Category Archives: Lynne Van Luven

Novel probes Afghanistan aftermath

Katrin Horowitz is a Victoria writer whose second novel, The Best Soldier’s Wife (Quadra Books, 184 pages, $21.95,) was a finalist in Mother Tongue Publishing’s second Great B.C. Novel Contest.   Horowitz’s protagonist Amy Malcolm, whose husband volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, writes a series of letters to the wife of the Chief of Defence Staff, as she struggles to understand what happened to her husband in the conflict.  Horowitz’s first novel, Power Failures, was a murder mystery published in 2007 after she had been a volunteer in Sri Lanka.  Horowitz will be launching her new book in conjunction with Remembrance Day events at Vancouver Island libraries:  in Duncan and Ladysmith on Nov. 14; Nanaimo on Nov. 15 and on Gabriola Island on Nov. 16.  Horowitz recently answered Lynne Van Luven’s e-mail questions about her new novel.

 Katrin, I really enjoyed the conversation – or is it a monologue? – that you created via Amy Malcolm’s “letters” to Mrs. Harker, the wife of Ian Malcolm’s chief commander in the Canadian Forces.   Can you explain how you came up with this technique for your novel, and what you hoped to achieve?

I knew as soon as Amy arrived in my imagination that she was obsessed with how Mrs. Harker had managed to become the ideal military wife.  If the story is a conversation, then Mrs. Harker is the antagonist to Amy’s protagonist.  And if it’s a monologue, Mrs. Harker is Amy’s alter ego.  But it took me a while to find the most compelling way to tell their story.  Then I happened to read White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, and recognized that I what I needed was a twist on the epistolary novel.  The letters allow Amy to say what she needs to say to one particular person, a person with whom she invents a relationship – but also someone who is on one level “you,” the reader, thereby strengthening the connection between writer and reader.

I find it interesting that Ian Malcolm is a reservist helicopter pilot who volunteers to serve in Afghanistan without first consulting his wife or teenage son.  Why this detail, why not just a novel about a regular enlisted man’s family?

Amy and Ian have a long history together.  And like many middle-aged couples, they know how the other is going to respond to certain issues.  Ian doesn’t tell Amy about his decision ahead of time because he knows that she will try to talk him out of it, and he doesn’t want to be talked out of it.  His strategy works, because he effectively shuts Amy up, and the rest of the story happens because he shuts Amy up. Ian retired from the full-time military because Amy insisted, she’s good with words and can talk him into anything, and although he’s still flying, which he loves, it’s not the kind of flying he did in the military.  Commercial flying is all about keeping it safe, about staying firmly in the centre of the envelope.  As their son Ethan points out to Amy with devastating accuracy later in the story, Ian was bored with his life and was looking for a new adventure.

Ian volunteers in 2009, and serves for nine months, but three years pass before Amy actually writes her letters to Mrs. Harker.  Why the lapse in time?

Amy first thinks of writing to Mrs. Harker the same day that Ian tells her he has volunteered.  But she is held back by her own reticence, so she limits herself to what she calls ‘head letters,’ letters she imagines writing but never commits to paper, because a good soldier’s wife doesn’t complain.  Even three years later she is worried that her letters are presumptuous, although by this point her obsession with Mrs. Harker has grown until it is impossible for her not to write. She feels she must tell her story to the wife of the general who she holds responsible for what happened to Ian.  How we communicate – the who, what, when, where and why of sharing our thoughts – is a thread running through the book.  Is the best soldier’s wife the one who keeps her thoughts to herself?  Or as Amy asks near the end of the book, “If I tell the truth and nobody hears, is it still the truth?”

As I read the novel, I kept thinking that you must have family in the military, because the details felt so accurate.  But in your Acknowledgements you thank Mary and Steve Lawson because they “made this book possible.”  Can you talk a little about your position on or your connection to Canadian Forces?

Thank you!  My father fought in the Second World War before I was born, but my only real connection to the military is through my very good friend, Mary.  She not only shared stories of life as military wife with me and introduced me to other military wives, but also enlisted her husband’s help with the details of his life at KAF.  The scene in the book where Ian puts together a slide show of all his pictures of ramp ceremonies for dead soldiers was inspired by some of Steve’s photos.

The daily newspapers provided incidents from the real war in Afghanistan, from horrific IED attacks to the ridiculous ‘Love in a LAV’ scandal.  Reading military memoirs, including former Chief of Defense Staff Rick Hillier’s A Soldier First, provided additional background.  The names of the dead soldiers that end each of Amy’s letters came from the Department of National Defense website. And finally, as I was writing about Ian’s PTSD, I realized I was also writing about how my father had been damaged by his war experiences.

Quadra Books may not be a known publisher to many readers.  Can you tell me why you chose the house to showcase your second novel?

Quadra is a Victoria literary publisher committed to publishing “good books for thoughtful readers,” which for me is an excellent starting point.  That it was willing and able to include The Best Soldier’s Wife in their Fall list and bring it out in time for Remembrance Day was a big plus.

 

Memoir captures residential-school trauma

Bev Sellars was separated from her family twice in her young life: in the fall of 1960, when she was five, she was sent to be treated for tuberculosis at the Coqualeetza hospital in Sardis, near Vancouver; three weeks after she was released from hospital, she was required by Canadian law to attend St. Joseph’s Mission school, south of Williams Lake.  Run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, her experience at the  school is now part of the terrible history that marked First Nations families for the past 50 years.  Bev Sellars was at St. Joseph’s from September 1962 until June 1967. Her memoir, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at Indian Residential School has just been released by Talon Books, a Vancouver publisher.  Recently, Chief Sellars spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of elders, students and professors at First People’s House on the University of Victoria Campus.  “I was 38 before I went to university,” she told her audience.   Afterwards, she answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions in an e-mail interview.

 

“Like a computer that cannot run at full potential if it has viruses, Aboriginal people need to eradicate the destructive viruses so we can run at our full capacity, ” you say towards the end of your book.   What would be the first “viruses” you would like to see eradicated today?

The fact that many Aboriginal people have been led to believe that they are inferior.  That is the biggest virus that needs to be eradicated.  If you don’t feel equal with others, how in the world can you fulfill your potential?   If all people are treated as equals despite cultural differences that need to be respected, then that will be a good start.

What would you say is the biggest hurdle Aboriginal youth face today?

Acquisition of the basic skills to compete in the world today.   This includes knowing who they are as Aboriginal people.  Not too many Aboriginal youth make it to the university level and many do not even finish high school.   Also, many of the ones who do make it to university feel an obligation to use their education to help fight for their human rights as Aboriginal people.   It would be nice if my grandchildren could study a discipline that they enjoy and not one with that obligation over their head.   Someone said if you are born Aboriginal, you are born into the political world.    But we are fighting for the rights that our ancestors lived and died for, the younger generation will take up the fight if need be.   That is sad that this is the way it has to be still, in 2013.

You and your peers suffered in so many ways in the residential schools, in your case, in St. Joseph’s Mission at Williams Lake.  As a white reader, I felt angry on your behalf when I read your book.  How have you managed and learned from your own anger over the years?

Before I met my husband Bill, I didn’t manage my anger.  I would either blow up at someone or I would get so angry I would just shut down — and that was not productive.  Bill showed me that talking about things and dealing with the issue was more productive.   I am still angry about the way Aboriginal people are still treated, but now I don’t just seethe and do nothing about it.  I have found my voice and make my views known.

I have heard many First Nations leaders say that “education” is the key to Aboriginal success.  If you agree, can you explain how you define that term, and how it should be achieved?

It is entirely inadequate to suggest that education is simply a matter of trying to achieve non-Aboriginal graduation rates for Aboriginal children. True reconciliation in education would mean Aboriginal people having the opportunity to define citizenship and determine how education will develop Aboriginal citizens to fulfill their nation’s goals. As with the rest of Canada, education for Aboriginal people would be about identity, citizenship, nationhood and taking their rightful place in the world. Not until this ideological foundation is in place will Aboriginal people be able to go on and meaningfully define education, its goals, and its standards of success well as equivalent graduation rates for their children and adult learners. There has to be a shift in thinking about Aboriginal people and by Aboriginal people.

Yours is the first full-length memoir to be published out of the Williams Lake community.  What would you say to others who have similar stories to tell?  

I would encourage them to write their stories even if they are not going to publish them.   I would hope that they at least would share [stories] with their younger relatives who need to know the history.  Maybe some will write it and burn it and that’s okay too.  I found that writing my story and connecting the dots between my childhood and my adult life gave me such an insight into the dysfunctional behavior I needed to change.    Mine is just one story of many that need to be told, and I hope my book encourages other to tell their stories as well.

Hostage memoir raises ethical questions

A House in the Sky
By Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett
Published by Scribner
373 pages, $29.99

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

Curiosity: it drives humans to new delights and sometimes to near death.

Freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout grew up in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, but she always imagined a destiny larger than her small-town beginnings. In childhood, her gateway to the world was her collection of second-hand National Geographic magazines.
Early in her co-written memoir she describes the aftermath of a violent altercation between her mother and her mother’s boyfriend:
“My mind swept from beneath the bed sheets, up the stairs, and far away, out over the silky deserts and foaming seawaters . . . through forests full of green-eyed night creatures and temples high on hills. I was picturing orchids, urchins, manatees, chimps. I saw Saudi girls on a swing set and cells bubbling under a microscope, each one its own waiting miracle. I saw pandas, lemurs, loons. I saw Sistine angels and Masai warriors. My world, I was pretty certain, was elsewhere.”

And she makes it so. Lindhout is everything a freelancer should be: resourceful, determined, apparently fearless. She leaves Sylvan Lake at 19 and moves to Calgary, where she immediately begins working in bars and restaurants in order to save up for travel. Men disappoint her, but she achieves her life of travel: she backpacks through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, India, Sudan, Syria and Pakistan. By the time she gets to Afghanistan and Iraq, she’s a fledgling television reporter. And she has a column in the Red Deer Advocate, which pays her a paltry $35 for each story she files. An amazing start for a self-taught writer, anyone would say.

But then in August 2008, Lindhout goes to Somalia, titillated because it is billed as “the most dangerous place on earth” at the time. On her fourth day there she – and her travelling companion, former Aussie boyfriend and photographer Nigel – are kidnapped.
The bulk of the memoir covers how Lindhout survives her 460 days as a hostage, held for ransom by a rag-tag group of Muslim fundamentalist agitators who blunder into kidnapping the Canadian and the Australian when they really meant to kidnap the other two journalists staying at the Hotel Shamo in Mogadishu – an American and a Frenchman working for – incredible irony here – National Geographic.“I’d like to say that I hesitated before heading into Somalia,” Lindhout writes, “but I didn’t. . . . Surely, I thought, I’d find stories worth telling. Surely, there was merit in trying to tell them. I knew that bad stuff happened. I wasn’t totally naïve. I’d seen plenty of guns and misery by then. But for the most part, I’d always been off to one side, enjoying the good, the harm skipping past me as if I weren’t there at all.”

A House in the Sky takes readers right into the series of sordid rooms, the boredom, the brutality and the sexual assaults that Lindhout lives through. Because she is a woman, she is treated far more harshly than Nigel is, and there are many tensions between the pair. The book raises number of moral questions about putting oneself in harm’s way while fuelled by good intentions. It’s a book every freelance writer and every intrepid traveller should read. Lindhout and Nigel are freed eventually after their respective families come up with a $600,000 ransom. As a result of her ordeal, Lindhout founded the non-profit Global Enrichment Foundation (globalenrichmentfoundation.com) to support aid and education in Kenya and Somalia.
Readers of A House in the Sky may be either inspired or infuriated by Lindhout. Is she an opportunistic voyeur or an idealistic voyager? I can’t quite decide, but the memoir is so well written, that it carries you along, even as you are arguing with yourself about Lindhout’s ethics and sense of responsibility.

Lynne Van Luven once wanted to be a foreign correspondent.

Novelist elegantly handles assisted suicide

Extraordinary

By David Gilmour

Published by HarperCollins

185 pages, $23.95

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

 

More Baby Boomers are ageing, sickening and dying than ever before.  And yet more are to come.  So it’s no wonder that “assisted death” is becoming an increasingly newsworthy subject.  And therefore it’s no surprise that writers are turning to the topic with renewed vigour.

Toronto novelist David Gilmour’s newest publication, his eighth book of fiction, tackles the controversy head-on, in compressed prose that is somehow both elegant and colloquial.  I don’t think I am the only one who has fallen upon this succinct work with great interest and equal hunger.  The voice of the narrator is arresting from the very first sentence – “What, You didn’t know I had a sister?” – to the last dying note – “ ‘Goodbye, Sally, I said, goodbye, and then I went down the back stairs and went home.’ “

Ostensibly, the novel takes place over the course of a Saturday evening in June, in Sally’s apartment, which is located in a large urban centre that sounds a lot like Toronto.  But through the siblings’ hours of conversation, the life of an entire family is encapsulated, including such huge events as sex, divorce, parenthood, life and death.

Sally is a strong person, a person who finds the courage to leave a bad marriage, become a single parent, resume her artistic life and pursue an independent and path even after a rogue accident (she trips on a carpet at a cocktail party) lands her in a wheelchair.  She lives her life the way she wants, and she orchestrates her death the same way. The brother is fifteen years his half-sister’s junior and has hitherto been somewhat neglectful of his sibling, whom he regards as  “ a hearty soul.”

But on the night in question, Sally’s spirit has reached its limits because she is able to do fewer and fewer things for herself; her life, she says, has become “less and less manageable.”  So she invites her brother over with the terse instruction to “bring a bottle of Russian vodka.”  Over the next month or so, having “agreed to help her kill herself,’ the brother collects the requisite number of unnamed sleeping pills to do the job.  When the night comes, the siblings talk for hours, their conversation wandering and weaving, sometimes coming back to the reason for the visit, sometimes soaring far away from the ultimate purpose.

“Do the dead forgive us?  I wonder,” Gilmore writes, in the first chapter.  “I hope so.  But I suspect not.  I suspect they do nothing at all, like a spark flying from a burning campfire:  they just go pssst and that’s it.  How they felt about you in that last second is where you remain, at least in your thoughts, for eternity.  Or rather, until you go pssst too.”  This is a powerful book from start to finish.  It will anger many readers, but I suspect it will comfort many more.

 

— Lynne Van Luven’s current book project involves research into end-of-life issues.

Novella captures migrant’s dilemma

 The Lebanese Dishwasher
By Sonia Saikaley
Published by Quattro Books, 146 pages, $14.94

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

Born and raised in Ottawa, Sonia Saikaley’s work stirringly represents her Middle Eastern heritage.  In the past year, Saikaley has published both a book of poems (Turkish Delight: Montreal Winter, Tsar Publications) and The Lebanese Dishwasher, which was a co-winner of the Ken Klonsky novella contest.

Through its compression, The Lebanese Dishwasher captures the marginalized but intense life of a 30-year-old immigrant named Amir. The action alternates between his earlier youth in Beirut and his current life in Montreal, where streets are slick with ice and opportunities fall far below his expectations. Not only is Amir unhappy in his work, he is at odds with his very being. For his whole life, he has fought against his nature, attempting to deny his own homosexuality, a situation made more acute after he is violently raped by a male neighbour when he is 12. As he turns 30, Amir faces increased pressure to mimic the norm his family expects: he is constantly urged to  “find a nice Middle Eastern girl,” and get on with raising a family.

For five years he has been trapped in a dead-end dishwashing job in a Middle Eastern restaurant, where his only offer of friendship comes from one of the cooks, Saleem. The tension within the contemporary narrative escalates when Saleem invites Amir to his home for dinner. Over the food-laden table, Amir meets Rami, who is Saleem’s nephew, recently arrived in Canada. As the pair’s sexual attraction blossoms, so does Saleem’s rage and disgust.

In addition, Amir has a casual sexual relationship with Denise, who loves him as an exotic and calls him her “Arabian prince,” but expects far more from him than he can deliver. Yes: complications.

Sonia Saikaley writes affectingly about immigrants who struggle to survive and to attain some modicum of the freedom and “good life” that impelled them to emigrate. And she captures with courage and clarity the patriarchal nature of many of her male characters who see women only as domestic slaves and the bearers of the children necessary to perpetuate the family line. In such men’s eyes, any hints of homosexuality are beyond abhorrent. Young men who do not flaunt their interest in women are suspect, little better than “dogs.”

Amir, like many migrants, thinks often of his former life, where the violence of his shrill mother is offset by the peace he experiences with his loving grandparents when he visits their farm and helps them pick olives and figs. The richness of Amir’s lost life contrasts strongly with the grime and drudgery of his Canadian existence.

The Lebanese Dishwasher showcases Saikaley’s talents well; I look forward to reading more of her work.

Alec Dempster explores roots via images and words

Ontario artist Alec Dempster was born in Mexico but moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old. He recently came out with a unique two-fold expression of his heritage with the book Lotería Jarocha: Linoleum Prints, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, and with the CD, Nuevos Caminos A Santiago (New Roads to Santiago), produced by Anona Music. Lynne Van Luven talked to Dempster via email, after listening obsessively to the CD and reading his book.

Alec, I’m a bit confused about the “birth order” here: which did you do first, the book or the CD, and how did one give rise to each other?

First, in 1999-2000, I did the prints which appear in the book. Then Kali and I released our first CD in 2006. We released our second CD, Nuevos Caminos a Santiago, in May 2012. Around that time, I had already started writing the texts for the book. Composing, arranging and recording was very absorbing. I wasn’t able to think about anything else. The same occurred with the writing of the texts. I didn’t stop playing, but I was not creating much new music–although we were working on eight new compositions in the same period with support from a Popular Music Grant from the Ontario Arts Council. We were a bit late submitting our grant report because I was so involved with the book project and then promoting the launch.

I have been to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and to Xalapa as well, so I did know a little bit about “son jarocho,” but I was totally ignorant about the role Lotería plays in Mexican and Latin American social life. Can you explain it a bit more for this gringa? It seems to have a vital cultural importance.

I was attracted to lotería because the graphics are so engrained in Mexican popular culture, even though most of the images aren’t very “Mexican.” The loterías I have created have more Mexican iconography than the traditional lotería. It does raise the question of what and who is Mexican. I am like that in a sense: born in Mexico but not brought up with lotería by parents who are not Mexican. However, I was exposed to a broad range of Latin American and Spanish culture, mostly through my father’s friends. The cultural importance of lotería has to do with the fact that most people in Mexico played lotería with their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and cousins. I have seen people really enjoy the playing of the lotería but I think the pleasure lies as much in the fact that the family is doing it together as in the playing of the game itself. I have also seen it in more public social events such as church fundraisers in outdoor venues. There are certainly places where more importance is given to the lotería as a past-time like Cosamalopan in Southern Veracruz. I have heard that Campeche has a unique version of the lotería. I am not sure about Northern Mexico. In order to do my loterías, I  did not do a lot of research into the game itself. I did some but my focus was on the themes I had chosen for my loterías.

As you just mentioned, you have a fascinating background: you were born in Mexico City, came to Canada as a young boy, and then were raised in Toronto. How old were you when you returned to Mexico to live, how long were you there, and what were you looking for?

I must have been about 20 when I returned to Mexico for the first time, and my Spanish was quite basic. I went to see the film Danzón which takes place in Veracruz, and enjoyed it but didn’t understand much of the dialogue. I knew enough to get around and stay out of trouble — it seems I was there on two occasions for a month each. The second time I think my grandfather had given me some money to take driving lessons but I spent it on a plane ticket, and I still don’t know how to drive.  The first trip I had no expectations but planned to visit a small town in the hills called Quetzalan, because I had a vague recollection of the place . . . there where some striking photographs my parents took when we went there and I must have been about three. Other than that, I spent time in Mexico City visiting museums, markets and also Tepoztlán, where I eventually lived for a year. Although I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was extremely happy being in Mexico. It helped that my hosts where my padrino and his wife, two of the most generous people you could imagine and extremely connected with diverse aspects of Mexican culture. Good cooks as well. I ended up very taken by Mexican artists such as the muralists, and Tamayo as well as Toledo but Mexico City is also a place where you are likely to see exhibitions of contemporary art of all kinds from all over the world.

The linocuts in Loteria Jarocha are beautiful, and the descriptions you have created of them teach a reader a great deal about this aspect of Mexican culture. Are these stories and images in danger of being lost as the great wheel of Americanismo grinds away at your birth-country’s traditions?

The word “Americanismo” has a different connotation for me. I  know you mean USA which is definitely imposing itself on Mexico as it does all over. Canada also is exploiting Mexico’s mineral resources. A Canadian project to do open air silver mining close to the Port of Veracruz has been put on hold due to grass-roots resistance. Stories are always in danger of disappearing without the pervasive influence of foreign cultural domination. However, stories and traditions also have the ability to resist, as well as absorb new elements. Good things have also come from the US, such as the remarkable interest in son jarocho from people living in California to name just one state. The result has been culural exchange, economic growth for instrument makers, and musicians who are constantly travelling to the USA. to teach and perform. This year, three different groups that use son jarocho as an important part of their music were nominated for awards. That said,  there are languages disappearing, ceremonies being forgotten and many stories  are no longer passed on from one generation to the next.

You sing with your wife, Kali Nino, on Nuevos Caminos a Santiago. Is your musical group Café Con Pan something new, and how does it tie in with your artistic self?

Our musical collaboration goes back quite a few years, but Café Con Pan became something quite different and more ambitious since we moved to Toronto in 2009. We had performed here before that but it is only recently that we have made such an effort to forge our own identity within the framework of son jarocho. We continue to play the traditional repertoire but are also playing our own songs which we want to be recognized for. I feel like two different people, the musician and the visual artist, but they complement each other because my visual art often adorns our CDs, posters and even clothes that we wear on stage. I fell fortunate to be able to jump from one art form to another while I also realize that sometimes one discipline will require complete attention. It is not always possible to juggle the two.

Journalist launches debut novel

Journalist Cathi Bond divides her time between the streets of Toronto and the fields of rural Ontario.  With her lively focus on contemporary culture and the Internet, Bond was a columnist on Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) with Nora Young, and is a regular contributor to Spark, both on CBC Radio. She also does movie podcasts for Rabble and, with Nora Young, has created The Sniffer, a podcast on “New Directions in Trends and Tech.” Bond’s latest project is her first novel, Night Town, published by Iguana Press. The unstoppable Bond is now writing its sequel.  She recently answered questions from Lynne Van Luven.

Cathi, most listeners and viewers know you as a journalist, from TV and especially from CBC Radio. What precipitated your move from cultural reporting into novel writing?

I haven’t completely moved from cultural writing or broadcasting. As you’d know, the number of print jobs in Canada has diminished significantly in the last decade. And landing a steady gig as a cultural columnist at any of the big papers is nearly a miracle. In fact, many columnists who had that security have lost it and now have to get in the pit and compete for every column they write. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to work part time at Spark and have the privilege to write about shifts in technology that truly excite me.

In part, this new employment reality steered me towards taking a shot at fiction, but Night Town was a story that had been percolating inside of me for years. So I saved some cash, decided to live relatively poor and took the time to write it. I guess you could say that Night Town was always close to number one on my bucket list, and now it’s completed and I’m very happy with the result.

Night Town has been optioned by Back Alley Films. Do you think being a media personality helped the process at all?

Absolutely. It’s really unfair, but I think it’s true. Having any kind of name recognition, any kind of brand makes you instantly more attractive. It makes the project easier to sell to the funding bodies that hand out the money.

That said, having a feature film credit makes you worth more. That credit proves that you can do the work. I was very lucky that Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, the story editor behind Back Alley’s award winning series Durham County, edited my novel. Yet another brand, or seal of approval, attached to the project.

Maddy Barnes is a captivating and credible character. I know this is a work of fiction, but I cannot help feeling there is a little spark of personal experience at the heart of this novel. True?

Good instincts. I think most writers, whether they admit it or not, do create from personal experience. Especially on a first novel. When I was very young, an absolutely horrible thing happened to me and my family. It was “the moment” that defined my life. So I took that moment and fictionalized it. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag if I tell your readers that the novel takes place, in large part, at the corner of Yonge and Dundas on the mean streets of Toronto during the early 1970s.

I wanted to write about that period in Toronto’s history. Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the world and, other than in  Ondattje’s “The Skin of the Lion” and by Atwood (a wee bit in her early work), it has never been mythologized in any significant way. I tried to change that by making Toronto a character. In fact, Night Town is the first in a trilogy of novels that follows Toronto and a single family from the dawn of the Great Depression, through to the arrival of the new millennium.

People call you a “podcast pioneer” and now you have a blog, so I wonder if it’s not a bit “retrograde” for you to become a novelist who’s now working on a sequel to her first book. What about all those “books-are-dead” prognostications?

I thought about this a lot, but I refuse to believe that reading is dead. The telling of stories is built into our DNA. It’s how we carry our history; it’s how we instruct; it’s how we delight. But is the book as we know it dead? I think we’re right in the middle of a big technological/business transition as to how our stories will be told. Personally, I think that eReaders are still clunky and not where they need to be, but they’re getting closer.  [Given] the speed at which technology is moving, I think the next device is right around the corner. That’s why I took the chance and went with a digital house. I wanted Night Town to be ready.

Can you talk a little bit about The Sniffer, the audio podcast you and Nora Young started? 

Nora and I started  The Sniffer in the summer of 2005, the summer when the word “podcast” had just appeared on computer screens . . . We do it primarily for fun, and as a way to sniff out sometimes wacky and really interesting new trends in technology. We’re both wool-gathering geeks and most folks don’t get all revved up talking about the stuff we do. But early subscribers heard about trends like Facebook, Second Life and YouTube first. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s something we do for ourselves and for you.

Reid’s essays capture “inside” view

A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden:
Writing from Prison
by Stephen Reid
Thistledown Press, 133 pages, $18.95

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

This is possibly the saddest book of essays I have ever read. Not sad because the writing is bad; not sad because the author has no insight. But, yes, sad because the essays seem to be written by a man perpetually divided against himself and deeply in pain about the schism.

On the quiet side of the ledger, as illustrated in the collection’s “Epilogue,” hunkers the introspective man, the poetic, sensitive observer: “The years have passed and I have watched the tides come and go, carrying their debris, real and imagined. I have grown old in prison and I am only interested in beginnings these days, but the string becomes harder and harder to find. It seems I am losing the plot of my own life.”

And on the wracked side struts the famously infamous Stephen Reid, the bank robber who revels in his bad-boy exploits, as brought to life in “The Last Score”: “We’re flat out, doing eighty maybe ninety clicks an hour, almost flying velocity on a residential street. I’m wedged out the window, the wind whipping my hair, and for one glorious moment, when that shotgun bucks against my shoulder and all four tires lift free of the ground, I am no longer bound to this earth.”

But of course, gravity always wins: the car lands, the cop on the motorcycle keeps on coming, and Reid’s cocaine-botched June 1999 robbery garners him 18 more years in prison. As these brief samples show, Reid has grown into a writer of both sophistication and energy. Although still haunted by his past, he’s confronted those first early transgressions when he was introduced to morphine at the age of 10 by a pedophile doctor named Paul; he’s lived through his Stopwatch Gang years, outlived his partner-in-crime Paddy Mitchell, contributed to his community, been Susan Musgrave’s husband and watched his daughters grow–always with the spectre of recidivism at his side.  .

While Reid hasn’t made his living as a full-time writer for the past 40 years, he is a man who ruminates and a man who writes–and when he’s able to subdue his addictions and the catastrophic decisions that usually follow, he demonstrates genuine talent.

This book of essays is a collection of work printed elsewhere, in Maclean’s, in the Globe and Mail, in an anthology and on salon.com, to name just four venues. I’m glad Thistledown has collected these pieces, even if here and there they could have been edited to pare away repetition. This is an important collection of essays, one that should be read by lawyers and police, by corrections officers and psychologists and, yes, most of all, by ordinary citizens and the politicians who purport to represent them. A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden demonstrates what “inside” really means. It gives us a world shaped by both grief and joy, seen through the eyes a man often yearning to be free of himself.

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.

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.