Irving Layton's legacy

Editorial

When he was a year old, Israel Pincu Lazarovitch was brought to Montreal by his Romanian parents. Irving Layton, as he would become known, would recast the Canadian literary scene as a groundbreaking poet and media magnet. He expressed some messianic delusions, which may have been part of a publicity stunt that, coming long before shock value became common currency, represented a marketing talent well ahead of its time.

Layton attended Baron Byng High School, which was made legendary by Mordechai Richler, and which educated generations of Canadian Jews. There, he encountered Tennyson's "The Revenge," which captured Layton's ear and altered the course of both his life and the literary life of this country.

But Layton was thrown out of school – not for poor grades or bad behavior, but because of his radical politics. He had fallen in with a crowd that would join him in the pantheon of Canadian arts and letters, including David Lewis, Louis Dudek and A.M. Klein. His politics would get him blacklisted from the United States, but his oratory gained fame, especially after his defeat of the Oxford-Cambridge debating team.

Growing up in the St. Urbain immigrant neighborhood, Layton honed his scrappy outlook defending himself against anti-Semites. He taught ESL and, in 1942, joined the Canadian army to fight Hitler. Returning to Canada, he taught at Montreal's Herzliah Jewish High School, where he had a profound impact on figures such as Leonard Cohen and TV impresario Moses Znaimer, before going on to teach at the university level.

Though his poetry was gaining respect and wider audiences, it was in 1959, with the publication of A Red Carpet for the Sun that Layton's reputation was solidified. That reputation grew, leading to a Nobel literature nomination.

Layton's impact on Canada has been marked. His poetry is central to the national canon and his early radicalism helped Canada shake off some of its conservative cobwebs. Layton passed away Jan. 4 at the age of 93.

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