The day after we watched yet another version of a Christmas Carol, Uncle Reginald devoted a full session of oralysis to it. He invented something called the Tiny Timometer, an instrument which measured cuteness, and said that we should take readings from it throughout Christmas, especially when corny movies were playing. Every night after that, as we sat watching the likes of Hayley Mills and Julie Andrews succumbing to the call of the convent while angels sang and light came breaking through the clouds, Uncle Reginald would consult the Tiny Timometer, take readings and announce them to the living room (93-94).

These sessions - and Uncle Reginald's continual presence in the young boy's life - provide him with the father figure he is otherwise lacking. Uncle Reginald also serves as comic relief for the tenser moments that arise frequently in the course of the novel.

Aunt Phil, unlike Uncle Reginald, feels that it is her duty to maintain the family's various traditions - not only in their faith, but in their business dealings, as well. Her worldview is tainted by fear, which is why she feels...

She would come over from next door, barge in unannounced to talk to my father, to give him what amounted to his morning pep talk, despite the fact that his day was just ending. The ink was not dry on that morning's paper, and she was already hounding him about tomorrow's. She always told him that the family was counting on him to keep the paper going, "to keep it alive," as she put it (77).
So intense is Aunt Phil's solemnity that Uncle Reginald goes so far as to joke that she has had a "dehumourizer" installed in the house (181).

While Aunt Phil and Uncle Reginald may both represent two extreme worldviews, it is made clear by the end of the novel that Draper Doyle and his sister need both figures in their life in order to guide them and help them decide for themselves what type of adults they will grow into.

Works Cited

Johnston, Wayne. The Divine Ryans. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.