The Christmas Turr
by Dave Paddon
with original linocut illustrations by Duncan Major
Currently unavailable.
Reprint under consideration.
Well, it wasn’t too long before word got around
And the heavy artillery started to pound.
Our poor little turr felt a strong déjà vu:
“My cripes, it’s the crowd out from Harbour Lecou!”
Of all of the planes he could jump on you see,
He’d jumped on the one to Fort McMurray.
– from The Christmas Turr
In 2008, just before Christmas, CBC radio carried the story of a bird that somehow had found its way onto a plane from Newfoundland that was headed to Fort McMurray, Alberta. Dave Paddon’s hilarious recitation offers a take on what kind of welcome that bird may have met when the plane landed.
The Christmas Turr has fast become a local favourite; Paddon regularly performs it, and his many other recitations, at storytelling and ballad sessions in St. John’s and at festivals across the province.
The text was set by hand in Fournier, and originally letterpress printed at Running the Goat Press in an edition of 360 in November 2009.
The text papers were Velké Losiny handmade in Czechoslovakia; the endpapers are Obonai Feather Grey, and the cover papers are Canal paper from St.-Armand in Montréal.
The chapbook was reprinted in October 2010, in December 2012, and again in February 2016.
