Vanier librarian gives his poetry collection to U of Calgary

By Scott McRae

Always told about other lives, never asked about yours. That, according to Marvin Orbach, is a librarian’s lot. Should anyone ask, though, Orbach, who has worked as a Vanier reference librarian for more than 25 years, has a few words to share. In fact, he has already shared over 650 pounds of them.

Since the age of 17 Orbach has been amassing the history of Canadian poetry written in English. A lifetime of collecting has left him with 73 linear feet of poetry books, chapbooks, correspondence, manuscripts, poetry reading invitations, and other ephemeral material, now all shelved at the University of Calgary Library’s Special Collections.

Though his collection has been evaluated at close to six figures, Orbach said he never considered selling it. He wanted to be sure that the collection was placed into public hands.

“I’m just a humble book collector, but I think it’s important to preserve Canada’s cultural artifacts,” he said. The Canadian Cultural Properties Review Board would agree. Orbach’s collection, they wrote in an assessment, is of “outstanding significance and national importance.”

Three years ago Orbach decided it was time to donate this literary treasure. Originally, he had hoped to keep it in Montreal; however, none of the local archives or special collections were willing to accede to his demands that the collection be kept intact, that the institute apply to the Canadian Cultural Properties Review Board to have it acknowledged as cultural property, and that he be able to add to the collection indefinitely.

“McGill already has a rich collection, so they didn’t really need my collection,” he explained. The Bibliothèque Nationale bluntly turned down the offer and Concordia’s archives do not collect in the area.

Having heard that the University of Calgary had an extensive bank of Canadian literature and a keen interest in preserving it, Orbach turned next to them. In the fall of 2002, much to the pleasure of the U of C librarians, his collection found a new home out west.

Apollonia Steele, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Calgary explained that “the collection includes works produced in very limited editions which university libraries may not have been able to acquire or even have been aware of. Mr. Orbach’s collection has enabled us [to] make these available to researchers.”

Several decades ago Orbach began the collection with Montreal poet Louis Dudek’s book The Transparent Sea. The collection now ranges from an 1858 volume of Alexander McLachlan’s Lyrics and the first serious anthology of Canadian verse to works by contemporary poets such as Erin Moure and David Solway.

It is especially strong in documenting Canada’s poetry explosion of the 1960s, and includes a rare volume of Leonard Cohen’s first book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, worth $2,000, and a substantial body of work by Quebec poets Irving Layton and Ralph Gustafson.

For Orbach, his collection has been a lifetime project and he currently adds approximately 10 books a month to it. Part of his drive, he said, came from a sense of mission to carry on the age-old Jewish avocation of book collecting.

Part of it came from the thrill of the hunt. For example, Orbach describes how it took two years to track down a Korean translation of one of Irving Layton’s books. In an age before e-mail, he and various Korean distributors sent letters back and forth before he finally connected with the right person.

More than anything, though, this is Orbach’s thanks to the country that accepted his parents after they left Eastern Europe. “I love Canada,” he said. “This collection is my gift to Canada.”