This blog features Writer in Residence work from 2010 and before. For the latest information, please visit the new virtual home of the Writer in Residence program on our new website.
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As some of you who read this blog regularly know, I am a believer in synchronicity. Today I received a note from my friend, Clare, telling me that Zoe at Quill and Quire was planning an article on what it’s like to be a Writer in Residence, and that Zoe was looking for input. Well input I had aplenty. In May and June of 2009, I was WIR at the Toronto Reference Library. From September 1st to November 30th of 2010, I was WIR at Memorial Park Library in Calgary.
On November 28th, I wrote a summing up blog about my experiences at Memorial Park. Optimistically, I designated that entry as Part I, a heading that did seem to suggest there would be a Part II. Well today, thanks to Clare and Zoe and my own driven Virgo nature, here is Part II.
In Part I, I focused on how my professional obligations as WIR had flowered into personal joys. I learned from and respected the writers who came to talk to me about the work we jointly do; I was grateful for the chances I had to read alone or with other writers at the branches of Calgary’s stretched-to-the-limits-but-coping- nobly library system; and although I was a reluctant blogger, I enjoyed the chance to ponder and write about my relationship with libraries in general and with the CPL in particular. Briefly put, the professional part of the WIR experience was immensely satisfying, but the personal rewards were even greater.
Before last September, Ted and I had been to Calgary perhaps ten times—always on book business—and that meant we saw libraries and bookstores, traffic and the inside of more than one nice restaurant, but we had never really seen much of the city itself.
The WIR experience changed all that. For three months we were Calgarians, and it was a great experience. We chose our condo on-line. We didn’t know the city but on the city map 17th Street SW just off 17th Avenue looked close enough to downtown to work for us. In fact, it was perfect. We lived in a very hilly area called Bankview and from the top of our street we had a breathtaking view of the city. We lived within walking distance of Boyd’s, a justifiably revered fish store where everything was splendid but the bag of frozen chowder fish (recipe included) was the best. We also lived near a Russian deli, a great bread store and Priape, a store whose male window mannequins wore black masks, thigh high boots and very nice black underwear. We were close to the great shops of Mission and to the seriously good bars and restaurants of the Red Mile (not a place to show your Rider Pride on the day of a Stamps/Riders game.) We worshipped at Christ Church, a beautiful and affluent church that seemed committed to social activism. We read the Calgary Herald every day and watched the Calgary news at night. We arrived in the middle of a civic election, so we learned about issues and about the candidates. We were in Vancouver on election day, but Ted checked the Internet and announced with a grin that our candidate, Naheed Nenshi was the winner.
In our three months in Calgary, Ted and I didn’t see or do everything we wanted to see and do, but we covered a lot of ground. We went with our grandkids to the special Dinosaur exhibit at the amazing Calgary Zoo, and then we hung around with them while they strode through the real zoo. We went with them to Bragg Creek and the beautiful Kanasksis Country. We walked by Elbow River on a crisp fall day and spent a happy Sunday afternoon strolling the paths of Prince’s Island Park and Eau Claire Market.
The Glenbow Museum had an exhibit of the work of Columbian artist Fernando Botero while we were in Calgary. We tagged along within earshot of a tour, but still on our own. The violence; the humour; the beauty and the colour of Botero’s work is overwhelming and the Glenbow presented the huge paintings and sculptures in generous spaces that gave Botero’s work room to breathe. It was a great show.
So was The 39 Steps at Calgary’s intimate and innovative Vertigo Theatre. Vertigo’s production of The 39 Steps used four actors to present every scene of Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Buchan’s novel, and it was great theatre – funny and inventive and wildly theatrical. Full disclosure. Vertigo’s productions are all mysteries and in 2011 I’ll be working on a play for them. I am happy about this not just professionally but personally.
I love our lives here in Regina. Ted and I believe that the best thing we’ve ever done is become parents and grandparents. We missed the kids and grand-kids a lot during our three months away. That said, we found it very difficult to leave Calgary. It’s a great city. One of our new friends in Calgary said “I feel as if I’ve known you forever.” Ted and I felt that way about so many of the people who welcomed us into their homes and their lives—especially Marje Wing, the librarian with whom I worked most closely.
It’s impossible not to look back at the year just past on New Year’s Eve. On this new year’s eve, I know that Ted and I will count our three months in Calgary with Marje and the CPL as among our greatest blessings. Ted and I love being Mum and Dad and Mimi and Grand-dad, but for three months it was kind of fun to be Ted and Gail again, discovering a new and shining city together. Thank you, Marje and thank you, Calgary.
The 2010 Writer in Residence program has wrapped up and Gail Bowen has gone home to Regina.
The program was extremely successful and Gail got great feedback on her presentations and consultations.
If we are successful in obtaining grant funding, we will offer another writer in residence program in 2011. Please watch this space to see our future plans.
There are two other writer in residence programs in Calgary at this time. Information can be found at:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/markinflanagan/
http://www.canauthorsalberta.ca/writers-in-residence
My tenure as the 2010 Writer in Residence at Memorial Park Library here in Calgary is winding down, so on Friday I filled out my final report. The document isn’t quite an apologia pro vita sua – ‘a defence of one’s life’ for those of you who didn’t sit through Miss Bauer’s Latin class for five years of your life. It is, however, an accounting of what I’ve done to earn my salary from the CPL in the past three months.
Like any report destined to be presented to a variety of official “To Whom It May Concerns” mine is long on facts and short on heartbeat. Number of manuscript evaluations and consultations with Emerging Writers (36); number of assessments of revised work (3). Number of Public Readings and Discussions of the Craft and Business of Writing (16); Number of blogs posted relating my experiences with the CPL or with the writing and reading community at large (12).
Dry stuff – what Robertson Davies would call ‘the police court facts’. But as Davies reminds us, the police court facts reveal only a partial truth.
Here’s the skinny on what I’ll remember of my time here.
Consultations with Emerging Writers: Every one of the writers who came down to my tiny basement office in the library brought me a fresh appreciation of how much the act of creating something new matters in a writers’ life. The writers I saw varied in age, experience and level of development, but without exception they were ready to do what it took to bring their writing to a level where it would pleasure and insight to a reader.
I heard of a Writer in Residence in Toronto whose meeting with an emerging writer got off to a shaky start when the WIR began to make suggestions about the manuscript and the Emerging Writer loftily announced, “I am a WRITER, not a RE-WRITER.” Luckily for me (and for them) all the writers who came to my office realized that the re-writing is the burden and the blessing that all writers must carry. Their excitement as they discovered new possibilities in their manuscripts – the advantages of a different point of view; of ways in which characterization might be deepened, tension increased or expression of ideas clarified and smoothed—always ignited a parallel excitement in me.
There are no guarantees in the writing business. Some of the writers I saw are creating manuscripts that deserve to be published now; many are writing manuscripts that, with work, will indeed, be publishable. Every writer who came through the door to my office believes that writing is central to his or her life. None can imagine a life without writing. This fact alone means that their work has illimitable possibilities. They will keep at it until they succeed, and that is a very exciting thing for a WIR to witness and remember. I thank them for that.
Public Readings and Discussions of the Craft and Business of Writing:
Not counting the two events I did at Vancouver’s International Festival of Readers and Writers, in Calgary I appeared either alone or with colleagues before 16 large and interested audiences to talk about my writing and writing in general. For any writer public appearances are immensely gratifying and ego soothing, but my memories have less to do with ego than with simple pleasure.
Each appearance was special in its own way, but I’d like to mention a few that stand out. On September 11th, Memorial Park Library held the Alberta launch of “The Nesting Dolls” and the launch of me as Writer in Residence. It was a bright September day and the newly restored Memorial Park glowed. I remember, Marje Wing, the librarian in charge of me and the event, looking out into our downtown park and saying I’m so glad they have the fountains on for you. I felt the sparkling fountains were auspicious too. The day was gorgeous and both Marje and I wondered if people wouldn’t be seduced by the sunshine and stay outdoors.
What I remember most about the day is Marje’s face. Like me, she is a worrier, and she wanted the book launch to be welcoming. As more and more people arrived, we had to find more chairs. When we ran out of chairs and knew the event would be SRO, Marge’s smile was wide. It was a great afternoon. The audience was warm and when I glanced outside at the water dancing from the fountains I knew my time at Memorial Park would be a happy one.
Literacy Day at Central Library was also an SRO event. Everyone there got a free and very tasty box lunch, and after we munched I read from my new Rapid Reads book “A Good Story Well Told” and we had a really solid discussion of why the ability to read competently and confidently mattered so much. Literacy Day was one of the many times in Calgary when I took away more from an event than I brought to it.
My event with the women of the Calgary Women’s Literary Club was gold-edged. I have blogged about this club, so all I’ll say here is that the women in it are very serious about their reading; they’re very thoughtful; they’re very smart and they’re a lot of fun. After my event and after attending Aritha van Herk’s event with the CWLC, I’ve decided that in the next life I’m going to be a Calgarian and hope the ladies will take a shine to me and invite me to join the group.
The readings at some of the branch libraries – Country Hills, Louise Riley, Fish Creek and Crowfoot--gave me a chance to meet new readers, and to see the Calgary that existed beyond my own downtown-centred world. This is a big, diverse and ever-changing city and my readings at the branches gave me insight into the energy and dreams that drive Calgary’s growth.
The reading I did at Central Library with Aritha van Herk and Val Fortney during the noon hour of November 12th was an emotional one for us and for the readers who drifted in, were interested in what they heard and stayed. Our topic that day was Canadians At War, and our talk was talk of the best kind. As writers and readers we connected. Alistair MacLeod says that writers write about what worries them. Clearly war and its toll on soldiers and civilians alike worried everyone in that room. It was good to be together.
Blogs:
During my time at CPL, I posted 12 blogs that related my experiences with the CPL or with the writing community at large. I think the blogs reflect the fact that my time as WIR has been an enriching one, but I’d like to close this entry by referring to a blog that suggests the relationship with any library enriches everyone.
In September, I wrote a blog called “The Most Important Building in the City” about a brief encounter I had when I was WIR with Toronto Reference Library in May and June of 2009. A young man who appeared to be of mid-eastern descent gave me his seat on the subway (as young men increasingly do). He asked me if I’d had a good day, and I said yes. Then he asked where I worked. When I told him that I worked at the Toronto Reference Library, his face lit up. “That’s the most important building in the city,” he said. “When I came to this country I went to the Reference Library every day because I knew that the library contained everything I needed to know to be a Canadian.”
The Toronto Reference Library asked my permission to use that blog in their fund-raising campaign. I gave my assent readily because, like that young man on the subway, I knew that wherever we live, the library is “the most important building in the city”.
Gail Bowen
The Nesting Dolls: Gail Bowen Author Reading
One of Canada's most popular crime-fiction writers and our 2010 Writer in Residence reads from her latest Joanne Kilbourn novel.
Fish Creek Library
11161 Bonaventure Drive SE
Thursday, November 25
2:00 – 4:00 pm
This is the last public reading that Gail Bowen will be doing while she is Writer in Residence.
Here in Calgary I’ve noticed that the media has begun to refer to “Remembrance Week”. To me, this is a welcome change. Two minutes of silence to remember those who died in war and those whose lives were forever changed by war has always seemed paltry. My own Remembrance Week began with an extraordinarily beautiful service at Christ Church last Sunday, included a large and moving ceremony at the Cenotaph in Memorial Park and ended on Friday with an event called “Canadians at War: Maverick Legacy”, co-sponsored by the Calgary Public Library and Wordfest.
Three writers: Aritha van Herk, who wrote “Mavericks “, the inaugural choice of the One Book/One Calgary program; Valerie Fortney, who wrote “Sunray: the Death and Life of Captain Nichola Goddard” and me came together to discuss the role Canadians have played during times of conflict past and present. The event was held on the main floor of Central Library between noon and 1:30.
I think all of us who were reading felt a twang when we saw that the podium from which we would read and the chairs for our audience were set up in a very public area with a great deal of foot traffic, but it turned out that having the event so clearly open to the public was perfect. We had a solid core of people who came for the program, but many others wandered by, were interested in what they heard, found a chair and stayed.
Perhaps because of the informal nature of our gathering those of us who were speaking spoke personally and from the heart. Aritha told of the day Canadian soldiers, tall, healthy and well-fed, came to the gate of her home, a home that like all other homes in the war-torn Netherlands of World War II was painfully short of food. One of the soldiers gave her a brother a chocolate bar and having never seen a chocolate bar, the boy ran inside and told his parents that there was a big man at the gate and the man had given him a stick. Later, Aritha’s parents talked to the soldier and when he told them that Canada offered vast spaces and limitless opportunities, they decided to emigrate. Aritha was born in Alberta. Yesterday, when she spoke of her gratitude to that soldier for changing her life and the lives of everyone in her family, she had to fight her tears.
I spoke after Aritha, and her story sparked a story of my own. After my grandfather was killed in the First World War, my grandmother, born and raised in Kent, uneducated and with two young children to raise on her own, left Toronto and went home to England. She saw immediately that in England the lives of her children would be limited by the fact that they were working class, and she returned to Canada. The lives of my grandmother’s children were, by anyone’s measure, good and productive. The possibilities realized in my life and in the lives of our children and their children would be beyond her imagining.
At Friday’s event, I read from a novella called “1919: The Love Letters of George and Adelaide”. I wrote it with Ron Marken, everybody’s favourite English professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Until this past week, I hadn’t read the book in 23 years, and I found myself in tears—not at the excellence of the book but at the power of the facts behind it.
In “Fifth Business” Robertson Davies’ protagonist, Dunstan Ramsay, has a haunting line about what it was like to be a young soldier returning home after World War I. “We had seen all of the worst of life and none of the best,” he says. “We were like pieces of meat that had been burned on one side and were raw on the other.” 1919 follows a year in the lives of a young nursing volunteer, Adelaide Farlinger, and two young soldiers, George MacTaggart and Roger Currie, as they try to tunnel through their memories of the worst of life to discover something good and beautiful. Adelaide and George are able to find that purpose and beauty; Roger cannot find a way through the darkness and pain, and he commits suicide. In our research, Ron and I learned that there were many “Rogers” – men who, well after the war was over, died of what the newspapers euphemistically referred to as “nerves”.
Valerie Fortney’s account of the writing of “Sunray: the Death and Life of Captain Nichola Goddard” was riveting. Valerie began with the fact that what most of us know about Nichola Goddard is that she was the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat, and that Nichola Goddard would have hated that permanent epithet. Valerie never met Nichola Goddard, but she spoke to the scores of people who knew her best: her parents; her husband; her friends and the soldiers who served with her. Nicola’s own letters home – and there were many of them—were a treasure trove. She held nothing back, and when you read those letters, you can hear her voice.
As the book jacket notes, on the day she died, Captain Goddard had already earned herself a spot in the history books by being the first Canadian solider since the Korean War to call in a fire mission against enemy combatants. The term “sunray” in military parlance refers to a leader, and Captain Goddard was, by all accounts, a fine leader: brave, smart, capable, strong and compassionate. There was every reason to believe that she would advance through the ranks to a position of great distinction.
Nichola Goddard was also a human being: a daughter deeply loved by her thoughtful, pacifist parents; a wife deeply in love with her husband, a lover of spas and creature comforts and of the movie, the Princess Bride. The dress Nichola wore at her own wedding was lacey and romantic—a dress for a princess. She studied at RMC and had a degree in English Literature. She was particularly attracted to the poetry written by soldiers like Wilfred Owens who came back, forever changed, from the trenches in World War One.
Hearing about her zest for her life as a soldier and a woman, I wonder what Captain Nichola Goddard thought of Wilfred Owens’ angry rejection of what he came to call “the Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est. Pro patria mori”.
The idea that it is sweet and right to die for your country is, I think, something worth pondering and not just in Remembrance Week.
Gail Bowen
For a man who died over 90 years ago, and who, at the time of his death in Ypres, was 35 years old, Nathaniel has played a large part in my life; in the lives of my children and now, in the lives of my grandchildren. Nathaniel was my grandfather.
I never knew him. I knew and loved his wife, my Nana, Hilda Exton Bartholomew, and their daughter, my Aunt Hilda Bartholomew Burke (known in our family as ‘Hildy’) Hilda Burke was and continues to be the best woman I’ve ever known. We named our first child, our much-loved daughter, Hildy after my grandmother and my aunt.
There’s something potent about family names. Certainly there was something potent about the fact that Ted and I chose to name our third child and second son, Nathaniel. Our Nathaniel was born on Remembrance Day and in a very real way, our Nat has brought his great grandfather into our lives. From the time he was very young, our Nathaniel has seen his name and the fact that he was born on November 11th as both an obligation and a gift. He has never missed attending services at the Cenotaph in Victoria Park, and he has a solid knowledge of the history and of the poetry of World War I.
A couple of years ago our Nat heard about the Canadian government’s Virtual Memorial Program. He followed the necessary links on the internet and discovered that his great-grandfather was born on May 4, 1883 and died on November 18, 1918. Nat printed out the attestation papers that Nathaniel Bartholomew signed to join the army. Nathaniel Bartholomew’s height and weight were noted on the paper and his signature was at the bottom of the page. Seeing my grandfather’s signature on the paper that would lead him from his wife, children and the home he had built on Prescott Avenue in Toronto to death in Ypres was an experience I will carry with me forever. Through something called The Maple Leaf Project, our Nathaniel found a picture of the grave of Nathaniel Bartholomew. The picture is in my office where I write, and I look at it often and I wonder about the man he was.
I’ve seen a picture of course. He was a handsome man – dark haired, with the luxuriant moustache that was the fashion of the time. My grandmother seldom spoke of him. When I asked her why she had never re-married, she replied, “Once was enough.” I have contemplated that terse and enigmatic statement for many years. Nathaniel Bartholomew was a brick-layer by trade and he built the house at 84 Prescott Avenue where I grew up. I visited the house last summer when we were in Toronto. It’s still standing and it’s still a good house. My aunt adored her father. In a day when working class children were not pampered, Nathaniel built his daughter a playhouse in a section of the garage on Prescott Avenue. My own father was very young when his father was killed and has no memory of him. My uncle Ben who was with his brother at Ypres had a breakdown after Nathaniel died. It was years before Ben returned to his wife and family in Toronto. He was the kindest man I’ve ever known. Our son Max Benjamin and our grandsons, Ben and Peyton Benjamin are named after him.
I learned yesterday in our Remembrance Day service at church that while the families of those who died in the first World War were often told that their fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers had ‘died instantly’, the reality was less comforting. Most soldiers died agonizing deaths—often from wounds that became infected from the sludge of mud, blood and human *** through which the Canadian soldiers trudged day after endless day. The fact that my grandfather died seven days after the Armistice was signed suggests that his death was not an easy one.
This week our Nathaniel sent his brother, sister and Ted and me the link to a vigil in Ypres, Belgium. During the vigil, the names of all those killed in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, The Canadian Merchant Navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps would be displayed two at a time on screens large and small throughout the world. By going on-line, you could discover exactly when your family member’s name would appear. Nathaniel Bartholomew’s name, along with the name of Francis H. Beaufort, appeared at 10:17 yesterday morning—at the exact moment when it appeared in Ypres. Seeing Nathaniel Bartholomew’s name and knowing that tens of thousands of others were seeing my grandfather’s name was another moment I will carry with me.
Later at church, we heard the old words:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
We will remember them.
Then M/Cpl Dave Ramsey played The Last Post and Reveille, and together, we wept.
Gail Bowen
Yesterday, Aritha van Herk came to my home library, Memorial Park, to talk about her book Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta. Because she was addressing the Calgary Women’s Literary Club, a group that has been here since Calgary’s beginnings, Aritha focused on our city. She’s a wonderful speaker – warm, knowledgeable, funny, respectful of her audience and absolutely in love with her subject. Aritha’s eyes danced as she talked not just about this city’s history but about its two great gifts of beauty and resources and of how Calgary’s citizens are charged with the obligation to be responsible stewards of what they have inherited and of what they will pass down to their children and their children’s children.
Ted and I cherish our copy of Mavericks. Aritha recommended reading it in small bites – the way you would eat truffles or a fine cheese, because Alberta history is rich and some of it takes a while to digest. But I had read and loved the chapter “Ladies, Women and Broads” before I came yesterday, and it was a delight for me to hear Aritha read it . Without her permission (but I know she would give it because she’s a generous person), I’m going to quote 2 sections from the chapter’s opening.
This was the way to be a woman in the West.
Figure out how to harness the horse by using the illustrations of harnesses in the Timothy Eaton’s catalogue. Read the catalogue and dream about what you do not have. When the new one arrives, cup up the old one for pictures, paper dolls. Flour sacks make durable sheets and pillowcases, tea towels and underwear. The trick is to soak them, then bleach them, then boil them to erase their shameful letters. No one will ever know you’re not wearing silk….
Stuff mattresses with straw, stitch feather and woolen quilts. Pray for Chinooks. Pray for a post office, a party line, a midwife, a neighbour with a sense of humour. Pray that soon you’ll leave this sod shack and live in a two-story frame house with three bedrooms upstairs, front and back parlours, a dining room, a pantry and a kitchen –and a cellar to keep carrots and potatoes firm enough to eat in February. Pray that your grandmother will send you a barrel of apples from Ontario.”
Last week on our way back from Edmonton, Ted and I stopped at CrossIron Mills, “Calgary’s newest shopping, dining and entertainment Centre” – just north of Calgary – 150,000 square feet of anything anyone anywhere could ever possibly want to buy and own. A veritable pleasure palace. Yesterday when Aritha was reading from “Ladies, Women and Broads,” I found myself wondering what those women in their bleached, boiled, flour sack underwear would made of CrossIron Mills. Probably, like me they would have been struck dumb by the sheer number of choices available to them.
But as superficially different as the lives of these sod-hut dwellers are from the lives of the Calgarians in 2010 who live in the sprawling prosperous suburbs or in the equally prosperous older neighbourhoods like Bankview where Ted and I are renting a condo, I think in many essential ways the people themselves are the same. Today’s Calgarians, like their ancestors, are proud dreamers who don’t fear hard work and don’t apologize for wanting more. Like the men and women who lived in the sod huts, today’s Calgarians put in long hours without complaint because they believe in the potential of their shining city.
Two and a half months is not long enough to come to understand a city, but after two and a half months in Calgary, Ted and I feel the buzz. This is a city that has only just begun. Watching the tallest office tower outside Toronto take shape is a thrill. Love it or hate it (and people do both, sometimes simultaneously), the Bow, named for its distinctive crescent shape and its view of the Bow River, is building that makes the blood rush. Driving through the lightshow that night after night is downtown Calgary after dark is another pulse quickener. Simply put, living in Calgary is pretty much like water-skiing behind a really powerful boat – it’s great as long as you remember to hang on tight.
In a few weeks, Ted and I will go back to our very happy, slow paced life in Regina. Once again, we’ll be paddling our canoe in familiar placid waters. It’ll be great to be home, but I’ve already tucked away a calendar filled with pictures of Calgary. When we need a jolt of adrenalin, Ted and I will look at those photos and we’ll smile at our memories.
Gail Bowen
Canadian novelist Alistair MacLeod once observed that “writers write about what worries them”. If he’d been in Vancouver this week at the International Writers and Readers Festival, Alistair MacLeod would have been cheered by the talk that went on informally among writers when they weren’t onstage. If the gatherings at which I was present are representative, writers have some large and provocative ideas that are driving them to write.
Ours hosts Susan and Lonnie arranged for us to have dim sum at Floata, the largest Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. It seats 1,000 and is apparently a favourite for massive weddings and receptions. Floata is also famous for its lunchtime dim sum, and that’s why were there. For me, dim sum is the most sociable of meals – the round table, the sharing of dishes, the pouring of tea fosters a sense of communion that is particularly welcome when scores of strangers are brought together at an event like an International Book Festival.
We were joined at Floata by another of Susan and Lonnie’s charges for the Festival, the novelist, Camilla Gibb. Her latest novel The Beauty of Humanity Movement is set in contemporary Vietnam. The novel has as a central character an old man who once owned a restaurant patronized by artists and writers but who, after he fell afoul of the Communist regime is banished to the streets where he sells his famous Pho from a cart. Camilla had with her her one month old daughter, Olivia, and Olivia’s nanny, Eveline.
The seven of us (well that seven counts Olivia who truthfully didn’t eat much) ordered way, way too much food. I believe this is an ancient Chinese tradition. The food was great but the conversation was even better. Our youngest son is 30, but I’m still recovering from his birth. I was dazzled at Camilla, a single parent, who’s been on the road doing a book tour pretty much since the day of Olivia’s birth. Predictably, much of our talk was about combining parenthood and writing but the most compelling conversation was, as they say in the movie biz, a back-story to Camilla’s new novel.
After Camilla graduated from Oxford with a Ph.D. in Anthropology, she came back to Canada and began working as a career counselor for U. of T. She hated the job. One day a colleague asked her what would make her happy and what was standing in the way of her dream. Camilla’s answer to the first question was “Writing”; her answer to the second was “lack of funds.”
A week later, her friend returned with a box filled with cash -- $6,000 to be exact. This was in 1999. Six months later, Camilla’s first novel was finished and she was on her way. She had been thinking about ‘retribution’ for this gift and several years ago when she was in Vietnam, she found the perfect candidate: her friend Phuong who longed to open a pho shop of his own but lacked cash. Camilla gave him $6,000 and the circle was complete. Someday when the time is right, Phuong will start another circle.
Later that same day, Ted and I went on a harbour cruise that the organizers of the Writers Festival had arranged for its writers and their beloveds. Our boat was a converted tugboat named La Fille that had been nicely fitted out with soft cushions, warm blankets, fresh flowers, wine, cheese, vegetable platters and truffles. More tough sledding for the Bowens.
Our boat held, I think 22 people, and we were full, but the most provocative conversation that I was involved in seemed to be almost an extension of Camilla’s story at dim sum. I was sitting with Katie Smith Milway, a Canadian writer of children’s books who lives in Wellesley Massachusetts.
Katie’s first book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference “received international acclaim for enlisting children in the cause of microfinance.” Her latest book, The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunter to Having Enough” provides children with the chance to grow “good gardens “ and foster food security. Katie speaks passionately about our responsibility as human beings to help others change their lives.
Clearly, writers like Camilla and Katie are writers whose concerns go well beyond their next royalties cheque, and they are not alone. Many of the writers here at the festival are also activists, people who are working to make the world we write about and worry about a better place. Alistair MacLeod would be proud.
Gail Bowen
Calgary has a new independent bookstore, Shelf Life Books. Given the current tumultuous state of the book business, that fact alone is worth celebrating. And Shelf Life is throwing a party, a Grand Opening Extravaganza—“three days of festivity, foolishness, and celebration”, October 28th to 30th. I’ll be there, and so will many others because there is another reason to rejoice. Shelf Life believes its mandate is “to support and display and promote and yes, actually SELL the work of local, regional and Canadian authors.”
As a Canadian writer, I believe that commitment alone deserves a double chocolate cupcake with whipped cream and sprinkles. I’ve been writing the Joanne Kilbourn series for twenty years, but I well remember how significant independent bookstores like Shelf Life Books were when I began. There’s something called “hand selling” in the book business. Hand selling is a highly personal interaction between those who work in the bookstore and their patrons. In Shelf Life’s case, this will mean that the bookstore owners and their colleagues will read new books by local, regional and Canadian authors, consider the interests and passions of their clientele and do a little match-making. If the reader feels a spark for the new book the Shelf Life person is recommending, a sale is made and what we all hope will be a long and happy relationship between reader and author begins.
I cannot over-estimate how important hand selling is to a new writer or to new books that may not be blockbusters but are worthy of attention. These books will bring hours of pleasure to their readers, and the sale of these books will allow writers—local, regional, Canadian-- to keep on writing.
The women Marje Wing of Memorial Park Library calls ‘our Founding Mothers’, the members (past and present) of the Calgary Women’s Literary Club, understood and fostered the mutually sustaining relationship of readers and writers. In 1906 ‘our Founding Mothers’ approached the American industrialist and advocate of libraries, Andrew Carnegie, and convinced him to contribute to the establishment of Calgary’s first library. I am now Writer in Residence at that Library. As I’ve said in other blogs, it’s a beautiful and gracious building.
More significantly, Central Park Library (as it was then known) became the cultural centre of the city. It was the meeting place for many educational and arts groups—most notably (to me at least), the Calgary Women’s Literary Club. In those early days, the members specialized in the study of Browning and Shakespeare. Shakespeare was, I have read, particularly popular “not only for his female protagonists but because study of his plays exposed the autodidact to history, geography, etymology and classical sources.”
Earlier this month I had the genuine pleasure of reading at a meeting of the Calgary Women’s Literary Club. The members still set their sights high. Each spring the theme for the upcoming year is decided upon and each member is assigned a writer. She will be expected to read all of that writer’s work and to read widely about that writer. Then she will deliver an hour-long report to the club’s members. For many years those scholarly reports were hand-written.
The theme for 2010-2011 is “Women writers of the twentieth century, women who made an impact through their political views, fiction, journalism or poetry.” Members have delivered or will be delivering papers on Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, Susan Brownmiller, Rebecca West, Anais Nin, Betty Friedan, Gertrude Stein Gloria Steinem, Anne Lindberg, Angela Carter, Charlotte Perkins and Andrea Dworkin. This is not a cosmopolitan-drinking, “Sex in the City” reading book club!
Now that Shelf Life has moved into 1302 4th Street SW and the Calgary Women’s Literary Club is comfortably ensconced most Tuesday afternoons in the meeting room at Memorial Park Library, it seems highly likely to me that the Memorial Park area is destined to once again become the cultural centre of the city. I just hope Shelf Life will stock some Shakespeare and Browning for old times’ sake.
Gail Bowen
I’m a believer in serendipity, defined by my faithful sidekick, Wikipedia, as “a propensity for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated”. WordFeast – the evening of “dinner drinks and celebration” that kicked off WordFest this year was held in the Canadian Pacific Pavilion of the Palliser Hotel. From the moment I tasted their succulent, incomparable Alberta Prime Rib, I’ve been able to find the Palliser with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back, but I had no idea where the Canadian Pacific Pavilion was.
As it turned out neither did the handsome couple that walked into the lobby at the exact moment I did. I was by myself because WordFeast is a fundraiser, and unless you’re a writer, tickets cost $200.00. Ted and I discussed the question of whether he would accompany me to the dinner and decided that he would be happier staying home with a sandwich watching “The Good Wife”. So, I was alone and looking for the Canadian Pacific Pavilion when I met the handsome couple that, coincidentally, was also looking for the Canadian Pacific Pavilion. We joined forces.
As we began our search the woman, an ophthalmologist, apologized for the large summer purse she was carrying. She said they’d had a house fire recently and she couldn’t find anything. I said I understood because years ago, just after I celebrated my 40th birthday, we’d had a house fire. It was an OMG moment for the ophthalmologist and me. Her house fire also occurred shortly after her 40th birthday. And there was more. By the time we reached the Canadian Pacific Pavilion, she and I discovered that we were both Anglicans; we both did yoga; we both owned big black dogs, and we shared an aversion to the hymn “Amazing Grace”. As it turned out, we were also seated at the same table for dinner. Serendipity.
And--as they say on the info-ads that pop-up on late-night TV-- there was more. The handsome man who was accompanying my new friend, Vivienne, was not her husband but a family friend and the architect who was drawing up the plans to restore her home. He was also the man in charge of the children’s program at Christ Church, the church we’ve been attending in Calgary, and the church in which Vivienne and her husband (also an ophthalmologist) are active. In Regina, we always claim there are only two degrees of separation. I believe this may also be true of Calgary.
At any rate, the architect/Church school teacher turned out to be David Grantham, who is a member of the Board of WordFest. He, too, was at our table. As were Susie Morgenstern, who writes books that children love; Anne Pope, a sculptor with some fascinating ideas about women and art, and two other architects, both of whom were knowledgeable about just about everything.
It was a lovely party. The elusive Canadian Pacific Pavilion turned out to a gorgeous space – lots of glass and a spectacular view of the Calgary streetscape. The champagne was cold; the food was hot; the emcee-- a lanky, attractive young Calgarian who had worked in NYC media and come home to work in Calgary media--was relaxed, funny and knowledgeable. There were two official speeches of thanks to Anne Green who is retiring after fifteen years of presenting WordFest.
The first, by Jane Urquhart, focused on Anne Green’s personal connection with each of the writers who comes to WordFest. I can attest to this. I was last at WordFest in 1996, but when I saw Anne at Memorial Park library on Tuesday, the first thing she said was “Remember how you left your trench-coat in Banff the last time you were here?” That’s impressive. Impressive too, is the kindness with which each of us is treated—and yes, the organizers (perhaps Anne herself) got my trench coat to me in time for the rain that greeted us that year at the Vancouver International Writers Festival.
Alberto Ruy-Sanchez of Mexico spoke of Anne’s courage in not shying away from the erotic nature of some of his poetry. He praised her as well for not fearing controversy in her choice of writers or in the writers she arranged to appear together in panels more often than not have generated both heat and light.
I started out this piece by talking about ‘serendipity’, and I’ll close there too.
The conversation at our table was stellar. We laughed a lot. We talked about books and writers and architects and art. We talked about faith and children and work. We played a game of ‘What writer would you interview if you could interview anybody?’ (I chose Colm Toibin). We amended the rules for the architects—they could choose an architect. My dinner partner chose LeCorbusier. We were all reluctant to say goodnight. For a few hours the people at our table had experienced joy with strangers who just happened to be book-lovers.
I wonder if that isn’t the real gift readers and writers have been given by Anne Green here in Calgary; by Alma Lee in Vancouver; by Gary Hyland in Moose Jaw; by Greg Gatenby in Toronto; by their successors and by the dozens of others who have worked tirelessly to create events where people can come together and talk about books. Serendipity.
Gail Bowen
Yesterday was the first day of Calgary’s WordFest. This is the fifteenth year of bringing Calgary’s readers together with writers from just about everywhere, and if Day 1 is an indication, it’s going to be a banner year.
Ted and I began our WordFest adventure at my home library, Memorial Park Library, in downtown Calgary. The event was a noon-hour reading called Rebels and Mavericks. The writers were Aritha van Herk, author of “Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta”, Calgary’s choice for One City One Book this year and John Boyko, an academic whose latest book, “Bennett: The Rebel Who Challenged and Changed a Nation” is described in the festival biography as “the first major biography of Canada’s controversial eleventh Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.” The moderator of the panel was a partner from Mr. Bennett’s old firm Bennett Jones LLP, and he was central casting’s idea of a Calgary trial lawyer, brash, confident, charming and to use a word he constantly mispronounced to great effect as “encouragable”, he was incorrigible.
The room was packed. Extra chairs were brought in and then when they were filled, more chairs were brought in. It was a lovely, lively gathering to celebrate what Aritha van Herk refers to as “Aggravating, Awful, Awkward, Awesome Alberta.”
The partner from Bennett Jones had some delicious stories to tell about R.B. Bennett, an august figure whom the young lawyers all believed was a bit of a dry stick, but who was anything but. My favourite was of RB’s penchant for doling out Christmas bonuses at the office at 9:00 a.m. on New Year’s Day. Any member of the firm who didn’t show up at that time bright-eyed and ready for action would be bonus-less till next year. When a firm member showed up in the top hat and tails that had made him the life of the New Year’s Eve party the night before, Mr. Bennett was not amused.
John Boyko’s anecdotes described a man of incredible self-confidence who knew, at the age of 19, he would be Prime Minister of Canada and never made a false step. Like most Canadians, I’ve thought of R.B. Bennett only in connection with the infamous “Bennett Buggies” of the Great Depression. These buggies were cars that had their engine and windows removed and were pulled by horses because farmers couldn’t afford gasoline. It’s an ugly legacy, but John Boyko’s book gave us a deeper insight to the man, his politics and the role he played in shaping our country. I was particularly struck by the fact that R.B. Bennett, by introducing a federal banking system to replace the system in which every bank printed its own money and stored its own gold as security made it possible for Canada to emerge from the latest of our great recessions in 2008 relatively unscathed.
We bought Aritha van Herk’s “Mavericks” yesterday so it is still un-read, but much anticipated. Van Herk is a novelist, not a historian, but in writing this book she tell us, she fell in love with the history of her province. Listening to her, the overflow crowd at Memorial Park fell in love with that history too. Aritha explained the origin of that now much over-worked word ‘maverick’. The word comes from the surname of a wily rancher who announced to his rancher neighbours that he didn’t believe in branding cattle, so that all cattle that had not been subjected to branding were, ipso facto, his. Over the years ‘a maverick’ has come to describe anyone who refuses to accept the brand another would put on him or her. The refusal of Albertans to accept the ‘brand’ others choose to put on them is something I’m coming to understand and value.
Writers like John Boyko and Aritha van Herk are charged with the task of presenting facts that lead us, as readers, to re-assess received opinions and arrive at our own truths. Anne Green and her incomparable staff at WordFest work tirelessly to bring this community writers who will by turns engage, anger, delight, amuse or provoke them. Every encounter between a writer and a reader changes them both. This is just to thank Anne Green and her colleagues for bringing us together.
Gail Bowen
Join us for the launch of the newest title in Orca’s Rapid Reads series by one of Canada’s most popular crime-fiction writers and our 2010 Writer in Residence.
Fish Creek Library
11161 Bonaventure Drive SE
Thursday, October 7 @ 7:00 – 8:30 pm
CM . . . . Volume XVII Number 04. . . . September 24, 2010r
excerpt:
"Late at night, Studio D is a fine and private place. The CVOX offices are empty, and except for the security guy and a technician down the hall, our show's producer, Nova Langenegger, and I are on our own. After ten years of working together, Nova and I know each others moods, and we anticipate each others needs.
Tonight Nova anticipates that I need a guest expert on death and grieving to keep me from going into freefall during the show. Halloween is tough for me. I met Ariel, the woman I loved and lost, at a Halloween birthday party. We were seven years old. She was dressed as the sun, and the memory of her shining face surrounded by rays of golden foil still stops my heart.
Nova is not often wrong, but as soon as I walk into the control room of Studio D, I know that we're in for a rocky ride. The guest expert and my producer are standing toe to toe, and they both look grim. A stranger who did't know the combatants would put his money on the guest expert. "
Well, if you have read Love You to Death ( and if you haven't, well, this is your opportunity to do so), you have already met Charlie Dowhanuik (or as he's known on air, Charlie D) late-night talk show host, and haunted by past loss. Charlie's show is entitled. The World According to Charlie and truly, it is a strange world. One Fine Day begins with an encounter which has rather eerie overtones for those of us who remember the first episode of HBO's Six Feet Under: bicycling on his way to work, Charlie is clipped by a vehicle, specifically, a hearse, but fortunately for both drivers, it's relatively safe. The driver of the car is a funeral director, who just happens to be a fan of Charlie's show. Their encounter is brief but profound, and after the hearse driver takes off to make his latest pick up, Charlie remembers that Halloween is the Day of the Dead and he has a show to do.
The Halloween night show features a guest expert on death and dying, one Dr. Robin Harris, a six-foot tall, auburn-haired goddess, and tonight, she's wearing a black leather coat, . . . close-fitted to showcase her many assets. And, as the above pull quote indicates, there's tension in the room when Charlie arrives. Apparently, Dr. Harris has requested that Nova block a specific caller, one Dr. Gabriel Ireland, Robin's former lover, and Charlie's producer is less than happy with the request. However, this is but the first of a series of tense situations which arise during the course of the evening. As Charlie states, words can lie but voices never do. Truly, many of the voices are full of pain, and as Dr. Harris responds to the callers, it is clear that, despite her professional cred as a thanatologist, Dr. Harris has a long way to go when it comes to empathy and understanding of the realities of death and loss.
Once Gabe Ireland phones in, the evening takes a definite turn , especially when he tells everyone about his personal birthday plans: ingesting a vial of a deadly poison, and then, taking Robin's six year-old daughter with him on his exit. At its half-way point, the story becomes a cat and mouse game, heightened by the on-air tension between Gabe and Robin. We learn about the difficulties in Gabe and Robin's relationships, and more importantly, we learn that, when it comes to Kali, Robin's daughter, the doctor's ice princess facade melts completely. The Halloween night call-in show becomes a race against time as the police attempt to find Gabe and Kali and prevent the inevitable.
One Fine Day You're Gonna Die is a page-turner of the best sort. Once again, Gail Bowen marshals her considerable talents and crafts a story that you will not stop reading until you reach the end. And when you do, you wonder what's next in store for Charlie, and (hint, hint . . ., Nova. There's more to that statement about anticipating each others needs than meets the eye!). It won't take much to hook readers on this Rapid Read!
Highly Recommended.
Joanne Peters, a newly-retired teacher-librarian in Winnipeg, MB, is a dedicated reader of mystery fiction, and huge fan of the Joanne Kilbourn series. (No, it's not just about the author's first-name, either!!)
This is Literacy Month at the Calgary Public Library. On Saturday there was a full day of literacy programming at Central and, as is often the case, I got the plum assignment: a box lunch and literacy talk to about 55 library patrons.
The lunch was great, and it was exciting for me to talk about my new Charlie D series for Orca. The first Charlie D, “Love You to Death” was published on April 1; the second “One Fine Day You’re Gonna Die” will be published on October 1, and I just sent the manuscript for the third novel, “The Shadow Killer” to Orca last week.
Over the years, readers of the Joanne Kilbourn series had asked me every so often if I was planning another series. I’d always said ‘no’. I enjoy writing the Joanne books and my pace of one novel every two years, allows me to do some other writing and more significantly, to not become the crazy grandmother in the attic whom her grandchildren hear rumours of but never actually see.
There were, then, good and compelling reasons, not to get involved in another series but one fact trumped them all. I cannot imagine a life without reading. Over 10 million Canadians are working at marginal levels of literacy. Most can read to a certain degree but, as ABC Life Literacy notes, these Canadians are not “at the literacy level required for full engagement at work, at home and in the community.”
As someone who taught First Nations students on reserve and in the city for over 30 years, I have seen first-hand the price literacy challenges exact from families. The inability to read competently and confidently erodes a person’s sense of self. The shame, fear and anger that those who struggle with literacy experience distorts their own lives and the lives of family members. I have had seen too many students subjected to spousal abuse because their spouses resented and feared the fact that their partners were moving into a world of books and learning into which they could not follow.
The Rapid Reads series Orca began last spring offers adult learners high interest, engrossing stories told at a level accessible to readers with, at the high end, a Grade 4.5 level of reading skills. Orca offers free downloads of Reading Guides for each of its titles.
I’ve seen these guides and they’re splendid and thoughtful. They also acknowledge a key truth about those who struggle with literacy. The fact that a person cannot read with confidence doesn’t mean that he or she lacks intelligence or valuable knowledge. By linking the Rapid Read books to study guides that allow emerging readers to bring their own life experience to the works they are studying, Orca is acknowledging the value of emerging readers. These are not stupid or valueless people. They are people who lack the key to contributing their very real gifts to their work, their families and their communities.
Many, many people are committed to offering the gift of literacy to members of their communities. As a reader, a writer, a teacher, a mother and a grandmother, I’m proud to be in the company of those who work for literacy here in Canada and throughout the world.
Gail Bowen
Last year when I was Writer in Residence at the Toronto Reference Library I took the subway to work. I am of an age where men offer me their seats on public transit, and I welcome the courtesy. One hot day when we were hurtling along, a young man who appeared to be of mid-eastern descent offered me his seat. He asked if I’d had a good day, and I said yes. He asked where I worked and I told him. His face lit up at the mention of the Toronto Reference Library. He told me that when he came to this country, Toronto Reference Library was the most important building in the city for him. He explained that he knew that everything he needed to make a new life was in that building, and he went there every day.
That young man was just one of many. Every morning, the lobby of the library was packed with people waiting to get inside. Most, like most of us, were immigrants and like the young man on the subway and like generations of people who came to this country in search of a good life, the people in that lobby knew that the key to the good life was the library.
I was born in 1942, and when I started going to Earlscourt Public Library in Toronto, it was filled with what were unkindly referred to as DP’s – Displaced Persons. As ugly as that term is, it offers a useful perspective for understanding what the library meant to people who came to Canada during those first post-war years. Libraries offered the displaced a place of belonging – a place where they could to learn to shape their lives to become the citizens they wanted to be.
Like many people of my generation, I was the first in my family to attend university. When I started at the University of Toronto, my classes were filled with the students who had sat beside me at the shining oak tables in Earlscourt Public Library. Like me, they went on to live lives that would have been beyond the imagining of their grandparents, and they were able to do this because the libraries of this country have always offered people the tools to build new lives.
Here in Calgary at my home library, Memorial Park, and at Central Library, I’ve seen students studying quietly after school. Memorial Park and Central are both downtown libraries and many downtown students don’t live in homes that offer them a place where they can study, read, think and dream. Ernest Hemingway wrote a fine story about the human need to have a place where, whoever they are and whatever their circumstances, they are treated with dignity, as valuable members of the human race. The story is called “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”. For generations, libraries have offered us all a clean well-lighted place to become the people we want to become. I hope we never lose sight of the value of that gift.
Gail Bowen, September 15, 2010
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