Author Archives: Douglas Gibson

A NEW YEAR, A NEW BLOG, A NEW BOOK!

by Douglas Gibson

You may have wondered why I let my blog slip in recent months. The answer is the best one possible, for me, at least. I’ve been busy writing a new book.

This was a major surprise to me. Whenever friends, or interviewers, asked me if I had another book up my sleeve I would answer honestly, saying ,”Look, Stories About Storytellers is about my forty years in publishing,I don’t think I’ll live long enough to come up with material for another book So no, I don’t think I’ll ever write another book.”

But then, to promote that book I turned the book into a one-man stage show, and decided to see where it would go. It went everywhere. And roaming the country from this Festival to that University, to this neat bookstore or that Library , with Jane as my “lovely and talented assistant”,  we came across dozens of stories. Too good not to share. Enough for a book.

So, in September 2015 our friends at ECW Press will bring out ACROSS CANADA BY STORY: A Coast-to-Coast Literary Adventure.

It will remind you of my first book, because I’ve persuaded Anthony Jenkins to enrich it with his caricatures, once again. This time there are no fewer than 30 of his superb drawings, of our major authors. With this book I’ve widened my range beyond just those authors that I edited, to include major figures like Margaret Atwood, Marshall McLuhan, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Carol Shields, Michael Ondaatje, and dozens of others.

As a Literary Tour the book will take you from Newfoundland to Haida Gwaii, and from Moose Jaw to Grand Manan, as we visit all ten provinces. It will set your feet itching to travel ,as I recall exciting events we enjoyed roaming around cities, small towns, mountains and islands . And as the books and authors spill out in the stories you’ll find that you’ll be tempted to read — or to re-read — dozens of our best books.

You heard it here first.

On Rob Ford and Alice Munro

by Douglas Gibson

On Saturday, November 17 the Globe and Mail asked several “prominent Canadians” to comment on Rob Ford. Here is what Doug had to say, looking at the disgraced Mayor through the prism of Alice Munro.

It’s sad that just weeks after Alice Munro brought Canada to the admiring attention of the world, Rob Ford is dragging us all down. As a storyteller he lacks Alice’s variety; everything is based on denial (“I wasn’t there,” “I didn’t do it”), and even Alice wouldn’t invent a character who is so unbelievable, in every sense.
But her titles alone explain much of the Ford story: Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You (about that crack question); Friend of My Youth (they’re not gangsters, they’re good guys); Open Secrets (nothing more to hide, honest); Who Do You Think You Are?(why should I stay away from your parade?); The Love of a Good Woman (keep my wife out of this, from now on).
As he runs out of people to lie to, let’s hope that he finally takes up the suggestion in another Alice Munro title — Runaway. That would be Too Much Happiness.

NOBEL PRIZE GROOMING TIPS

by Douglas Gibson

ALICE MUNRO 1931– Not Bad Short Story Writer

You’ll be glad to know that I was prepared for Alice Munro to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Pause for arm waving, dancing and cheering.)

As I was saying, I was prepared. So thoroughly prepared that late the previous evening I did the full shower and shave thing, so that I could getup very early and sit, perfectly groomed (striped tie and all), in front of my computer before 6 o’clock. This meant that when the wonderful news came in and the ringing phones started to jump across my desk, I was able to say, “Yes, I can be in a cab to come down for CBC TV news right away,” and so on with all of the other stations.

You may have caught me babbling happily on one of the many shows that interviewed me. It was all inspiring, with every single interviewer beaming and delighted. The ultimate good-news story. A wonderful event for all Canadians with a superb author, one of ours, being honoured at last.

I’m very proud to have been part of it.

The Perils Of Translation

by Douglas Gibson

One of F.R. Scott’s best poems “Bonne Entente” begins:

“The advantages of living with two cultures

Strike one at every turn,

Especially when one finds a notice in an office building:

‘This elevator will not run on Ascension Day'”

It’s unfortunate that there were no poetry-lovers among the hot-shot soft-drink marketers who thought that it would be a great idea to mix up random words in English and French inside bottle-caps to amuse the lucky purchasers. You probably saw the result. An offended couple drew a bottle cap that combined the English word “you” with the French word for “late”, which unfortunately is “retard.”

When we consider that the perfectly respectable word for “shower” in French is “douche” you begin to glimpse the awful possibilities here (although you might develop a fine party game, devising amusing combinations). The marketers panicked, and shut the programme down.

I have recently been involved in studying the work of Sarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan. Sarah was a uniquely gifted translator. For example, translating the famous love poem by Heine  which begins “Du bist wie eine Blume” Sarah rose to new heights with the line “You are like one flower.”

Closer to home, the possibilities for mis-translation extend beyond the English-French divide. Noah Richler’s book, This Is My Country, What’s Yours? contains the fine story of a white official from the south trying to explain the modern industrial world to his Inuit audience, “Time is money!” he explained. This was faithfully translated by the interpreter “A watch costs a lot.”

“WHAT’S IT LIKE, BEING MARRIED TO MARGARET ATWOOD?”

by Douglas Gibson

Every so often, as I roam around book Festivals, or other literary events, a conversation with a nice stranger will take an odd turn. They ( and they’re usually women, but not always) will start to ask what it’s like  “having two writers in the family”. I’m able to laugh this off, explaining that Jane is much too sensible to get into writing, ha, ha. But sometimes they are more direct, asking about what  “Margaret” or even “Peggy” is up to these days.

And it becomes clear that they think that I’m Graeme Gibson.

Now Graeme is a very fine fellow, and I’m pleased to call him a friend, even if we’re not related. But we both suffer ( at least I hope he suffers from people telling him how much they enjoyed his publishing memoirs) from having a very common Canadian surname, in the narrow confines of the world of books, which leads to our being mistaken for one another.

We are both keen birders, and have worked for Adventure Canada, and are members of The Writers’ Union of Canada(which he helped to found) and I have published him with pride in the past, so life often throws us pleasantly together.

Never more pleasantly, however, than in August at Port Medway in Nova Scotia. After I had performed my stage show, I signed books at the local Fire Hall. The excited volunteers told me at the end that I had sold 29 copies of my book, the most ever in the 12 years of the Readers’ Festival…matched only by Graeme Gibson.

BONNIE CLYDE ROSE ON BONNE BAY

by Douglas Gibson

One high point of the Woody Point adventure was when my old publishing friend, Clyde Rose, emerged from the gloom of the darkened theatre at The Merchant House to greet me before my show. Clyde was the publisher of Breakwater Books in St. John’s for what seemed like many generations, and his daughter Rebecca carries it on today.

Clyde now lives in Woody Point, and he kindly took me and Jane out for a mid-day cruise around Bonne Bay on his small boat, which he handled with easy skill –- even if he failed to find the bald-headed eagle near Norris Point for us!

We recalled grand old publishing times, including two stories involving the great Newfoundland humorist, Ray Guy, who died just a few months ago.

Clyde once proudly published a Ray Guy book with a title that was designed to mystify anyone outside Newfoundland. The title was You May Know Them as Sea Urchins, Ma’am.

Every Newfoundlander, however, was delighted by this internal joke. They all knew that the local term for “sea urchins” was “whore’s eggs.”

I remember vividly the time that Ray pulled off a great practical joke in, I think, The Canadian magazine. It involved the cleverest case of bilingual swearing I ever saw. In a solemn look at Newfoundland heraldry, Ray pointed out that the seal in the central position of the official coat of arms was lying horizontally, in what is known in heraldry as a “volant” or “flying” position. Since a seal is known in French as “un phoque” alert readers (but, perhaps, not the editors) sensed that mischief was afoot.

Ray went on to note that this “volant” position gave rise to the official French-language motto of Newfoundland, “Je ne donne pas un phoque volant.”

THE POINT OF WOODY POINT

by Douglas Gibson

For a Canadian author, being invited to attend the Writers at Woody Point event in August is the equivalent of winning the Nobel Prize. It has been running for 10 years now, and has attracted a galaxy of literary stars “from away,” like Michael Ondaatje, Richard Ford, Alexander McCall Smith, Linda Spalding, Elizabeth Hay and Will Ferguson, bolstered by major talents from Newfoundland such as Lisa Moore, Wayne Johnson, Michael Crummey, Michael Winter and many more.

It all started when Stephen Brunt, the well-known Toronto-based sportswriter, had the idea that outsiders would love to discover Woody Point, his idyllic summer home. The tiny community of about 700 lies half-way up the long west coast of Newfoundland, surrounded by Gros Morne National Park — a little like an east-coast Banff, without the fudge shops. The sort of sweeping views of fiords and mountains that you get in those clever ads from the Newfoundland Tourism folks lie all around the little town, and the open waters of the Gulf are just around the corner, as Jane and I found when we borrowed kayaks from our friends Peter and Robert early one morning.

Gros Morne, of course, is a World Heritage site. Its high, orange Tablelands (amazingly, derived from the ocean floor thrust upward) were what proved the revolutionary Continental Drift theories of Toronto’s Tuzo Wilson and Newfoundland’s own “Hank” Williams.

Two minor notes: Tuzo Wilson and I were once guests at a small dinner party given by Brenda and Robertson Davies; like most great scientists he had wide-ranging interests. Second, in the course of my five days at Woody Point I went on a guided hike at The Tablelands. Part of the attraction was a reading by the poet Don MacKay, a keen geologist, and also an outdoor performance by the energetic fiddler Kelly Russell; he amazed me by revealing that Hank Williams was a fine fiddler too.

A key moment in the history of the writers’ festival was when Stephen Brunt’s local crew (including his wife of undetermined ethnic heritage, Jeanie MacFarlane) persuaded the marvellous Shelagh Rogers to get involved. Now she is the voice of the Festival, introducing all of the main events at the grand old Heritage Theatre. She even conducts live, on-stage interviews for her CBC show, The Next Chapter. Her talk with Greg Malone, author of Don’t Tell The Newfoundlanders will make astonishing listening for anyone who, like me, believed that Newfoundland joined Canada gratefully, after an honest vote.

The writers’ events run morning, noon and night. My own show began at 11 at night, followed by some more music, by Pamela Morgan and Sandy Johnston. (Later, Shelagh announced Pamela as “Pamela Anderson,” which led to many jokes.) Often the first readings were at 9:30 in the morning, and the nature walks and other events through the day kept us hopping, and sometimes missing readings that clashed with our chosen event. Saturday morning started with a Church Hall fund-raising breakfast for the local firemen, and the Saturday and Sunday evenings ended with a big dance at the local Legion.

We were staying within earshot of all this, at a central B and B named “Aunt Jane’s”. How could we resist? Will Ferguson was there, too, and others came and went.

A key part of understanding the lure of Woody Point is realising that you are part of the community. People who elsewhere might be strangers come up to you on the street and chat. Fishermen and carpenters (I’ll try not to be too Biblical) reveal that they were at your show, and enjoyed it, but have a question about Brian Mulroney.  Going for dinner produces comments and questions from the staff, and paying your bill involves a long conversation. Village life! That’s what I grew up with in Scotland. I loved every minute of it. And the organizers like Gary Noel made everything easy for us.

At the start of my show I told the audience that my book contains the line “I never met a Newfoundlander I didn’t like.” I hoped that none of them would take that as a challenge, and none did. So the record is still unblemished.

The usual unbelievable coincidences occurred. After my show a woman from the Cypress Hills district in Saskatchewan came up to tell me that when she was growing up she knew my cowboy author, R.D. Symons. She was even able to tell me what happened to his son, Gerry, ranching on another frontier in Colombia.

And when we had dinner with the multi-talented Des Walsh and his lady, Ruth, he told me that he had known Harold Horwood well, even attending the rebel school called Animal Farm that Harold established, in the teeth of fierce St. John’s police pressure. He could even do a fine imitation (like all schoolboys) of his teacher, Harold, throwing back his long-haired head.

A final Newfoundland story. At the Legion bar I met a fine man who had enjoyed my show. When he told me his name was Young, I got excited, telling him about my father’s mother in Scotland, Jessie Young. He cut short my speculation about our being related by telling me that family research had showed that his family were pirates … and had stolen the law-abiding name of Young!

I never met a Newfoundlander I didn’t like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAYFIELD DAYS AND NIGHTS

by Douglas Gibson

Late in July we drove down to Bayfield, in Alice Munro’s Huron County.  

   After Stratford the car knows the way… through Sebringville (Ontario’s longest hamlet, I’m told) then Mitchell (former home of Orlo Miller, who wrote Death To the Donnellys for me) then Dublin (home of “The Liffey Drain”) then Seaforth. Here we took a turn south, wrenching the car wheel away from the traditional route on to Clinton and then Goderich,  to go straight to Bayfield. Along the way we saw the Bannockburn Bridge (worth a photo shoot, since I’m organising a Bannockburn reunion next June, the 700th anniversary of the 1314 battle, where Robert The Bruce defeated Edward The Second-Rate) with the next village, appropriately, named Brucefield.

Bayfield is a place well known to Alice. She once did a “Long Pen ” signing event there , as a favour to her friend the bookseller and her friend Margaret Atwood, the Long Pen’s inventor. We know it, too. In fact my wife Jane is a former resident. When she was based in London, working as a Speech Therapist at the old Victoria Hospital, she and her first husband had a summer place in Bayfield, so we’re always glad to have an excuse to head for “Ontario’s West Coast”.

After wandering around the busy Main Street (on a summer Sunday it’s as crowded with strollers as Yonge Street) we settled in at The Little Inn. In the evening we met Mary Brown, the brave bookseller who organised the event, at the Town Hall, an old church built in 1882. There were the usual technical difficulties before the show, but it all worked out well, with me performing my act at floor level, in front of the stage, and introducing my “lovely and talented assistant”, Jane, who would be changing the slides for me. We even had a Q. and A. session , which was fun, including a woman with memories of being hailed as a  fellow “stubblejumper” by W.O. Mitchell.

Among the audience were old friends of mine , lost for 30 years, and a number of Alice’s friends, from Goderich, Clinton, and even Blyth including one lady who once shared waitressing duties with her. There was a flash of Huron County understatement when one woman told me she was at the show because a friend had seen my show in Stratford and had reported that it was ( I swelled, expecting superlatives, although she was really  too old for “awesome”) it was … um …  “quite interesting.”

When we visited Alice at home in Clinton the next day, she liked that story, and matched it with a story from some years ago when she was visiting a bookstore and offered to sign the pile of copies of her latest book. The bookseller refused the offer…  “because then I couldn’t return them if they didn’t sell.”

GOOD CHEER AT BONNECHERE

by Douglas Gibson

 For 11 years the little Ottawa Valley town of Eganville has played host to the Bonnechere Literary Festival. The moving spirit (there is always a moving spirit for these things) is a Force of Nature called Doyne Ahearn. She contacts you, tells you just how remote her Festival is (about 5 hours from Toronto) and how they can’t really afford to pay anything, but you can stay with her and Frank in their big log house and get to know the Ottawa Valley, including nearby Foymount,  the highest inhabited town in Ontario.

 How can you say no?

  Well, I tried, just as others such as Nino Ricci before me had tried, but Doyne wore me down. Not the summer of 2012? OK, we’ll put you down for 2013.

   So Jane and I planned an anti-clockwise sweep, first up to Peterborough, then to Marmora and the gold-rush country near Madoc, then via Bannockburn (!) up to Bancroft , then sidling north and east to Cormac, near Eganville.

  Our arrival at the famous log cabin coincided with the descent of amazingly thick clouds of flies, but Doyne and Frank soon introduced us to the joys of “bug suits”, and we were able to go swimming off a raft moored in the bug-free middle of a lake, Lake Doyne. The raft, by the way, was reached by means of a circulating rope ferry system, the rope pulled by Jane or me as keen, bug-suited Charons.

   A fine dinner was followed by a tour of the Valley, far from the county seat of Renfrew, the boyhood home of Robertson Davies. In Eaganville we learned about “the Catholic side “ of town, as it was in the old days (and as late as the 1920s Orange-Catholic hostilities were so fierce that the military came in “with cannon”, we were told, to keep the opponents to their own side of the Bonnechere River that divides the town). In these saner times we saw the fine old Museum, and the Library, which the Literary Festival helps to maintain.

  Late in the day “extreme weather” took over. Rain fell in sheets, thunder rolled and lightning flashed. The pre-show dinner at the best restaurant in town was shaping up well, with our mouth-watering orders taken by the friendly waitress when everything went black . The power was off.

It stayed off, and dinner was cancelled. Show time approached. Since my show was due to take place in a windowless church basement, the lack of power was fatal.  For safety reasons we would not be allowed in the dark basement.

   With 30 minutes to the show, it was time for plan B. I suggested that with the thunderstorm rain now gone we could bring chairs out to the parking lot and I could do the show there, in the open air. We had started to bring the chairs out when the lights went on…and, after some heart-stopping flickers, they stayed on.
And the show went on!

  We all had fun, and a few books were sold. Doyne told me that we attracted the very first standing ovation the Festival had seen in its eleven years; I could get to like the experience, especially when Jane joins in. And I was very pleased to receive a fine original painting, entitled “The Storyteller”! Local delicacies made up a very welcome “gift pack”.

   When we got back to Doyne and Frank’s place, the power was off there, so we went quietly to bed. And the next day, after a lavish breakfast, we set off for the long ride through Algonquin Park, armed with Frank’s fascinating book on the subject. As my father’s son, who grew up around saw-mills, I found the Logging Museum a constant delight. And then, after Algonquin Park, via Huntsville, Rosseau and Foot’s Bay, we were back at beloved Loon Island, the cottage on Lake Joseph owned by our good friends, Hope and Phil, who live next door. After four days of swimming (why do they put the navigation buoy we swim around further out in the lake each year?), canoeing, rowing the skiff, cruising the lake admiring the moon and stars, and gathering buckets (oh, all right, cups) of the world’s best blueberries, it was time to head south to Barrie and Toronto, after almost 900 Ontario kilometres.

Not a bad way to spend a summer.

WORKING HARD AT LAKEFIELD

by Douglas Gibson

  Three years ago I was the Lakefield Festival’s host/interviewer at an evening celebrating Michael Crummey’s Galore and Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. With those two fine writers and performers crooning their readings at the entranced audience, how could it go any way other than very well indeed?

  But the Lakefield Festival organisers (this means you, Stephanie) remembered me with affection, and this year presented me with an offer I could not refuse. I would give my solo Stories About Storytellers Show at 2.30 on Saturday afternoon, then act as host/interviewer for the evening session at 8.00, with three authors — count them, three. Then, presumably, I would collapse off-stage, but the show would be over by then.

   Ruthless people, those Lakefield folks.

   On the Friday evening we had dinner with Orme Mitchell (W.O.’s son) , his wife Barb, and  Norman Jewison and his wife, our dinner enlivened by Norman’s tales of his Caledon neighbour , Robertson Davies, and his Hollywood friend Sean Connery, whom I can imitate shupremely well.

  Saturday was spent roaming around Lakefield, before we went to the superb theatre at Lakefield School. After many careful sound checks the lapel mike was working really well… until, after a kind introduction by Lewis MacLeod (son of you know who), I went on stage, to find that squeaking feedback was now, mysteriously, a constant enemy.

   In the end Jane (urged by the sound man) strode on to the stage, demanding the slide-changing “clicker”, which she handled off-stage, and we soldiered on, to good effect. There was even a standing ovation, which is a surprisingly humbling experience (“You really liked it that much?”). Then Lewis conducted a kindly Question and Answer session, and I went off to sign books.

  So many books were sold, and signed, that the local bookseller ran out, and we were able to replenish her supplies with extra copies from the car. Ah, the glamorous life of a touring author.

  The evening session featured three very fine novelists, reading from their recent books, then chatting about them with me. The final part of the evening allowed the audience to throw questions at any of the authors.

  The books in question were very different: Annabel  by Katherine Winter tells the story of a hermaphrodite baby raised as a boy in Labrador in the 1970s:  The Empty Room by Lauren B. Davis tells the modern story of a day in a middle-aged Toronto woman’s life when her alcoholism catches up with her: The Purchase by Linda Spalding is set on the violent Virgina frontier around 1800 when an abolitionist Quaker finds himself the owner of a slave.

  All very different, all very good. I recommend each one of them whole-heartedly, and am proud that our discussion centred exclusively on the books, as opposed to the prizes won, or the brothers or husbands (including Ron Davis, an excellent photographer) who might have earned a mention. Our main problem was that we ran out of time before all the audience’s questions could be answered. But the books are there to be read.

And I did not collapse, on-stage or off, and even attended a post-show party, before sleeping very soundly that night.