buy the press.
Ihad always been impressed by Barry, this cool, slight guy with a goatee andsilver hair and sharp suits, who knew all of these other cool people, some ofwhom were real poets. He looked like a jazz drummer, which is, of course, whathe was. In the binder with the receipt, I have a photograph taken midwaythrough the rather violent process of getting the bed shaft out so as toseparate the bed from the frame of the press, and off to the side of the pressare a couple of jazz kits, one yellow and white, and the other black and white.Bass drum, snare drum, floor tom, high hat.
Inthe Introductory Note to the second edition of The Caledonia Writing Series (AChronicle), McKinnon observes that the chronicle of “our picaresque letterpress …would [have to be amended to] include thelast move. My friend, the poet, artist, and teacher Simon Thompson bought my10x15 Chandler Price letterpress, came to Prince George from Terrace with atruck full of tools, donned his blue mechanic’s coveralls, and started todismantle the monster.”
Thepress alone weighs 1,500 pounds. The rest of the cases of type and furnitureand cabinets and chases probably weigh that much again. Much of the press ismade of cast iron. The parts are heavy, and awkward, and the ceiling was low,and it was pretty dark in the basem*nt.It took a couple of days to work out how to take the press apart to thepoint it could be loaded onto pallets and stowed in the back of a little 1992Nissan truck.
Barryput me up at his house, and we spent the evenings talking about the press, andhow to run it. Barry showed me how to use a composing stick, and how to usetiny slips of copper to correctly kern the lines of type. Even though the presshad been idle for a long time, Barry still effortlessly knew the lay of aCalifornia case, and we practiced tying up matrices of type with butcher twineand setting them in the case, positioning the type in the chase with furniture,and locking the assembly in place with speed quoins and the big quoin key,whose shape and weight are now very familiar to me.
Wetalked about his work at CNC, and the difficulties of being an Englishprofessor at a small college in a northern resource town that at times did notseem interested in poetic English instructors. We talked about his archive, andother poets, such as Ken Belford and John Newlove and George Stanley and PierreCoupey and Cecil Giscombe, all of whom he admired very deeply. We talked aboutjazz and New York and drank beer and listened to John Coltrane records. I feltI was talking to someone who was connected to poetry and art in a way I mightnever understand.
Weused a photocopy of the Chandler & Price press manual, received andannotated by Martinsburg News in 1958, to figure out the disassembly. The largegear cam wheel, the double ink disk, the tight pulley, the straight fly-wheelshaft and crankshaft, the gripper cam and the throw-off saddle and frames, themain shaft and the small head and lock cam, the fly-wheel, the chase hook androller frames, the disk lever studs, the back-shaft collars, and a hundredbolts of differing sizes all ended up spread out on a tarp. The side frames andthe bed had to come apart, so the bed shaft, a large steel rod that serves as apivot and links the press frame together, had to come out. This involved a sledgehammer and a lot ofpatience to separate these two parts so that they could be individually draggedout of the basem*nt door and up the stairs. I pounded in the gloom while Barryheld a beer and looked worried. When I got all of it apart, Ken Belford showedup and stood watch at the top of the basem*nt stairs, a can of beer in one handand a joint inthe other, offering an endless stream of questionable suggestions that seemedto annoy Barry to no end.
Inhis Introductory Note, Barry says Joy had the idea to call a tow truck to liftthe frame parts up out of the basem*nt stairwell. That might be true; what isalso true is that even though it had taken great ingenuity to take the pressapart in such a confined space, there is no way we could have devised anotherway to lift the separated frame and bed up the stairs. Soon enough, a man camewith a tow truck and very quickly and expertly hoisted these very bulky itemsout of the dark and onto waiting pallets that were then loaded into the back ofa little truck for the return to Terrace. The tow truck man seemed genuinelyinterested in this unusual little spectacle and was very gentle in his work. Hekept saying he didn’t want to see the cast iron get bruised; he seemed to knowwhat he was talking about.
Thesuspension and the engine were sorely tested over the nervous return drive.When I arrived, Terrace felt somehow new.
Overthe next few months, I reassembled the press and was stunned to find that itworked exactly as it should. The press and all the other parts of the originalCaledonia Writing Series press, later Gorse Press, sit in my workshop, readyfor use.
Simon Thompson is a poet and a printer, and a professor at Coast Mountain College inTerrace, BC.
