Five years passed between the reading of Alfred Nobel’s will and the awarding of the first Nobel Prizes, in 1901. It took that long to establish a structure to award the prizes and administer the fortune, because Alfred Nobel had spoken of his intentions to no one. He had even written his will himself, in order not to have to deal with lawyers and risk being disappointed by them once again. It should be said that, at the end of his life, Alfred Nobel was more interested in the phonograph, the telephone, and various types of projectiles than the administrative side of the institution he had created. In other words, the man — a bachelor who shunned high society and lived a very simple life, considering his means — remained extremely inventive to the end. He is not known to have had any love-life to speak of, which leads one to believe that even his emotional life was subordinated to his inventions. For Alfred Nobel, although he was not a novelist, a day without a new idea was a day gone to waste. He was tireless, mastered five languages, and in politics, tended towards social-democracy. Born in Stockholm in 1833, he grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lived a good part of his life in Paris. He died in Italy, in San Remo, in 1896. As a matter of fact, his long stay in France caused a problem at the time of his succession, as the French state insisted that Mr. Nobel’s fortune was legally located in France. The issue was resolved when it was clearly established that Alfred Nobel had transferred to his native Sweden his team of Russian Orloff horses, a gift from his brother Ludwig. (The three Nobel brothers, known as the “European Rockefellers,” had become rich primarily by operating oil wells in Baku, on the Caspian Sea.) And according to French custom, a man’s wealth was inventoried on the property where he kept his team of horses.
As brief as his testament was, Alfred Nobel’s intentions were clear: each year to reward someone who had made an important discovery or invention in physics, in chemistry, and in medicine and physiology. A fourth prize was to be awarded to an author of a literary work of an “idealist nature,” and a fifth prize would crown the efforts of someone who had done the most to foster good relations among nations, to abolish or reduce arms, and to bring people together around the theme of peace. (The prize for political economy was created in the memory of Alfred Nobel by the Swedish Riksbank in 1968, to mark its tercentenary.) The great inventor’s will stipulated that the Swedish Academy of Sciences would award the physics and chemistry prizes, the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm the one for medicine or physiology, and the Swedish Academy of Letters the literary prize. The Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. Sweden and Norway were politically united at the time Alfred Nobel wrote his will, but when the union was dissolved in 1905, the Storting maintained the role Mr. Nobel had assigned to it.
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Like Scandinavia in Alfred Nobel’s time, the Moncton area and Acadia in general offered little to attract the attention of the world during the first half of 1953. In Moncton, the year began on a practical note with an increase in bus fares. The price of an adult ticket went from seven to ten cents, but a savings was offered at three tickets for a quarter. Children would henceforth pay five cents per trip, but six children’s tickets would cost only twenty-five cents. Until then, they had sold ten for the same price. The new fares came into effect on Wednesday, January 14, the day after Radio-Canada’s Concerts du mardi broadcast Darius Milhaud’s Concerto no. 2, written for the violinist Arthur LeBlanc, and, in a Canadian premiere, played by the Acadian himself and accompanied by the Montréal Symphony Orchestra. During the first half of 1953, the violinist Arthur LeBlanc, the Acadian soldiers in Korea, and the Melanson triplets more or less accounted for Acadia’s contribution to the international scene. As for the students of Saint-Joseph College who spent the winter rehearsing the Bourgeois gentilhomme, they went as far as Victoria, at the other end of the country, to participate in the Canadian Drama Festival, where they did win a prize, though not first place.
Life in Acadia was therefore quiet compared to the upheavals on the international front. When these events became too heavy to bear, one could always turn to the news briefs for a more human perspective on distant horizons. Two in particular captured the imagination of Baby M.’s mother. In Toronto, a father offered to exchange his eyes for a house for his wife and six children, who were living in a garage. The man found a buyer, but the blind buyer, who “knew what it was to be blind,” required only one eye from the unfortunate father, who had thought “blindness was preferable to poverty.” The other news brief was about a London cab driver who did not like foreigners and who was fined eleven dollars “for refusing to accept an Arab sultan as a passenger.” The man later gave up driving a cab when he learned that the sultan in question had been-known to leave tips of 140 dollars.
Baby M.’s mother felt that a newspaper ought to deal with all facets of life, and enjoyed the fact that the entirely commonplace, such as an ad for Barbour products, appeared alongside the most extraordinary. It should be noted that Barbour provided something more or less universal, with its homogenized peanut butter, its prepared mustard, its jellied desserts in six flavours, and its double-action Acadia baking powder. Other advertisements punctuated the daydreams of energy-drained housewives: Cream of the West and Five Roses fought the flour wars, Domestic peddled its lard, Kraft its Parkay margarine, Magic its baking powder, and Fleischman its yeast. As for tea and coffee, Chase & Sanborn, Nescafé, Salada, and King Cole offered no less than the best. But when it came to beverages, no one could match the genius of the H. F. Tennant distribution company of Church Street in combining the virtues of its product with life’s circumstances. In the first place, the ad explained, Coke, which sold for seven cents a bottle, tax included, or thirty-six cents for a six-pack, went “well with any meal . . . whether right after a soup, a meat dish, or dessert” and “truly made good food taste better.” The product, furthermore, attained the summit of perfection on special occasions — at Easter, for example, when Coke tasted great with baked ham. At the rate of an ad every two weeks, one could learn not only about the beneficial effects of the drink with the “world-wide reputation of quenching thirst fast,” but also about those tough times in life when, really, there wasn’t anything to do but drink a Coke. Whether the “steering wheel starts to stick,” or “your shopping seems to take forever,” or “the heat is unbearable,” it was always time for a Coke. In general, Coke was recommended whenever there was loss of identity of any kind and a reaffirmation of the self was required (“anytime you’re working, take a Coke break”). Canada Dry’s ads (“everybody’s favourite!”) were no match for H. F. Tennant’s clearsighted advertising, whereas those of Sussex Ginger Ale, a local manufacturer, simply asked for the return of empties in order to ensure a continuous supply.
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L’Évangéline also did its part, in 1953, to warn people against a sly new force, as dangerous as Communism or the atomic bomb. The movies, with their enormous capacity to influence the masses, were of concern to all institutions of authority, including the Church, for whom the cinema, along with newspapers and radio, had “knocked down the signposts by which men could think according to their ancestral beliefs and their national mind-set.” Such language, with its references to familiar realities such as signposts, ancestors, and nationalism, pulled on Acadian heart-strings. Many therefore read the series of church-inspired articles dealing with the irresistible power of the seventh art. Possibly because the Church was also thinking of using this means of communication for its own ends, it was careful not to condemn the cinema outright, endeavouring instead to warn people against its pernicious side. According to the Church, by allowing the viewer to experience “generally forbidden or rejected emotions,” movies created an interior malaise not easily overcome. A campaign of decontamination and education aimed therefore to educate Catholics by exhorting them to pay attention to the morality ratings and to abstain from seeing movies that were not recommended. The Church deplored the fact that too many Catholics regarded film mora
lity ratings as good for others but not for themselves. As a result, far too many Catholics were venturing into theatres showing proscribed films.
Statements such as these tended to leave a shadow of doubt in the minds of those generally Catholic people such as Nurse Vautour and Baby M.’s mother, who did, as a matter of fact, consider themselves to be capable of mature judgement. Nevertheless, even such people were not always able to ignore the insinuations of the Church on the subject of human frailties. For religious authorities were warning the faithful against the movies’ real dénouement, which plays itself out once the lights have come back on at the end of the feature and the spectator must quit the world of dreams and return to his or her own life, his or her own reality. In short, the Church did not believe the average man spiritually strong enough to return to the fold after a few hours of identifying with a film’s brave hero, kissing “a beautiful star, whose powers of seduction sometimes far outmatched those of the housewife seated next to him.” On the other hand, under the guise of entertainment, some movies could severely unnerve a viewer and, consequently, disrupt his peace of mind for several days thereafter. Other films, by offering recipes for emotional happiness which were marginally moral or based on material values, forced viewers into “a struggle against themselves in order to uphold Christian lifestyles.” All things considered, the cinema could be a dangerous trap and, still according to the Church, rare were those who escaped its clutches. These repeated warnings often cited the archbishop of Paris Cardinal Feltin’s words, prophesying that human beings would eventually pay dearly for expanding their consciousness.
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In January 1953, there were four movie theatres in Moncton: the Empress, the Capitol, the Imperial, and the Paramount. All together, they showed some dozen films each week. There were also theatres in Shediac (the Capitol), Bouctouche (the Roxy), and Richibouctou (the Pine). Of course, the quasi-totality of movies came from the United States and were shown in English. L’Évangéline published daily listings of movies being shown in all these theatres. The list sometimes included the three Bathurst theatres (the Capitol, the Kent, and the Pines), the three Edmunston theatres (the Capitol, the Star, and the Martin), the Acadia of Saint-Léonard, and the Montcalm of Saint-Quentin. Monday’s list was the longest, as it included movie showings through the following Saturday, the theatres being closed on Sunday. Each film was rated from one to four: a one rating indicated a movie was appropriate for general audiences, a two rating restricted it to mature adults, a three was ascribed to movies containing proscribed scenes, and a four to movies proscribed in their entirety. On the whole, the proportion of movies rated from one to three was equal. By no means were all the best American films of the early fifties shown in Moncton, but several ended up being projected in one or another of the city’s theatres.
In response to Acadian popular demand in the Moncton area, the manager of the Empress theatre agreed to show French films once a week. Because there was only one showing per night, the evening took on a certain chic. Rideau à 8 h 40 was inaugurated Wednesday, January 28, with Fandango, starring the incomparable Luis Mariano, whom Franco-Monctonians had already applauded in Andalousie, which had appeared in the same theatre the previous fall. Nous irons à Paris (We’re Off to Paris), with Ray Ventura and his orchestra, Françoise Arnoul, Philippe Lemaire, and Pasquali, was shown the following week. Tickets for these two première presentations cost seventy-five cents for a seat in the orchestra and sixty-five cents for a spot in the balcony. Prices were reduced to sixty and fifty cents for subsequent shows, which featured La Voyageuse inattendue (The Unexpected Traveller), with Georges Marchal and Dany Robin; Le Sorcier du del (The Sorcerer from the Sky), the story of a saintly priest from Ars, or “Satan’s struggle against a saint,” with Georges Rollin; L’héroïque Monsieur Boniface (The Heroic Mr. Boniface), starring Fernandel and Liliane Bert; Au Royaume des cieux (In the Kingdom, of Heaven), with Suzanne Cloutier; and Je n’aime que toi (I Love Only You), with Luis Mariano and Martine Carol. Some of these films were also shown at the Roxy in Bouctouche and the Pine in Richibouctou, where the program also included Ma pomme (My Apple), starring Maurice Chevalier; La révoltée (The Rebel Girt), with Victor Francen;and Deux amours (Two Loves), starring Tino Rossi. In these Kent County theatres, showings began at 8:30, ten minutes earlier than in Moncton. Also, movies shown at the Roxy on Tuesday were screened at the Pine on Thursday. Judging by the movie listings in l’Évangéline, the Capitol in Shediac did not participate in this effort to show French films. But in June, it did show Petite Aurore, Venfant martyre (Little Aurore, the Martyred Child), and, in December, it screened Vittorio de Sica’s Demain il sera trop tard (Tomorrow Will Be Too Late), which had played in English at the Imperial in Moncton at the beginning of the year. Finally, near the end of the year, the Roxy in Bouctouche also took the initiative to show Procès au Vatican (Trial in the Vatican), a non-controversial film on the life of Saint Theresa, featuring a reconstruction of the Carmel nunnery and its ceremonies.
Though the screening of movies in French was certainly worthy of praise, it did pose certain problems. Baby M.’s father, committed scriptor that he was, had exposed these problems in one of his editorials. In essence, he argued that the operators of commercial theatres should not expect people to prostrate themselves with gratitude because the former had seen fit to show a French film when the print was so bad that the dialogue was barely comprehensible. The Acadian ear not being particularly attuned to the accents of, say, Fernandel, if people had to struggle with poor sound to boot, French movies in Moncton were destined for the sort of death that no advertising campaign could forestall. L’Évangéline applauded the showing of French films in Moncton, but not at the price of scratched prints in which the language was unrecognizable. Such mediocrity was likely to further strain the Acadian people’s spirit of sacrifice (already stretched to the limit by Loyalist persistence and the tentacles of the American dream) and to turn them away once and for all from a French culture which they would end up remembering as indecipherable.
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Criticism, whatever its object, is always more likely to be accepted when people feel that it is justified. This explains why it is generally based on facts. It also explains why selections for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in literature are more often contested than those awarded in the scientific fields. Anyone with the ability to read can have an opinion on a literary work, and any minimally informed citizen may feel qualified to evaluate an international personality. The Nobel juries’ decisions in the fields of chemistry, physics, and medicine and physiology, on the other hand, are more easily accepted, since few people consider themselves qualified to second-guess. It is also possible that the public is more indulgent towards scientists, because we have the feeling that they are really working, as opposed to writers, who often seem to be living the easy life, or those princes of peace, who seem to have a taste for good eating and travel. As a matter of fact, around 1953, the status of people working for peace had become somewhat muddied.
Winston Churchill, the last historian to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, was joined at the awards ceremony by General George Catlett Marshall, the first military man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. General Marshall was recognized for having formulated the American aid plan for the reconstruction of Europe following the Second World War. The year before, the Nobel Peace Prize had gone to the musician and musicologist, theologian, philosopher, and French missionary Doctor Albert Schweitzer. In 1954, 1955, and again in 1956, no one was deemed worthy of the prize. It was not until 1957 that a sufficiently reassuring pacifist figure rose above the crowd: Canadian Lester B. Pearson, who had dedicated himself to international relations for forty years. It was in large part due to his talents that Canada gained the reputation of a country playing an active role to re-establish a lasting world peace. The efforts and qualities of Lester B. Pearson, a likeable, optimistic man with a keen mind, had notably contributed t
o the resolution of the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, a conflict that threatened to ignite a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.
But needless to say, the complex relationship between Baby M. and the world was not restricted to literature and peace. All the sciences played a part. Both the 1953 Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded to the German Hermann Staudinger for his work in macromolecular chemistry, and the 1952 award to two Brits, John Porter Martin and Richard Laurence Millington Synge, for perfecting chromatographic separation, recognized work with the potential to transform Baby M.’s life, or illness. The inventors of paper chromatography, a procedure to analyse substances in extremely small quantities, did much to advance our knowledge of amino acids, an essential component of living matter. In 1954, the Nobel Prize in chemistry went to the American Linus Carl Pauling, a pioneer in the study of chemical links and molecular structure. Starting out in quantum mechanics, Mr. Pauling subsequently turned his attention to the structure of crystals, resonance theory, protein structures, antibodies, hereditary diseases, anaesthesia, and vitamin C therapy. In 1962, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his writings and conferences on the dangers of radioactive fallout.
As for the Nobel Prize in physics, it was awarded, in 1953, to the Dutchman Frits Zernike, who developed the technique for the observation of phases in contrast. This advancement in microscopy may also have influenced Baby M.’s life, since it was now possible to see bacteria and cells which had, until then, remained invisible. The previous year, the Nobel Prize in physics had gone to Felix Bloch, an American of Swiss origin, and to the American Edward Mills Purcell, for their work in nuclear magnetism. In 1954, it went to Max Born, an Englishman born in Germany, for his statistical interpretation of quantum theory. That same year, the Swedish Academy of Sciences also rewarded the German Walther Wilhelm Bothe, inventor of the technique of coincidences in the use of the Geiger counter. His work made a major impact on the corpuscular theory of light and on nuclear fission products.
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