Back Yard Inspiration. June 2011.
Fine Day in Montreal. June 2011
The photos were taken on the edge of Square St. Louis, a favourite haunt of mine. The Bixi bicycles were back at the edge of the park and I saw them being delivered at spots further north.
Went to convocation at McGill for Health Sciences, large crowd under the white tent. Impressive to see the diversity of the graduates of the 2011 classes.
Now in Toronto again where the grass was high (cut this morning) and the clematis had bloomed and wished me good morning today!
Are the Dandelions 8" High?
Well, maybe it's just a convenient excuse not to write this morning. Or to write a blog post rather than add to the manuscript I am working on now entitled May I Have This Dance? This is a collection of short fiction with some flash fiction at the beginning, a middle section of linked stories pertaining to dancing and some other stories written fairly recently. How it will evolve is still a mystery, but the work is progressing. In the meantime, my mystery novel languishes as does another novel and a memoir. All progress though, albeit slowly, with the focus of work shifting from time to time.
Fiction. How Do You Write a Novel?
The man walks at a slight tilt from an old ski injury, a gait that makes me think of a platypus. Even though I've no clear vision of what a platypus looks like. Or even if it's an extinct species. He'd know. And about the blue footed boobies in the Galapagos Islands where he traveled by boat and took slides of the birds and animals. Iguanas. Seals. Birds and wild flowers of vivid, exotic colours. There are also slides of markets in small towns and cities in Ecuador and some of a train that took him high into the mountains of Peru.
He also knows how to eat skilfully with chopsticks, something he learned from his Chinese wife from whom he is now separated.
Were I to write a story, I'd show him sitting at his teak desk, fingering through papers with hands covered with blotches of brown and knuckles with arthritic bumps. I'd dress him in the yellow sweater the Chinese wife knit that he wore sometimes when he felt lonely. I'd describe him as a wealthy businessman who loves to travel and has explored the depths of oceans and has swum with sharks. Trekked through the Himalayas to sleep in tents under the stars. Seen Thailand's treasures.
And also a man who doesn't know he still loves the woman who appeared in the court room on the day before his birthday and wrote NO on the list he'd made beside the items she didn't want to return to him. The writer would be included as a very minor character who perhaps added some intrigue and excitement to his life for a while.
The nuances skilfully captured in weaving the tale would convey the pain he felt. Although otherwise he would have a life quite unrelated any longer to this man's. He might have another wife. Perhaps a Japanese one. Or a Portuguese one from Brazil. Maybe he would come from Quebec instead of some European country. With a French name now badly mispronounced. Many things could be different. There is nonetheless a major question the man asked that will never be answered.
"I wouldn't know how to write a novel," he said, walking at a slight tilt. "How do you write a novel?"
The writer in the story thinks, ah well, some learn about spread sheets and blue footed boobies and how to eat with chopsticks. And others notice knuckles with bumps and when yellow sweaters are worn.
“Ah,” she says. “Just like a business is built. By trial and error.”
"But where do you start?"
"Where do you?"
He nods. Perhaps even understands.
the end
p.s. It's not like making cookies! There is no recipe.
Out and About in Toronto. May 12, 2011.
Hot Docs Finale. May 2011.
My last two films at Hot Docs were People of a Feather and Love Shines. Unfortunately, I missed You've Been Trumped, at the last minute making time available for out of town guests I hadn't seen since last summer.
My experience at Hot Docs was quite wonderful, including the lineups that were usually in spring sunshine. Meeting interesting people surrounding the events is one of the highlights. I heard about films I hadn't seen and told others about ones I had.
People of a Feather is set in the Belcher Islands in the Arctic and is about the Inuit, the eider duck, the effects of hydroelectric dams and climate change. It was a very beautiful and effective film, also a strong political statement.
Love Shines is about the musical career of singer and songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Not knowing much about how songs get put together and out there in the public sphere, it was fascinating to me. Also to see the creative process, the various people who work together, the studio, the associated insecurities of Sexsmith, the acheivement of his solo show at Massey Hall. Sexsmith was very honest and exposed a lot of his own angst and personal story, which I would imagine took some courage. Afterwards I bought the CD in which the moving song, Love Shines, appears on the track. Sexsmith appeared for the Q&A along with the director, Doug Arrowsmith.
Apparently You've Been Trumped was a good expose of Trump's attempt to build a golf course in Scotland. Gives a sense of a man who wouldn't be the good president he claims he would be! Integrity doesn't seem to be a high point. I like films of this nature about contemporary figures that expose the ways in which they mislead the public. Or perhaps are deluded themselves.
My favourite is still Mama Africa.
Now that the Festival is over, back to writing fiction!
My experience at Hot Docs was quite wonderful, including the lineups that were usually in spring sunshine. Meeting interesting people surrounding the events is one of the highlights. I heard about films I hadn't seen and told others about ones I had.
People of a Feather is set in the Belcher Islands in the Arctic and is about the Inuit, the eider duck, the effects of hydroelectric dams and climate change. It was a very beautiful and effective film, also a strong political statement.
Love Shines is about the musical career of singer and songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Not knowing much about how songs get put together and out there in the public sphere, it was fascinating to me. Also to see the creative process, the various people who work together, the studio, the associated insecurities of Sexsmith, the acheivement of his solo show at Massey Hall. Sexsmith was very honest and exposed a lot of his own angst and personal story, which I would imagine took some courage. Afterwards I bought the CD in which the moving song, Love Shines, appears on the track. Sexsmith appeared for the Q&A along with the director, Doug Arrowsmith.
Apparently You've Been Trumped was a good expose of Trump's attempt to build a golf course in Scotland. Gives a sense of a man who wouldn't be the good president he claims he would be! Integrity doesn't seem to be a high point. I like films of this nature about contemporary figures that expose the ways in which they mislead the public. Or perhaps are deluded themselves.
My favourite is still Mama Africa.
Now that the Festival is over, back to writing fiction!
Hot Docs Festival. Toronto. 2011
Have seen a number of interesting documentaries this week at the annual Hot Docs Festival. Among my favourites were Buck and Mama Africa. You can go to the website (see below) for information on the whole list.
Buck (Buck Brannaman) travels the US giving four day sessions on training horses. His philosophy, somehow garnered from his own childhood of extreme abuse, is to recognize and respect each horse. By gentle means, and recognizing the horse's fears, he gives us wise lessons on not only treating animals this way, but also on treating everyone thus. Gently, respectfully. And the horses are beautiful, such handsome animals. There are a couple of cameo appearances by Robert Redford who learned from Buck on the set of The Horse Whisperer and expresses in this movie his awe and respect for the man.
Later in the day, I saw Carol Channing, at ninety still an impressive figure. Makes aging seem not quite so daunting! Especially when she has found late life romance with her high school sweetheart.
Yesterday, Love Crimes of Kabul, has young lovers in jail facing charges for crimes such as premarital sex. And sentences that could be as long as fifteen years. One couple married before the trial with much reluctance on the part of the man, thus avoiding more jail time. Hard to watch even though I know about the plight of women in Afghanistan. The stark reality of watching the stories of these young people is always more difficult than simply reading about isolated incidents.
Position of the Stars. Filmed in Indonesia and set in the context of the political situation. Story of a poor family, trying to get an education for a teen-aged girl who would be the first of their kin to thus raise herself out of an impoverished environment. The grandmother, the main character, is determined. Yet the girl is often concerned only with herself and ungrateful. As well as the story itself, the film follows close-up scenes of something as seemingly insignificant as a cockroach scooting around the periphery of the family's life and looking down on it.
hotdocs.ca
PHOTOGRAPHY in Toronto.
Before seeing the photograhy show, I went to another movie, New Castle, in the Hot Docs series. While it was interesting and gave one a glimpse of the hardship of life in rural China, it was way too long!
Finally Spring.
Basic Economics. Basic Logic.
The Best Explanation Of What's Really Going On With The American Deficit http://bit.ly/fy0vTE via @moveon
Yoga in Toronto. Metro Convention Centre
Assaulted Women's Helpline. Gala Fundraiser. April 15, 2011
It was a fantastic evening! Well attended with good speeches, entertainment, food and an interesting silent auction as well as an exciting live auction. It was gratifying to know that this necessary service will continue with the help of all its donors and friends.
Sandra Diaz read a very moving poem with three words...'someone you know'...that repeated throughout the poem poignantly created images of women who experience abuse as our friends, neighbours, colleagues, etc. Too true and a reminder this 24 hour crisis line for assaulted women is an essential service.Sandra Diaz, Rebecca Ng and the women who organized this event are to be congratulated. As is Huong Pham who is the Executive Director of the AWHL.
SPRING DAY. TORONTO
It's beginning to feel like spring!
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Out and About in Toronto.
The escalator at the Lawrence Station was working in both directions on Sunday.It must be the longest one in the TTC system and it is often being repaired in one direction for what seems like weeks at a time.
Outside the AGO, a piece of Henry Moore sculpture.Artists enjoying the Art Gallery of Ontario. April, 2011.
This afternoon, I went to the Paterson Ewen exhibition at the AGO with my niece, who is an artist, and one of her friends who is also in the aets, One can't take photographs within the gallery, except for this magnificent area,
ILE D'OR. A Review.
Ile D’Or
Mary Lou Dickinson
Novel, 2010
Inanna Publications, trade paperback $22.95
The most important character though may be Ile D’Or itself, a grasping town built on the greed for gold, on a rough-hewn individualist morality, and on the division between the English and French. Our protagonists were born in the hard-scrabble 1930s, raised into the narrow-minded 1950s and are returning to their roots in 1980, shortly after the first Quebec referendum, which rejected the separatist option. In many ways Ile D’Or is a far different world now from the one they grew up in, but many of the problems that drove away the young people remain and now in approaching middle age they have to face them.
Toronto writer May Lou Dickinson, herself a former Quebec northerner, somehow keeps all these emotional, social and political threads straight to weave an involving story of ordinary people figuring each other out. There’s something very Canadian in the content with its characters’ experiences in snow-driven cabins, with horses stuck in swamps, and on frozen lakes — the northern survival theme should please our literary theorists. But the unadorned, earnest style is also very much of this country’s past. The writing is quite direct and accomplished, especially given that this is the first novel for the 70-something author. Perhaps it’s a little old-fashioned — but old-fashioned in the way readers like, telling a complicated story simply and effectively.
And every now and then Dickinson’s characters throw in an explicit but honest sexual reference (to throw off anyone who’s dwelling too much on the author’s age). If I have any disappointment with the novel, it’s that the story doesn’t come to any great climax. Certain revelations are made. Some relationships are resolved. Conclusions are reached. But life goes on in the town and the protagonists continue to muddle through their messy lives. But that too may be very Canadian. Nothing overly dramatic, nothing bigger than life. Our modest lives as they are.
Farzana Doctor. Six Metres of Pavement.
Six Metres of Pavement . Published by Dundurn. Spring 2011.
I have just finished reading Farzana Doctor's second novel and highly recommend it. Follow Ismail and Celia gradually getting to know each other, crossing the boundaries of their own losses and tragedies to sharing with each other. Moving on into new mysteries. Fatima, a young bisexual woman, whom ismail meets at a writing group, becomes central also as she deals with her parents rejection, where Ismail finds himself somehow involved with this situation in helping her. Set in downtown neighbourhoods of Toronto, the city, as well as the characters, spring to life on the pages of this intriguing and moving novel.
NICOLE GOMBAY'S new book on an Inuit community's economy
The following is a book published recently by my friend, Nicole Gombay. You may purchase it through the publisher or order it at your favourite bookstore.
Gombay, Nicole. Making a Living: Place, Food, and Economy in an Inuit Community. Saskatoon, Purich Publishing Ltd., Dec. 15, 2010.
www.purichpublishing.com
Although food is vital to our daily lives, we tend to be unaware of the particulars of where it came from and how it was produced. We simply go to the market and buy what we need in neatly packaged containers. But what was required to get that food there in the first place? In some societies obtaining food is not merely a matter of going to market. Instead it involves the active participation of community members in its harvesting, distributing, and sharing so that ideally no one goes without. Such is the case of many Indigenous communities, including Puvirnituq, the Inuit settlement in Northern Quebec that is the setting for this book.
Until recently, most residents of this Arctic village made their living off the land. Successful hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering, so vital to people's survival, were underpinned by the expectation that food should be shared. As the Inuit were in some cases drawn and in others forced to move into settlements, they have had to confront how to accommodate their belief in sharing to the demands of a market economy. Rooted in phenomenological engagements with place, and using the commoditization of country foods harvested from the local environment as a vehicle, the author documents the experiences of an Inuit community as it strives to retain the values rooted in life on the land while adjusting to the realities of life in settlements.
In this thoughtful and well-researched book, the author documents her experiences and personal reactions while living in Puvirnituq. Quoting local residents and drawing upon academic literature, she explores how some Inuit are experiencing the inclusion of the market into their economy of sharing. While the subject of the study is the Inuit community of Puvirnituq, the issues the author addresses are equally applicable to many Indigenous communities as they wrestle with how to incorporate the workings of a monetized economy into their own notions of how to operate as a society. In the process, they are forging new ways of making a living even as they endeavor to maintain long-standing practices. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the struggles of maintaining local values in the face of market forces.
Educated in Canada, Nicole Gombay teaches Geography at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
$33.00, 232 pages, 2 maps, 17 photos, index, bibliography, paper, 6 x 9, winter 2010 ISBN 978-1895830-590
SIGMA MINES, BOURLAMAQUE, QUEBEC. PHOTO OF MINE 'FAMILY'
Photo taken in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
WINTER EVENING WITH A TORONTO BOOK CLUB
It was a wonderful experience to attend a book club of women in their 30s and 40s who had read my novel, Ile d'Or, and wanted to discuss it with me. We sat in a circle in a warm living room with the fireplace on low (one of those winter days when it was already supposed to be Spring, but this was Toronto in March when anything can happen). The first question was posed by Debra, who had invited me to the evening. How did you start to write? Etc. So I told them the story about my grandmother (Louise Moore) who was the food editor for the Toronto Telegram when I was growing up in that mining camp up north who included stories in her columns as well as recipes. Those stories often had to do with unusual exploits of the town and/or of her three grandchildren who lived there of whom I was the eldest. And that when I was 7 she accepted and included a poem I had written in her column for which she sent me $5. I told the women I was misled into thinking that writing might be a lucrative profession. Everyone laughed and we were off to a fine start.
Their questions and comments were insightful and interesting. And no one commented on the historical error in the book I've previously confessed to have made until I asked if anyone had noticed it. Indeed, Kelly had. She said she wouldn't have commented on it if I hadn't raised it, so I was glad that I had. It didn't seem to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the book. It was interesting to hear that Kelly had lived in Montreal during the time of the FLQ, so was particularly attuned to the events surrounding those dark days.
The host for the evening, Nicole, had made pieces of cooked meat on skewers with tortiere flavours and maple syrup pie in honour of the novel, set in Quebec and with at least one banquet that included some typical Quebecois food. Not being a meat eater, I'm not sure how the meat on skwers compared with traditional tortiere, but I can say that the maple sugar pie melted in my mouth and elicited wonderful memories. And everyone who had either of these delicacies was impressed.
Every time I read from my book(s) or answer questions, the experience is different and I learn something new as well. I'm always glad to have the opportunity.
Their questions and comments were insightful and interesting. And no one commented on the historical error in the book I've previously confessed to have made until I asked if anyone had noticed it. Indeed, Kelly had. She said she wouldn't have commented on it if I hadn't raised it, so I was glad that I had. It didn't seem to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the book. It was interesting to hear that Kelly had lived in Montreal during the time of the FLQ, so was particularly attuned to the events surrounding those dark days.
The host for the evening, Nicole, had made pieces of cooked meat on skewers with tortiere flavours and maple syrup pie in honour of the novel, set in Quebec and with at least one banquet that included some typical Quebecois food. Not being a meat eater, I'm not sure how the meat on skwers compared with traditional tortiere, but I can say that the maple sugar pie melted in my mouth and elicited wonderful memories. And everyone who had either of these delicacies was impressed.
Every time I read from my book(s) or answer questions, the experience is different and I learn something new as well. I'm always glad to have the opportunity.
