Posts

Showing posts from 2021

The Sea

Image
 I have come home to the West Coast, home to the sea. I had been away, preparing for my return but never aware that I did so. The mystery of such things must remain a mystery. How could we manage our days if we knew? How would we discover meaning, our true purpose, the things we had to go through, learn, discover, uncover, forgive, forget, meet the right person out of chance, luck, or more rightly some divine intervention that saw that love burned unlived inside them, and, yes, grow, grow, grow like a flower, a tree if we knew the road ahead? That is the meaning of our lives after all, to experience this human life, this amazing, astonishing life. Existence is mindblowing. I want to be wowed by life, by love, by touch. I want to drink the long draught of it, and savor all of its offerings. I want to cry when I'm hurt, and cry when I am overwhelmed with love. I want to forgive every error, every wrong turn, and be humbled by the rightness if it all.

A Gentle Rain

Image
  the rain settles like hands upon you, cold fingers remembering your face there is no one in the street but the washed few who think that it is for them there are small voices in the rain, no one talks, and you can think without the urgent sun and the melancholy drift of it, the grey and insipid pouring that allows you to shrink back we can rest there, a moments withdrawal from the world look at the solitary crows and how the rain boils off their ungodly capes they cackle with their jaunty hops, pleased, I would say, to be so ridiculous in the carnival of wet and shivering but not too much of it under the dripping leaves listening to the drizzle and sizzle I once sat in the woods as a boy when a thrush told me stories with its rusty-hinge song and when it rains now and the sky falls black and brooding, I take his hand and wait for the music    

Dominion of Mercy Review - When Criticism Begins A Conversation

Image
While Winnipeg Free Press did give Dominion of Mercy a good review, the reviewer did criticize the absence of indigenous content, specifically the impact of the Anyox Smelter and its development on the occupied traditional lands of the Nisga'a people. The story takes place in 1917 in northern British Columbia.  I thought a lot about this in the context of historical fiction, writing a novel that contains both fact and fiction. Although I did have the main character question the presence of an indigenous person in one scene, and further content offered by an other character, (Dominion of Mercy p.197-98), the structure of the novel could not provide the proper treatment to address the cultural and human impacts of the smelter. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/scottish-lass-starts-fresh-in-bc-mining-town-574612052.html My reflection returned me to a question that I've had for a long time. How did we acquire the lands called Canada? Were they just

Dominion of Mercy - Canada Bound

Image
      The movement of individuals of one country into another for the purpose of resettlement is central to Canadian history. The story of Canadian immigration is not one of orderly population growth; instead, it has been — and remains one — about economic development as well as Canadian attitudes and values. It has often been unashamedly economically self-serving and ethnically or racially discriminatory despite contributing to creating a   multicultural   society (s ee  Immigration Policy in Canada ;  Refugees to Canada ). Immigration has also contributed to dispossessing   Indigenous peoples   of their ancestral lands. Canadian Encyclopedia   So, it was, for my fictional heroine, leaving all that she knew for a better life. That one motivation is not without its self-serving aims. Conditions in Europe in 1917 were dire. A world war raged. Poverty in Scotland, as well orphaned children of the war, made the prospects of a new beginning appealing, if not essential. Of course it is self

Dominion of Mercy Cover

Image
 The cover of Dominion of Mercy was inspired by historical events, and portrayed by a painting in 1871 by John Everett Millais. Margaret Wilson was executed by drowning for refusing to swear an oath declaring James II of England as head of the Church. As an eighteen-year-old young woman, her faith in the face of death became celebrated as part of the martyrology of Presbyterian churches. They believed that no man, no woman, not even a king, could be the spirtual head of their church. Margaret Wilson was chained to a stake on the Solway Firth in 1685. As the tide rose, choking on the salt water, Margaret was told to offer a prayer for the King, which she did, but she continued to refuse to renounce her beliefs. She was overcome by the tide and drowned. Cover design by Michel Vrana