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National Library News |
Céline Gendron,
Research and Information Services
 Taken from Tales of a Gambling Grandma (Montreal: Tundra Books, 1986.) |
In the summer of 1999, the National Library prepared a tribute to children’s author-illustrator Dayal Kaur Khalsa (1943-1989). The exhibition, based on the National Library of Canada’s collection of the author’s literary documents, offered an opportunity to study her work method and to view original illustrations contained in her books.
Last July 20, during an extraordinary presentation of SAVOIR FAIRE, children’s bookseller Barbara Yoffee (Maryland, U.S.A.) presented us with the fruits of a decade of research on Khalsa. Her presentation was called "Dayal Kaur Khalsa: A Childhood Remembered, a Childhood Transposed".
July 17, 1999, marks the 10th anniversary of Dayal Kaur Khalsa’s death. She was born in Queens, New York, on April 17, 1943. She died in Vancouver on July 17, 1989. She lived in Canada for more than 25 years and, as an expression of gratitude to her adopted country, she left all her illustrations and manuscripts to the National Library of Canada.
Her adolescence, in the 1950s and 1960s, was influenced by Woodstock, the Black Panthers, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. She was a militant; her parents had difficulty understanding their rebellious daughter. The fact that she later joined a Sikh ashram and changed her name, which had been Marcia Schonfeld, was quite unusual for a middle-class Jewish girl raised in a New York suburb.
 Taken from Cowboy Dreams (Montreal: Tundra Books, 1990.) |
Her battle with cancer led Kahlsa back to the universe of her childhood, a time and place in which her relationship with her grandmother Shapiro had had a profound effect on her. Her grandmother’s death from breast cancer in 1953 upset her terribly and in the text accompanying the last illustration in her first book, Tales of a Gambling Grandma, she says: "Then I opened her closet door and stepped inside. I closed the door behind me and hugged and smelled all my grandma’s great big dresses". It is through the magic of her grandmother’s stories - her spectacular escape to America, her attempts to find a husband, her two rules for survival and her poker-playing skills - that Khalsa awakened to the imaginary. It was in this relationship that she wove the privileged bonds of tenderness and understanding that would later be transposed into her work.
Other people affected her life too. In her second work, I Want a Dog, we again find the character of the little girl, but she now has a name, May, in honour of May Cutler, Khalsa’s publisher at Tundra Books. Julian, the dog she wanted so badly as a child but did not get until adulthood, would become the title of her second-last book.
Hers was a difficult adolescence. The relationships she had with her family, in particular with her mother, were tumultuous. Alcohol, drugs and sojourns in Mexico and California had disturbing effects on Khalsa. It was in Millbrook, Ontario, in 1974, that she met the friends who would have a pivotal influence on her. Soon after meeting them, she entered an ashram where the development of her spiritual life, discipline and the family life she missed so much following the loss of her grandmother, enabled her to achieve the balance and serenity that would guide her steps as a children’s author and illustrator. Between 1986 and 1989, she wrote and illustrated nine books. It is through these books that we meet her family, during a memorable first trip to Florida. My Family Vacation tells us of the excitement of the preparations, the change in temperature, the colourful motels, the blue-tinged swimming pools and the little paper cocktail umbrellas at the restaurants.
According to Dayal’s closest friends, her most accomplished work is without doubt Cowboy Dreams, published posthumously in 1990. In her SAVOIR FAIRE presentation, Barbara Yoffee reminds us that this is undoubtedly due not only to the drawing and the intricate details of the illustrations but also to the author’s almost superhuman effort to finish the work when disease had overtaken her (both her mother and her grandmother were also stricken with cancer). Symbolic details can be found in the illustrations in this book; in the final illustration, we see May on her wooden horse, following the cowboy who is guiding her beyond the illustration.
With perseverance, Barbara Yoffee collected anecdotes, letters and photographs, as well as copies of drawings that had been left with various friends. She searched through the Khalsa Fonds at the National Library many times. During her presentation, Ms. Yoffee painted a portrait that helped us understand the complex nature of an artist whose illustrations speak of a powerful freshness, vivacity and imagination: sparkling intelligence combined with the internal turmoil of early youth, the loyalty towards one’s friends and the reconciliation with oneself that permitted the peaceful acceptance of death. Few authors and illustrators have succeeded in creating such a rich and luminous work in so little time.
For more information on the Khalsa fonds, visit the Canadian Literature Research Service on the National Library of Canada’s Web site at : <http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/services/eclsc.htm>.