I happened to be passing as the ‘Residential School Totem,’ carved by artist Charles Joseph from Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, BC, was being raised outside the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Of course I had to stop and watch even though it was Continue reading
Even though I’ve graded any number of school and university students’ papers, exams and projects, I’ve never enjoyed it. That’s an understatement. I loathe grading!
So why did I volunteer to join a judging committee for a children’s writing competition?
I suppose I felt it was a small way to give back to the larger writing community. I’ve been so lucky to have wonderful generous mentors and friends who’ve taken the time to give me advice and feedback.
In any case, what could be so hard about helping judge a children’s writing competition?
Plenty, as it turned out! Continue reading
A writer friend who had recently moved to Montreal asked me where home was for me. Was it Montreal?
I was surprised how complicated it was to answer that. Yes, my home is in Montreal. I’ve lived here for years. But Montreal is not totally “home.” There are ways in which I’ll never feel I completely belong. For one thing, I only have to open my mouth and people know I’m not from here. I certainly don’t sound like a francophone Canadian. I don’t sound like an anglophone Canadian either.
Where are you from? I’m asked that at least once a week.
But where I came from isn’t home either. That country has changed so much that when I’m there, I’m definitely a visitor. I even have trouble working out which coin is what value when I get on the bus or go shopping.
So is home being with my husband? With my family? Or is it…
I’m clearly not the only one to have trouble pinning down the idea of ‘home.’
The panel discussion “What is Home” at the recent Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, Continue reading
Backstories are always fascinating to a fiction writer. How can you know the characters in your story if you don’t know what’s happened in their past and how that’s affected them?
Is that why I feel so sad when I see yet another of Montreal’s beautiful old mansions bite the dust? Because when we’ve lost Montreal’s old buildings, we won’t know Montreal?
I couldn’t help but wonder what the story was of this building Continue reading
Just looking at these quirky little lopsided buildings in the trees to one side of Beaver Lake on “the mountain” (Montreal’s Mount Royal) makes me want to sit down and write.
I’m sure I’d finish my next story collection so much faster if I had one of these as my private writing nook.
Unfortunately that little sticker says Continue reading
This week from the Time Capsule: the magazine Canadian Weekend November 1979.
Some things just read differently now. For example the headline: “Wonderful WONDERFUL Wonder Weed“… the article is talking about seaweed.
My favourite article is “Kangaroos Are Peculiar to Canada,” tidbits from student essays compiled by a teacher of Canadian history in the U.S. “There are many animals peculiar to Canada. Just for one, it would be peculiar to see Continue reading
Last week I wimped out of my Time Capsule project (my door to the past).
The booklet I pulled out was distributed by our Member of Parliament in 1988 detailing the reasons why the Mulroney-Reagan Trade Deal was not a good idea.
Quite the coincidence that I should find it now, given that President Trump has just opened the door to renegotiating the trade deal (now NAFTA)….
I did try to make a blackout poem with a page of the text but it just didn’t work.
This week the Time Capsule produced the Continue reading
It’s taken me years to finish my collection of short stories. Now I’m in that lovely but frustrating floaty ‘what-next?’ phase.
It’s not that I don’t have plenty of projects to work on (two other story collections are in the pipeline) but I’d really like to sink my teeth into something totally new.
And I feel there’s some idea lurking out there, not so far away, waiting for me… Something important.
It’s just a matter of finding the right door….
Doors to hermit caves in Ethiopia
Inspired by Norm’s Thursday Doors
Weekly Photo Challenge: Security
In the Middle Ages anyone who had committed a serious crime would be given security for thirty-seven days if they used The Sanctuary Knocker on the door of Durham Cathedral.
In that time they had to decide whether they would stand trial or leave the country – or (according to the site I’ve linked below the photo) try to reconcile with those who had suffered from their wrongdoing.
I found The Sanctuary Knocker quite mesmerizing and ominous. Was it looking into my innermost soul to see if I was guilty? It’s actually a replica but obviously imbued with the right aura!
For more about the Knocker and the Sanctuary Seekers.
Out of the Time Capsule comes a shoe box. Great excitement. What’s inside? Letters? Sea shells? A fragment of a dance I once composed? Something of immeasurable value?
Off with the lid.
Inside:
1) a caviar tin lid, bright blue, shiny. Was that a special occasion? One to remember? Then why don’t I remember?
2) a rock. Glued to it, a fabric leaf, and to the leaf three small bobbles (one grey, one red, one grey). ??????????????????
3) a dinosaur, plastic, red with blue fin rising from its back, mouth wide open, spiky teeth.
4) a playbill for ‘Swing’ from 2000. Hey, look at those great songs “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “I’ve Got a Girl in Kalamazoo,” “Cry Me a River”…
But the show was in New York. I’ve been to New York twice: once on my way to work in Bogotà in the ’70s and once a couple of years ago. I wasn’t in New York in 2000. I don’t think I was in New York in 2000.
The show certainly looks as though it was a whole lot of fun.
5) a programme for ‘School for Scandal’ – was that the time we met up with friends for an ultra-elegant afternoon tea before the show and the kids discovered packets of balloons in a drawer in the table and tried to blow them up? By the time we adults realised what was going on, everyone in the restaurant was looking aghast. The balloons were condoms.
6 and 7) two trophies – one for ‘Best Etiquette’ in a golf tournament, the other with a plaque reading “B. of N.Y. Canada Day 77 – Fittness Award 2 Mile Run.” (I Google to check if that stands for Bank of New York – but why would the Bank of New York be sponsoring a Canada Day run? And why wouldn’t it know how to spell Fitness?)
Recognize any of this? I ask my husband.
He seizes…
8) a big round button with the words “First Prize” and featuring a jolly orange cat waving its paws. “Hey! That’s my special Father’s Day button,” he says.
One orange cat button circa 1989. Priceless! (And for the rest, there’s recycling. The rock will go into the garden.)
Susi Lovell 