I know that masked woman

I had no time for Pierre Berton while he was alive. I was brought up on those CBC documentaries based on journalist and populist historian Berton's ubiquitously good-for-me history books. Yuck. Until, that is, one of former television news anchor Knowlton Nash's memoirs learned me that Berton was a leftie.

Geez, who from m-m-m-m-my generation could tell? Turns out Berton's "The Comfortable Pew: A Critical look at the Church in the New Age" included a critique of the Anglican church's rejection of gays and lesbians. This in 1965 -- when gay sex was still illegal!

Yup, Pierre Berton, activist. And joker, too. And lawd help me, I love a good literary hoax. From the reference work "Mondo Canuck":

She raises her whip.
"On your knees, worm," she says, coldly. "And do not dare to speak again until I give you leave."
He grovels, the sweat poring from his brow.
His jacket, she notes, is splendidly tailored. He cannot see the single tear rolling down her cheek.

More: "In late spring 1985, McClelland and Stewart, the proudly Canadian publishing stable... published a volume of [heterosexual] erotic short stories called 'Masquerade: 15 Variations on a Theme of Sexual Fantasy.' The first work of English fiction by an obscure Eastern European immigrant named Lisa Kroniuk, the book was published by M&S on the recommendation of Kroniuk's agent, Elsa Franklin....

"The title's promise of forbidden delights notwithstanding, Masquerade stiffed. The only daily newspaper in the country to even bother reviewing it was the Globe and Mail, and its response was, well, flaccid: 'Entertaining,' allowed reviewer Laszlo Buhasz, 'but somehow flawed in execution.'"

Five thousand were printed, only 1,300 actually made it to store shelves. And they all stayed there. After six weeks, press releases went out inviting reporters to a Front Page Challenge-like event where three luminaries had to guess which of three masked women was the real Lisa Kroniuk.

After a few minutes of silliness, the terribly respectable Berton finally stood up and declared authorship of the porn.

"The roots of what the Globe and Mail's William French called 'the most ingenious publicity stunt in the history of Canadian publishing' apparently began with a novel Berton had finished two decades prior to Masquerade, but which [book company honcho Jack] McClelland, presumably highly unimpressed, had strongly advised his best-selling author against publishing. Masquerade was thus Berton's revenge: a way of showing Jack McClelland that not only was he a good novelist -- he was good enough even for Jack McClelland to publish."

Postscript: Masquerade continued to languish on the shelves, and one of Berton's children called it dull. Before she knew her dad had written it. We Canucks, we know good porn when we read it. Er.