Category Archives: Interviews in 5 questions

Partners in crime . . . writing

Victoria residents Kay Stewart and Chris Bullock are partners in life and crime-writing. Their third mystery in the Danutia Dranchuck series was published this spring. The series features a female RCMP constable who grows more complex with each new book. The authors will be in Vancouver April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia, for the Aurthur Ellis Shortlist event.  Stewart and Bullock recently answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions about the context for and development of  their new mystery, which they’ll launch in Nanaimo at The Coffee Vault (499 Wallace Street) on April 22 at 6:30 pm.

The two of you have logged a total of 50 years as professors of English at the university level. How difficult was the switch from that sort of intellectual work to the challenge of writing crime novels?

KAY: During most of my university years, I was a sessional lecturer, teaching writing and introductory literature courses. So I didn’t have the same stake in academic research and publication as Chris did. Before we began our first crime novel, I had published short stories as well as personal essays and writing textbooks. The stretch for me was moving from short fiction to the novel–no more sketching a character or setting in a few sentences.

CHRIS: In contrast, the switch from intellectual work to writing crime novels was very difficult for me. I discovered that knowing about the theory of fiction–about kinds of characterization and various ways of structuring plots–was little help in writing fiction. So the first drafts of chapters I wrote for our first novel, Deadly Little List, were hopelessly expository, full of reflection and very little action. The turning point for me was taking a writing class with Marilyn Bowering and learning to write in scenes. I also discovered that I needed to notice the life around me rather simply reflect on it, so writing fiction has involved an expansion of perception for me.

You both have lived in Alberta and taught in Edmonton, where there is a sizeable Ukrainian community. Did that influence the creation of your protagonist, who is named Danutia Dranchuk?

 KAY: Definitely. It was important to me that the book reflect something of the Canadian mosaic. I’d had Ukrainian students and neighbours, and I’d recently been fascinated by Myrna Kostash’s revisionist history of Ukrainians in Canada, All of Baba’s Children (reissued 1992). However, I didn’t want my protagonist’s ethnicity to be her defining trait. So I created Danutia Dranchuk, of mixed heritage like many of us. I expect that at some point she will be called upon to re-examine her cultural roots.

Unholy Rites takes Danutia and her “sidekick” Arthur Fairweather to England. Why did you move the action from Victoria, BC, to the wider world stage?

CHRIS:  We hadn’t intended to move Unholy Rites outside Canada, but were drawn by a particular area of England. The landscape and customs of that area seemed to ask us to set our novel there.

KAY: Changing the setting was also a device for keeping our interest as well as the interest of readers. We both enjoy exploring new places and trying to capture the flavour of their inhabitants. By moving into the wider world, we set new challenges for ourselves as well as for our protagonists.

Your acknowledgements thank the “well-dressing community of Derbyshire” for sharing their craft, but I am wondering when you knew this was going to be an integral part of Unholy Rites–before you started the novel, or part-way through?

CHRIS:  Initially, we went to the Peak District in Derbyshire to sell our first novel (A Deadly Little List) at a Gilbert and Sullivan festival.  While at the festival, we toured around a bit and became fascinated at seeing ancient hill forts and stone circles, and witnessing originally pagan customs like well dressing. Our original idea was to set our novel around a stone circle called the Nine Ladies. After mapping out this idea, we discovered that a local crime novelist had already written a book with exactly this setting. So we switched from monuments to customs, and started our second joint writing project with well dressing as a focus. As it turned out, our research into well dressing also led us to some other strange places and areas of interest.

Unholy Rites leaves the reader wondering about Danutia’s future as a RCMP constable. Without giving away any of the suspense, can you talk a bit about your plans for the novel series?

KAY: Like most young women of the last half century, Danutia is faced with questions about “work-life balance,” or, more accurately, “work-life imbalance.” These questions arise in the first book, A Deadly Little List, and intensify in Unholy Rites. The issue may–or may not!–come to a head in book four, which I’m working on now. I don’t know how it will turn out. If her life is like that of most women I know, her world will shift again just when she thinks she’s found some balance.

 

The authors will also appear in Victoria at Chronicles of Crime bookstore (1048 Fort Street) Thursday, May 23, 7 pm in At The Mike, a “conversations with crime writers” event. 

On May 25 from 9:30 to 1 p.m., they will be part of “Making Crime Pay: A National Crime-Writing Month Mini-Conference” at the Greater Victoria  Public Library, Central Branch and will be part of the afternoon “Speed-Dating” event as well.

Tunnels, Treehouses and Trainsmoke!

Coastal Spectator reviewer Noah Cebuliak, himself a musician living in Montreal, recently interviewed travelling-man Jeff Andrew about his new music and his forth-coming CD.  Andrew grew up in Ontario, has a degree from the University of Victoria, and has criss-crossed Canada many times in his near-indestructible 1988 Toyota 4Runner. He calls the vehicle CCRider, and says he has logged 430,000 kilometres in the vehicle.

Jeff, tell me about your inspiration to record in tunnels and other underground spaces. Why are you drawn there and not to other locations, like churches or actual studios? Have you recorded anything in other semi-obscure places, like grain silos or caves or the like?

I’ve always been drawn to the underground. Secret places in general, like tunnels, crawlspaces, secret passages in old houses, sub-basements . . . probably from growing up on mysteries and horror stories. Same reason I love old buildings–they’re full of ghosts. I get a lot of inspiration thinking about the lives that have been lived there, what might have happened in those spaces.

They also tend to have really interesting acoustics. One of my favourite records is by a BC fiddler named Oliver Schroer (who passed away about 5 years ago). He did an album called Camino where he walked the El Camino De Santiago trail in Spain and recorded himself playing in all the old cathedrals. The sound of that album breaks my heart. I listen to it almost every day.

I’ve never done any grain silos or caves but maybe one day! Studios tend to be expensive, and I don’t like the idea of recording in a hermetically sealed chamber, cut off from the outside world. One of the things I love about old folk and blues records that were recorded in people’s houses, hotel rooms, front porches is that you can hear things like old cars in the background, dogs barking, trains rolling by in the distance . . .  they are like a time machine.

What are the songs you’re going to record about? What inspires you to write? Are the songs linked to the subterranean theme at all?

Let’s see, there are a couple of travel songs, a set of fiddle tunes written to sound like a freight train taking off, a murder ballad set in the Carnival era, a lighthearted novelty song about police brutality . . . also an apocalyptic love song and a true story song about a girl named Nyki Kish, who’s serving a life sentence in Ontario for a murder she didn’t commit. I can’t see how she did it, at least, and I’ve read through the judge’s verdict from the trial and dozens of newspaper articles about it. Seems like another case of wrong place, wrong time and the cops desperate to pin it on somebody, so they picked the easiest target. Lots more about her at www.freenyki.org.

There’s also a song called “The Graveyard Downtown,” loosely based on Victoria’s secret history. I learned there used to be a graveyard at Douglas and Johnson, back when that was the edge of the city . . . It’s about what used to be there before the modern city was built. And all the history the city (and Canada as a whole) doesn’t like to talk about. The Chinese head tax, the internment camps, residential schools, the whole reservation system, plus all the Asian people who died building the railroads and the tremendous labour battles that were fought in the 1910s and 20s. Our country was built on a lot of racism, abuse and exploitation. We pay lip service to some of it, but most of the physical legacy is being torn down and replaced with condos. All the old buildings, bridges, alleyways, shipyards, train yards, even the grain elevators–the places where the people who built Canada lived, worked and died–are disappearing. Part of that is an attempt to erase the past, the living history you can see and touch. Reduce it to footnotes in a textbook and it stops being real.

You say in your Indiegogo campaign video that you’ve got a whole collection of obscure string instruments. What draws you toward these fringe instruments?

The new album called “Tunnels,” which you can pre-order and donate to, is going to have to some unusual string instruments on it. I don’t have as big a collection as I’d like, but I do have a baritone violin, a 5-string violin and a Stroh violin. The 5-string has an extra low string on the bottom and the baritone violin has heavy strings on it so I can tune it an octave lower than normal. It’s basically down in cello range. The Stroh violin (which you can see in my profile shot on the Indiegogo page) has a resonator and a big phonograph horn instead of a body. I’ve also got a steel-bodied resonator guitar on a couple of tracks.

I love these early attempts at amplifying strings. They date back to the turn of the 20th century when recordings were done into a giant cone with a needle at the end of it scratching the sound into a wax cylinder. You had to be really loud and forceful to get your playing in through that cone – also to cut through the sound of a horn section on stage. Simple answer: add a horn to the violin!

Are you going to record with a band, live, or will you be multi-tracking and building a bigger sound?

The Stroh violin is somewhere between a fiddle and a trumpet. Plus I can use the baritone violin to build my own string section. So yes, multi-tracking. We actually did most of the recording already in Vancouver–me on guitar, fiddle and vocals, plus Ryan Boeur from Fish & Bird on lead guitar and Kenan Sungur from High Society (who also played drums on my last album), laying down percussion and upright bass. He’s a one-man rhythm section! And Ryan is one of the best accompanists out there right now. And we had Corwin Fox to record it, who’s done two albums for me already and is a brilliant engineer and producer. We’ve all been playing together for a long time, so it went down pretty easy. The tunnel stuff I’m going to do on my own with a handheld recorder later this week.

How is the campaign going? Are you planning a big release and tour for the album after its completed? What are your career expectations for this record?

I told someone recently I want my career to be like that little shack at the edge of town, where the river bends and the tracks have broken down . . . it’s out there waiting for me, in disrepair right now but one day I’ll be able to live in it.

The campaign’s doing well so far, really encouraging. The better it does, the more I’ll be have to pay everyone involved and put into the packaging and promoting of it. So please keep the shares and contributions coming! It means a lot to an independent artist, to get this kind of support.

I’m planning a zine to go with it, a hand-drawn songbook (by Victoria’ s Fraea the Banshee) of all the chords and lyrics. I’m aiming to release it at the end of summer with a couple of big shows in Victoria and Vancouver, followed by a cross-Canada tour (in sections this time, I’m through with doing the whole thing at once. The country’s too damn big!)

After that, we’ll see. I took the last year off from touring and promotion, so I could write and get better at fiddle. I spent this winter in Halifax learning east coast fiddle tunes and playing with an orchestra, trying to get my head around classical music, which I fell totally in love with over  the past couple  of years. I needed a break from the music business, to let the tanks fill up again. Now they’re full, and I’m ready to jump back in the game. I have most of another album written and ready to go; that’ll be a much bigger project with electric guitars and some kind of string section. And plans for a musical after that — or it might turn out to be a novel with an album to go with it.

In other words, yeah. I’m taking this as far as it can go. Stay tuned!

 

Learn more about Tunnels, Treehouses & Trainsmoke here:

 

Painters inspire new perceptions

On Friday, March 15th, Deluge Contemporary Art (located at 636 Yates Street) hosted the opening of Drama of Perception, an exhibit of the work of three contemporary painters: Stephanie Aitken, Katie Lyle, and Shelley Penfold, all former students of the University of Victoria Visual Arts Graduate Program. Deluge, located in the upper story of Victoria’s original fire hall, sponsors the Antimatter Film Festival and aims to represent “a vanguard of visual and media arts in Victoria.” The curator for the exhibit is Sandra Meigs, a visual arts professor at the University of Victoria; Julian Gunn interviewed her about the artists and the show. Drama of Perception runs until April 15, 2013.

Sandra, how did the exhibition come about? How did you come to hang the work of these three painters together, and what kind of context do they create for each other?

I’ve been teaching painting at UVic for twenty years. I’ve known Deborah De Boer, the gallery director at Deluge, over the course of that time and I’ve always admired the way she supports artists in Victoria. Her gallery space is lovely and a really good focused space for viewing art.

About a year ago Deborah asked me if I’d curate a show of painters. She said she’d be interested to see what paintings I put together because I “have an interesting mind.” All three of these painters work in a way that is free of referential structures and strategic methods of construction. By that I mean that they form their images from something other than direct referencing of things in the world. Stephanie paints from her head, using her own made-up drawings to paint from. And Shelley leaves her canvases outside and lets nature take its own course on them before bringing them into the studio and then reads herself into them. Oh sure, Katie Lyle paints women, and may have stacks of magazine images and photos of women in her studio, but she rarely paints directly from them. It is more like she has digested the world, and then transferred it into herself.

Stephanie, Katie and Shelley were all in our Grad Program at different times. They are living in Vancouver and that also interests me. The art scene in Vancouver is not overwhelmingly supportive of painting, but I know there are a lot of great painters living there, so I thought this might be a way to get to know some of what’s happening there in painting. And that certainly worked, as I went twice to visit the artists’ studios. One of the artists is going to arrange for me to do more studio visits with other painters over there soon.

You note that when you look at these paintings, you “have total conviction that the forms . . . exist in the world.” I found that particularly true of Stephanie Aitken’s paintings, which often seemed haunted by real-world perspectives–partially occluded views–flattened into a plane, which makes me think immediately of photography. Although the forms themselves have a genuine immediacy and are not mimetic, can you speak to the subterranean role of mediated viewpoint in Aitken’s paintings?

That’s an interesting idea. Yes, they do seem occluded, one could say looked at through one eye because they lack spatial depth, also altered, as though looking through a fish-eye lens. I think of them as totemic heads that have no back or sides but that are nonetheless authoritative. Their flatness is their virtue and strength and everything good about them. Like a veil that has all the power of the kingdom behind it. I don’t see them as mediated viewpoints. On the contrary, I think they are completely unmediated. That is, they exist without the intervention of any other Thing.

On a similar note, your discussion of Katie Lyle’s portraits was fascinating. At a cursory glance, her paintings might appear to be rather inexpertly rendered portraiture. However, in your monograph you describe Lyle’s long process of “working in” these images, and closer examination shows evidence of careful relationships among the small geometric forms, the lines and arcs, that compose the features of these faces. So Lyle’s paintings are, in a sense, performative works–she is performing a certain kind of painting and also undermining our assumptions about it. How might you advise a viewer to approach this performative element in Lyle’s work?

I guess. Sure, you could say they are performative. Her work is a recording of its own formation. I imagine a beautiful portrait, an at-once captured likeness in paint, and a genuinely radiant young woman showing all her heart and soul, free of touch ups and fakery, at her most absolute real. Then I imagine Katie having made that portrait and repainting it over and over, trying to capture some fleeting essence of the young woman. I imagine that as Katie paints, Katie is also thinking about painting and about all we have seen of painting. I imagine Katie wants to kick painting, to rock it, to destroy and challenge all of our assumptions about beauty in art so as to get closer to the woman’s essence. So, the paintings are a mash-up of radiant young woman meets painting, full on. The geometric forms are new. I think those are very new paintings. I think that is Katie’s way of pushing the painting back even more into a kind of formal depravity that begs for its own beauty.

Actually, all of these questions may be about process and its relation to final form. It seems that there are two distinct stages to Shelley Penfold’s process of creating her paintings. First, there is the phase of putting the canvas itself into situations where it will become weathered and altered–an object with a certain independence. Second, there is the phase where her own gestures become important as she adds marks. Both stages contain random and chosen elements, but can you speak about the relationship of the two? Or if we want to shed the temporal aspect, the relationship of the marks on the surface to the features of the surface itself?

Yeah. I don’t actually think much about those paintings is random. I think Shelley has a lot of control over where she puts them outside, what the weather is going to do to them, what colours she put on them first or adds later. That is the main attraction of the work to me, which is that I can’t figure out what is random and what is chosen, so I choose to think it’s all chosen. Who knows why a sailboat got into that scene in “Fountain of Youth”. Or, why “Blue Lightening” looks like it has a turkey drumstick in it. Or why there’s no man in Mr. Mister. How lovely! That’s how the imagination works. No explanation needed. Also what I find fascinating about them is the play between the marks and the surface. Which is which? A pour of brown enamel is equally a surface and a mark. A scratching of distressed dye on fabric is equally a surface and a mark. Sometimes there is the odd gestural line as in “Blue Lightening” which is very much a mark, but there aren’t many of them. Just ones you could count on one hand. And that makes these grouping of paintings seem most basic or base to me, of essence to humanity.

“As I persist in doubt and knowingness, I am closest to my living perceptual experiences of the world.” That’s your comment about viewing these works, and it comes close to a Buddhist statement about using meditation to achieve an immediate relationship to the world. Is this a goal of artistic production for you? A goal for you, as a viewer of art?

Absolutely! For me, working in the studio is a state of mind that is focused on the moment. Making art is having freedom from thought and an engagement with the world through each and every breath of movement in space between the canvas, the palette, the brush, and the hand, the being. To get in that zone is to set the thinnest possible membrane of separation between the world and me. We become one, you see. Think about the studio as a giant meditating mind. The Artist is in there kicking stuff around and trying to get rid of chatter to make the one form that essential in that moment.

Looking at art can be meditative if the art doesn’t try to complete too much for me. If it is me who is completing it, then it works. That allows me the engagement of doubt and knowing that makes me aware of myself completing it and of not completing it.  A constant, endless meditation.

People still passionate about books, says writer-teacher

Buffy Cram now teaches part time at the Vancouver Island School of Art and lives part of the year in Berlin, a city of great creative stimulation. A graduate of writing programs at both the University of Victoria and the University of BC, Cram is now working on her second book of fiction. Her first short story collection, Radio Belly, was published in 2012 by Douglas and McIntyre and was one of the publications caught in the company’s later bankruptcy. Cram talked recently with Lynne Van Luven about her new novel and her hopes for the future of publishing.

Buffy, it’s probably still painful to talk about, but how did your publisher’s bankruptcy–and its subsequent re-organization earlier this year–affect your energy for the writing life?

I won’t lie; the bankruptcy news did put me into a bit of an end-of-the-world, books-are-dead funk. I wasn’t worried about my career or myself as much as I was worried about the future of books in Canada. We’ve lost so many of our independent publishing houses in recent years and every time that happens it means fewer Canadian writers making it to print and less diversity for readers.

The odd thing is, I meet people every day who are passionate about Canadian books. I meet high school students who are hungry for contemporary short fiction they can relate to. So it seems there is a disconnect here. Perhaps there aren’t enough ways for readers and writers to connect. Perhaps readers don’t realize how important it is to spend their money on Canadian books. Perhaps writers don’t realize how important it is to become evangelists of books and reading in general, as opposed to just promoting their own books. This winter I tried really, really hard to convince myself I was all done with writing. I taught myself how to make music videos because it seems this is something society values far more than books. But then I would read a really amazing sentence or discover a new writer and it would all come rushing back. Reading and writing will always be the two most important acts for me, even if they aren’t as cool as music videos.

Your short stories in Radio Belly seem to be animated by skepticism about the material world, as well as about the present. Could you talk a little about what sort of fictional worlds most interest you, what sort of characters?

I’m most interested in portraying those moments in life where “magic” and “reality” blend.  Often that means writing about people who are pushed to the outer edges of their sanity. Change is a crucial part of all short fiction. But I’m most interested in characters who have been living in denial and avoiding change for just a little too long. This may be where the skepticism about the material world comes in. In my experience, the best way to support denial is to focus on my outer or material existence (i.e. the best cure for heartache is a new haircut.) I think we are living this way on a societal level. Here in North America, most of us spend a lot more time shopping or updating our Facebook pages than we do saving the planet. I guess maybe I wanted my writing to speak to this in some way. The final stage of denial, right before change, is full of emotional urgency and, to my mind, that’s interesting territory for fiction.

Like so many writers in British Columbia, you are now a teacher of writing yourself. Did that require a great transition, or did it feel like a natural shift in your own working life?

I’ve been an ESL teacher and a private tutor for years, so in many ways I was prepared for the transition into teaching writing. I knew how to break the subject down into small, digestible parts and how to be instructive and entertaining at the same time. What I didn’t expect is that my role as a creative writing teacher would primarily be about giving people permission to write and coaching them through the fear of the blank page. This seems to be far more important to my students than learning about the technicalities of writing. Over and over I find my role as a teacher is just to be the one saying, “keep going” and “bad writing is a necessary part of good writing.”

What’s the best piece of information any writing instructor could give her students in these uncertain times?

The best advice any writing instructor can give students these days is to learn how to make music videos. Secondly, they should remind their students to have fun while they write. I tell my students to put on music and sit in their favourite chair and light a candle and make a cup of tea. I challenge them to make themselves laugh or cry and to tell the story they’ve always wanted to tell. I say these are strategies to help ease the fear of writing. What I don’t say is that these rituals are so important because, in the end, writing itself is the reward. Publishing is unlikely and, in my experience, largely unrewarding. There won’t be money or fame. There might not even be readers. So, it all comes down to finding ways to enjoy the actual writing. That’s one of the reasons I started up a drop-in writing class at VISA, where writers of any level can just show up and explore their imaginations together. I don’t believe writing needs to be a lonely and torturous act. When writers get together, it can be social and inspiring and, believe it or not, fun.

Tell us what Berlin is like for a young and engaged writer these days, what keeps you going back for part of the year?

I have a restless spirit. I’ve always been happiest when I’m on the move and I’ve recently learned that splitting my time between two places is a more sustainable way to satisfy that part of myself than starting all over in a new place every year. I love Berlin because it is a city full of stories. You can walk through the streets and see bullet holes in the walls of old buildings. Or you might come across parts of the wall still standing. Or you might meet a little old lady selling communist relics at a flea market. It’s almost impossible not to be inspired by all that history. But I love Berlin for the way it barrels forward too. I live in East Berlin, a part of the city that is still reinventing itself. Every day there are changes. Someone decides to build an art gallery in an old junk yard. Or someone sets up a photography school in a ruined building. Or someone starts a café that only serves one dish and has no chairs. I can’t help but admire this kind of thing. It’s reckless reinvention or forward motion without preparedness. It’s a living reminder to celebrate imperfection.

Skidmore tells story of child migration

Patricia Skidmore (left), who lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, has written a moving book about her mother’s experiences as a child migrant to Canada in 1937. Marjorie Arnison was from Whitley Bay in northeastern England. She lived in Birmingham for seven months before being sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School in the Cowichan Valley when she was just 10. She could never properly explain her past to her children. The “mystery” caused Skidmore to write Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry: A Home Child Experience, published by Dundurn (295 pages, $30). Coastal Spectator Editor Lynne Van Luven read Marjorie’s story with great interest since her own grandfather was also sent to Canada as a “Barnardo Boy.” Skidmore’s book will be launched at the University of Victoria Bookstore on March 14 at 7 p.m. 

Can you remember the catalyst that set your mind to writing about your mother’s story?

After spending much of my childhood fighting my mother for her story, in an attempt to find out who she really was and why she was in Canada while most of her family was in England, I concluded that she was keeping some horrid dark secret from me. At 17, I gave up and left home.

It took another eight years before I faced the question again, when I was a mother myself and feeling overwhelmed. My father had died in 1957, leaving my mother with 5 children between the ages of three weeks and 8 years. My bout with one sick baby helped me realize that I was not stronger than my mother, as I had always thought. I began to see her in a different light and I wondered who was this “superwoman” who single-parented her little family and kept them together against all odds?

And I realized that I needed to find my way back to her–although I would still need to try to figure out who she was. I feared that I couldn’t be a good daughter without knowing her deeper, and if I couldn’t be a good daughter, then how could I be a good mother?

In June 1986, when I saw the Fairbridge Farm property for the first time, I was dumbfounded by the beautiful countryside. I had expected a gravel pit. It hit me that the stark image I had in my mind came from my mother’s emotional distress at feeling so alone and bleak when she was removed from her family and sent to a new country.

By this time, I had been single parenting my three sons for many years–so finding time to pursue this research was challenging. After my 2 older sons were through high school, I returned to Victoria in 1996 to complete a degree that I started there in 1969. And I found my way into Women’s Studies.

In 1999, Professor Christine St. Peter led us to the BC Archives, which opened an avenue for research that I had no previous knowledge of. And the archives are where I found my mother’s past (in the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School records). I found a personal file for my mother, and together we discovered her immigration landing card, then her birth certificate, sent by her mother in 1948 when she wanted to get married, along with a couple of photographs. My mother seemed pleased as the research progressed: “Well they didn’t just throw me away, they kept records of me,” she said.

You have referred to your 20 years of exhaustive research on your book. What advice do you have for others who might be considering writing a family memoir?

For me, making my mother go back to that place she had buried all those years ago was a tricky business. I told myself I would stop if she became distressed. However my desire to understand the truth was so great, I wonder if I really would have.

My advice to anyone searching for a lost past is: don’t give up but don’t expect things to happen overnight.  Patience is important.

A number of factors enabled me to rediscover my mother’s past, but the most important thing was that she was with me while I did this research. I wrote my mother’s story because it was important to me to know about my past.

I am working on a sequel, which takes Marjorie through her years at the Farm School until early 1943. She was removed from the Farm School at 16 and was placed as a domestic servant in a home in Victoria. The working title for this sequel is Marjorie: The War Years. Today, my mother is offering her memories. The door is open to her past. The shame has dissipated. Marjorie now feels strong and proud about how she navigated her life and survived.

Have you or your mother heard from many other child migrants since your book was published?

Yes. I keep in regular contact with a number of the Former Fairbridgians sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, as well as several from the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) Fairbridge Memorial College, which ran from 1946 until 1962, and I keep in touch with some of the Old Fairbridgians from the Australian Fairbridge Farm Schools.

Since the publication of my book, I have had numerous new contacts, which include email  from offspring of former Canadian child migrants, now living in the United States and in Australia.

In a recent CBC interview, you said many of those transported as children, including your mother, felt “shame” about their history. Do you think Gordon Brown’s apology and the slow growth of books and stories about child migrants helps to dissipate that feeling?

Yes, but it may be that each personal journey differs – so I cannot speak for others. I saw my mother transform during her visit to England in 2010 for then-prime minister Gordon Brown’s apology. If you were not directly affected by the events that lead up to a formal apology, then that act would hold little meaning. But I will never again question the validity of a formal apology after witnessing the healing firsthand.

When Gordon Brown looked into my mother’s eyes and said, “I am truly sorry,” that formal recognition allowed for more healing than all my years of research. I believe a lot of the shame stemmed from an inability to talk about her past and what brought her to Canada. So much was hidden, she found difficult to speak openly.

 Do you think Britons and North Americans have learned anything useful about child migration since the practice first started, even since your mother’s time?

Child migration went on for so long: Britain first started “transporting” children in 1618, and child migration to Australia continued until 1974.  So many well-read people tell me that they have never heard of British Child Migration. I too was surprised to learn that child migration had a 350-year history, with the first group of children being sent to Richmond, Virginia, at the request of King James I.

I feel at a loss to understand why its history has not become better known. Perhaps the main reason is that the full history is not taught in the public schools. The Canadian government’s attitude may also be a factor.  In 2009, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said there was “no need” for Canada to apologize for abuse and exploitation suffered by thousands of poor children shipped here from Britain.

VIMA’s eclectic scene ready to roll

The Vancouver Island Music Awards (VIMA) is gearing up for the 9th Annual Awards show on April 28th. Some of this year’s nominees include the Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra, Steph MacPherson, Woodsmen, Man Made Lake, and Carli and Julie Kennedy.  Andrea Routley recently talked with James Kasper, the founder and producer of VIMA, about what to expect.

So, 9th Annual Vancouver Island Music Awards, and you’ve been there from the beginning. You must have heard hundreds of submissions by now, and across such diverse categories like rock/metal, jazz, pop, spoken word . . . Have you noticed any musical trends over the years, or recurring themes? Is there a way to describe “Vancouver Island Music”?

There is definitely an eclectic scene here on the Island, with everything from blues to metal. But probably what I hear most is a kind of vocal-based organic roots-rock sound. I think it’s been like that here for years, from what I’ve observed.

Is there a particular artist or group that stands out over the years? Why?

Any artist who works hard and doesn’t give up despite the challenges and adversity . . .  Any artist who treats other artists and fans with respect and kindness no matter what level of success they achieve . . . Those are the artists who stand out to me.

The Awards show is a huge production. You’ve got 1,000 tickets for sale, up to dozens of performers, advertisers, media–camera crew, artist collaborations . . . So quick:  Best VIMA show moment ever?

Oh wow, where to begin . . . I like the moments where the audience is so excited to hear the winner’s name that people begin screaming even before the presenter is finished reading the card . . . This happened in 2011 when Aegis Fang won for Male Vocalist, and in 2012 when Lindsay Bryan won for Song of the Year. And really, the whole event is just a rush. I spend 8 months of my year preparing for the main event, and it’s pretty exciting to see it all crystallize into a 3-hour show.

Now, Worst VIMA show moment ever:

Hm, well, the cue cards have presented some interesting challenges over the years, including the first awards presentation in 2011 when the cue cards weren’t ready, and the presenters were left to improvise until I sent the hosts out to do damage control, which they they did just fine. It was stressful at the time, but some people told me later they thought it was all part of the act. Ha. Also, several years back, when David Gogo and David Lennam were hosting, they were asked to give out a door prize and they somehow procured an actual honest-to-goodness door in the rubble backstage and brought it out as a “door prize.” At that point, I shook my head and thought to myself, “I have completely lost control of this show.”

James, you are also a prolific musician, both as a touring musician and a recording artist. What can awards do for a music career?

I always advise independent musicians to just take advantage of any opportunity they can to expose their work and build their network of contacts. A music awards show is one such opportunity. And the Island Music Awards have always been much less about competition and much more about community, celebrating the Island’s music scene, and a way for a diverse array of musicians and music industry representatives to come together on one night and network with each other.

Last summer, VIMA’s put out a call for community support, seeking donations from businesses in order to continue into 2013. The goal was $100 from 50 island businesses. What happened with that?

To be honest, it wasn’t the result we were hoping for. There were some donations from a couple of businesses and a couple of musicians, which we were very grateful to receive, but the event is still in dire need of financial sponsors in order to stay afloat. Any Island business wanting to support this event can reach me at info@jameskasper.com . . . because if we can stay afloat, it would be nice to have a 10th anniversary next year!

The 9th annual Vancouver Island Music Awards show takes place Sunday, April 28th at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, downtown Victoria. Tickets are available now. Contact info@jameskasper.com.

For the full list of 2013 nominees, visit islandmusicawards.wordpress.com.

 

Singer’s lyrics aided by English degree

Chris Ho’s new CD, City of Dust, released January 18, 2013 at the Victoria Event Centre, has been keeping Lynne Van Luven happy company for the past couple of weeks. Smitten by the music and lyrics, she keeps changing her mind about her favourite songs. Today, it’s “Ghost Limbs.” Tomorrow, it could be “Story of the Flood,” or “It’s Coming Along.”  Van Luven recently talked to Chris Ho about his work and creative plans. 

Chris, I am one of your newest fans.  Love your lyrics!  I keep trying to figure out your musical influences. I’d call you a bit of a balladeer, but you have a wonderfully energetic sound–which is good, because ballads can get awfully lugubrious and sentimental. Can you explain where you position your own songs in the music spectrum?

Thank you! My top influences include Wilco, Death Cab For Cutie, Stars, and Tegan and Sara. There is somewhat of a genre ambiguity when it comes down to my music. Put simply though, the sort of music I’ve written thus far tends to fall under two somewhat contrasting categories: indie rock and folk. That isn’t to say that they’re always separate from one another, since many songs obviously incorporate both of these traditions simultaneously, but it definitely helps to think of City Of Dust as having two personalities.

The numbers in this new—your first—CD are all appealing, and yet convey their messages in diverse ways. Did you envision an overarching narrative for City of Dust?

After writing the songs, and contemplating which ones I wanted to include on the album, I did end up envisioning an album that was musically eclectic and yet narratively cohesive, which was definitely a bit of a challenge.

Where did you study or are you a totally self-educated musician?

I took guitar lessons for about a year, starting when I was sixteen, at the Douglas Academy of Music in Vancouver, which taught me some basics. But, ultimately, songwriting has always been a process of spontaneity and trial and error. Oddly enough, the English Major I completed last April at the University of Victoria contributed to my growth as a songwriter more than anything else.

 I am impressed by the orchestral sophistication of City of Dust. Can you tell us about the crew that helped you put your CD together?

The co-producer and engineer Sam Weber, along with myself, put our minds together for this, and of course reached out to the local community of musicians in order to add more depth to this album. For example, Taz Eddy (Trumpet), Rob Phillips (Drums), and Alexei Paish (Percussion) were all music students at UVic during the time we were tracking the album. Not to mention, Kiana Brasset (Violin, Backup Vocals), Chelsea-Lyne Heins (Backup Vocals), and Esme John (Bass Guitar) are very much embedded in Victoria’s musical community as well. The hard work of Sam Weber, combined with my artistic vision and a strong support network of musicians, made this album possible.

I know you have a another show coming up in Victoria (Feb. 16th–all ages–at Fairfield United Church with The Archers, doors at 7pm, $10) and recently played in Kelowna, and will keep on with more promotion. Where would you like to be five years from now?

Put simply, I would like to be doing exactly what I’m doing now, except on a larger scale. The singer-songwriter tells the story of [his] journey, and the listener relates it to theirs. Every so often, someone tells me how much they appreciate my music, or how it’s helping them get through something in their life. The more people I can affect this way, the more rewarding and fulfilling that work is for me.

Collage artist moves beyond words

Vancouver artist Sarah Gee studied creative writing at the University of Victoria but is now known primarily as a visual artist. Lynne Van Luven talked with Gee recently about her creative process. Gee’s current exhibition of collage works, “Stuck,” is showing at the Slide Room Gallery, Vancouver Island School of Art, 2549 Quadra Street. The show, curated by Tyler Hodgins, runs until Feb. 18, 2013.

Sarah, you strike me as someone whose creative life is always evolving, sometimes between really different forms of expression. Can you talk a bit about your shift from studying writing to becoming a practising visual artist?

For a long time, growing up, I assumed I would be a writer. I came from a highly literate family and I seemed to have the knack for it. I received a degree in Creative Writing and loved that protective, isolated environment, but I never wrote seriously after university. Part of that was due to the immediate pressures of life, which meant a series of low-paying jobs. When I first tried making art, it was more text than image, which betrayed a lack of confidence on my part. But it felt wrong – contrived, somehow, a shortcut, maybe even a falsehood, relying on language when what I wanted was beyond language. Maybe it has something to do with being wary of unequivocal expression, I’m not sure. Now my work is about as mute and ambiguous as it’s possible to be. And I don’t have the knack for visual arts the way I had for writing. It’s really hard, and I fail a lot! But it feels right.

In the publicity for your show at the Deluge Contemporary Gallery in Victoria in the summer of 2012, you were quoted as saying: “I use collaged paper to compose what could be called geometric abstraction, but I sometimes think of it as heretical geometry: formalism combined with the psychedelic.” Could you “unpack” that statement a little bit more and discuss the spatial aspects of your vision as an artist?

If I’m using geometry as a kind of utopian language, that seems heretical to me, in a funny sort of way. I’m more of an idealist rather than biographical or political artist, and I’m hoping for a kind of transcendental experience when you look at my work. Most compositions are made of repeated geometric shapes, and because there is something hypnotic about repetition with slight variation, the image can invoke a sort of theta wave response. That’s where the psychedelia comes in. Psychedelia tries to unlock the mind through intense, vibrating colour and radical, often sexualized imagery. It all looks a little silly today, but I appreciate what they were trying to do, and in my own way I’m attempting the same thing. I don’t know if I unpacked that statement or just crammed a lot more junk into it.

How does the “vocabulary” of art differ from that of creative writing? Or does it?

Creation of all kinds demands the same things from the maker. Be honest and accurate. Avoid cliché by knowing the history of your craft. The only thing that may separate the majority of writing with what goes on in the art world is the act of deliberate provocation. The art world is far more addicted to what I call The Grand Startle than the literary world. Visual artists make work that will most certainly be perceived as ugly, unlikable, or just plain confusing. Yes, there are great experimental writers, from James Joyce to Mark Danielewski, but it’s not part of the larger writing culture. Writers, in my opinion, try to orient you to the world, while visual artists try to disorient you. Through disorientation – shock, bafflement, or in my case, the mysteries of abstraction – hopefully you can come to a new kind of thinking.

With your current show in Victoria, are you marking the end of one period of your work and getting ready to segue into another?

I’m not sure my themes or my methods will change in the near future, but any exhibit is a natural end period – you get to see your work for the first time outside the studio, and it feels elegiac somehow. But when I get a bone I don’t let go. Right now I’m obsessed with these horizontal stacked forms, these “totems,” and I can’t seem to make anything else!

What are you reading right now, and does it somehow inform your art?

Being self-taught, I do a lot of reading about the history of art, and right now I’m reading a coffee table book about, of all things, how big tobacco companies in the 40s and 50s collected amazing contemporary art. It’s filled with drool-inducing photos of industrial spaces crammed with Lichtensteins and Picassos, all with a kind of democratic approach to art that seems not only radical, but sadly obsolete now. But by far the bulk of my reading right now is crime fiction. I’ve come to realize there’s a strong correlation between a mystery novel and my own aims as an artist. Both are concerned with bringing disparate elements into harmony, and both expose secret or hidden aspects of life in an attempt to make sense of it all. I find life mostly bewildering and painful, and the idea of a neat resolution is very alluring.

 

Novelist undismayed by publishing changes

Ann Ireland’s new book, The Blue Guitar, has just been released by Dundurn, an Ontario literary press. The author spoke to Lynne Van Luven via e-mail from her winter pied-a-terre in Mexico.

I’ve been following your career as a fiction writer since A Certain Mr. Takahashi (1985), and I notice that you seem intrigued by the dynamics and power differentials in learning situations where we have a student/instructor relationship. Could you comment on that?

When I was young, [I had] various teachers who exerted a strong influence on my greedy mind. In a way, I wanted to become the person I admired. This must have been creepy for those concerned. I saw getting close to the teacher as being a short cut to a certain degree of sophistication and knowingness. Now, as a long -time writing instructor (Ryerson University’s continuing education division) I have a strong radar for students who want to get too close, and I find myself backing off. I know too well . . .
In my new novel, The Blue Guitar, I wanted to investigate how caring for someone who has had a severe breakdown creates an uneasy power imbalance in a relationship. It can be tantalizing to save someone, to feel his dependence.
When the younger, cared-for Toby decides he wants to make big steps on his own, it is an affront to his lover, Jasper, who is afraid that Toby will be hurt again. And yes, perhaps [even] more afraid that Toby will manage on his own. So easy to confuse Control with Loving.

Ann, The Blue Guitar — in this era of endless television reality shows as well as oppressive celebrity culture — addresses the tensions and fears behind competition, in this case among a group of classical guitarists. Can you talk a little about your view of the pressure to excel in culture today?

I wouldn’t confuse celebrity with achievement, but perhaps these two concepts are getting mucked about these days. It’s dead easy to achieve celebrity via the Internet. Heck, I have been flailing about on Facebook and various social media sites, getting out the word on The Blue Guitar, and I feel the narcissism in this sort of activity. More me! Here I am again! Another ‘like’ on my author’s page!
I recall, when I was a little girl and drawing my name on the dusty surfaces of mirrors, my mother would recite: ‘Fools’ names and fools’ faces/always appear in public places.’
I hear that voice whispering into my ear, constantly. However, real achievement– playing the recital of your life after putting in ten thousand hours of practicing – that is another matter entirely. That is climbing the mountain; that is sticking your flag at the summit. It’s the result of immense personal effort and even, dare I say, ‘talent.’ Talent exists. Maybe even a talent for celebrity.

Toby, your main protagonist in The Blue Guitar, has had a breakdown due to competition stress a decade ago, but is driven to try again. Do you see him as more “heroic” than Lucy, who’s a talented amateur who just wants to push herself beyond playing at weddings.

I’m not sure that I see Toby as more ‘heroic’ at jumping back into the fray, after such a god-awful mishap ten years ago when he played in Paris. He is a huge talent and knows it. Lucy is not a huge talent and knows it. Each of them imagines a life that would change drastically if s/he were to win this competition. Yet they are at such different points in their lives, Lucy being middle-aged mother of two teenaged sons, Toby not quite 30, feeling the last ten years have passed him by. I’m not sure for whom I’m cheering. Lucy was the ‘me’ character, except she’s way more accomplished as a musician. She operates at the competition in my stead –if only I had more courage, more musical talent . . .

You understand “competition nerves” very well. Do you play an instrument yourself?

I have played most instruments known to man in my life – and none of them well. Classical guitar, piano, oboe, cello, banjo, recorders. I don’t play in front of people, or hardly ever. Nerves tend to play havoc with my performance. In high school, I liked playing in orchestras, band, trios, quartets. It’s one of those ‘if I had another life to live’ deals.

Ann, you’ve been publishing fiction for over 20 years now. What’s your opinion of the current bouleversement in Canadian publishing?

Thanks; I had to look up that word. Maybe that’s because I’m writing this from Oaxaca City, Mexico, and Spanish is in my ears. You are speaking, no doubt, of the upheaval due to e-books and the end of the old ways: warehousing books, packing them into cartons and sending them across the country to book stores, then the unsold ones getting packed up again and sent back to the warehouses . . . It wasn’t viable to continue that way, books being a commodity that were sold on consignment.
Technology has slammed all of this and I think it may be a good thing. Writers MUST make sure they get a fair shake on e-books. E-books don’t have to be printed, shipped or warehoused. They are much much cheaper to produce. Yes, the publishers still have to acquire/edit/market books and print ‘tree books,’ and those costs remain. But there is no getting around the fact that the e-books circumvent many of the traditional costs. In the future we may see more writers’ co-operatives, selling e-books and print on demand books with no middleman.
I also note that the smaller, independent publishers are quicker on their feet and more flexible – and they don’t have to answer to the mother ship in Germany or New York or wherever.

B.C. poet explores her construction days

Vancouver poet and creative writing teacher Kate Braid talked via email recently with Lynne Van Luven about her new memoir, Journeywoman: Swinging A Hammer in a Man’s World, published in 2012 by Caitlin Press. She was frank about how little progress women have actually made in the trades over the past 30 years. Braid is working on a new book, which she suspects will be a book of essays.

Kate, you were a pioneer among women labourers in B.C. Does that designation feel foreign to you?

In spite of warnings in high school about “long-term goals,” my life has been basically one step after the other, mostly guided by gut instinct. In hindsight, that’s served me well – no way, as a girl growing up in the ‘50s, I could have ever planned to be a carpenter. So when people started using the word “pioneer,” I had to look over my own shoulder. Who? Now, I’m not sure if the word is a compliment or a curse. It tends to put people on pedestals, which makes me uncomfortable mostly because it says, “You (Person On Pedestal) can do that but I never could,” and my work since I started in the trades in 1977 has been to encourage more women (and men) to join me.

Do you think the status of women in trades has improved since the 1970s when you first began as a carpenter?

Alas, I know it hasn’t. The number of women in trades in BC in the ‘70s was 3%. The number of women in trades now (if you exclude chefs and hairdressers) is 3%. Same in the U.S. That, in spite of Affirmative Action laws (in the US), Human Rights and Charter laws (in Canada), role models, special groups and courses for women, etc. The number of women in traditionally male white-collar jobs like medicine and law and even engineering, is far higher, so clearly there’s something harder about breaking into blue collar work – and, I dare say, more resistance on the part of the men.

Often in your book, despite all the struggles you recount, you talk about how “empowering” it felt to be a woman who earned her living by the strength of her muscles and the sweat of her brow. Can you comment on that feeling?

It’s amazing, the confidence that being able to put up your own shelf gives you, let alone the confidence that comes from building your own house. As a woman, I knew I could enjoy my body for sex (though even this was not said overtly – mostly we were supposed to feel ashamed). And I could use my body below the wrists and above the neck for clerical work or teaching. But I was never told I could be physically strong, competent. I also learned – by going through the wonderful training called apprenticeship – that anyone can learn this. It isn’t a secret code men are born with; it’s a skill – like cooking – that even I could learn. Totally exciting!

You have taught carpentry and you have taught English and creative writing. What similarities have you found between the disciplines? What differences?

After 15 years of building, the hardest thing for me when I started teaching (initially, construction to BCIT carpenter apprentices) was not having a physical measure of what they’d learned at the end of a day. I used to literally want to take their heads between my hands and shake them, ask, “What’s in there? Did you get it? Anything?”

However, I’d always written. I kept copious journals throughout the construction years, loved poetry, and when instinct sent me back to school to take Creative Writing at UBC, I was more familiar with the implied, the almost, the unspoken – though the hardest thing for me there, was the ambiguous. Very funny for a poet, who dwells in the ambiguous! And in fact, that’s what I came to love most about teaching creative writing. As a carpenter, you build in a traditional, time-honoured, tested way, the same every time, though in fact the changes in conditions are endless so it’s always challenging. But there’s something about the physical groundedness of the work that’s deeply satisfying. Creative writing is different. Every word can take you in a different direction. It’s all ambiguity and suggestion, which is another form of truth. And both – carpentry and creative writing – are highly creative.

If you could wave your magical carpenter’s hammer, what change would you like to see for labourers in the province of British Columbia?

By “labourers,” do you mean construction workers? I’d want every student in the province to get their hands on blue-collar tools before they leave high school so they could seriously ask themselves before they graduate, “Is this something I’d love to do?” I’d like young women in particular to ask themselves this question.

Someone at BCIT once told me their biggest recruiting ground is a student in first-year university courses – young people who never thought of trades as a career, or who thought it was beneath them. If you want physical work, it’s fabulously rewarding, challenging and well paid. Tradespeople – good ones – have to be smart, and there’s a kind of quiet pride among them because at the end of the day, they can see exactly what they’ve done, how important it is, how long it will last. I loved that.