Close Encounters with Science: Picks

Close Encounters by Caroline Woodward

We lived at the top end of an L-shaped piece of land in the north Peace River region. To get to the Co-op, Dad drove our team of horses along a narrow dirt road, across a steep-banked coulee over a gap-toothed wooden bridge and finally on a proper gravel road for six miles. The springy Democrat buggy was a better ride than the steel-rimmed wooden wheels of the grain wagon could offer in summer and in winter, the caboose was better than the wagon box open to the elements, even though the box was moved onto sleigh runners.

I can still see us all on the bench in the dark caboose, with hot bricks wrapped in grain sacks at our feet, the little wood heater glowing and the end of Dad’s hand-rolled cigarette glowing too. He stood and drove the team with a round hole in the wall of the caboose to see through and another for the harness lines to come through. There were no sounds except the squeak of the cold, dry snow beneath Babe and Brownie’s hooves and the long sleigh runners gliding along below us, the gentle rocking of the caboose, wood on wood, as we rounded corners and small clunks from within the wood heater.

When I was in Grade One, Dad bought a John Deere tractor and the horses were retired from hauling ploughs, harrows, seed drills and grain binders around our fields. In Grade Two, Dad drove home from Fort St. John in a 1953 Chevrolet car, white-knuckled down the steep and winding Beatton River hills. In Grade Six, we were told to use ballpoint pens instead of ink pens, with which I enjoyed the art of cursive writing. Thanks to a blizzard, my Dad couldn’t get to the Co-op so I was the only kid in the classroom happily writing with my ink pen, the nib slanted at a perfect angle, one day past the deadline.

That spring, there were meetings in the Hall about electricity but for the poles to cross our neighbour’s land to reach us would cost five thousand dollars. That summer, long trucks came to our farm and men loaded our house, barn and chicken house onto the flat-decks. We opened and closed five gates, running beside the trucks until we arrived at the toe end of the L.

Our house was set down over a new root cellar only forty feet from the main road where a tall hydro pole already stood. Within days, the wiring was complete. Mom turned on the switch and a bare bulb gleamed overhead. She plugged in a pink table lamp with a plastic orchid on it, our neighbour’s gift. She walked from room to room, turning on the lights, her face glowing just as brightly. The new deep freezer cleared its throat and hummed to life.

“Oh,” said my mother. “It’s just like a miracle. Maybe a washing machine next?”

Later, I looked up the word ‘miracle’. Close enough.

Review of "I'll See You In My Dreams"

I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel by William Deverell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every new Arthur Beauchamp mystery seems even funnier than the last, which is saying something. The self-deprecating humour, legal puzzles, human conundrums, urban and rural settings and the characters created by William Deverell never fail to satisfy. This book, in particular, deals with some very dark Canadian history and corrupt characters, circa 1962, mostly.

The structure of the book, intersperses a "biography" of the gangly, Roman-nosed lawyer from the beginning of his career, referencing other books in the series (very clever) and then unspools a plot which moves between the 60's and present day. Deverell is a terrific writer who happens to specialize in erudite, witty, page-flapping mysteries with a social conscience. It takes a pro to make those diverse elements sing in a pitch-perfect way and that's why his fans are legion.

The tidbits offered up to depict Vancouver of the early 60's era are another delight to encounter: the Cecil Hotel, the poet Newlove (John, like the fictional Beauchamp, a brilliant, tormented fellow fond of libations), the tasty and affordable Green and Orange Door restaurants,the Marco Polo, Isy's, the old West End and the view while walking over the Burrard Street Bridge. Likewise, the depiction of rural"Garibaldi Island" and its denizens, classic Gulf Island caricatures, lovingly created, down to the perennially late ferry boat, the transsexual Queen of Prince George, never fails to elicit guffaws. Warn your bedmate if you read at night. It's either a benign West Coast quake or a new Arthur Beauchamp novel underway.

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Review of The Taste of Ashes by Sheila Peters

The Taste of Ashes by Sheila Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a thoughtful and well-written novel which will challenge those in 'comfortable pews' as well as those readers who try to avoid reading about genocide (in this case, Guatemala) or those who have set ideas about Catholic priests. This is to name just three good reasons to read this challenging book. The central characters are not having easy lives: Isabel is a recovering alcoholic in her late forties, living in a small northern Canadian town. She is a lonely woman who has made many poor choices in male companionship while under the influence and who has difficult relationships with two of her three adult children. Her daughter Janna is bright, hardworking and just as stubborn as her mother but she has managed to escape the town where her mother's drunken, lustful escapades brought down more than her fair share of shame amongst her peers. There are two brothers with different fathers, one increasingly remote and disapproving and the other, wonderfully developed, the emotional and sensible pillar of the family, who provides stability for them all. His Gitxan family roots are exemplified by his behaviour and leadership.
One character observed that Isabel was "fierce for her children" for all her lapses and failings. She struggles to pay her mortgage, working as the assistant manager of a discount clothing store for $12.50/hour. She finds solace in gardening though, descriptions of which illuminate the darkness of the story in much the same way as bulbs planted in late fall restore the faith of northern gardeners when they emerge to announce another spring.

Isabel tucked the (peony)root into the ground. Before she covered it, she said a prayer for Janna, a prayer to overcome anger. Isabel had felt it in herself when she hugged Janna at her college graduation last spring. She'd felt it in her daughter, the way her pretty face pinched in resistance and her body became an awkward stick that Isabel wanted to shake. She covered the root and prayed that Janna would grow soft, would send out tender shoots, and that she would come home.

Alvaro is the Catholic priest who has lost his faith, his calling and who is suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress. Alvaro endured torture in Guatemala and encountered its manifestations daily while working to reunite families, even if some of the members were bones in a mass grave. There are many more characters, all masterfully created 3-D people, great, reprehensible or merely meddling, with devastating results to show for it. They are characters that linger in my mind, each one fully developed. This is not a book to rush through but to think and feel and hope through and the author's skill is such that one is forced to confront one's own prejudices and easy judgments.

The author, Sheila Peters, has done a substantial amount of research with human rights workers in Guatemala, with Catholic priests and lay persons, and with trauma counselors in Canada. By tackling the sacred and the profane, the best and worst behaviours of humanity, she has offered us an ambitious first novel of great depth and complexity with memorable characters that will linger a long while after the ending, which is just exactly right for the story.The Taste of Ashes

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Review of The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman by M. L. Stedman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book was recommended to me by a friend, an avid reader who thought that since I lived on a Canadian lightstation, a new Australian book set on a station there would be of interest. Also, that it was a very, very good read. Well, what a pair of understatements.
This is a stunning first novel set in post-World War I Western Australia, well south of Perth. The Janus Rock Lightstation is strategically located between the Great Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean, a place where the warm and cold currents collide and ships traversing the shipping lanes recognize its five second flash as entering or leaving the realm of the Australian continent.Urgent messages to and from the lightstation and the ships are infrequent but Morse code is used by all parties. Part of the lightkeeper's duties are to note the names of the ships passing by, time and date, and to log all such information.

Stedman's descriptions of lighthouse duties, of the island, the tower itself and the house provided, the supply boat which stopped by every three months and the mental strain suffered by a widowed lightkeeper are apt and accurate. She writes beautifully.

To this well-named island, comes battle-scarred Tom Sherbourne, a relief keeper and war hero, looking for a place to be still and solid.

At the kitchen window, the flame of the oil lamp wavered occasionally. The wind continued its ancient vendetta against the windows, accompanied by the liquid thunder of waves. Tom tingled at the knowledge that he was the only one to hear any of it: the only living man for the better part of a hundred miles in any direction. He thought of the gulls nestled into their wiry homes on the cliffs, the fish hovering stilly in the safety of the reefs, protected by the icy water. Every creature needed its place of refuge.
And to this sad, good man's life while on shore leave comes Isabel, a cheerful, pretty young woman who amazes him with her wit and her audacity, especially so because she has set her sights on him, of all people. Tom is advised by the supply boat's captain never to underestimate the importance of the right wife on the Lights, advice as sound in the early 1900's as it is in this century.

Then to their idyllic and adventurous island life comes more grief, in the form of two miscarriages and a stillborn child, and just the two of them out there alone, coping with the physical and emotional reality.

But then, then a rowboat adrift lands on one of their island beaches, a boat with a dead man and a very much alive baby girl.
What to do? By then the reader is mesmerized,watching Tom and Isabel succumb to their choices, making decisions that will undo them both but the skill with which the author sets the pacing of the novel, the slow unspooling of the days and the shocking jolts of tension, is guaranteed to undo the reader-- unless the reader has a heart of stone.

I'd like to add that the cover is lovely and the endpapers are simply wonderful-- early lighthouse logbook pages with graceful, copperplate penmanship, noting the wind direction and force, the barometric pressure and temperature, and remarks as to passing ships and special task performed.



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Estevan Point Lightstation Summer of 2012

Except for the slithering gang of garter snakes, the constant presence of three or four neighbourhood bears to be on the look-out for, the friendly hikers who may show up needing fresh water just when you need a shower more than anything else in the world....Estevan Point is a great lightstation. We are here for another long stretch of nearly six weeks as relief keepers while the permanent keepers take their annual vacation. Just as in 2010, when we worked here from August to early October, the true summer sun, a sun packing heat beyond 14 Celsius, is the prevailing and welcome element. Estevan and Nootka lightstations tend to be north of the “fog bowl” that is all too often our lot at Lennard Island and of the southern stations: Cape Beale, Pachena Point and Carmanah Point.

Previous keepers like Dave and Louise Edgington and the current couple, Brent and Sylvia Hacking, have established a greenhouse, garden beds and flowering borders. Seaweed, lawn clippings, and kitchen scraps are composted to bolster the acidic clay soil. Everything from lavender to roses to globe artichokes grows outdoors as well as prolific ever-bearing strawberries. Four kinds of peppers and at least as many varieties of tomatoes produce amazing results in the greenhouse. Against a south-facing wall of the assistant keeper’s house, an elderly espaliered pear tree grows. In the winter, I was told that the ferocious winds can lift the greenhouse up and away so the lightkeepers throw a sturdy fishing net over the entire structure and peg it down securely!

The boulder beaches trap countless plastic buoys and oyster tubs, which the resourceful lightkeepers carve into hanging plant pots and heat-loving squash family container gardens. The buoy pots of strawberries, fuchsias and other flowers dangle from a re-purposed satellite dish and an old clothesline pole. Also on display inside the principal keeper’s residence are the hand-blown green and blue glass floats in all shapes and sizes collected over the years from those same beaches. We keep looking for those increasingly rare beauties too but so afar, all we’ve found are tantalizing shards. One happy discovery is that sea asparagus aka samphire grows in abundance on the Point and along the beaches, a perennial vegetable packed with Vitamin C and long a staple of coastal First Nations’ diets. Steamed and served with butter and lemon or jazzed up with a drizzle of sesame oil and balsamic vinegar, samphire complements a platter of salmon or halibut perfectly.

My favourite building here is the concrete tower, a two year project completed in 1909, and still the tallest lighthouse on the B.C. coast at over 150 feet. Cruisers and sailboats often slow down to admire the dramatic lines of the flying buttresses supporting the tower. I’ll never forget the crews of two tall ships out on their 19th century decks all staring at our tower while we stared back at those magnificent sailing ships.

We hike up and down the boulder beaches, carefully putting our feet on secure, dry rocks and using our beautifully varnished hiking sticks, complete with metal points, made by our son to sustain us when rocks inevitably roll beneath our feet. A twisted ankle would be very bad news indeed. Walking on this terrain is hard enough with two good legs but hopping back to first aid and safety at the lightstation for several hours would be a test of physical and mental strength. We always come to a complete stop when we want to look around, a necessity to keep track of any bears in the area or just to admire boats going by. Or to take in the dramatic shapes of the clouds above or the eagles chittering anxiously or a stately Great Blue Heron poised on a boulder far out in the bay.

We manage to find the path leading up from the beach to a lonely gravesite. Sarah Jamieson Hamilton died in 1921 at the age of 72. Who was Sarah and how did she die? A relative from England hiked out to see her grave some years ago so somebody remembers her. A holly tree grows beside her grave and a tall granite headstone gives the sparse details of her life. Birth, death, wife of. The site is just up from the shoreline to the north about a kilometre from the lightstation, near where the road used to bring in supplies from Homas.

Homas once was a summertime Nuu-chahl-nuth settlement, a place for fishing and drying seaweed, with its small but deep natural harbour, now popular with sailboats and cruisers. Several families still meet annually to spend time together in their traditional camp. I admire this enduring connection to the land and the sea, to food, and to the extended family.

Estevan once had a small settlement of people connected to running the lighthouse in three round the clock shifts and, like Pachena, a crew of radio technicians and their families. Historic ship to shore achievements were made at Estevan, as 1907 newspaper headlines proudly proclaimed the news that Estevan maintained radio contact with an Australia-bound ship for 6000 miles.

For a gripping description of the World War II “shelling” of Estevan by a mysterious Japanese submarine and an unexplained boat in the vicinity, with not one shell in twenty-six attempts successful in hitting the tallest lighthouse on the coast, read Don Graham’s excellent book, Keepers of the Light (Harbour Publishing). Along with his second book, Lights of the Inside Passage (Harbour Publishing) this is required reading for anyone interested in B.C.’s maritime history and especially, the history of its lighthouses and their keepers.

What I will remember most about our time at Estevan Point is listening to the skipper of a fishing boat whom we’d spoken with by radio near Lennard Island during an incident where a man had taken a 14 to16 foot runabout out into swells approaching twelve feet, strong wind gusts and fog. With this perfect trifecta for disaster and no life jacket visible, we’d called it in to Tofino Radio and immediately hailed the forty foot fish boat coming in out of the rough conditions. The skipper had impressed us then with his good sense then (unlike the dude in the runabout who seemed to be engaged in a bizarrely macho contest of some sort with the ocean but who eventually returned to safety with the alerted Lifeboat crew on hand to escort him home), saying that “nobody should be out in this water today.” But this summer at Estevan, he was advising us that he’d be anchoring at Homas, a place where his ancestors had camped during the summertime. In fact, his family had erected a totem pole in Homas several years ago, a fact we’d heard about from hikers who had stopped to photograph it. Then he shocked us by saying that in 2013, all his family would be gathering in Hesquiaht to honour the memory of his grandfather, who had been hanged with another unfortunate man before the men in the village in 1869, and for which he said the government has since apologized. The government's public "regret" for this incident took place in November of 2012.

See this 2008 article about the petition for the apology and the circumstances leading to the trumped-up charges, with flames fanned by histrionic Times-Colonist newspaper headlines back in the day, where people were hanged to “set an example” and where translators unfriendly to the accused were used in courtrooms. It’s really appalling to read about how often this happened to First Nations people, from the Coast to the Chilcotin incident and beyond. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NatNews-north/message/13519

A book written in 1999 by Peter Wilton Johnson for Heritage Books, Glyphs and Gallows: The Rock Art of Clo-Oose and the Wreck of the John Bright also sheds light on the court case and the multiple accounts of the wreck and what happened to the survivors and the possible fates of the two bodies found. What is clear is that the racism of the era was recognized by the attending doctor, acting as the coroner, who refused to lend his credibility to the kangaroo court-style proceedings and that the pivotal role of the translator, an enemy of the Hesquiaht, makes the public hanging of these two men all the more reprehensible. Despite the predictable ignorant online braying about government apologies for past crimes, the families of the two innocent men hanged in public on that dark day can now go forward with the stain on their family names removed.

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Review of 'Once You Break a Knuckle' by D.W. Wilson

A simply wonderful collection of short stories, set in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia and happily, recognized and published by a biggie, Hamish Hamilton and not consigned to the 'regional voice' ghetto in parochial Canadian literary terms. Most of these stories are written from the p.o.v. of young, yearning males: what to do about the hicks waiting to beat them up, weekend in, weekend out? Should they leave town and get an education? Should they follow in their fathers' footsteps and do the same job,and somehow earn the old man's respect? Should they let the local tough girls know they are crazy for them? It is the bare-bones, muscular style of the writing that sets this book head and shoulders above the cliched tropes of small town settings and Wilson is a brilliant stylist. His ear for the vernacular of working class tradesmen is wonderfully honed, pitch perfect, for those of us who've spent any time working alongside these jokers, some of the funniest people around. His nuts and bolts descriptions of the daily tasks of carpentry and electrical/plumbing work evoke such authenticity and made me realize: we just don't read about this stuff in fiction, do we? Thanks to Wilson, a world is revealed. His comprehension and articulation of the muddled mysteries of male desires is nothing less than a tour de force. Look for this young man to become a major writer, period.

DIY Checklist for a Book Tour

1. Assume nothing. If you have an over-staffed publishing house with flocks of talented, smart people looking after your p.r. and your hair and jetting you around everywhere, read no further. You are living my dream life. Meanwhile, back in the trenches with me, I'm advising you/me to follow-up on absolutely everything, from the date of the book's release from the jaws of the printer to its eventual arrival at a distributor's warehouse. Why? Because your new book MUST be available in bookstores when you have moved heaven and earth to organize a tour. 

2. Five months ahead of time, four at the very least, book key launch venues.Why? Because everyone else with a book coming out in the spring or fall season will need a launch venue as well so unless you want to launch on a Tuesday evening, try for a Friday or Saturday first.

3. Work with your publisher to establish your key readership areas, places you've lived and worked, places where your books have done well before or where you've recently had a great reception in schools or at a festival. Work hard to book reading events or bookstore signings there so that when you get to a town, city or village, the p.r., from online alerts to bookmarks to posters to press releases and radio public service announcements, is in place.

4. Assume nothing. Follow-up on local media AND provincial media to make sure every event you've organized is advertised in some form of media. Let your own professional, book-related, friend & family networks know you're coming to town with a new book as far in advance as you can. Timing conflicts will still happen but give yourself the time to sort them out as well. If your publisher has a smart, well-trained publicist, you are lucky, lucky, lucky. If not, do it yourself because nobody else cares as much about your book (the years it took to write, the years you could have earned really decent money working at a respectable career instead of holing up and writing in hopes of someday getting this thing published in order to earn a pittance). Yes, it's a huge time and energy suck to have to write your own press releases and to find out the deadlines of monthly, weekly and daily media, but you have to do it. Or else shit happens and stuff doesn't get done. If stuff does get done, and your sales are still low, well, write the next book. Meanwhile, great stuff does happen to books all the time. Hold onto the dream of actually making a half-decent living!

5. The great poet John Newlove said: If writing isn't fun at least some of the time, why do it? Well, the same is true for book tour events. Don't be just another author pontificating from the podium! Put some creative flair into your events and if you don't have the energy, hire somebody to help you. Although if you're a writer worth a hill of beans, you'd better have some creative zip in your veins! So, organize contests for kids, fun stuff for adults, give away books, make people laugh instead of dutifully listening to your heartfelt paragraphs and then lining up to buy your book (or slinking out the door, bored silly). The wonderful and creative Allan MacDougall, founder of Raincoast Books and former book sales rep, always said: Want to sell books? Give 'em away! 

6. Finally, assume nothing. Establish a check-in time prior to your book's release, say once every two weeks or weekly if there's lots of activity, with your publisher or publicist and have your tour/media plan in writing so that you are literally on the same page. Know your tour budget as well, by the way so that you don't expect full-page ads in the Globe & Mail. If you know next to nothing about book publicity, ask grizzled veterans whose publishers are about the same size as your publisher. Come to grips with your ego and your fantasy life in a big hurry. You are not J.K. Rowling so don't expect to be sent to New York City with your wee but wonderful Canadian book about a tree fort gang, is what I'm saying. Publishers with fantastic publicists do great things because they are a known quantity (see: great editors & designers, smart publishing program with consistently excellent books, savvy publicity moves online and everywhere else) and nationally respected in the publishing business, so their authors, magically, are invited to national Festivals, interviewed on prime time radio and television programs, with foreign rights and sweet, fat prizes waiting in the wings. The rest of us must DIY and learn, learn, learn. It's all good, really.

7. Finally, sign books at bookstores, meet and thank the people who actually read and sell your books, or at least have the time to sell them. Meet your regional sales rep if you have the opportunity to do so and thank them. They are the behind the scenes angels for authors and books and yet I still hear authors yapping on about how well they "sell books" as if their publisher and the sales reps hadn't logged in countless hours talking up your book to the front-line book buyers! Not to mention forking out a lot of money to produce the book, the catalogues, the website updates, the publicity 'hits', all the mysterious overhead at any publishing house and sales rep agency. 

8. Try to line up readings with libraries and schools and ALWAYS insist on being paid for your time and talent. Otherwise, you could actually be a librarian or teacher (many of us were) and not somebody with nothing better to show for decades of writing and training than making 95 cents in royalties per book. When in doubt, assume nothing, work hard, try to stay positive and enjoy the results of actually meeting readers who loved your book. There is nothing better than someone beaming or emailing or writing a card to let you know they really loved what you wrote and that it changed them, affirmed them, made them feel they weren't alone with their thoughts in this world. This is why I write, to connect with readers, to say, yeah, I noticed this too and it's wrong to do this to someone else or it's right to be grateful for the way this is handled or it's the way it is when I wake up and why doesn't anyone ever write about this...