Back on the Literary Road Less Travelled

Hello? Is anyone out there in this vast digital world of #readers and #literary bloggers?  

It’s been a while, my absence from #writing.

The pandemic shut down many creative minds and places.

When I checked, it was over a year since I’ve sat in my office chair and written a blog post. Let’s say all the COVID restrictions, lockdowns, and negative news finally wore me down like the flattened lead in an old chewed-up pencil. 

Was anyone even listening or reading my posts anymore or were they just AI bots phishing for what? Ways to sell me products that I didn’t need.

Like a wilted dandelion, I aged and watched my grey roots take over until people no longer recognized me when I ventured outside my home. Oh, how I cheered when former CTV News Anchor Lisa LaFlamme stood firm in her decision to keep her grey locks. She paved the way for more women to embrace their age without succumbing to society’s obsession with youthful appearances.

And what a crazy journey, each of us were faced with in the last three years. So many stories of unexpected illnesses and deaths – family, friends, co-workers, and neighbours. Faced with mortality, grief, and the loss of community, some people wrote and wrote and wrote. Others, like me, lost their voices and pursued new creative outlets based on their long and once forgotten bucket lists.  

Goodbye computer screens. Hello sketch books.

I cleaned closets and downsized, found bags of wool and knitted hats and scarves for the homeless, made homemade cards, sketched, and coloured in my daughter’s old colouring books. 

In Thunder Bay, Poetic Words on Waterfront Benches

If you stand near the ridge of Hillcrest Park in Thunder Bay, you will see him floating on his back in Lake Superior. Known as the Sleeping Giant, this land formation of mesas and sills has inspired many writers including Governor General Literary Award-winner Jane Urquhart with her fourth novel The Underpainter.

She writes, “Passengers who have travelled on the Trans-Canada train can bring his physique to mind long after mountains and prairies have faded from memory.”

From Hillcrest Park: a panoramic view of the famous Sleeping Giant. Although the Sleeping Giant Writers’ Festival is currently on hiatus, Thunder Bay has a vibrant literary community. Check out the International Festival of Authors (IFOA Ontario) to be held Thursday, November 6, 2014 starting at 7 p.m. at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. Featured readers include Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Alison Pick, and Michael Winter.

It’s true. There is a haunting magic or spirit in the north and to try to capture that vast landscape through paintings, photographs, poetry or prose is a difficult task. You must stand on the granite, press the pine needle scent onto your skin and drink in the rugged waterfalls and northern skyline. It’s common to see wildlife such as bears, chipmunks, red squirrels, wolves, deer, beavers, otters, and even a lynx in your travels.

The wilderness swallows you and at some point the words flow like sap from the coniferous trees.

Catherine Moodie Vickers (1873) was the daughter of well-known author Susanna Moodie.

It’s been several years since I’ve visited Thunder Bay. At one time, it was my adopted home where I used to wander Lakehead University’s halls in my quest for stories for the AGORA, a monthly employee newspaper I edited in the mid-1980s. So many untold tales still hide beneath the rocks but last month as a poet I was most captivated by the new waterfront development at Prince Arthur’s Landing. Change stirs the emotions and I too had mixed feelings about the urbanization of the natural shoreline as I watched a mechanical crane lift a pallet of bricks to the fourth floor of a new condominium.

Special thanks to Thunder Bay writer Marianne Jones for her guided tour of Prince Arthur’s Landing, the new waterfront development area on Lake Superior. Her poetic lines are sandblasted in four granite benches located in the park.

Local writer Marianne Jones, author of The Serenity Stone Murder (Split Tree Publishing) took time from her new book promotions to provide me with a special tour of the area. During lunch at the new Bight Restaurant and Bar, we chatted about Thunder Bay’s literary scene. Marketing one’s work is always a concern but these challenges are compounded in the north where writers can feel isolated from the larger publishing centers.

Jones launched her latest book The Serenity Stone Murder (Split Tree Publishing) last month.

The Norwestern Ontario Writers’ Workshop (NOWW) helps by providing inspiration and support for seasoned and emerging writers. Jones also meets and writes with one or two local writers at a local coffee shop. “It motivates us to write,” she said.

Marianne Jones is one of 11 literary guests with work represented on granite benches. Other writers include: Jane Crossman, Marilyn Dumont, Donna Faye, J. F. (Jim) Foulds, Rick Garrick & Bob McKay, Emily Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake, Jean E. Pendziwol, Sarain Stump, and Catherine Moodie Vickers.