Catherine Wilson, John Potter’s daughter, reads her father’s wartime biography aboard HMCS Sackville, as Rev. Andrew Cooke presides over the funeral at sea.
She clutched the folded papers in her hands for quite some time. When the officer on board HMCS Sackville called upon her, she knew it was her turn to speak. Then, though unaccustomed to public speaking, Catherine Wilson stepped forward in front of the warship’s company and other civilians assembled there, unfolded the speech, and began:
RCN telegraphist John Potter during WWII. Potter family photo.
“My father, John Wallace Potter – better known as Potts – was born on March 10, 1922, in Toronto,” she said. “It took him three attempts to enlist before the Royal Canadian Navy finally accepted him in May 1941.” (more…)
I’m going to tell you about a person who helped save Canada. And I was fortunate to witness his work.
His mission began long before this moment, but in November 1976, when the Parti Québécois won the provincial election and René Lévesque became premier of Quebec, a lot of Canadians were suddenly afraid. Lévesque’s platform called for the separation of Quebec from Canada. At that time, I worked as producer/host at CFQC AM Radio in Saskatoon. Dennis Fisher was the station’s general manager. Right after the Parti Québécois victory, he called us together.
“The nation has never been so threatened,” he said. “It’s up to us to do something.” (more…)
How could something so beautiful, be so deceptive?
We got the call on Monday. Our grandkids needed a lift. It was a “snow day.” The school board had cancelled bus transportation, but with the schools still open, we were on deck to drive three of them to school. So, when we arrived, it was the wintertime routine of organizing boots, snow jackets, snow pants, hats and gloves. If you recall, despite the snowfall, that morning dawned sunny, so we got the usual…
“We don’t need snow pants,” they said. “Look how sunny it is!”
“It’s deceiving,” I said. And I thought to myself, “Does any kid understand what ‘deceiving’ means? Not likely.” (more…)
Marg Wright at her 90th birthday celebration in Winnipeg.
The project seemed daunting. On paper, it looked as if I could pull it off. I was young. I had ambition. I had no sense of my limitations. And yet, the idea of actually travelling across the Prairies in search of eyewitnesses to help me document a piece of Canadian history, was just that – an idea and little more. It needed somebody, anybody to give it a vote of confidence. That’s when a couple of business associates offered me a lifeline. They knew I planned to begin my research in Winnipeg.
“Well, if you’re going to spend any time in Winnipeg,” brothers Jim and Hal Sorrenti told me, “you have to stay with Auntie Marg.” (more…)
In the introduction to a book, “A Doyle Reader” by Newfoundlander Marjorie Doyle, CBC Radio host Shelagh Rogers described a get-together between the two longtime friends. Shelagh said, on this particular visit, that she presented Marjorie with a couple of ceramic coffee mugs with the title (of the show Shelagh was then hosting) “Sounds Like Canada” on them.
In accepting the gift, Rogers said Doyle immediately ran to her office, returned with a thick black Magic Marker pen and crossed out the word “Canada” and scribbled in “Newfoundland.”
“Now I can use them,” she told Rogers. “I’m stuck with what I am, who I am,” Doyle recently told a panel discussion I attended in Newfoundland. “On an island, borders are intractable.”
Back in May, The Writers’ Union of Canada gathered its executive, its administrators and several hundred of its members (myself included) in St. John’s for its annual general meeting. Traditionally, TWUC holds workshops on the first day the union meets. Marjorie Doyle appeared on the panel entitled “Writing From My Centre.” She admitted that her home province did not appear in her earliest work as a journalist for the Globe and Mail, the National Post or even on her late night CBC Radio show “That Time of the Night.”
But eventually – perhaps because she often worked away from Newfoundland, in Toronto, Montreal or on Vancouver Island – she realized how much her home island affected her.
“When I was away,” she said, “ I was very aware I wasn’t from that place.” Newfoundland shaped her taste in music, in travel and in language, so she embraced it and celebrated it. I suspect place has a lot to do with the works of many Canadian writers.
Pierre Berton
As well as Marjorie Doyle, author Wayne Johnston has always captured the political and social bloodlines of Newfoundland. The writings of Earl Birney, Dorothy Livesay, George Woodcock and P.K. Page have almost always been associated with British Columbia, just as Pierre Berton’s and Farley Mowat’s works of non-fiction are often linked to Yukon and the Northwest Territories respectively. Think of some of this country’s best fiction or poetry with Montreal as a setting and you read Mordecai Richler, Gabrielle Roy or Roch Carrier. Similarly, W.O. Mitchell, Margaret Laurence and Guy Vanderhaeghe are Canadian writers with their feet and creativity firmly planted in the Prairies.
Over the weekend I joined the 18th annual Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw. For a time – back in the 1970s – I lived and worked in Saskatchewan; I have enjoyed a following there and have twice presented at the festival. But a new generation of Prairie writers has emerged in recent years. They too have found their fictional characters, non-fictional stories, plot lines, settings and even their muses in what one character described as “this dry and barren landscape.”
In her adopted home, Regina, Gail Bowen has written 15 books known as “the Joanne Kilbourn mystery series.” Six of her books have been adapted to television movies; she has also written stage plays and radio dramas. Throughout, she has remained in content and in voice a Prairie writer. Nor has Bowen ever shied away from dealing with contemporary Prairie urban issues, such as the poverty, prostitution and low-rental housing in a Regina neighbourhood known as North Central.
“I always try to portray my locations accurately,” she told a writing panel about the Prairie landscape. “When I write about North Central, I write about it warts and all.”
Anthony Budulka
Seated next to Bowen on the panel was celebrated crime writer Anthony Bidulka, known best for his mystery series featuring detective Russell Quant. On his website, Bidulka describes his hero as “a world-travelling, wine-swilling, wise-cracking, gay PI.” He remembered a unique moment when Quant’s origins suddenly emerged as an issue during a Q & A session in the U.S.
“This big Texan got up to the mike and began to speak,” Bidulka said. “He said, ‘I would like to know how you can write a series about a detective who is … from Saskatchewan?’” That’s when Anthony Bidulka realized how powerfully his home in Saskatoon affected his personality and writing. “We’re a fly-over province,” he added, “but I’m driven to write about Saskatchewan.”
Signal Hill just outside St. John’s is a reminder of just how rugged this island province can appear.
Similarly, as I pointed out in the beginning, Marjorie Doyle is a proud Newfoundlander. She writes critically about her home. She writes passionately about her home. She has strong feelings about its past and its future. She’s even been known to profess that her island province should eventually secede from Canada and return to Dominion status (as Newfoundland was prior to its joining Confederation in 1949).
However, Marjorie is realistic enough to recognize where she is and from where she writes (at least for now).
“I’m the only member of my family born in Canada,” she said at the St. John’s writers’ conference. “The rest of my family was born in Newfoundland (before 1949). Still, I’m rooted to this place … in all I think and write.”
Homemade Barris Christmas angel ornament (fashioned by our daughter Quenby in 1980s).
It happened after I’d graduated from Ryerson in 1971. I’d learned about a position writing press releases and biographies about up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll musicians. They called it A&R, an artist and repertoire position. My employer would be one of the biggest recording labels in the world – Warner Brothers. And, they told me, I would be working from a brand new office in Yorkville, the heart of Toronto’s pop music world.
I wanted that job so badly I could taste it. I applied in June, got it in September and was told I’d start in December. It would be my biggest, best Christmas present ever. Then, the roof caved in.
“Sorry to have to tell you this,” the Warner Brothers flunky said on the phone that December. “Changed their minds. No A&R office. No job.”
It was a reverent moment. Our host entered. We had all enjoyed our first meal in the dining hall together, while on the wall over our shoulders a painting depicted Christ and the apostles at The Last Supper. Our host – a middle-aged monk – apologized that not all seven Franciscans normally resident there could be present; two of them – men in their late 80s – had recently been moved to hospital for elder care, he said. Nevertheless a younger 70-ish Brother Dominic bid us welcome.
Brother Dominic
“We are brothers of prayer,” he said. “But we welcome you here to St. Michael’s, your home away from home.”
