Who Look In Stove – And the Edgar Christian Diary

John Hornby (aged 46), Harold Adlard (28), and Edgar Christian (18) built a log cabin by the Thelon River in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 1926, which began their ill-fated adventure. Edgar Christian started a diary in 1926. He made his last entry in June of 1927. Hornby had been dead for six weeks, and Abelard almost a month. Just before Christian died he crawled to the small stove in the centre of the cabin and placed the diary and a letter to his mother and father in the dry cold ashes of the stove. The last thing he wrote was a note he placed on top of the stove: WHO LOOK IN STOVE. He then crawled back to his bunk, pulled a red Hudson’s Bay blanket over his head, and soon after died. The bodies were discovered one year later by prospectors. One year later the RCMP arrived to conduct a formal investigation. They found the faded note, and diary in the stove. (The diary was first published in 1937. Lawrence Jeffery’s drama is based on the diary’s tragic tale; the diary in its entirety is also included to end the book.)

The talent of contemporary theatre is varied, distinct, and no dramatist is more singular than Lawrence Jeffery. His roots are Chekovian, a spare language that probes internal violences, particularly among the rich — “a group,” as The Globe and Mail pointed out, “that is almost entirely Jeffery’s own in Canada.”

Lawrence Jeffery was born in Vancouver, lived in Toronto, the Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Guelph – he died on May 15, 2021. His plays have been produced in Canada and the United States. His Clay was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play and the Governor General’s Award for Drama; Tower was also nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play; Frenchtown was shortlisted for a Governor General Award for Poetry.