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.
Thanks especially to our wonderful speaker, actor and director Jeff Culbert, who read poems from both One Man Masque and Souwesto Home and played songs from his “Donnelly Sideshow” collection. Jeff also spoke about directing Chris Doty’s play The Donnelly Trialin 2005.
Thanks also to Josh Lambier of Wordsfest for his work as host and guide to an afternoon of tales. Our wonderful audience members shared memories of being in James Reaney’s plays, including productions of One Man Masque at their high schools in North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. Hilary Bates Neary, local historian and former Listeners’ Workshop member, remembered being in Listen to the Wind in 1966.
Thank you Sarah Caetano and the London Public Library for providing a home for this event. Next year’s lecture will look at poet Colleen Thibaudeau’sLozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things and its publication by James Reaney’s Alphabet Press in 1965.
James Reaney in London, Ontario in 2005. Photo by Jeff Culbert.
The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario.
James Reaney at home in London, Ontario in 2005. Photo by Jeff Culbert.
Join us on Saturday October 19 at the London Public LibraryCentral Branchin the Lawson Room for an afternoon of stories, songs, and memories as actor and director Jeff Culbert recalls his friendship with James (Jamie) Reaney and their collaborations.
Josh Lambier of Wordsfest will be our host and help Jeff recall his roles in the Reaney artistic process. Jeff has also curated selected readings and songs as snapshots on the tour.
Jeff Culbert’s family ties to Lucan and fascination with local lore led to his admiration for James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney’s The Donnellys trilogy, about the murders of an Irish immigrant family by their Lucan-area neighbours in 1880. In turn, Jamie Reaney enjoyed experiencing Lucan alongside Culbert as the two visited such attractions as Lucan heritage days.
“He was interested in my home town. That was so cool,” Culbert says.
Jeff Culbert’s The Donnelly Sideshow
The Donnellys and Lucan were only the start of the Jamie and Jeff friendship. At one point, Jeff was at the night of words and music when Reaney bounced a rubber ball in time to a poem by his wife, the late Colleen Thibaudeau. Reaney was often in the audience for plays with Culbert in the cast or director’s chair or both during London’s alt-theatre excitement in the 1990s and early 2000s. He laughed loudly watching Jeff as a drunken Irish-American police chief in alt-theatre spoof The Boneyard Man.
During that period, Culbert worked closely with Reaney to prepare for Jeff’s starring role in a revival of 1960’s One Man Masque. Jamie Reaney had starred in its debut decades before.
“It isn’t scholarly — but it is scholarly,” Jeff says of the friendship tour.
Jeff Culbert in One-Man Masque, Grand Theatre McManus Studio, London, Ontario, 2002
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of London poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008) and his late wife, the poet Colleen Thibaudeau. Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Wordsfest for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
Composer Harry Somers (1925-1999) was commissioned by Lawrence Cherney, Artistic Director of Music at Sharon, to write the music in 1983. The story was to draw on the colonial era history of the Sharon Temple and the Quaker sect the Children of Peace. Seven years later, Serinette was complete and premiered on July 7, 1990 at the Sharon Temple.
July 7, 1990: Harry Somers celebrates at the Serinette premiere
Serinette July 7-28, 1990: Conductor: Victor Feldbrill, Director: Keith Turnbull Costume and Set Designer: Sue LePage Singers: Kristine Anderson, Lynn Blaser, Benjamin Butterfield, Jeffrey Carl, André Clouthier, Leslie Fagan, John Fanning, Carol Ann Feldstein, Dennis Giesbrecht, Aline Kutan, Brian McIntosh, Erik Oland, Jackalyn Pipher, Laura Pudwell
Harry Somers chose James Reaney to write the libretto: “Knowing James Reaney’s plays and his exceptional collaborations with John Beckwith, I was absolutely confident that he would produce a libretto that was suitable for setting to music. I knew that it would be dramatically rich in character and situation, and eminently theatrical. I’ve often been struck by how he uses simple and basic means to achieve a wide variety of theatrical effects, and how he uses a comparatively small cast with the greatest versatility.” [1]
James Reaney first learned about the Sharon Temple and the Children of Peace on a summer visit: “In 1944, while working at a farm labour camp in Holland Marsh, I received permission to walk into nearby Newmarket on business. Curiosity led me to take back roads; I was soon lost, and suddenly a pivot, a spiritual one, whirled into my life. Yes, I had lost my way, but I had also discovered an old square building made of wood and hundreds of panes of glass. It was the Sharon Temple, and as the years went by, its culture and religion became an obsession with me.”
“From John Beckwith, Keith MacMillan and Helmut Kallmann, I learnt that the musical and poetic tradition, as well as the left wing politics, of anglophone Canada started here. This was the site of the first commune based on Christian principles in Ontario, and these people created many original hymns, built the first organ, were the first to educate women in the crafts, and were the first to break down the barrier between artisan and artist. David Willson will always be one of my great folk heroes. [….] So, when Harry Somers asked me to write a libretto about nineteenth century life in Sharon, I leapt at an oft wished project, but decided not to be solemn.” [2]
Notes: [1] and [3] Harry Somers quoted in Serinette Program Notes, June 3, 1990. [2] James Reaney quoted in Serinette Program Notes, June 7, 1990.
From Act I Scene 4: Three Quakers: John Fanning, Benjamin Butterfield, Jackalyn Pipher, July 1990Serinette Act I Scene 3: Leslie Fagan, the Bird Girl, among the Jarvis guests, July 1990Wild finch (The Bird Girl) design by Sue LePage (1990)
From Act I: Scene 3 The Bird Box
MRS. JARVIS: Mr. Jarvis, don’t let them start dancing. Quiet! I was about to show the ladies how this small barrel organ – the serinette you gave me, remember? – has taught our wild finch over there in that cage to sing Rossini. Sam Junior – take that sheet off that cage. Shhh!
(With great authority, Sam Jr. starts pulling the cover off the cage. The serinette begins to play, but its music goes wild as Sam inadvertently opens the door of the cage and the Bird Girl escapes. From being a bunch of voyeurs around a bird prison, the cast fan out to catch that bird! Improvise or compose chase music here. Colin and Ann do not take part in the chase. Eventually, Sam Jr. catches the bird and she is brutally shoved back into her prison and her cage is covered. As before, Sam Jr. ceremoniously pulls off the cover and as he does so, a singer in yellow dances in and repeats vocally the Rossini aria. Applause. Cover restored. Dancer off.)
LADY TWO: What else can it sing, Mrs. Jarvis? MRS. JARVIS: A month ago, that bird could not sing a thing worth listening to. LADY ONE: Oh, play another one, Mrs. Jarvis. Pray do. How many do you have on each barrel? Of this bird box? MRS. JARVIS: Two per barrel and we got twelve barrels! This is ‘O cessate di piagarmi, togliatemi la vita ancor.’ Hush!
(As the Lilliputian music sounds, the men retreat a bit.)
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Audio excerpt from the 2001 revival recording
A concert revival of Serinette was held at St. James’ Cathedral, Toronto, Ontario with performances on May 31 and June 2, 2001, and a subsequent recording made at the Glenn Gould Studio is available from the Canadian Music Centre.
Admission is by donation to The Manor Park Food Bank — non-perishable food or cash accepted. Reserve your seathere. Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario
A plot is afoot to change the very DNA of the Gentle Rain Food Co-op !! James Reaney’s comic delight celebrates the eccentricities of community and lampoons fanaticism.
November 22, 2023 —AdamCorrigan Horowitz and Kydra Ryan in Gentle Rain Food Co-op: Evil Professor Skimwater commissions a model of St. David’s Ward from unsuspecting Jones: “By the way, Jones, my graduate class is waiting next door. I wonder if you’d mind brining your model of St. David’s Ward in for me so they can have a look at it too?”
November 5, 2022 — Katy Clark (soprano) accompanied by Charmaine Fopoussi (piano) at Museum London.
November 5, 2023 —Thank you all for coming to Wordsfest at Museum London to hear Dr. Katy Clark and ensembleperform selections from John Beckwith and James Reaney’s musical works, including four operas, poems set to music, and radio collages.
Dr. Clark drew on her research from her thesis on “Regionalism in the Operas of John Beckwith and James Reaney” to eloquently lead us though the six decades of Beckwith and Reaney’s musical collaboration.
Congratulations to the singers — Katy Clark (soprano), Paul Gambo (baritone), Charmaine Iormetti (soprano), and London Pro Musica— and musicians —Charmaine Fopoussi (piano),Gary McCumber (clarinet), and Patrick Theriault (cello) — for their wonderful work on these selections:
The Great Lakes Suite (1949) — Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron (poems by James Reaney) “Serenade” (1950) (poem by Colleen Thibaudeau) Night Blooming Cereus (1959) — A Plant Song, Houses in Heaven, Scene 3 Recitative (James Reaney) The Killdeer (1960/1961) — Waltz, Excerpt from Act 2, Scene 4, Credits music (James Reaney) Twelve Letters to a Small Town (1961) — To the Avon River above Stratford, Canada, Instructions: How to Make a Model of a Town (James Reaney) The Shivaree (1979) — Daisy’s Aria (James Reaney) Crazy to Kill (1989) — Down the Avenue of Trees (James Reaney) Taptoo! (1994) — Loyalists’ Song (James Reaney)
The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario.
James Reaney 