CANADA THROUGH THE EYES OF HERCULE POIROT AND AGATHA CHRISTIE

The maple leaf is a national emblem for the state of Canada. Here in our own local area the grounds of the Anglican church, St John's in the Fields, contain a driveway flanked by a row of ornamental maple trees. The borders of the grounds are planted with a mixture of ash and sycamore trees. The sycamore is also called the English maple tree; their leaves are a similar shape. The maple emblem is one I know and enjoy. 

Canadian Red Maple

Canadian flag sticker 

Canada is a nation we have never visited but we have important friends who have made their lives sing more sweetly by moving to that country. John Reid, a contemporary of mine at Catz in Oxford (1967-70), moved to Canada to follow an academic path of distinction that now sees him a professor emeritus at SMU - Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia. Mel and Dan Read are a couple we knew when we lived in East Anglia who moved to Canada with their two young boys to start a new adventure - and over twenty years later have reaped such rewards. 

This blogpost is therefore dedicated to John and his wife, Jackie, and their extended family, and Mel and Dan and their two sons, Jake and Finn. 

The trigger to create it came when the inimitable Sir David Suchet who played the part of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, for around twenty-five years made a BBC series shown this year, 2025, which traced in five episodes the journey around the world undertaken by 

Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie, in 1922. They were part of the Imperial Expedition that was preparing the ground for the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition in London. The fifth and last episode sees Suchet following in Agatha's footsteps across Canada. My blogpost is based on the notes I made as I watched this fascinating and revealing programme. 

Canada had become a self-governing dominion within the British Empire in 1867. Agatha, Archie and the expedition made landfall in Vancouver on the west coast and their first official destination was the Observatory Hall near Victoria, the site of the recently constructed largest telescope in the British Empire. Canada was a new nation that aimed to become a big player on the international stage; there was national pride in the discovery of Plaskett stars using this new instrument. Suchet too visited the observatory to find it still in use and thanks to its link with computers its telescope is now 10,000 times more powerful than in 1922.

Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Agatha and Archie's Imperial Expedition was led by Major Ernest Belcher who wrote that Canada needed more encouragement to participate in the upcoming London British Empire exhibition than Australia had. If the politics of the journey were becoming sticky so too were the finances of the couple. Archie had a £1,000 allowance but Agatha was running low; she had only one novel published to date. Ever resourceful, Agatha feasted on breakfast which lasted her until the evening meal. 

Their next stop as they travelled east was Banff, the highest settlement in the Canadian Rockies at 4,500 feet. They were travelling on the Rocky Mountaineer train, just as Suchet did a hundred years later - 'the best and most scenic way to explore Canada' and all thanks to an engineering triumph of railway building designed to unite the east and west coasts of Canada (and encourage British Columbia to join the Canadian federation). Suchet relates the grim fact that quite possibly Agatha was not told: tens of thousands of Irish and Chinese immigrants built this railway and every mile saw a labourer's death. 

The Banff Spring Hotel where Agatha and Archie stayed - it was built in 1888 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is one of the earliest of Canada's grand railway hotels.  

The Canadian Rockies contain fifty peaks that are higher than 11,000 feet. At one point the railway needed to ascend 5,300 feet and the engineers decided in 1907 to bore through the mountain in two spirals, each taking a 226 degree turn, to provide as gentle an incline as possible for the train engines. The Canadian railways are an essential part of Canada's story and identity - and the potential for tourism was always part of the calculation. Not only did the railway span the Rockies it also covered over 1,500 miles of prairie land. 

Rocky Mountaineer scenic train - passing through the Canadian Rockies. 

It was within this prairie land that in 1919 the future king Edward VIII (who abdicated in 1936, shortly after his accession, to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson) bought an Albertan ranch so taken was he with the landscape and lifestyle that he encountered when visiting Canada. Edward it should be noted was a Nazi sympathiser; in 1941 he spent a week on the ranch with his wife and came back in 1950 for what became a two-day visit due to a snowstorm. In 1922, Prince Edward's ranch would have been quite a talking point for Agatha and her party. Perhaps the most memorable item in the British Empire Exhibition's Canadian pavilion was a life-size butter sculpture of the Prince at his ranch home. It had taken 3,000 pounds of butter to make. 

The butter sculpture of the future Edward VIII

In all the episodes of the series, Sir David Suchet gently teases out the racist nature of imperialism. Agatha Christie makes no mention of the indigenous people in her notes on the journey across Canada. Suchet ensures that we, the viewing television public, learn what Agatha was most likely steered away from. At the St Eugene Mission, Suchet meets a survivor of the national government policy to crush the culture of the Ktunaxa, the First Nations people, by taking their children away from home and forcing them into boarding schools. The Indian Act of 1868 laid the foundations for these residential schools for 7-15 year-olds whose purpose was to cancel their language and leave them speaking only English. Those who spent their childhood at institutions such as St Eugene Mission endured hardship and often physical, sexual, and cultural abuse inflicted by priests. One punishment for speaking their own language was to be forced to eat salt. 

One hundred and fifty thousand children were sent to such schools; thousands died. The St Eugene Mission School closed in 1970 and the Ktunaxa faced a dilemma: what should happen to this building which carried such memories for so many - 5,000 children had attended over the  years. The decision was taken to take back the building and turn it into a cultural centre to celebrate the language and culture and history of the Ktunaxa. The 1980s were the turning point in Canadian self-awareness; more and more people came to know and understand what had been happening - yet it was not until 1996 that the last such school closed its doors. 

The Ktunaxa Nation has gained ownership of St Eugene as a cultural centre - the traditional tepee stands on the grass in front of the building where their culture was systematically attacked for over half a century.

Suchet's last focus on Canadian life, following in the footsteps of Agatha and Archie, took him to Ottawa and the national art gallery. There he saw the work of the 'Group of Seven' Canadian artists, featured in the 1924 Imperial Exhibition. These artists were dedicated to painting nature in a way that was informed by what they felt not what they were simply seeing. They wanted to establish their own distinctive artistic identity, separate from Britain and Europe.

A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974) - 'Hills, Killarney, Ontario' (c1933)

In the end, the 1924-25 British Empire exhibition, held at Wembley, was not quite the international success that had been anticipated. Twenty-seven million people did attend over the two years and Wembley stadium with its twin towers was built, remaining a London landmark until 2003 - but around £1.5 million was lost overall. Agatha Christie would have had bitter-sweet memories of this time; her husband, Archie, was introduced to Nancy Neele during the world tour and in 1926 he asked Agatha for a divorce. Yet it was Agatha who was nursing the talent that made her different and in a class of her own as she became the prolific professional writer in the 1930s and 1940s, read by millions then and still. 

My friend, David Siggers (1960-2022) with his mother, Christine, in the front garden of their home in Wembley, with the twin towers of the Exhibition stadium in the background. See my tribute to David in an earlier blogpost.