Kenneth Leslie
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Leslie was a Canadian poet
and songwriter, and an influential political activist in the United States
during the 1930s and 1940s. He was the founder and editor of The Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), which had a peak circulation of over 50,000 subscribers. A Christian socialist, he was given the nickname, "God's Red Poet."
, on Hallowe'en, 1892. His father, Robert Jamieson Leslie, was a shipping magnate and in 1905 became a member of the Quebec legislature
, but drowned that year when one of his ships, The Lunenberg, sank in a storm off the Magdalen Islands
(which were part of his Quebec
constituency).
Kennneth Leslie was raised by his mother, Bertha Starratt Leslie. As a boy he learned to play the violin and piano, and loved to sing; he also wrote poetry. He "was a child prodigy, attending Dalhousie University
in Halifax at age 14." Later he was educated at Colgate Theological Seminary for a year; the University of Nebraska, where he received his M.A.
in 1914; and Harvard
, where he studied "under the brilliant idealist Josiah Royce
" but did not receive a Ph.D.
. The couple led an active social life, travelling widely, acquainted with some of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day. In Halifax they were members of The Song Fishermen
, a social and literary set led by their friends, Andrew and Tully Merkel, whose Halifax, Nova Scotia
home was "a favourite rendezvous for writers and artists." Leslie became a close friend of Song Fisherman Robert Norwood, "a native of New Ross, N.S.
who published eight books of poetry and became, as rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York
, one of the most renowned preachers in North America
."
"In about 1928" the Leslies "went with their children to Paris
for a year, ostensibly to enable Leslie to study at the Sorbonne
; in actuality they spent most of the year touring the continent
."
In the late 1920s the Leslies relocated to New York
, where Leslie began losing his wife's money playing the stock market
: "Estimates of the loss run from $25,000 to $250,000." During those years, the Leslies were active in theatre
circles. Leslie studied acting, and his children were cast in a Broadway
play. Leslie wrote his own "'Broadway’ musical, which collapsed in rehearsals, and a few dozen other songs which did not sell in Tin Pan Alley
."
During the 1930s Leslie hosted a radio program on Newark, New Jersey
station WOR on which he read poetry, sang Gaelic songs, and played the violin.
In the 1930s the Leslies' marriage fell apart. As Kenneth Leslie later told it: "My wife had the habit of taking all the children away to stay with relatives for months at a time, leaving me alone. I stepped out on her and she divorced me." Beth prevented him from seeing his children again in her lifetime, and even changed the name of his son (from Kenneth Alexander to Alexander Moir). After her death Leslie reconciled with his daughters; but he never saw his son again.
." The dozen years of their marriage were the most productive of his life. In 1934 he published Windward I Rock, "the first of several acclaimed volumes of poetry in 1934." Three more books of poetry would follow in the next four years.
The last volume, By Stubborn Stars, won Canada's Governor General's Award in 1938
. But by then Leslie had other concerns. During the mid-1930s, "he had become increasingly disturbed by the growth of fascist and anti-semitic attitudes in the United States throughout the ’thirties and the concomitant influence of isolationist sentiments on American foreign policy." In particular he was concerned about the radio broadcasts of Roman Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin
, who was reaching as many as 40 million listeners.
He worried about the spread of groups like the German-American Bund
, the Protestant War Veterans Association, the Christian Mobilizers, the Christian Front
, and William Dudley Pelley
’s Silver Shirts, all of whom he saw as being inspired by Coughlin's anti-semitism.
So "during the late 1930s, he chose to take a public stand, launching the Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), a progressive
journal of religion and politics." In December 1938, with the "support of his second wife, who provided almost all of the initial investment money (approximately $40,000), he created the Protestant Digest, ... which eventually attained a circulation of 50,000 and became a powerful voice in the war against fascism and anti-semitism in the United States." "With contributions from the leading public intellectuals of the day, the magazine called for a declaration of war against the Axis powers
, and stood firmly against the oppression of Jews
."
Theologians Paul Tillich
and Reinhold Niebuhr
became editorial advisers to The Protestant, "as did ... Dr. John Mackay, President of Princeton Theological Seminary
, James Luther Adams of the Meadville Theological Seminary in Chicago
, and Louie D. Newton of Atlanta, Associate Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance
. "But [Leslie's] leftist politics and pointed criticism of the Catholic Church (which in his view had enabled Europe
’s fascists) earned him enemies as well."
"By the early 1940s, Leslie’s organization [Protestant Associates] had produced numerous offshoots, including a national organization of anti-fascist Protestant clergy.... Leslie himself was in constant demand as a speaker, and earned endorsements from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt
," the First Lady
.
One initiative of Protestant Associates was "the Textbook Commission, with Leslie as 'national' chairman.... The Commission gave itself the mandate of searching out and eliminating anti-semitic statements in American textbooks." In December 1943 the Commission released a list of 33 books carrying what it called "race-hating propaganda." "The fact that a large number of these publications were in use in Roman Catholic parochial schools contributed to Leslie’s undeserved (but growing) reputation as a virulent anti-Catholic."
Leslie also came up with the idea of The Challenger, "an anti-fascist comic book
which appeared sporadically in 1944 and once in 1945, this last time in a 64 page “deluxe” edition which had a press run of 400,000 and sold at 10 cents. The cover of the 1945 edition shows youths of the white, yellow and black races battling green demons of fear, hate and greed. Gerald Richardson, the editor, made use of nationally known cartoonists in this attempt to counter the mass production of fascist propaganda aimed at the young."
By 1945, though, there was little need to worry about 'fascist propaganda'. Fascism was dead; the perceived threat was no longer fascists but Communists, Leslie's progressive allies in the anti-fascist coalition. Just as Leslie criticized the Catholic Church as enablers of fascism, so he was criticized by its supporters as an enabler of Communism
. And just as he called the Church anti-semitic, he was called anti-Catholic. Typical of the attacks on him was a "widely-distributed Roman Catholic newspaper in 1947 [that] described The Protestant as the 'Red Hope' and accused Leslie of serving faithfully 'the Moscow
purpose to wipe out the Catholic Church, as the chief moral obstacle in the path to Soviet World domination."
At the same time, by Leslie's account, he was fighting "to keep editorial policy out of the hands of certain supporters of the Communist Party
on the executive staff" of The Protestant. As a result of that struggle, six members of the executive resigned in November 1946, "allegedly because of Leslie’s dictatorial, one-man control of the publication."
Suddenly, at that time, "Leslie’s ability to attract financial support, and, indeed, his personal prestige, became severely diminished." To make matters worse, his wife discovered he was "having an affair with his private secretary, Cathy, a Polish-American girl some thirty years younger than himself," and filed for divorce. Since Leslie had never taken a proper salary from The Protestant, this left him with no personal income.
Next, "Leslie attracted the scrutiny of the FBI
and Senator Joseph McCarthy
’s anti-communist crusade. He made Life Magazine’s list of the top 50 Communist 'fellow travelers and innocent dupes,' in such illustrious company as Albert Einstein
, Norman Mailer
, Leonard Bernstein
, Arthur Miller
and Langston Hughes
."
In 1949 Leslie "left the U.S. and returned to his native Nova Scotia for good."
His new marriage fell apart quickly. "Cathy was not happy in Nova Scotia — and she had fallen in love with one of Leslie’s nephews, a man close to her own age. Tearfully, and still with great fondness for her husband, she left him to join the nephew."
Kenneth Leslie lived quietly in rural Nova Scotia, working as a lay preacher and substitute teacher. Due to his activist past, plus a 1958 trip he made to the Soviet Union
, he was for some time under Royal Canadian Mounted Police
suveillance, and an object of "parental anxieties about Communists in the classroom".
The Protestant finally shut down in 1953. But for the next 20 years Leslie continued to publish successor periodicals: One, New Christian, Man, and New Man.
In 1960 Leslie heard of the death of an old friend, Judge Totten. He
"drove alone to California
to console — and to marry — the judge’s widow, Nora Steenerson Totten. The couple were devoted to each other and collaborated on the publication of New Man until 1972, when ill-health forced them both to enter a Halifax nursing home. Leslie died there in relative obscurity on October 6, 1974. Only about a dozen friends and relatives attended the funeral. Nora died the following spring."
. In the 1920s in Nova Scotia he and his first wife were members of The Song Fishermen
, a literary and society group that included Charles G.D. Roberts
and Bliss Carman
. Leslie began contributing poetry to the Song Fishermen broadsheets, and soon in other small Halifax literary publicatons too. By the end of the decade he had published poems in Literary Digest and Scribner's.
His first collection, Windward I Rock, "was published by Macmillan
in New York in 1934 and received favourable critical attention on both sides of the Atlantic
. The Times Literary Supplement praised him for having 'broken through the crust of the conventional to something that is burningly alive.'"
His next two books, Lowlands Low (1935) and Such a Din! (1936), were published in Halifax and received little critical notice. "But in 1938 he won considerable acclaim and the Governor-General’s award with the publication in Toronto
of By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems. Charles G.D. Roberts
, by then the grand old man of Canadian letters, ranked Leslie at this time a better poet than E.J. Pratt, and Pratt himself wrote to Leslie.... 'I gave an address the other day on the newer poets and quoted at length from your book.'"
After 1938 Leslie published very little outside his own periodicals. But he continued to write poetry and publish poetry through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. "Some of his best poems of these years are highly political: 'Moscow’s Measure,' 'Remember Lumumba!' and 'Praise the Viet Cong.' They are as stirring and passionately rhetorical as anything he ever wrote."
Ladysmith Press published The Collected Poems of Kenneth Leslie in 1971. However, because editor Sean Haldane omitted a number of poems 'because they were light verse, or political verse, which fulfilled a temporal need,' Leslie published his own collected edition, O’Malley to the Reds and Other Poems, in 1972.
Jennifer Fandel wrote in ForeWord Review:
for his book, By Stubborn Stars.
The lyrics to Leslie's song "Cape Breton Lullaby" (set to a different, traditional melody) have been recorded by several Canadian Celtic
artists, including Catherine Mackinnon, Ryan's Fancy
and The Cottars
.
Leslie was the subject of a 2008 VisionTV documentary, God’s Red Poet: The Life of Kenneth Leslie.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy of Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews.
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
and songwriter, and an influential political activist in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the 1930s and 1940s. He was the founder and editor of The Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), which had a peak circulation of over 50,000 subscribers. A Christian socialist, he was given the nickname, "God's Red Poet."
Life
Leslie was born in Pictou, Nova ScotiaPictou, Nova Scotia
Pictou is a town in Pictou County, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Located on the north shore of Pictou Harbour, the town is approximately 10 km north of the larger town of New Glasgow....
, on Hallowe'en, 1892. His father, Robert Jamieson Leslie, was a shipping magnate and in 1905 became a member of the Quebec legislature
Legislative Assembly of Quebec
The Legislative Assembly of Quebec was the name of the lower house of Quebec's legislature until 1968, when it was renamed the National Assembly of Quebec. At the same time, the upper house of the legislature, the Legislative Council, was abolished...
, but drowned that year when one of his ships, The Lunenberg, sank in a storm off the Magdalen Islands
Magdalen Islands
The Magdalen Islands form a small archipelago in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with a land area of . Though closer to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, the islands form part of the Canadian province of Quebec....
(which were part of his Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
constituency).
Kennneth Leslie was raised by his mother, Bertha Starratt Leslie. As a boy he learned to play the violin and piano, and loved to sing; he also wrote poetry. He "was a child prodigy, attending Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...
in Halifax at age 14." Later he was educated at Colgate Theological Seminary for a year; the University of Nebraska, where he received his M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1914; and Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he studied "under the brilliant idealist Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce was an American objective idealist philosopher.-Life:Royce, born in Grass Valley, California, grew up in pioneer California very soon after the California Gold Rush. He received the B.A...
" but did not receive a Ph.D.
First marriage
Leslie was married four times. His first wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of the wealthy Halifax candy manufacturer, James MoirJames Moir
James Moir was a senior BBC executive for many years until his retirement in 2003. Among the programmes he produced were Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game from 1971-75....
. The couple led an active social life, travelling widely, acquainted with some of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day. In Halifax they were members of The Song Fishermen
The Song Fishermen
The Song Fishermen, or the Song Fishermen's Circle , was an informal group of poets from Atlantic Canada that included famous Canadian poets Bliss Carman and Sir Charles G.D...
, a social and literary set led by their friends, Andrew and Tully Merkel, whose Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
home was "a favourite rendezvous for writers and artists." Leslie became a close friend of Song Fisherman Robert Norwood, "a native of New Ross, N.S.
New Ross, Nova Scotia
New Ross is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in the Chester Municipal District. Home of the Ross Farm Museum.New Ross was the end-point for construction of the Western segment of the Annapolis Road which was intended to eventually reach Halifax...
who published eight books of poetry and became, as rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, one of the most renowned preachers in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
."
"In about 1928" the Leslies "went with their children to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for a year, ostensibly to enable Leslie to study at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
; in actuality they spent most of the year touring the continent
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
."
In the late 1920s the Leslies relocated to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where Leslie began losing his wife's money playing the stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
: "Estimates of the loss run from $25,000 to $250,000." During those years, the Leslies were active in theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
circles. Leslie studied acting, and his children were cast in a Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
play. Leslie wrote his own "'Broadway’ musical, which collapsed in rehearsals, and a few dozen other songs which did not sell in Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
."
During the 1930s Leslie hosted a radio program on Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
station WOR on which he read poetry, sang Gaelic songs, and played the violin.
In the 1930s the Leslies' marriage fell apart. As Kenneth Leslie later told it: "My wife had the habit of taking all the children away to stay with relatives for months at a time, leaving me alone. I stepped out on her and she divorced me." Beth prevented him from seeing his children again in her lifetime, and even changed the name of his son (from Kenneth Alexander to Alexander Moir). After her death Leslie reconciled with his daughters; but he never saw his son again.
Second marriage
In 1934 Leslie married Marjorie Finlay Hewitt, a divorcée, who had "become enamoured of him when she attended a poetry reading he was giving in Montclair, N.JMontclair, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 38,977 people, 15,020 households, and 9,687 families residing in the township. The population density was 6,183.6 people per square mile . There were 15,531 housing units at an average density of 2,464.0 per square mile...
." The dozen years of their marriage were the most productive of his life. In 1934 he published Windward I Rock, "the first of several acclaimed volumes of poetry in 1934." Three more books of poetry would follow in the next four years.
The last volume, By Stubborn Stars, won Canada's Governor General's Award in 1938
1938 Governor General's Awards
The 1938 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the third such awards. No monetary prize was yet given; the awards were simply recognition of the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: Gwethalyn Graham, Swiss Sonata...
. But by then Leslie had other concerns. During the mid-1930s, "he had become increasingly disturbed by the growth of fascist and anti-semitic attitudes in the United States throughout the ’thirties and the concomitant influence of isolationist sentiments on American foreign policy." In particular he was concerned about the radio broadcasts of Roman Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin
Charles Coughlin
Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a controversial Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than thirty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the...
, who was reaching as many as 40 million listeners.
He worried about the spread of groups like the German-American Bund
German-American Bund
The German American Bund or German American Federation was an American Nazi organization established in the 1930s...
, the Protestant War Veterans Association, the Christian Mobilizers, the Christian Front
Christian Front
The Christian Front is a Conservative Christian political party in South Africa. It is a breakaway from the Christian Democratic Party, and has a seat in the Johannesburg Meropolitan Council, and in the Tshwane Meropolitan Council....
, and William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley
William Dudley Pelley was an American extremist and spiritualist who founded the Silver Legion in 1933, and ran for President in 1936 for the Christian Party.-Family:...
’s Silver Shirts, all of whom he saw as being inspired by Coughlin's anti-semitism.
So "during the late 1930s, he chose to take a public stand, launching the Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), a progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
journal of religion and politics." In December 1938, with the "support of his second wife, who provided almost all of the initial investment money (approximately $40,000), he created the Protestant Digest, ... which eventually attained a circulation of 50,000 and became a powerful voice in the war against fascism and anti-semitism in the United States." "With contributions from the leading public intellectuals of the day, the magazine called for a declaration of war against the Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
, and stood firmly against the oppression of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
."
Theologians Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...
and Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
became editorial advisers to The Protestant, "as did ... Dr. John Mackay, President of Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church located in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey in the United States...
, James Luther Adams of the Meadville Theological Seminary in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and Louie D. Newton of Atlanta, Associate Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance
Baptist World Alliance
The Baptist World Alliance is a worldwide alliance of Baptist churches and organizations, formed in 1905 at Exeter Hall in London during the first Baptist World Congress.-History:...
. "But [Leslie's] leftist politics and pointed criticism of the Catholic Church (which in his view had enabled Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
’s fascists) earned him enemies as well."
"By the early 1940s, Leslie’s organization [Protestant Associates] had produced numerous offshoots, including a national organization of anti-fascist Protestant clergy.... Leslie himself was in constant demand as a speaker, and earned endorsements from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
," the First Lady
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...
.
One initiative of Protestant Associates was "the Textbook Commission, with Leslie as 'national' chairman.... The Commission gave itself the mandate of searching out and eliminating anti-semitic statements in American textbooks." In December 1943 the Commission released a list of 33 books carrying what it called "race-hating propaganda." "The fact that a large number of these publications were in use in Roman Catholic parochial schools contributed to Leslie’s undeserved (but growing) reputation as a virulent anti-Catholic."
Leslie also came up with the idea of The Challenger, "an anti-fascist comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
which appeared sporadically in 1944 and once in 1945, this last time in a 64 page “deluxe” edition which had a press run of 400,000 and sold at 10 cents. The cover of the 1945 edition shows youths of the white, yellow and black races battling green demons of fear, hate and greed. Gerald Richardson, the editor, made use of nationally known cartoonists in this attempt to counter the mass production of fascist propaganda aimed at the young."
By 1945, though, there was little need to worry about 'fascist propaganda'. Fascism was dead; the perceived threat was no longer fascists but Communists, Leslie's progressive allies in the anti-fascist coalition. Just as Leslie criticized the Catholic Church as enablers of fascism, so he was criticized by its supporters as an enabler of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. And just as he called the Church anti-semitic, he was called anti-Catholic. Typical of the attacks on him was a "widely-distributed Roman Catholic newspaper in 1947 [that] described The Protestant as the 'Red Hope' and accused Leslie of serving faithfully 'the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
purpose to wipe out the Catholic Church, as the chief moral obstacle in the path to Soviet World domination."
At the same time, by Leslie's account, he was fighting "to keep editorial policy out of the hands of certain supporters of the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
on the executive staff" of The Protestant. As a result of that struggle, six members of the executive resigned in November 1946, "allegedly because of Leslie’s dictatorial, one-man control of the publication."
Suddenly, at that time, "Leslie’s ability to attract financial support, and, indeed, his personal prestige, became severely diminished." To make matters worse, his wife discovered he was "having an affair with his private secretary, Cathy, a Polish-American girl some thirty years younger than himself," and filed for divorce. Since Leslie had never taken a proper salary from The Protestant, this left him with no personal income.
Next, "Leslie attracted the scrutiny of the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
’s anti-communist crusade. He made Life Magazine’s list of the top 50 Communist 'fellow travelers and innocent dupes,' in such illustrious company as Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
, Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
and Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
."
In 1949 Leslie "left the U.S. and returned to his native Nova Scotia for good."
Third and fourth marriages
Kenneth Leslie arrived back in Canada with a new wife, "Cathy, whose parents were peasant class Polish immigrants [and] had no independent source of income. Leslie had to find a job." He drove a taxi and found some work as a substitute teacher. He tried to enter academe: "financially down-and-out and reduced to driving a taxi to earn a living, he entered the education faculty of Dalhousie University, only to withdraw after a few weeks, thoroughly disillusioned with the feeble intellectual quality of the program."His new marriage fell apart quickly. "Cathy was not happy in Nova Scotia — and she had fallen in love with one of Leslie’s nephews, a man close to her own age. Tearfully, and still with great fondness for her husband, she left him to join the nephew."
Kenneth Leslie lived quietly in rural Nova Scotia, working as a lay preacher and substitute teacher. Due to his activist past, plus a 1958 trip he made to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, he was for some time under Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
suveillance, and an object of "parental anxieties about Communists in the classroom".
The Protestant finally shut down in 1953. But for the next 20 years Leslie continued to publish successor periodicals: One, New Christian, Man, and New Man.
In 1960 Leslie heard of the death of an old friend, Judge Totten. He
"drove alone to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to console — and to marry — the judge’s widow, Nora Steenerson Totten. The couple were devoted to each other and collaborated on the publication of New Man until 1972, when ill-health forced them both to enter a Halifax nursing home. Leslie died there in relative obscurity on October 6, 1974. Only about a dozen friends and relatives attended the funeral. Nora died the following spring."
Poetry
Leslie wrote poetry as a boy; his first poem, he later recalled, was about Bonnie Prince CharlieCharles Edward Stuart
Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...
. In the 1920s in Nova Scotia he and his first wife were members of The Song Fishermen
The Song Fishermen
The Song Fishermen, or the Song Fishermen's Circle , was an informal group of poets from Atlantic Canada that included famous Canadian poets Bliss Carman and Sir Charles G.D...
, a literary and society group that included Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......
and Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman FRSC was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada's poet laureate during his later years....
. Leslie began contributing poetry to the Song Fishermen broadsheets, and soon in other small Halifax literary publicatons too. By the end of the decade he had published poems in Literary Digest and Scribner's.
His first collection, Windward I Rock, "was published by Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
in New York in 1934 and received favourable critical attention on both sides of the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. The Times Literary Supplement praised him for having 'broken through the crust of the conventional to something that is burningly alive.'"
His next two books, Lowlands Low (1935) and Such a Din! (1936), were published in Halifax and received little critical notice. "But in 1938 he won considerable acclaim and the Governor-General’s award with the publication in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
of By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems. Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......
, by then the grand old man of Canadian letters, ranked Leslie at this time a better poet than E.J. Pratt, and Pratt himself wrote to Leslie.... 'I gave an address the other day on the newer poets and quoted at length from your book.'"
After 1938 Leslie published very little outside his own periodicals. But he continued to write poetry and publish poetry through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. "Some of his best poems of these years are highly political: 'Moscow’s Measure,' 'Remember Lumumba!' and 'Praise the Viet Cong.' They are as stirring and passionately rhetorical as anything he ever wrote."
Ladysmith Press published The Collected Poems of Kenneth Leslie in 1971. However, because editor Sean Haldane omitted a number of poems 'because they were light verse, or political verse, which fulfilled a temporal need,' Leslie published his own collected edition, O’Malley to the Reds and Other Poems, in 1972.
Jennifer Fandel wrote in ForeWord Review:
- The true beauty of Leslie's poetry lies in his often stunning use of language. His seemingly simple word choices, combined with his attention to meter and form, may remind readers of the early work of W.B. Yeats. Additionally, he draws readers in with sound (waiting for the snow, / the foam of bloom forgotten), at times reminiscent of Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
. But the daring of Leslie's work stems from his desire to reveal the complex dualities with which he wrestled in his personal life. From the double entendre in the crotched necessity of standing true / to her while pledging life and love to you to the moody repetition of this monster ledge / of granite under granite clouds, Leslie's language lingers in the mind and on the tongue.
Recognition
Leslie won the 1938 Governor General's Award1938 Governor General's Awards
The 1938 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the third such awards. No monetary prize was yet given; the awards were simply recognition of the authors.-Winners:*Fiction: Gwethalyn Graham, Swiss Sonata...
for his book, By Stubborn Stars.
The lyrics to Leslie's song "Cape Breton Lullaby" (set to a different, traditional melody) have been recorded by several Canadian Celtic
Celtic music in Canada
Celtic music is primarily associated with the folk traditions of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Wales, as well as the popular styles derived from folk culture...
artists, including Catherine Mackinnon, Ryan's Fancy
Ryan's Fancy
Ryan’s Fancy was a musical group active from the 1960s until the 1980s, all three of whose members were Irish immigrants to Canada.-Early years:...
and The Cottars
The Cottars
The Cottars are a Canadian Celtic musical group originating from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia- Conception to Feast :From 2000 to March 2006 The Cottars were composed of: Ciarán and Fiona MacGillivray of Albert Bridge, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and The MacKenzies of Cape Breton. In 2006, big...
.
Leslie was the subject of a 2008 VisionTV documentary, God’s Red Poet: The Life of Kenneth Leslie.
Poetry and songs
- Windward Rock: Poems. New York: Macmillan, 19341934 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a film directed by Sidney Franklin, with Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett and Fredric March as Robert Browning; redone in 1957, less successfully*The University...
. - Lowlands Low: Poems. Halifax: McCurdy, 19351935 in poetryLinks to nations or nationalities point to articles with information on that nation's poetry or literature. For example, United Kingdom links to English poetry and Indian links to Indian poetry.-Events:* Canada -- Charles G.D...
. - Such a Din! Poems. Halifax: McCurdy, 19361936 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* James Laughlin founds New Directions Publishers in New York, which published many modern poets for the first time;...
. - By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems. Toronto: Ryerson, 19381938 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In Nazi Germany, the Reichsschrifttumskammer banned German expressionist poet Gottfried Benn from further writing.-Australia:* Rex Ingamells and Ian Tilbrook, Conditional Culture, published in...
. - Songs of Nova Scotia. [Words and music by Kenneth Leslie.] Halifax, 1964.
- The Poems of Kenneth Leslie [Ed. Sean Haldane.] Ladysmith, Quebec: Ladysmith Press, 19711971 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* This Magazine founded by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten...
. - O'Malley to the Reds And Other Poems. Halifax: By the Author, 19721972 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* John Betjeman becomes Poet Laureate...
. - The Essential Kenneth Leslie. [Ed. Zachariah Wells] Erin, Ontario: Porcupine's Quill, 20102010 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 19 - For the first time since 1949, an anonymous black-clad man, known as the Poe Toaster, failed to show up at the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, early...
. ISBN 0889843287, ISBN 9780889843288
Anthologized poems
- "Cobweb College." "A warm rain whispers, but the earth knows best." "Day slipped out of the web of her fog-wet gown." "My love is sleeping; but her body seems." "The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine." The Book of Canadian Poetry. Ed. A.J.M. Smith. First Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943, p. 300. (Also in the 1948 and 1957 editions of the anthology.)
- "A warm rain whispers, but the earth knows best." "The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine." Twentieth-Century Canadian Poetry. Ed. Earle BirneyEarle BirneyEarle Alfred Birney, OC, FRSC was a distinguished Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honor, for his poetry.-Life:...
. Toronto: Ryerson, 1953, pp. 14–15. - "From soil somehow the poet's word." "My love is sleeping; but her body seems." "The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine." The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Ed. A.J.M. Smith. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960, pp. 173–174.
- "A warm rain whispers, but the earth knows best." "The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine." The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse. Ed. Ralph GustafsonRalph GustafsonRalph Barker Gustafson, CM was a Canadian poet and professor at Bishop's University.- Biography :He was born in Lime Ridge, near Dudswell, Quebec on August 16, 1909. His mother was British, his father Swedish. He was educated at Bishop's University, earning a B.A...
. Revised Edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967, p. 126. (Also in later editions.) - "Halibut Cove Harvest," "The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine," The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Ed. Margaret AtwoodMargaret AtwoodMargaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN 0195404505
Pamphlets and periodicals
- The Red Judge and Other Anecdotes: Reminiscences of Two Great Law Courts of Bengal. Rangoon, Rangoon Times Press, 1934.
- Protestant Digest. Boston and New York, 1938-41.
- The Protestant. New York and Halifax, 1941-53.
- Hungary: Christian or Pagan: An Eye-Witness Report. [New York: New Christian Books, c.1950].
- One. Halifax: New Christian Books, 1951?
- New Christian. Halifax, 1953-55.
- New Christian Pamphlet. Halifax, 1955 [-?]
- Man. Halifax, [1957-59?]
- New Man. Pictou and Halifax, 1959-72.
- Christ, Church And Communism. Gravenhurst, Ontario: Northern Book House, 1962.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy of Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews.