Author Archives: Douglas Gibson

NEWS ABOUT ALICE MUNRO

by Douglas Gibson

Alice may not be writing any more, but people are certainly writing about her – and creating events and works of art that celebrate her writing.

In FILM , for example, the famous Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has just brought out his first film in three years. Its title is “Julieta”, and it’s about mother-daughter tensions, based on three stories by Alice.

In MUSIC, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa recently enjoyed great success with a new piece inspired by Alice’s work.

In THEATRE, the Belfry Theatre in Victoria is hard at work on preparing a “word for word” stage version of two of Alice’s short stories. I’ve been involved (helpfully, I hope) in these preparations, and I’m sure that next Spring’s production will be fascinating, and may tour the country. These “word for word” presentations, half-way between a simple reading and a play with actors playing all the roles, are really a new art-form, and I find them fascinating.

In LITERARY FESTIVALS, early June saw The Alice Munro Literary Festival take place in Wingham and other parts of “Alice Munro Country”. A major feature of this year’s event was a fascinating talk by Professor Robert Thacker, where he dealt very generously with my role in bringing Alice’s work to the wider audience it deserved. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to light up the auditorium with my blushes. Next year, I hope.

In LITERARY GALAS , I’ve already mentioned Alice winning The Canadian Scot of The Year Award in May, where I represented Alice. I’ll have the same honorific role on October 13 when The Literary Review of Canada recognises a number of our greatest writers at a fund-raising gala dinner.

In THE UNIVERSITY WORLD, the great news is that Western University ( in Alice’s time there, it was “The University of Western Ontario”) has successfully completed its fund-raising for The Alice Munro Chair.  The first Professor will be chosen in due course, and announced with appropriate fanfare.

Not bad, eh?

 

MOOSE JAW MEMORIES

by Douglas Gibson

We’ve been travelling around, at the expense of the blog, but amassing a number of stories. In Moose Jaw, at the Saskatchewan Writers Festival, we knew that we would have a fine time. This was a return engagement, after a three year lapse, and the old gang of friends was there, wallowing in the pool at The Spa, or strolling through central Crescent Park, where a beaver put on a special evening cruise for us.
We had breakfast with Harold Johnson and Joan, whom we met three years ago, as authors on the same stage in the Library. In August Harold is bringing out what sounds like a very controversial book about the impact of alcohol on our indigenous people. As a Cree with a law degree from Harvard who works as a Crown in La Ronge, Harold  knows about the daily damage of booze to our society. The book is called FIREWATER, and will come from Bruce Walsh’s University of Regina Press. It seems certain to be a powerful book. Watch for it.

On Friday afternoon I gave my Across Canada By Story show in the Mae Wilson Theatre that I remembered with such affection. All went well, although this time there was no superb introduction by Bob Currie (whom I’d like to pack up in my bag, and take with me as my Travelling Introducer). Earlier, I had the pleasure of sharing a session with Bob reading his poetry this year.

I helped with one or two other events, once unofficially. I found Zarqa Nawaz, author of LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE MOSQUE wandering aimlessly around the Library, when she was supposed to be the main lunch speaker. I led her there, and from the stage she told her interviewer, Angie Abdou, that this “nice man” had rescued her, and got her to the event on time. When the “nice man” was asked to identify himself, Angie laughingly suggested that following this particular nice man’s directions was usually good policy for any Canadian author.

On the final day of the Festival, events took a strange turn. I was on a five-author panel on humour, and the speaker before me was Zarqa. She was very keen to inform us all just how difficult it has been for her to find a market for her most recent piece of writing, a very thorough non-fiction study of labiaplasty. She spoke at some length about this, and the audience seemed to like it.

(There may be a link here with the romantic reticence in Saskatchewan that was satirised by singer Connie Kaldor in her Saturday concert at the Mae Wilson Theatre. She asked “Did you hear about the Prairie farmer who loved his wife so much that….. he almost told her?”)

Speaking for the first time, I followed Zarqa by thanking the organisers for inviting me to come to this superb festival. Then I noted, disapprovingly, that while inviting me to participate in the Humour panel, they had not even mentioned the word “labiaplasty”.

Not even once.

The ensuing discussion was amusing,and we all had a good time. Although Terry Fallis later suggested that I might have been wiser to avoid the issue of labiaplasty altogether. He said that I should have kept tight-lipped about it. I believe that was the term he used.

LOVE ALL – A TENNIS CONUNDRUM

by Douglas Gibson

Like so many Canadians, I cheered along as Milos Raonic fought back for famous victories against David Goffin of Belgium, and Roger Federer of Switzerland. This was a wonderful thing for Canada…a Canadian in the Men’s Final at Wimbledon. Surely this was something for all of us to get behind, cheering him on.

Except for this: his opponent in the Final was Andy Murray of Scotland.

I was born into a keen tennis-playing family in Scotland. I was good enough that I was on the local Men’s Team at 14, and my father and I never lost a set all season, as our fit young opponents vacillated between picking on the old guy, or targeting the little kid. So after I came to Canada in 1967, as my own minor tennis career  came to an end, I watched Andy Murray’s career take off, and supported him keenly – although watching him was never a truly relaxing experience.

He played a part in my own career as a writer. In 2008 he made it to the Final of the U.S. Open in Forest Hills, his first Grand Slam Final. I happened to be in Scotland, staying with my brother’s family near Stirling, just south of Dunblane, Andy Murray’s home town. Shazam! It was time for a piece of enterprise reporting. I contacted the Globe and Mail and asked if they would like a Special Correspondent’s Report on watching the New York Final in Andy Murray’s home town.

They liked the idea. I grabbed a quick sandwich, while my young nephew watched in disbelief (“You’re just going to go there and write about it for the newspaper?”), and drove to Dunblane. Quick questions on the street revealed that the tennis match would be shown at The Dunblane Community Centre. I found it, found the organizer, and shamelessly introduced myself with the words “I represent the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto”. In turn, she introduced me around in the crowd, to friends of the Murray family. I knew that all would be well when one old gentleman gave me the quote “Win or lose, to me Andy will always be just a wee laddie from Dunblane.” (Punching the air is not an appropriate response from a note-taking reporter).

Well, Andy didn’t win that day, but The Globe and Mail’s readers got a fine feature from an unexpected tennis correspondent. If you don’t believe it, you could look it up, from September 2008.

So Andy Murray and I go back a long way. Supporting Milos against him was going to be very hard. It was indeed, as my title suggests, a real tennis conundrum. How should a patriotic Canadian born in Scotland handle this culture clash?

In the end, I decided that since both Scottish and Canadian cultures are, let’s say “anti-triumphalist”, my most appropriate position was to support, and root for, the player who lost in the end.

So go, Milos!

AUSTIN CLARKE AND GORDIE HOWE

by Douglas Gibson

Last week I went to Austin Clarke’s funeral in St. James Cathedral. A fine, formal event where the white-gloved pall-bearers included the hefty Barry Callaghan, somehow reminding me of his wispy father Morley; also my old friend Patrick Crean ( we dated girls in the same family in the Sixties) who was latterly Austin’s editor for The Polished Hoe, and other books; and above all Cecil Foster, the well-known writer.

At the end of the service (one of the few in the Cathedral to involve Bob Marley’s songs, plus a reading from Austin’s latest novel, More, which mentions the bells of St. James), I made a bee-line for Cecil. I thanked him for urging me to visit Austin, who was in poor health. Of course I had meant to visit Austin, whom I’ve known for over forty years as a figure on the Toronto scene, and whose novel, The Origin of Waves, I published. But, although full of good intentions (you may recognise this situation in your own life) I had never got around to it. Cecil’s urging me to go to see him, soon, did the trick. I visited Austin at home just two months before he died, and just days before St. Michael’s Hospital claimed him for the last time.

Austin was clearly very ill, but he knew me, and our fond visit went very well. So well that his young relative Alan, who was with us at the Shuter Street house, greeted me at the funeral, and told me how much Austin had enjoyed our time together. Then he invited me back to the family gathering after the funeral, where I met many old friends, and we shared stories about Austin, not all of them involving rum.

Some weeks earlier Gordie Howe passed away. Our newspapers and magazines were full of tributes to this man that scores of writers called our greatest player. Yet many of the tributes (especially Stephen Smith’s fine hockey blog) dealt with Gordie’s Jekyll and Hyde personality, where this big, charming Saskatchewan boy off the ice, when he put on skates and picked up his surgeon’s stick, turned into an on-ice assassin.

I knew Gordie. I knew, and liked, the good Gordie when I published After The Applause, Gordie and Colleen’s book, written by Charles Wilkins. And during that time, I was hip-checked by Gordie Howe!

Let me explain.Famously, Gordie used to get bigger in the dressing room. The more clothes he took off, the more his long muscles seemed to emerge. I can attest to just how solid he was. We were at a publishing cocktail party and big Gordie secretly came up on my blind side, then smilingly stepped into me with a gentle hip check. I staggered across the room. It was like having a building move into you.

 

JULY ENGAGEMENTS FOR THE ACROSS CANADA BY STORY SHOW

MOOSE JAW…..Saskatchewan Writers’ Festival

The Mae Wilson Theatre. Friday July 15, 4.00 – 5.00

TORONTO……..Classical Pursuits, with Ann Kirkland (Members only)

Victoria College Dining Hall. Tuesday 19,  7.00-8.00

OTTAWA VALLEY…..Bonnechere Authors Festival

St. James Church, Eganville, Wednesday, 27 July 7.00—8.30

EASTERN TOWNSHIPS…..The Piggery Theatre, North Hatley, Quebec.

Sunday Evening, 31 July.

THE FOGGY DEW AT RIDGEWAY

by Douglas Gibson

Three years ago, I was delighted to drive down to the Niagara Peninsula to be part of the very first Ridgeway Literary Festival. The other participants were Charles Foran , talking about his majestic biography of Mordecai Richler, and Andrew Westoll, telling us about his prize-winning book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.

It was great fun, although I missed the spectacular events of the Saturday, when the celebration of the Battle of Ridgeway went sensationally askew. According to my informant, the reliable David Wilson (biographer of D’Arcy McGee), the two proud Canadian regiments involved in the original battle (“headlong retreat” is not used in regimental histories) were unable to agree on who should march at the head of the line, following the historical route from the Ridgeway train station to the nearby battlefield.

Total standoff.

In the end, the gallant lads from Hamilton flounced off, and the Queen’s Own Regiment led the way through cheering (well, ice-cream licking) crowds to where the new monument was to be unveiled.  The local MP, Harper’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Nicholson, made a speech where he paid tribute to me as an impressive performer the previous evening at the Literary Festival named (long pause) “Doug (…..even longer pause) Wilson!”

The unveiling of the monument went no better, because the canvas cover had been tightly lashed down against high winds, and the ropes had to be slowly sawed through, whereupon the cover billowed and snapped like a sail until it was caught and hauled down, as I have described in a previous blog

Nevertheless, the Ridgeway organisers, led by the tireless Mary Friesen, had warm memories of me, and invited me back to Ridgeway this June. The occasion was not a Literary Festival, but a Literary Evening grafted onto a remarkable historical event entitled “THE FENIAN RAIDS HISTORICAL AUTHORS CONFERENCE” .

The people in attendance were historians from Canada, the United States, and Ireland, and for two days I sat and admired their professional skills as they explained the significance of this battle, which had taken place exactly 150 years earlier, to the day, June 2, 1866.

The background is this. Many Irish immigrants with bitter memories of British rule in Ireland fought for the North in the American Civil War. When the war ended, many of these hardened soldiers were persuaded by nationalist Fenian groups that an invasion of British Canada might pressure Britain to give up their rule of Ireland, to in effect swap Canada for Ireland. Inspired by this idea, these Fenians invaded Canada at several points, most famously across the river from Buffalo, to Ridgeway, beside Fort Erie.

The battle was a disaster for the Canadian volunteers, whose officers were so incompetent that they sent their men out in sweltering June weather in winter uniforms, and without canteens to give them water. I took a battlefield tour with Peter Vronsky, the author of the Penguin history of the battle, and the tales of military folly were predictably amazing. As the Canadians advanced, the Fenian general was luring them, Civil War-style, to a killing ground. But someone shouted out “Cavalry!” and the panicked Canadian commander had the chance to use his favourite parade-ground manoeuvre, which always brought warm applause from crinolined spectators,

“Form a square!” he bellowed. The troops loyally shuffled into position, ready to repulse the non-existent cavalry.  The Fenians, with their inaccurate breech-loading muskets, could hardly believe their luck as their opponents clumped together to form an easy mass target.

Soon the Canadians were rushing back to Ridgeway. This hasty retreat meant that they avoided the planned killing ground, but nine Canadians died, while fourteen Irish Americans also lost their lives.

It was a fine historical conference, but many of the attendants were…er…deeply eccentric. One enthusiast, for example, had driven many hours from Vermont in a car bearing the licence plate FENIAN. Others were historical re-enactors. They are the sort of hobbyists all too keen to march around reconstructed battles in precisely correct uniforms, dying dramatically, arms outflung, until the announcer at such events  intones through the microphone  “THE DEAD MAY NOW ARISE.” I’m sorry that we had no such event at our Conference.

The musical entertainment in Ridgeway involved a famous Irish group, Derek Warfield and the Young Wolfetones. Their long-running tour of Irish America meant that their praise of all things Irish was without a trace of irony, and sentimental rebel songs full of weeping mothers were greeted with hoots of delight.

I like Celtic music.

Across Canada By Story tells how I came to sing a solo of “The Wild Rover” at the Royal Ontario Museum. But what, you may wonder, was I doing at this Ridgeway conference?

Well, the Literary Evening featured Guy Vanderhaeghe, whose last historical novel, A Good Man, featured a narrator scarred by his experience at the Battle of Ridgeway, who later encountered Fenians out west, when he was dealing with Sitting Bull’s arrival in Canada after The Little Big Horn.

My role was to interview Guy, or have an on-stage conversation with him. He’s such an old friend that we go back to Man Descending, his first book, which I published in 1982. Not only was our conversation a success, because Guy is such a thoughtful writer. Socially, it was a great time for us, from the moment when Jane and I picked him up at the Toronto airport on Thursday, until we dropped him off on Saturday.

I especially enjoyed our time together, roaming around downtown  Ridgeway. We visited the fine bookstore on the main street run by Mary Friesen, where I was pleased to find that my photo (along with Charles Foran and Andrew Westoll) adorns her walls. Just a few minutes down the street, past The Flying Squirrel restaurant, I found the theatre where I gave my original show. It shares a building with a lively brewery that produces a beer named “Brimstone.” There may be a song there.

Certainly, the menu at our Fort Erie hotel deserves wider fame. For dinner, Guy noticed, it is possible to order a steak “grilled according to your likeness.”

THE NIGHT MANAGER SHUTS DOWN CANADA

by Douglas Gibson

Despite all of my travels to give my new Across Canada By Story show (more than 40 performances so far, only one of them involving a death-defying  fall off the stage) I have been able to see a spectacularly good TV series. It is “The Night Manager”, based on the 1993 novel by John Le Carre.

Long before that book appeared I was telling anyone who would listen that John Le Carre was not “just” a spy novelist, but the best novelist in Britain. I’m happy to note that this heretical opinion is now gaining acceptance. Ample proof is provided by the recent book, John Le Carre: The Biography , by Adam Sisman, who is, of course, “an Honourary Fellow of  (aha!) the University of St. Andrews”. His account of the life of David Cornwell, the man behind the nom de plume, is full of admiring quotes from major sources. For example, Philip Roth called A Perfect Spy “The best English novel since the war. ”Ian McEwan in 2013 called Le Carre “perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain.” I agree.

Certainly, in my mind, Le Carre/Cornwell was behind the best TV series of all time, the 1979 BBC adaptation of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Watching the superb plot unfold on the screen drove me back to the book, and I had a strange extra-dimensional experience as the same events were subtly revealed in two art forms.

With that background, I was excited to learn about the new TV series, “The Night Manager”. I have not been disappointed, and await the final episode with keen interest. One curiosity is that the villain of the piece – “the worst man in the world” – is a shameless arms dealer named Charles Onslow Roper, played by Hugh Laurie. Yes, Hugh “Bertie Wooster” Laurie, the pop-eyed idiot kept afloat by Jeeves, and later the star of the American TV series, “House”. For a Scot, there’s a special pleasure in seeing Hugh Laurie (and we all remember the old Scottish song “Annie Laurie”) become the world’s idea of a drawling English villain, when his features are almost a caricature of The Scottish Face.

For Canadians, there’s a special curiosity in the TV version of “The Night Manager”. In the book (and, again, I was drawn back to the book) when our hero,  Jonathan  Pine , has left Cairo, then Switzerland, then Cornwall, and is creating a new identity,  he ends up for some months in Quebec. In the mining town of Esperance he ends up working at le Chateau Babette, hired by mighty Madame Latulipe, who unfortunately gives him a room near her daughter Yvonne, whose fiancé, Thomas, is off studying First Nations in the North.

Madame is convinced that Pine/alias Beauregard is French.“Or perhaps Belgian. She was not an expert, she took her holidays in Florida. All she knew was, when he spoke French she could understand him, but when she spoke back at him, he looked as insecure as all Frenchmen looked when they heard what Madame Latulipe was convinced was the true, the uncorrupted version of their tongue.”

There are about 30 pages set in Canada, while Pine seduces his way to a new passport. But they don’t appear in the TV series. Making a film or a TV series out of a novel always involves great deal of reduction, and, in truth, the Canadian episode is not central to the book. Le Carre (who is involved in this screenplay) has written ruefully about how much cutting is required to prepare a novel for the screen, saying that you have to watch your oxen being turned into a bouillion cube. I’m sure that in the original quote, it was an Oxo cube.

DOES HIS OWN STUNTS

by Douglas Gibson

After my London fall from grace, I asked my blog-readers (blogistas?) for ideas about how best to turn this mishap to my commercial advantage.

So far, the best suggestion has come from the High Commission’s own Scott Proudfoot. He suggests that I should boast that, unlike many Hollywood A-listers, “Gibson does his own stunts.”

Debra Martens came up with a witty headline about “falling for the love of books.” She tells me that she’s working on the contrast between me swan-diving to the floor, while in Trafalgar Square outside Horatio Nelson turns his back in statuesque disgust.

 

HOW TO SEE THE SHOW

I’ll be giving performances of ACROSS CANADA BY STORY in May.

IN TORONTO, at THE BEACHES LIBRARY, on Queen Street, on Thursday May 12 at 7.00

IN STRATFORD, at The CITY HALL AUDITORIUM, as part of Springworks, on Saturday May 14 at noon.  AND on Tuesday May 17 at 8pm.

IN TORONTO, at THE RICHVIEW LIBRARY, 1806  Islington, on Thursday May 26  at 6.00.

IN ELORA, at THE ELORA FESTIVAL, a 20-minute version in The Aboyne Hall, from 1-to 4.00

At all of these events, books will be sold, and signed!

 

MORE TO COME, IN SUMMER AND BEYOND

KING OF THE ROAD

by Douglas Gibson

When I fell off the stage in Canada House, I did so in the Mackenzie King Room. Another example of how links with this former Prime Minister keep cropping up in my life.

In ACROSS CANADA BY STORY I tell about how, long before my own days at Macmillan, the sober bachelor’s visit to the Macmillan of Canada’s building on Toronto’s Bond Street went terribly wrong. The Prime Minister expressed the wish to pay his respects to the nearby house that had belonged to his grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie. His appalled assistants, and their Macmillan hosts, were aware that the house had fallen on hard times, and was now a brothel.

As the portly Prime Minister stood reverently on the sidewalk outside, one of the ladies inside spotted him, and mistook his quiet reverence for bourgeois hesitation. Throwing up the window, she vigorously invited him to step inside, giving some very explicit promises of the pleasures that awaited him there. The Prime Ministerial party departed at high speed.

Later that old house was restored, and became the fine museum that it is today. That was where we at Macmillan mischievously launched the 1976 book, A VERY DOUBLE LIFE by C.P.Stacey. This astonishing history drew on the recently published secret diaries kept by Mackenzie King. These diaries revealed, beyond question, that this man, who held the post of Canada’s Prime Minister longer than anyone else, was deeply crazy. In the restrained words of The Canadian Encyclopedia (1988): “Recent revelations show that this apparently proper and colourless man was a spiritualist, in frequent contact with his mother and other dead relatives and friends.” To speak plainly, this Prime Minister, in charge of Canada throughout the Second World War, was a crazy man, who consulted his dead mother before making vital national decisions that would cost lives.

Yet this very eccentric side remained a closely held secret. Most Canadians were astonished when the Diaries, and Stacey’s book full of damning excerpts, revealed the truth.

But surely, for this secret to be held so successfully, he must have kept his beliefs totally secret in Ottawa? Right?

Wrong.

We switch to Gananoque, where, thanks to Debra Davis, on 29 April, I went to visit The Literary Festival, now in its second year. (I recommend it, without question).And, as usual, in telling stories, I received some. A woman in the audience later introduced herself as a member of the Norman Rogers family, and told me that Norman had been one of Mackenzie King’s closest advisers, and a member of his War Cabinet. In fact, in 1939, this former Professor turned Kingston MP became the Minister of National Defence. The next year, he died in a plane crash.

Naturally, his funeral was a major national event, and Prime Minister King was there, with the Cabinet. To console the grieving Rogers family, King sought them out, to assure them that Norman was just fine, and very happy in Heaven. He, the Prime Minister, had recently chatted with him, and was pleased to report that everything was fine with good old Norman.

The family was amazed to hear the Prime Minister talking openly in this way, but they kept the story secret, like all the stories of King and his mother’s portrait, and his respect for the opinions of his dead dog, little Pat. But the story lived on.

I’ll think of this story every time I go near the Kingston Airport, The Norman Rogers Airport, one of the few instances of an airport named after a man killed in a plane crash.

DISASTER IN LONDON’S WEST END

by Douglas Gibson

Since I started performing on-stage versions of my books, I’ve been to many surprising places. With STORIES ABOUT STORYTELLERS I went from coast (Queen Charlotte City, Haida Gwaii) to coast (Woody Point, Newfoundland) to coast (Ungava Bay, on an Adventure Canada cruise ship, in July 2015). Over 100 Canadian performances, so far!

Outside Canada, I took the show to Mexico, and to China, with performances in Beijing and Shanghai.

Now, with the new show based on the fall 2015 book. ACROSS CANADA BY STORY: A Coast-to-Coast Literary Adventure, I’ve started to roam around Canada. So far, I’ve given about 20 shows, in every province west of New Brunswick. Many, many more to come. Watch this space….or invite me to your theatre, library, bookstore, or club!

But in April I opened up new territory, by giving the show in Scotland and in England. The Scottish show was in St. Andrews, my alma mater. I was there to celebrate my 50th anniversary of graduation. I gave the show in the Byre Theatre, to a small but appreciative audience that seemed interested to learn about our major Canadian authors.

A side note: the Byre Theatre played a role in my life, perhaps preparing me for the performing life. In 1964, I and five friends under Alan Strachan took over The Byre for a week, to put on an original satirical review, a little like “Beyond The Fringe”. A high point occurred in the middle of the show when I stepped out beyond the closed stage curtains. In an annoyingly mincing voice I posed as a theatre authority, saying:  “Trends in humour are ever-changing. Satire has come and gone. Now many experts in the field are predicting that the new popular trend could well be….Slapstick!” Whereupon a bare arm flew out between the stage curtains and smashed a large custard pie into my face.

Blackout.

And the bare-armed Stage Manager then led me, blinded and gasping, back to my dressing room, where towels awaited me. As I finished mopping my face, more than thirty seconds later, they were still laughing. Give the audience what they want… And seeing me getting a creamy pie smashed into my face certainly seemed to hit a new theatrical record for total audience delight, every night of the week. It was good training for a Publisher.

There were no custard pies in evidence when I gave the show on April 19 in Canada House, in Trafalgar Square. The High Commission people treated me very well, and Scott Proudfoot introduced me graciously to the 70 people assembled in the grand MacKenzie King room. The stage, about two feet high, was bare, to allow me to roam around, retreating where necessary to the screen at the back, to point out details of Anthony Jenkins’ caricatures, or of the maps as we moved across the country. It was all very fine, and Nelson was standing unconcerned on his column outside the window when BANG, I fell off the stage.

It wasn’t just a little trip off the back. It was a full swan-dive, so that I landed on my shoulder and head, legs in the air. The screen went blank, people screamed, and Jane and Scott stormed across the stage to pick me up, and dust me off, and restore the shattered slide-changer that had suffered in the fall.

Miraculously, I was not hurt, and was able to carry on, and even to enjoy the excellent dinner that the High Commission staged in my honour in the MacDonald room. But since Trafalgar Square is definitely in London’s West End, a theatrical Mecca, I hope that someone can come up with a selling line about this incident that I can use to promote my show.

Any ideas?

For an objective account of my fall please read the blog of Debra Martens, spouse of Scott Proudfoot.

https://canadianwritersabroad.com/2016/04/27/falling-for-love-of-books/

IN PRAISE OF ELLEN SELIGMAN, COLLEAGUE AND FRIEND

by Douglas Gibson

Ellen and I were colleagues at McClelland & Stewart for almost twenty years. When I became the Publisher in 1988, Ellen was the Editorial Director for Fiction. She was already a legend who had been at M&S for over a decade, and had established herself over that time as a superb editor who specialised in fiction.

My main role in this area, in fact, was simply to clear the way for Ellen to work her magic with the authors whose trust and affection she had earned. Their names, and their prize-winning books, are too well known to bear repeating here. It is the heartfelt tributes from these bereaved authors that speak most tellingly to the great qualities of Ellen Seligman.

An extra dimension was her superb eye for talent. At any Sales Conference when Ellen began to use her expressive hands as she wove her tale about a new writer (perhaps a poet named Anne Michaels who had just written a wonderful first novel), the Sales Force and the entire Marketing Team would sit up and pay very close attention, to their great benefit.

I have written elsewhere that I hoped that Ellen might some day write the inside story of her creative dealings with so many famous and grateful authors. Sadly, it seems that this will not happen. We have all been deprived of a fascinating book by her untimely death.