On Tour Blog
April 16, 2009
So many things about this trip are wonderful: the incredible friendliness of the people we meet in every town and village, the breathtaking scenery, the company of the other authors and Bryan as we drive from one stop to the next, the opportunity to explore a part of the world I’ve never been to before. Still, the absolute, hands-down best part for me so far has been talking to all the kids who love books.
Every classroom of students has been terrific: welcoming, enthusiastic, and full of interesting questions When I ask the kids who likes to read, a forest of hands flies up. When I ask them about their favorite books, the answers come thick and fast. Mysteries. Harry Potter. Jane Austen. Fantasy novels. Vampire novels. Stories about animals. All kinds of books. Their excitement and obvious love for reading is inspiring, and spending time with kids who share my own passion for stories is a sheer joy.
And then—and I love this part—there are the writers. The highlight of yesterday, for me, was talking with the ten year old boy who ran home to his grandmother’s house to get the book he had made so that he could show it to me. And it was lovely. It takes places in a magical setting of a fairy school in the clouds, and tells the story of a young fairy called Ashley and her struggles to cope with the bullying there. Thanks for sharing it with me Max. And keep on writing your stories down.
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April 16, 2009
On the way from Terrace to Hazelton. I won’t even try to describe the setting. The natural beauty disappears in our cameras. It does not convey in words or pictures, can be only looked at: sturdy mountains covered with thick layers of snow; tall, skiny trees silently by the road; transparent, frozen river.
Finding John Field Elementary School brings back the reality. A small school by the road, surrounded by fields and mountains. Everybody gets fast and busy to host the BC Book Prize authors. The children enter the library: K1-Grade 3. One of the teachers mentions that some children have a challenge to concentrate for a longer period of time. The story goes interactively: we are all involved. Even though some children are restless, they are all participating one way or the other. Everybody is eager to ask questions and we even have to extend the reading to give everyone a chance. The grade 3 students want to stay when the others have already left. We look at the pictures again. Why so many eyes around the carriage when the kings shouts out that he has goat ears? I know, says one boy, because everybody is looking at him!!
I am presented with a small handmade creation: an art work of John Field school students. The native culture teacher shows enthusiastically the other items in the classroom: native language exercises on the board, old stories,children’s work…
In South Hazelton Elementary we have vivid discussions throughout the story: how does it feel when you have a secret? what is self-concept? what happened to the king to make him look so different and much happier at the end of the story?
Later that evening, at the BC Book Prize event at the Hazelton public library, one of the visitors is a student from South Hazelton Elementary. She came to our reading with her mom and two other children to hear the story one more time.
” She told me all about today” mom said, ” how thrilled she was to meet the ‘real author’ and she explained me about the idea of the story as well: how important it is to like yourself the way you are; she understood everything!”
The beauty of inspiring children and the beauty of the mountains on the bright day in Hazelton - even though I am a writer, I don’t find the right words to express it.
That evening I also learned that the name of that mountain translated to English is: Standing Alone.
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April 15, 2009
Clambering down the rocks towards the Skeena River at Hazelton took a few moments, earlier this afternoon, but I wanted to be near the water—and I was determined to be near the ice. Yes, the ice is still on the river! Great slabs of it are sloughing off, shelving steeply into the green water, and bobbing away, surfing away, downstream, in chunks as big as cars, as small as shoeboxes, and in this amazingly sunny weather, they are probably melting rapidly, just beyond sight. To watch the ice move is mesmerizing, calming, and to be so warm in this northern sunshine, watching the river melt, came as a complete surprise, an unexpected gift. The sound of the water rushing by filled the air, and I almost dozed off, but a tone underneath kept me awake, kept me alert. It puzzled me; a sound like Christmas, a sound like water glasses in restaurants. A musical note underlay the sound of the water, sometimes faintly, sometimes clearly. It was the ice.
The whole of the mighty Skeena River was tinkling. Filled with tiny ice cubes, as well as the big chunks, the river was making music.
It still is tinkling, I just went out and checked. It is tinkling right in front of where I now am, at the Hazelton public library, a lovely building perched on the very edge of the river.
In about ten minutes we will be reading to people from this community, having already all done readings at various schools, in all the three Hazeltons today. New, South and Old Hazelton—we have visited them with the greatest pleasure, and in the brightest sunshine, surrounded by the most astonishing mountains and scenery, we have met and talked to many students today.
I was at Hazelton Secondary School, with about forty high school students in the library, telling them stories of characters in my book, and encouraging them to think of the history in their own area, the stories in their own families. Since then I have visited the Hazelton museum, been to Kispiox village, and admired the restored village here in Hazelton. If only more historic locations in Canada could do this kind of preservation, this kind of restoration. I have added this to the list of places I must return to. I could learn a lot here.
But now the first guest has arrived for the evening reading. He looks about ten years old, and has come to meet Robin—they are deeply engaged in conversation about her books. Who will come in next?
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April 14, 2009
I felt very lucky to have been invited, along with my fellow author Margaret Horsfield, to read in high schools in Terrace and Kitimat today. At Caledonia High, three teachers—Geoff Parr and several others (spellings I hope to be confirmed tomorrow) had set up our event in the library. Margaret gave a terrific talk about some of the eccentrics she’d discovered in the Clayoquot community depicted in her social history, Voices From the Sound. She imparted some idea of her exhaustive research—all the painstaking work she had done with original documents to help bring this community back to life in her book. Among other things, she quoted from a moving letter by a First Nations boy suffering from tuberculosis in one of the Clayoquot schools. She gave the students a sense of how fascinating local history can be and how important it is to try to preserve it.
Bryan, our wonderfully patient and ever-genial guide, took all of us to Kitimat next. Katarina Jovanovic reported she’d had a terrific time reading her children’s book to an elementary school crowd in Terrace that morning, while Robin Stevenson was pressed for autographs by the children at her event! At Mount Elizabeth high school in Kitimat, Margaret and I were greeted by several marvelous classes assembled by a teacher named Dave Durrant. The students asked both Margaret and me many questions and we wound up feeling not only warmly welcomed but also very stimulated by their curiosity. As we departed, Margaret and I were asked to sign a brick on an office wall reserved for visitors to the school—we were honored to hear our names would be officially shellacked the next day! Katarina and Robin also had a very good experience with their elementary-school readings in Kitimat.
Then we piled into the van again for a lovely drive to a First Nations restaurant, Sea Masters, at a spectacular setting right on the water. After enjoying delicious seafood and the sunset there, we trundled off for our final reading of the day, at BookMasters in the Kitimat mall, where we were hosted with such generosity by the store’s owners and staff. The owners even offered trays full of homemade cupcakes, and a gift for each of us writers. Several of the tour’s sponsors, from Rio Tinto Alcan and Bank of Montreal, were present; Bryan had a ceremony with the cheques and afterward we all got to express our appreciation to them and talk to each other and to the audience members, many of whom lingered to discuss books.
Tomorrow we’re off to Hazelton. I’m very grateful for this tour and for my fellow writers.
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April 14, 2009
Our first talk starts at 9:15. Uplands Elementary in Terrace. Only Robin and myself. Margaret and Elise are going later, to Caledonia Secondary. I am reading to the grade 3 students. Two classes together. Every single student engaged and listening with their eyes wide open. They carry me with that childhood enthusiasm for the story and such generous appreciation for having a book author visiting the class. I never talked with more energy and inspiration. After the reading, the teacher comes up with an extension: all the children will draw a picture of their favourite part of the story. Curious, I walk between the tables leaning over little shoulders: what are they going to draw? Some children draw the king looking at himself in the mirror. Most of them choose the scene with Igor digging the hole and shouting his secret into it. They all fill out the hole with the words:” king….goat…ears”. Some of them approach me saying that they want to become the writers.
Our second visit is in the afternoon. We are full of energy driving down to Kitimat. Yes, we all agree, we are the finalists and it would be nice to get a prize but this trip with all the children we get to talk to - that’s more exciting than anything else.
In Kitimat,we separate again. Margaret and Elise are heading to the high school students. For Robin and myself the next stop is Nechako Elementary School. I am reading to 40 children: grades 1-3. This group is even more involved. We can’t possibly end the talk: they have so many questions: when did you start writing? .. why did you write this story? ..now that you are famous, do you get to meet other famous people? .. what is the prize: do you get a car.?... do you know what happened to the king after?...where does he live?
They all want an autograph. While I am signing,we talk. They find out that I came on the plane from Vancouver.
” And you came from Vancouver only to read us a story?!” - yells a little boy in the corner, his dark eyes growing really big and bright.
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April 14, 2009
First Day
Posted by Robin Stevenson
This is our first day on the Northern leg of the tour… and this is actually going to be a week of firsts for me. First book tour, first time in the north, first time away from my not-quite-five year old. And believe it or not, first ever blog post. Despite considerable peer pressure, I am a committed non-blogger. .
Until now I guess. And it is funny: Knowing that I should post my first blog entry tonight has been making me notice things differently all day. If a student asked a particularly interesting question, I’d think hmmm. Can I work that into the blog? If we drove past some spectacular scenery—which we did—I’d think I wonder if I could describe that well enough to write about it. Or would that be boring? I wish something really funny would happen. When Bryan, who is our fabulous driver and fearless leader, said “If we hit a moose, duck,” I thought, Wow, that’d be an exciting blog post. Assuming I ducked fast enough.”.
Of course, to some extent I do this all the time anyway—scavenge my daily life for potential material for my writing. I imagine most writers’ lives become fodder for their writing in one way or another. But I write novels, so the truthful details that work their way into my writing are usually well disguised. Sure, my name is on the cover of the book but the readers don’t know the exact relationship between the story and my life. They can’t tell which the true bits are. And I kind of like it that way. I like the freedom that fiction provides. I can make my stories exciting because they don’t have to be true.
Hmmm. Maybe if I could write fictional blog posts. Think of the potential for drama, intrigue, suspense…
But as it turns out the day really was filled with excitement. I spent the morning in Terrace and the afternoon in Kitimat, and in both towns I met with wonderfully enthusiastic groups of students in grades four to seven. Their energy level, love of reading and passion for creating stories was incredibly inspiring, and listening to them talk about their favorite books and why they love them reminded me of my own passion for reading at that age. Collectvely, the kids came up with their own fictional characters: in Terrace, a 10 year old boy who desperately wanted two things—a dog, and and to be taller than his younger sister; and in Kitimat, a fabulous home-schooled skateboarding 12 year old called Katie, with blue streaked hair, two good friends, and divorced parents who were tearing her in two different directions with their constant fighting. We talked about the myriad of stories that could be written about those characters, and about the fact that each student would have their own story and their own way of telling it.
I hope some of them will write their stories down.
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April 14, 2009
I had forgotten the beauty of this countryside, even though I spent my childhood here. As the day brightened, the sun emerged, and with it the mountains. How could I have forgotten the scale, the beauty of the mountains? But I had. And I am glad to be here again. The whole day, in between readings, has been illuminated by bright sun on brighter mountains.
First stop today was Caledonia High in Terrace, my old high school. I had the pleasure of hearing Elise Partridge speak of and read her poetry for the first time, in the school library, with about thirty students and three teachers in attendance. Having no poetic voice of my own, hers fascinates me—I spoke of my own work, too—and it was a great start, for both of us.
From there, to Kitimat, and the next reading in Mount Elizabeth High School. This time Elise and I found ourselves in the beautiful theatre at the school, a facility with remarkable acoustics, which we later learned serves as a theatre for the entire community. About sixty students gathered at the front, and again, we talked of our work. The combination of Elise’s poetry and my “documentary” experience in writing Voices from the Sound, combines remarkably well. Our work, our styles are entirely different, and entirely complementary. Just as the students were tiring of me, they were able to hear her more elegaic voice, and oh how that group loved her poetry! The response was remarkable, especially amongst the girls, to the poem she wrote for her husband. An audible sigh, a murmur, rose amongst the students following that poem, that powerful expression of love. I was astonished, and very moved.
Kitimaat Village for lunch, and the spectacular setting of a restaurant, right by the water, with mountains all around us, for an early dinner. Mark this on my memory bank, I thought. Do not forget this. I must come back here.
In the evening, to the bookstore in the Kitimat shopping mall, where the owners had gone to a such a lot of trouble to welcome us, with a spread of coffee, cupcakes….and books! I especially liked the store dogs, small, fluffy and friendly! A highly motivated and interested group gathered to hear us all speak of our work, and this was the first time we all came together for an event. Earlier in the day Robin and Katarina had been at elementary schools, while Elise and I were at the high schools, but this time…it was a foursome at work. I heard Katarina speak of her book, with such clarity and enthusiasm, and Robin told the showstopping story that inspired her Thousand Shades of Blue book….how she and her partner set sail for the Carribean with almost no sailing experience. Remind me never to go sailing with Robin, I thought! But it was such a great story. Then Elise, again, with her poems, again holding us all, listening with such attention.
Sponsors showed up at the bookstore, too. From Rio Tinto Alcan, from the Bank of Montreal—- the people who have helped to finance this tour, without home we would be home doing the dishes and putting the cat out. Instead here we are, now back in Terrace after a luminous drive back in the fading light, through the mountains. And here we stay till tomorrow, glad to be here, and soon to be in Hazelton!
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April 14, 2009
Walking around Terrace, I am looking for signs of the town I knew when I grew up here. I lived here throughout the 1960s, went to elementary and high school here. The elementary school, the house we lived in, the church we went to….all gone. I went looking, hoping to see signs, landmarks, traces, but I found few, indeed none. I felt lost.
But the mountains have not changed. And the Skeena runs wide and gray-green, just as I remember, and the old bridge curves over it—the same bridge I bicycled across,over forty years ago, as logging trucks thundered towards me in a cloud of dust—for the roads were not paved then.
I look at the main street, we are staying right on it, and try to see again those May 24 parades, when logging trucks, shining and new, in great numbers, lined the street, part of the parade, passing by us, proudly and noisily, one after another. This was a town where the loggers were kings.
I am not sure that the Terrace I remember exists any more, but I know that the high school I went to still exists. Caledonia Senior High! I was there, on its opening day, part of the first Grade Eleven class, in 1969.
And I will be there tomorrow, talking to students about my book, about writing, about valuing local history, about keeping and opreserving the letters and diaries of our grandparents and great grandparents.
Probably here in Terrace, as elsewhere throughout BC and Canada, people have, in their attics, or in suitcases, or in long forgotten boxes in their basements, the personal letters, diaries, documents that truly reveal the history of this place. I am convinced that through personal story, through colourful glimpses of everyday life, we begin to understand our past.
So I will share a few letters, from my book, with the students, and I will ask them if they have anything like that within their own families. And because I have built my book largely on collections of ordinary correspondence, on grocery orders, and gossip, and information about local transport….. and because I believe such sources are hugely undervalued, I hope to be able to convince at least a few students at the school that the stuff of everyday life,sometimes seeming so trivial, can indeed be the truest, the most real, bones of our history, and can provide the first step in understanding who we are and where we came from.
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April 08, 2009
Here I am, doing my first BC Prize blog only several days before the Northern BC Tour. We shall be traveling, talking, reading in schools, libraries, book stores, museums….
In this moment I have only a vision of the trip, but I know that it is a precious experience for an author: reaching out to people personally, not only with your written words.
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April 25, 2008
I don’t know how the Kootenays tour went by so fast. While I enjoyed hearing everyone read (crying my eyes out at one of Meg’s readings, admiring the vivid flow of David’s writing, jumping into Heather’s interactive writing exercise and musing over her thoughtful words), it was the question and answer periods, the live discussions, that especially made the trip worthwhile, reminding me of how reading and writing feed and generate a larger dialogue that keeps flowing, a larger sense of community, an ability to imagine, to empathize, to keep learning. Funny how we spend so much time both face-to-face and online doing just that.
Thanks everyone!
Rita
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