2026 — James Reaney’s centenary year — is off to a good start with two plays based on his work from London’s AlvegoRoot Theatre.
On February 20-21, AlvegoRoot presents two encore performances of Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996). Adam Corrigan Holowitz reprises his solo performance as Ephraim, a young traveller lost in a blizzard who strays into Donnelly country. Directed by Kydra Ryan.
AlvegoRoot Theatre reprises James Reaney’s Sleigh Without Bells on February 20-21 in London, Ontario.
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:February 20 at 7:30 pm and February 21 at2 pm.
Tickets: $30 at the door or call 519-615-2210 or order online from OnStageDirect.
AlvegoRoot’s second Reaney production this year is an adaptation of Take the Big Picture, James Reaney’s 1986 children’s novel. Take the Big Picture will be presented at Fanshawe Pioneer Village from June 10 to June 14.
Cast announcements are expected soonfor Take the Big Picture — an epic story that involves six children, their parents, their grandmother and a host of characters they meet on their way back to Ontario from British Columbia — including a Sasquatch!
James Reaney’s children’s novel Take the Big Picture from 1986.
Poems Written About The Donnellys To Assist The Renewal of The Town Hall at Exeter, Highway #4 *
I Around Borrisokane, in Eire, the roads twist After cowherds with willow gads, after wise woman’s spells, After chariots and the widest go-around found in a mare’s skin. But in Biddulph, Canada, in Mount Carmel’s brooder stove, St Peter’s fields, The roads cross at right angles, a careful Euclidean net, roods, rods Spun by surveyors out of Spider stars – Mirzak, Spicula, Thuban, Antares. Like serpents, twitchgrass roots, dragons – the Irish roads twist, The old crooked roads twist in the cage of the straight new.
II We were horsemen, dressed well and from my brother’s entire horse, From his entire horse came the colt fast fleet hoofhand with which We seized and held onto the path through Exeter down to London. We lifted the hills, creeks, rivers, slaughterhouses, taverns, We lifted their travellers and those who were asleep when we passed And those who saw us rattle by as they plowed mud or whittled. We lifted them like a graveldust pennant, we swung them up and out Till they yelled about wheels falling off, unfair competition, yah! And we lie here now – headless, still, dead, waggonless, horseless, Sleighless, hitched, stalled.
III As the dressmaker hems my muslin handkerchiefs, The night the Vigilantes burnt down one of their own barns, As I sit waiting for a cake to bake and my gentle niece with me I realize I am not doing what you want me to do. You – bored with your Calvinist shoes chewed to pieces By streets of insurance, streets of cakemix, packages, soap, sermonettes. You want me to – you project a more exciting me on me. She should be burning! Clip! Ax! Giantess! Coarse, I should curse! Why should I accept these handcuffs from you?
James Reaney, 2005
* Respectively, the three speakers of these poems are William Porte, the Lucan postmaster, Tom Donnelly and Mrs. Donnelly.
“Entire Horse” is from Souwesto Home, a collection of James Reaney’s poems from 2005 available from Brick Books.
( ( 0 ) )Listen to Jeff Culbert read “Entire Horse” and other poems from Souwesto Homehere.
All three plays from James Reaney’s The Donnelly Trilogy — Sticks and Stones, The St. Nicholas Hotel, and Handcuffs — were performed at the Blyth Festival in 2023 at Blyth’s Outdoor Harvest Stage.
“Are there any more ladies and gentlemen for Calamity Corners as ’tis sometimes called, St. John’s, Birr — my old friend Ned here calls it Bobtown, the more elegant name is Birr. Elginfield known to some as Ryan’s Corners, Lucan that classic spot if it’s not all burnt down, Clandeboye, Mooretown, Exeter and Crediton. If Ned here hasn’t sawn it to pieces, the coach is waiting for you at the front door and it pleases you.”
(Opening lines from James Reaney’s The St. Nicholas Hotel)
Summer 2023 — On the way to the Outdoor Harvest Stage on the old Blyth Fairgrounds. Photo courtesy The Blyth Festival.
James Reaney printing at the Alphabet Press print shop at 430 Talbot Street in London, Ontario (mid-1960s). Credit: London Free Press/Sun Media Corporation.
In late summer 1965, James Reaney’s Alphabet Press printed the first edition of Colleen Thibaudeau’s Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things in London, Ontario. Thibaudeau’s husband James Reaney typeset the poems and also designed the cover.
In fall 2024, Hilary Neary, historian and former Alphabet Magazine designer, proposed a facsimile second edition of the original Lozenges for Colleening 2025, a celebration of the centenary of Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Printers Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario. (Photo by James Stewart Reaney)
On August 27, 2025, after many months coordinating and resourcing this venture, printers and compositors Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker (pictured above) gathered at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario to print the new second edition. The photo shows a proof from the new 2025 edition’s cover design in the foreground, and Mike Baker holding the original 1965 classic by Colleen Thibaudeau.
Copies of the new Lozenges: Poems in the Shape of Things were given out at Colleening 2025 events in London and St. Thomas.
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to Hilary Neary and Mike Baker read poems from Lozenges.
Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Train” from Lozenges (1965)Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Hockey Stick” from Lozenges (1965)
Alphabet Issue 10 from July 1965 shows an announcement for Lozenges by Colleen Thibaudeau and one of her poems “The Hockey Stick” on the inside front cover.
Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision” at the James Reaney Memorial Lecture on November 29, 2025 in London, Ontario. London poets Patricia Black and Ola Nowosad (seated) read many of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems.
Thank you for coming to the 16th annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrating poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision this past Saturday November 29th. This year’s lecture is part of Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary.
Thank you, Peggy Roffey, for leading us through a thoughtful exploration of Thibaudeau’s poetry. After getting us to reflect on someone dear to us and on what we associated with that person, Peggy said that we “… had all donea bit of Colleening. You’ve used memory and imagination to reach beyond time and space. You found an association, made a connection and had that associated detail there. You’ve also connected to somebody else in the room.”
“You’ve touched on the way Colleen wrote her poems; they are peopled, very peopled. Full of significant objects, places, experiences, but all attached to people. I actually counted the number of people that she named by name or role: five hundred. Five hundred people in just over two hundred poems….”
Thanks also to Alannah Vanderburgh-Oakley and Dan Hamilton of the London Public Library for their coordination and assistance, and to Josh Lambier of Words Festival for his technical expertise.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Wordsfest for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau near Stratford, Ontario in 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
This year, in the spirit of metaphor, the 2025 James Reaney Memorial Lecture steps to the side and shows the “she” beside the “he”: James Reaney’s wife, poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Join us on Saturday November 29that the London Public LibraryCentral Branch for poet Peggy Roffey’s presentation “Colleen Thibaudeau’s Big Sea Vision”.
In a combination of photo images, presentation, and readings, Peggy Roffey and readers from London’s poetry community will explore Colleen Thibaudeau’s unique voice, sensibility, and metaphor-making artistry.
Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea Vision’ helps us enter the very nature of metaphor, illuminating the connectedness of things, people, times and places, showing the as-yet unseen inside something else. Her big sea vision is all over her poems like fingerprints, a vision worth holding in a fragmenting world.
It was Colleen Thibaudeau who delivered the first Reaney Memorial Lecture in 2010 at a grassroots event in Stratford. Since the Lecture was welcomed to London under the Words Festival banner and with support from the London Public Library in 2016, performances of her poems and short stories have inspired several of its iterations.
The 2025 Lecture is the first one devoted to her words and life. It marks another peak for Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of her centenary. The last scheduled event is Antler River Poetry’s evening of Colleen Thibaudeau poems, December 3, 7 pm, at the Landon Branch Library.
About the presenter:Peggy Roffey is a Londoner who did her Master’s Thesis at UWO on Colleen’s poetry to 1975 and was a frequent reader alongside Colleen. Peggy has also had an interesting career in organizational culture and leadership development at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and at UWO (Western). She taught English Renaissance Literature and Canadian Literature at Western for the last 15 years of her career.
For more about Colleen Thibaudeau and her poetry, see the biography on her website.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Words Festival for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney near Stratford, Ontario, 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
AlvegoRoot Theatre presents Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story, October 22-26
On October 22-26, AlvegoRoot Theatre presents Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996).
“The story strikes me as an interesting coda to the Donnelly Trilogy, and a few people I have talked to say they thought that it feels a bit like a portrait of the artist diving into the Donnelly story, falling in love with the people/characters and then having to leave them behind in the land of the dead/purgatory.”
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:October 22, 23, and 24 at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on Saturday October 25 and Sunday October 26.
Tickets: $30 at the door or online from OnStageDirect.
Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012) in 1977 in London, Ontario. Colleening 2025 is a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry.
Colleening 2025 in St. Thomas, Ontario
September 2025 — On September 18, celebrate Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary with a feast of her St. Thomas poems read by local fans including Joe Preston, John Allen, Julie Berry, Barb Hoskins, Mike Baker & more!
Where: The Elgin County Railway Museum, 225 Wellington Street, St. Thomas When: Thursday, September 18, 2025, 7-9 pm Cash Bar — Admission is free.
Colleening 2025 in London, Ontario
November 2025 – On November 7-9, AlvegoRoot Theatre presents a brand new concert version of Colleening: The Letters and Poetry of Colleen Thibaudeau, which premiered in 2013.
Compiled by Adam Corrigan Holowitz with music by Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead, Colleen’s letters and poems take us on a journey through childhood memories, home life, and Canadian culture. The performers are Katy Clark, Paul Grambo, and Kydra Ryan.
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:Friday November 7 at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on Saturday November 8 and Sunday November 9.
Colleening: The Life & Letters of Colleen Thibaudeau, November 7-9
On Saturday November 29, poet Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s Big Sea Vision” at the 2025 James Reaney Memorial Lecture. This year the annual lecture, in the spirit of metaphor, steps to the side and shows the “she” beside the “he”: James Reaney’s wife, poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012). Presented by London Public Library and Words Festival.
Where: London Public Library, Central Library Lawson Room, 251 Dundas Street, London, Ontario When: Saturday November 29, 1 pm. Admission is free.
On Wednesday December 3, Antler River Poetry presents Celebrating Colleen Thibaudeau: An Evening of Poetry and Memories. A lineup of well-known local poets and readers will share their favourite work by Canadian literary legend Colleen Thibaudeau. Where: The London Public Library, Landon Branch, 167 Wortley Road, London, Ontario When: Wednesday December 3, 7 pm. Admission is free.
For more about Colleen Thibaudeau and her poetry, see the biography on her website.
James Reaney (left) directing Tomson Highway and others in a scene from Wacousta, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)
In 1976, James Reaney began working on Wacousta!, a new play based on John Richardson’s 1832 novel. Londoners, NDWT actors, and Western students helped develop the play through a series of workshops directed by Reaney at the University of Western Ontario’s Drama Workshop.
Playwright Tomson Highway, who was studying at Western that fall, was a member of the workshop and the Cree language coach for the play. In a later reflection on “Our Own Literature,” he recalls his early days and how the impetus to write plays came from the discovery that other Canadian writers such as Margaret Laurence wrote about what they knew.
“I was born into an oral culture and an oral language (Cree). Up where I come from, caribou country, the extreme far north of the province of Manitoba […] there is no written language, certainly no English, French, or any other European language. […]”
At age 20 while studying at the University of Manitoba, he “…came upon the writings of Margaret Laurence, whose stories took place in Neepawa, Manitoba, mere miles west of Winnipeg, a town I’d travelled through and whose cemetery I’d seen, from a distance many times and I thought that that stone angel in the imagined cemetery (never having seen it up close) must surely be the most magical stone angel in the history of the universe. […]”
“And then later on of course I met him in the flesh – shook his hand! – I met the poet/playwright James Reaney who wrote about London, Ontario where I was going to university. And then there was Michel Tremblay, over in Montreal, with that country-and-western goddess Carmen, singing her songs of love and sorrow on “the Main.”
“Well that was it. I decided that when I grew up I was gonna be like James Reaney and Michel Tremblay and Margaret Laurence and all the rest of them. I was gonna write stories that took place among my people inside the mythology of my people, vibrant, colourful – every bit as vibrant and colourful and passionate (yes, and tragic, sometimes) as people in New York and London (England) and Paris and Moscow. Yes, I decided, we were gonna have our own literature…in Cree.” [Excerpted from Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors” Reflections, Danielle Schaub – Photographer and Editor, University of Alberta Press and The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006, page 48.]
For more about Tomson Highway and his plays The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and Kiss of the Fur Queen, see tomsonhighway.ca and the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.
For more about the Wacousta Workshops (Fall 1976 to Spring 1977) at Western in London, Ontario, see James Reaney’s play Wacousta![A melodrama in three acts with a description of its development in workshops], Press Porcepic Limited, 1979.
Tomson Highway: lacrosse scene for Wacousta, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)Tomson Highway and others — Wacousta workshops, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)
Sometimes when I hold Our faded old globe That we used at school To see where oceans were And the five continents, The lines of latitude and longitude, The North Pole, the Equator and the South Pole— Sometimes when I hold this Wrecked blue cardboard pumpkin I think: here in my hands Rest the fair fields and lands Of my childhood Where still lie or still wander Old games, tops and pets; A house where I was little And afraid to swear Because God might hear and Send a bear To eat me up; Rooms where I was as old As I was high; Where I loved the pink clenches, The white, red and pink fists Of roses; where I watched the rain That Heaven’s clouds threw down In puddles and rutfuls And irregular mirrors Of soft brown glass upon the ground. The school globe is a parcel of my past, A basket of pluperfect things. And here I stand with it Sometime in the summertime All alone in an empty schoolroom Where about me hang Old maps, an abacus, pictures, Blackboards, empty desks. If I raise my hand No tall teacher will demand What I want. But if someone in authority Were here, I’d say Give me this old world back Whose husk I clasp And I’ll give you in exchange The great sad real one That’s filled Not with a child’s remembered and pleasant skies But with blood, pus, horror, death, stepmothers, and lies.
James Reaney, 1949
“The School Globe” is from The Red Heart (1949), James Reaney’s first book of poems.
2026 — James Reaney’s centenary year — is off to a good start with two plays based on his work from London’s AlvegoRoot Theatre. On February 20-21, AlvegoRoot presents two encore performances of Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996). Adam Corrigan Holowitz reprises his solo…
Entire Horse Poems Written About The Donnellys To AssistThe Renewal of The Town Hall at Exeter, Highway #4 * IAround Borrisokane, in Eire, the roads twistAfter cowherds with willow gads, after wise woman’s spells,After chariots and the widest go-around found in a mare’s skin.But in Biddulph, Canada, in Mount Carmel’s brooder stove, St Peter’s fields,The…
In late summer 1965, James Reaney’s Alphabet Press printed the first edition of Colleen Thibaudeau’s Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things in London, Ontario. Thibaudeau’s husband James Reaney typeset the poems and also designed the cover. In fall 2024, Hilary Neary, historian and former Alphabet Magazine designer, proposed a facsimile second edition of the…
James Reaney 