Autobiography

rob mclennan

1.
July, unaccountable			to winter’s excess,
we attend park afternoons

of wading pool, swings 	and listening. I have my book. The middle
of unspooled fabric

in multiple bearings. How large their appetites.	The function
of a rite of passage: play. The advent

of crowds. What any child
might fulfill.		Rose holds her heart out, no clemency

on the parallel bars. A sentence, 	like the sun,

or Aoife’s sun-blushed face			, that lingers.


2.

Dissecting hours		with a cool knife; these physical laws
of speech, bare feet,

the sand between their toes. Such public life			displayed
at city pools. The thumb and index finger. The bare feet, 

towels. Toddlers lurch. An underscore		of bicycles.
This afternoon, burrowed, chrono			typical;

through the speed		of pause. I read

my book, I read my book, look			past the boundaries; scan

them splashing, the water’s surface		furrowed,
crest. Thin swells	of fibre. They 

are fine, yes, fine. 		As lifeguards shift, their eyes
on cellphones, poolside, children	, the ends		of the earth,

a discrimination		to their meaning.

Reading Adrian Lürssen’s Human Is To Wander in a garage on Merivale, awaiting windshield replacement

rob mclennan

	The plan to explain is absolute, but only an entrance.
		Adrian Lürssen, Human Is To Wander (2022)

1.

a map					as a system
of amplification

: in the city’s west end,

this unheated office		garage		electric space
, industrial push
		into December squall,


2.

all along Merivale			a		history of grammar
, and sprawling development,

farmland redacted, rewritten		: a hamlet or two		scarred 
						, telephone poles
								splintered
		during summer’s derecho
							as clouds
brought down the wind, 	the sky,



3.

across a vista
, each poem 			maps
					, how

the oldest		human longing			before
bread			before oil		and windshields

	, an escape		away	from what we document,

		, and this crack length 		from silence,
incremental, grown
			from here	up, where		the light goes


4.

how to wish			one might be smarter,
sometimes			, experience

a deeper wisdom
					, cloud of grasshoppers

		, our teenaged selves

			, when we were seventeen

and knew nothing 
about anything			: not even		ourselves,



5.

tell me,					what have I learned

		, torrential rain
						this threat
of freezing, severe winds				schools

	, this last day		cancelled, premature

			and sure,


6.

each word		deeper
	, turns			in silence

and to		the streets again,
the traffic lights, the		rows of paused commuters

	, this overlay
	, this overload of birds,

Flame Flower

Kersten Christianson

 -I’m filled with a new joy mixed with old grief. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Can you hear that? 
Hushed murmurings
rustling new maple leaves
tickling the dull wood branch,
intertwining with pliant stem.

You’ve carved your losses,
regrets nailed in a tiny coffin,
buried them in the backyard
between storm-addled raven
and varied thrush.  Quelled,

but not forgotten, you
nourish new bloom. Long
overdue, you wrap rusty hands
around nasturtium-orange flame,
kindle with breath and wonder.

Border Closure

Kersten Christianson
 
No matter your kinship
with mountains etched
with laugh lines, frost
heaves in chip-sealed road,
or your love for Tim Hortons
coffee, especially the Double
Double with Timbits,

or that your daughter
was conceived in a parking
lot campground, midafternoon
in that raucous goldrush town
in the wild-wind Yukon that once 
boasted eggs and champagne 
a hot commodity in 1898;

no matter owing the Raven 
Lady artist a beer for his run
to the Skagway post office —
cheap postage for art — 
or dancing with loopy abandon,
two-stepping to music and laughter
rippling circles and stories,

another pint of Molson in hand,
or that you once shook Justin
Trudeau’s hand there on Canada
Day.  No matter your reading
poems from your open book
to the trappers in the Mile 1016 Pub,
or that you and your daughter

spread ashes to breeze from peaks
he loved.  No matter these things,
you still wish for raven’s flight, 
for span and scope of then and now,
here and there.  Your curious eye,
your draw to the shimmer and shine
of sharp memory.

 

A Vegetarian Dilemma

E.C. Daly
 
Over dinner— pork loin, slow-roasted 
with prune, parsnip and baby carrot— 

I nurse my roll,
                        defending the pig 

now cloned by hand;
one gene at a time 

tinkered with 
to increase the chances of Alzheimer's.

As is wont in such situations, I'm momentarily distant.

Fragrant and still warm, the meal continues.
I put it out of my mind.             
                                                                            

                                                             Almost forget it.

On Colonizing Space

E.C. Daley
 
Imagine


out walking 

the membrane of space-time


each step— our hands entwined—

sinking deeper

into the depression 

our mass has created


yet on we go

as we have always

oblivious to the momentum building behind us


a black hole like a dark tsunami

folding the continuum 

over onto itself

creating an event-horizon

stretching every atom 

the size of a city-block


until time— our ultimate conceit—

stops.

Even a parking lot looks beautiful from above

Marion Lougheed
 
The city ends in a corner of light: 
right-angled saffron glitters, framed
within a jet-black void.
Lanes of cars streak red and white 
past festive sparkling houses. 
From the air, the swimming
pool is a teardrop, the football 
field an accidental brushstroke, 
floodlit viridescence.

From way up here, even the parking lot looks beautiful. 
Even the football field.
Even the line of cars.

The First Cicada

Cheri Wilson
 
August relaxes in the morning heat.
The day thickens,
spruce cones bulge, 
wasps dizzy with sap.
 
Clothes hang limp on the line, 
the sun a white gleam,
the bay a sheet of sky,
the crows quiet for once.
 
We sit on the door step
lazy and languid, feet in the warm grass,
waiting for the tide to turn.
Or some reason to speak.
 
And then we hear it, that singular trill 
of summer’s first cicada, strumming, 
as if it had been here all along, 
as if it were we 
who had not.
 
In that moment 
the inevitability of September,
as clear as 
the line of a sharpened pencil, 
furrows the brow of summer, 
 
and a longing wells within us
as if it were we slipping 
past the harbour buoy
and heading out to sea.
 

Rocking Chair

Stacy Gardner
 
this is not a good day

 			for a longing heart, weary mind

time: an erratic clock

that ticks	and toils	and talks its way into hands


					stiffening bones


rigidity: shaped from lack of touch
 
and eyes		that see through everything


						have nothing


							to look into.

Mooring Benjamin

Stacy Gardner

I remember always knowing what colour paint I would choose for a wall

	Any wall
		        Accent wall
					Bathroom
							Stairs

Kitchen (can’t afford the dream reno, so paint will have to do) Everything but the kitchen sink I’d paint

Now full of dirty dishes
And a dishwasher full of clean ones

The colours have changed two times in three years, maybe three 
Spontaneous evolutions, the testers, the teasers

The friend-visit over May-long weekend, offered a bite of her special mushroom and 
Dedicated herself to the mood
				that bloomed

I caught wind of the energy -
Only to find myself painting over the geometric shapes she whimsically, steadily

Traced on my kitchen wall (cooling off even more, a room that lacks good insulation) 
I painted over it with a fresh coat of Tikka Masala
 
Wishing for more depth, warmth
And yet over time, the dwelling of this earnest orange
							     burdened me

An inconsistent hue with the shade I had been slowly shedding in
		      life
			       love
				         form
						weight

You’re ready for lightness said another friend over a glass of red 
This is why your artwork troubled, lost-looking

Misplaced on walls, sitting against, not even hanging 
Eyes down, not ahead

Chantilly Lace, White Dove, Antique Pearl, Proposal –
A palette of Benjamin Moore that promises light, warmth, reflection
										varied with

The enchanting tones and tints of coming 
Home, being at home

The dishes get put away
The mornings brighter even when fog is in the harbour

The art dances on the walls
Each framed story, beckoning the other to

								play again

Dream Chasing

(after Michael Bazzett)

Aidan Chafe

Now that I’ve taught my dog
how to read poetry, he’s barking
in verse. His tail wags for rhyming
couplets. Every lost tennis ball
is a Greek tragedy. He ponders
the paradox of chasing his tail.
On walks he works out analogies,
comparing the rudimentary hand-
shake to the aromatic intricacies
of the butt sniff. He’s quit chewing
the corners of Love Is a Dog from Hell. 
A whiff of the ocean sends him 
on an inner Odyssey. At night, 
curled into a furry comma
he hounds his dreams to chase him. 

Fatherhood Blank

Joel Ferguson

Woke in composition again. I dreamt
of the barn behind my childhood home, how
rotten the floorboards must be now, twenty
years on, the texture of taffy. Some lines
about that, the old posters, calendars
grown into the walls: a buggy-maker,
1889, a portrait of some King George,
a campfire Canada Dry cowgirl mum
cut down and framed before moving. Other
geographies my childhood moved through— 
a disused dancehall and a witch-hut taxi stand—
A world burnt down for insurance money.
I lost the rest, between the sleeping baby’s 
heavy head and the bottle I hold for her.

Disappeared

Clay Everest

"Cableship Seaman Mysteriously Gone"

He magnifies the article 
and gently nudges the focus lens until
he can see the name, 
the date, May 21, 1912, 
the man had just returned from recovering
the victims of the Titanic disaster. He wheels
through days of sports, weather reports, 
and shipping news, for any word
of what happened to the man.
He finds nothing.

At home
he scrubs the rice pot,
showers, and watches TV.
Through the night, the name
haunts his thoughts.

He dreams of broken limbs,
the unnatural way a body crushed
between piling and hull,
rests on water, or sinks,
how the man had spent his last days
surrounded by bodies, like his.

In the morning the man remains
a buoy.

Idling by Broadway

Tracy Kreuzburg
 
The windshield is my palette
as the winter rain pours down 
and blends the colours
in my painterly vision 
darkness and light mix 
like oil and water 
my eyelashes, the brush bristles  
my cornea, the canvas
opposing headlights like fireworks
blazing for me, bursting from inside 
the black glass painted Stop red
champagne yellow and neon pink 
all moving like the Milky Way
a hazy galaxy cradling 
billions of planets
while I am lost in time 
with the oldest of its stars 
sitting, waiting in the front 
passenger seat of a Mazda 
god of wisdom
bringer of sun and shadow
its seat softer than the stool 
in the cartoon booth 
where I watched Mighty Mouse
for a quarter at the Millbrook Mall 
absently aware of the picture’s 
dancing black speckles
concealed behind a cubicle curtain
I absorb the image 
in the glazed shield of the sedan 
as it transcends 
the coin-operated film’s 
8-millimetre frames.

Goose Bay Dancer

Robin McGrath

Two-step half the length of Hamilton River Road
With a gale of wind coming out of the north,
Manage a dozen small paces forward,
Then five or six to the right, but still ahead,
Lean a shoulder to the left for a time,
Turn backward to catch your breath, still progressing,
But mind the treacherous ice on the corner,
And keep your chin down and your elbows in
As you skitter along for a block and a half.

Take advantage of a lull and trot quickly,
As fast as you can, before she starts to blow again,
Then edge up onto a snowbank to negotiate
Past the lights, and break for the post office
When the cars from the airport try to run you down.

Try that during our five-minute rush hour
At twenty below in the dark of a winter afternoon,
And tell me if Ginger Rogers would need more
Than high heels and a dance band.

Relocation

Robin McGrath

We launched the coop in late afternoon
And as the flatbed rolled offA momentary hitch jiggled loose the latch,
Freeing the hens into the dusky woods.
They were back in the morning,
Scratching around the slack stone foundation:
You could hear them thinking "The roost is gone."

Two days before, they would eat from your hand;
Two days later, they disappeared at a footfall.
After a week on the loose, there were
Feral hens in Beachy Cove,
Wild and cunning with eyes on their heels,
Not even mildly tempted by the bowl of mashSet to lure them back into captivity.

Sometimes in the early light of dawn
They'd pause at the old stone stoop,
Poke among the remnants, kick up a bald corn husk,
Or the empty shell of some peanut treat,
And then they'd be off, making trouble in the underbrush.

Next thing you know they'll be line-dancing 
And brawling like Fort MacMurray barflies.
That's what happens when you relocate a heart.

Letters to a Girl in Bavaria

M.E. Boothby
 
I of no faith and you of less –
heaven is construct.

waiting for a song,
the kind of language that could make flowers grow
in the concrete.

we chart unlikely transatlantic maps,
build castles of music and fragile blue envelopes.

bioluminescent flowers!
breach the cracks and rise, lighting strings
ghostly indigo as you play them
into existence, into the brighter night.

architects of nothing at all, creating
rising spires from words on paper.

you are always both here and there and I
am never anywhere.
you are a lemon tree in Italy;
I am North Atlantic sea foam given form.

graph it in the freckles I would like to study
until I know every inch of skin – heaven is a violin.

heaven we can invent;
humans are always inventing better versions
of that which does not exist.

 this exists.

 

Kelly

Terry Doyle 

	Kelly had pulsing red burns and blisters all over her arms and shoulders and legs from where I’d been whipping her. We’d been whipping each other. I just didn’t realize. We always did it, going back years. You could only swim so much, or at least I could only swim so much, so we’d find ourselves looking for something else to be at. Climbing trees, catching frogs, picking berries, and whipping each other with stalks of cow parsnip. Except I guess I grabbed the wrong plant. My hands burned too, but not half as bad as Kelly’s burns. 
	Apparently it’s called giant hogweed. It oozes this goo that got on her skin and then it reacts with the sun and then you’re burned. Burned awful bad. This was before Kelly found out about her father. About three weeks before.
	At the infirmary the nurse person was acting grave. There was a seriousness to her eyes. Kelly was in a lot of pain. She was screeching. At that point I didn’t know I’d done it. Didn’t realize it was the giant hogweed. I was scared and confused. The high tide of guilt hadn’t yet arrived. I’d hurt her bad, I just didn’t know yet.
	One of the older councillors took her to town in the van. To the hospital. I watched them pull out, still baffled, assuming an allergic reaction—something she ate? Then I went swimming again.

	Last December I was getting off the ice, waiting for the Zamboni to make its first loop so I could push one of the nets against the boards, onto the smoothed, wet surface, when I got this thought out of nowhere. Maybe thought is the wrong word. Feeling doesn’t seem right either, but I had this sudden guilty sensation—like remembering the stupid thing you’d recently said—a fast in-breath of self-loathing and shame. Then the ‘boni passed, the rink attendant said thanks, and I skated off the ice and entered the locker room. It was our last skate until after Christmas. We were drinking beers. Many beers. After forty minutes of shit-talking, half the guys slung bags over their shoulders, leaned forward to balance all that weight on their hip, then strode to trucks and drove home. I was living on Hayward Avenue then, and I had wheels on my hockey bag. I just rolled across Allandale and I was almost there.
	Home for me then was a musty one-bedroom on the top floor with a single window that looked into the sliced-up backyards of row houses which sat too close together. At least that was the view in December. In July all I could see from there were green maple leaves and the spanworms who munched them incessantly. 
	I was walking in the street, rolling the hockey bag behind me. We’d had a bunch of snow already, but then, as it does, it’d warmed and we’d had drizzle. I saw a kid—he was probably twelve. He was facing a snowbank with both fists cocked. The first punch was soft as he smartly tested the solidity of the snow. Then he went cracked. He started pummeling the snow, strike after strike, digging two fist-sized holes into the bank. I could hear a low growl sound coming from him, and then he must have heard me dragging the bag. He stopped and wheeled around, saw me, and took off down Mullock Street. 
	I hadn’t meant to embarrass him.


	Kelly’s dad had been in some kind of industrial accident. There was shockingly little public information about it, only rumours and conjecture. I’d heard a lot of different stories but for some reason the one that stuck with me was the version where he’d been struck by a careless crane operator swinging a load of cable, about to lift it up onto the roof. I kept imagining him—a man I didn’t know—walking across a construction site, maybe planning a trip to the cabin, then BONG, he’s dead. Maybe I remembered and held this version because it was conceivable, in this telling, that he didn’t suffer. Here, earning a dollar; gone.
	I only saw Kelly once after the burns. She came back to camp with her mom, to collect her things. That’s when she told me about the giant hogweed. Then she told me about her dad. Then she told me to have a fun summer. I heard her mom moved their family to somewhere in Nova Scotia shortly after, to be closer to grandparents. 
	My palms were still red but even back then I had callouses, and I think it helped. They stung sometimes but it was nothing compared to what I’d done to Kelly.

	On Hayward Avenue, just as I was reaching for my front door, my downstairs neighbour came out through it, and I had to step back.
	“Sorry.”
	“Sorry.”
	“Oh, I’m sorry.”
	We both apologized too much and cast our eyes down and away until she sidled past me. Her name was Lori, she’d lived downstairs since before I moved in and we’d telepathically come to an understanding of self-embarrassment and acting shy. If we had to witness each other behind the front door of 27 Hayward we would pretend to be blind, or at least disinterested and abashed. I only knew her name because I’d seen it on her mail in the stairway outside her door. I dragged my hockey bag up the stairs and took a long, introspective hot shower, wondering about that feeling I’d had on the ice, revisiting it to make sure there wasn’t something I should be concerned about but had somehow forgot. I ticked off possibilities while washing my hair. Nothing had happened at work, no customer complaints, no disagreements with Gary, no mistakes. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in a couple of days but I was due to see her on the 24th and last we’d spoken things were fine. There was the possibility I’d bothered Lori somehow, but I didn’t think that was it—it never had been before, so it stood to reason there was nothing new there now. And I hadn’t been on a date in two months, hadn’t even logged onto Tinder or Hinge. The last date had been awkward, but I’d spent enough time analyzing it already. I’d moved past it. 
	I turned off the water and reached for a towel. When I was dry and dressed I went back out, down to the store to buy a case of beer.

	A few summers after the incident with Kelly I was working near the university. I’d started off at roofing but soon they told me I was too big to be up on the roof all day, so before long I was at the framing. But that summer I was still doing roofs. Most of the guys I played hockey with were spending their days in classrooms or watching girls at the university, and I could see the whole campus from this one roof, could see the student body milling around, flitting in and out of buildings. Even during summer the place looked busy. I was glad to be on the roof where I wouldn’t be in the way. Or at least I thought I wouldn’t. It was hot up there. The tar could burn and you couldn’t get it off, but I liked the roof. Climbing the ladder was sort of like climbing into bed, it was like shutting the front door. Besides the one or two fellas who’d be up there with me, I felt insulated on the roof. I felt at ease. Comparably. 
	Then one afternoon I heard my name called from the sidewalk out front. It was Jesse, a hockey buddy. He was shouting at me to come down, so I did. He said he didn’t want to shout out and have my coworkers overhear, but he was meeting a bunch of people later that night at Big Ben’s and they were carpooling to the beach to have a few drinks and a fire, and I should join them. He listed a few names of guys I knew. He said there’d be lots of girls too.

	On the 23rd, I listened until I heard Lori go out, then I started carrying all my empty beer bottles down to the car. I went first to the recycling spot, then to the liquor store to buy Mom’s Christmas gift. I always got her a bottle of wine. It’s what she wanted. While I was there I thought maybe I should get a bottle for Lori too. I could leave it by her door with a note that just said Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or whatever. But I hesitated. Wine seemed kind of romantic to me, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. If anything I just hoped to make her fear me less.

	I met Jesse and a group of his friends at Big Ben’s. There was a loudly whispered conversation about which vehicle I should go in—being too big for most backseats. No one wanted to be squished against me all the way to Outer Cove. So I got to ride shotgun in a Pontiac Grand Prix with a guy named Felix and three girls in the back who giggled and talked the whole way. Felix looked rotted.
	We sat on beach rocks and driftwood and shut our eyes tight when the wind shifted, blowing the black smoke into our faces. We drank. I drank. I always drank. People were having fun. I watched them and peeled bits of tar off my hands and wrists and smiled politely.
	One of the girls, her name was Shelly, got up. She said she had to pee, and when she found her feet she stumbled and fell. She fell right into the fire. I jumped up and reached into the flames, turning my face away. My hands found her, her leg, her back, I could feel bits of tar simmering on my arm, and I scooped her up out of the fire but she was still burning. I don’t know what she had on or what products she used in her hair but she was still on fire so I sprinted for the water with her cradled in my arms and when I got there I tossed her in. I don’t like water. Not anymore. I hadn’t swam since summer camp. So I tossed her in, only, when I let her go, just as I released her from my grip, still burning, the water pulled back. The wave receded and Shelly landed on a slippery tide of wet rocks. Her cry of pain and the sound of impact echoed across the beach. Then the water rushed back in and extinguished the flames. But the damage was done. 
	I might have walked home that night if not for Jesse, who tugged my shirt once the commotion was over and nodded his head toward his truck.


	I didn’t end up getting Lori a Christmas gift. Too risky. But as I left the liquor store and entered the attached grocery store with Mom’s wine tucked under my arm, I saw a woman with dark hair who I immediately thought I knew. It was a shock of recognition and it scared me. She was examining apples, searching for the few bruise-less ones that remained. And then she looked up and our eyes met.
	“Doug?”
	“Kelly?”
	“Holy shit.”
	We hadn’t seen each other since the day she’d come back to camp to get her things.
	“What’re you—I thought you moved to Nova Scotia?”
	“I did,” she said. “I did. I’m here for the holidays, to see my sister and her family. You remember Claire?”
	I didn’t remember Claire.
	Kelly told me she’d also come for a job interview, at the university. She’d combined the interview and the holidays into an extended vacation from her life in Dartmouth. The way she said this made me hopeful in a terrifying kind of way. I’d gone into the grocery store to buy chips but I found myself standing there, gawking at Kelly, trying to figure out a way to ask her to see me again, outside the grocery store, without causing offence. 
	Then she said, “Listen, Doug, I gotta run but I’d love to catch up. Did you want to meet up for a bite or something? Maybe on the 27th or 28th?”
	I said I would and I went home without the chips.

	We met on the 28th. She gave me directions to a pub just outside of town, which she said had the best fish ‘n’ chips. I drove there through slanting sleet, the roads full of holiday traffic, celebrators swerving out of their lanes. I’d left my apartment far too early, so I took my time, found the place, circled around a little, then finally went inside. I sat against a window where I could watch the parking lot and my palms were sweating. I hadn’t stopped thinking about Kelly since the grocery store.
	“What the hell’s wrong with you?” my mother had asked.
	“What? Nothing.”
	“Well get the face off you.”
	“Sorry,” I said. Then, “You remember Kelly?”
	“Who?”	
	“Kelly. From camp.”
	“No.”
	The waiter brought me a Dominion Ale and I had to force myself to sip slowly. My nerves were getting the better of me and I had to go to the washroom. When I came back out, there was Kelly, sitting at a table next to the fireplace. She smiled when she saw me, then stood. She gave me a hug. I retrieved my bottle and coat from the table by the window and sat across from her. We ordered fish ‘n’ chips, Kelly got a glass of white wine and I didn’t know what to say. There were so many things I wanted to express but I didn’t know how. I wanted to apologize, I wanted to know about her dad, I wanted her to know how terrible I felt for her, I wanted her to like me more than I’d ever wanted anything in my whole life. Which meant I said very little.
	But Kelly spoke. She could carry a conversation. I liked that. She told me about the holidays with her sister’s family: the kids being spoiled, the bickering, the performative traditions. Kelly told me about the job she’d interviewed for at the university, though I didn’t really understand a lot of what she said. It was something to do with chemistry, I think.
	Just before our food arrived the waiter came by and tossed another log onto the fire. That’s when Kelly removed her coat, and I saw her arms.
	She caught me staring. She rubbed the scars and looked away.
	“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant for staring, being awkward, but who knows how she took it.
	The food arrived and we ate in silence. I ordered another beer. 
	“So tell me about yourself, Doug.”
	I took a very deep breath. 
	“I don’t know,” I said. “Not a lot to tell.”
	“Well, what’re you into? What do you do with yourself?”
	I shrugged and downed my beer. What was I supposed to tell her? That I lived alone in a one-bedroom, I worked at Home Depot this time of year, and I played hockey four times a week? Because that was all I had. And it was embarrassing. Should I tell her I felt like there was nowhere I belonged? Should I say I was lonely beyond even my own comprehension and I had no idea how to remedy it?
	No. Of course not.
	I’m scary enough without revealing things like that.
	I ordered another beer.


	Kelly went back to Dartmouth and I spent most of January torturing myself with what I should have told her. I made note of every interesting nugget about me I could think of, though there weren’t that many. But by February I had a list and I was starting to almost feel good about it. I wrote her probably fifteen letters. Or, rather, fifteen different drafts of the same letter. I never sent it. I didn’t have her address. But it occupied my mind all winter.
	In the spring I started again with the contractor I’d worked for the previous summer, framing new houses in a subdivision out near Paradise. He was a nice enough guy and on Fridays sometimes we’d go for beer, just the two of us.
	“What’s that list I always see you looking at?” he asked me one Friday. I told him all about Kelly. Told him everything. It was cathartic. I was very drunk.
	“Find the sister,” he said.
	“What?”
	“Find the sister and get her address.”

	Claire looked nothing like Kelly. I knocked on her door and scared her kids. They clung to her leg and watched me from behind as I explained how I hoped to send Kelly a letter. 
	“You want her number?” Claire said.
	“No.”
	“Okay. Why don’t you give me the letter and I’ll make sure she gets it.”
	I didn’t like this solution, but I understood why she was cautious. 
	“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.
	I was halfway down the driveway when Claire said, “Tell you what, I’ll give you her email.”

	In the fall I moved out of the one-bedroom on Hayward and into a basement apartment—a two-bedroom—off Newfoundland Drive. It had a separate entrance around the back and I rarely saw the upstairs neighbours. When I left Hayward I wrote Lori a note saying she was a good neighbour and I was sorry if I’d been kind of scary. I left it attached to a bottle of red wine.

	My email to Kelly never got a response. Who knows what Claire told her, but I couldn’t blame either of them. After I sent the letter though—the email—I started to feel a little better. About me. I was trying anyway. 
	I still thought about Kelly constantly. I had long, platonic but semi-romantic daydreams where we lived together. There was never any sex or anything in the dreams, just a peaceful contentment. Meals together, shovelling, movies, stuff like that. Companionship. 
	I thought about her scars a lot. I’ll admit, I did think about touching them. About running my hands along her shoulders and arms. But not in a sexy way. I don’t think. Though I did long to hold her.
	Then, yesterday, I was driving home from work and stopped at a red light along the parkway, I turned and in the car next to mine was a woman with dark hair. My stomach sank. I turned the radio down. She was listening to the same station as me. She was singing. She turned, just a little, her hair moved and I caught sight of her profile: it was Kelly.
	What was she doing here? Had she gotten the university job after all? Maybe she did. The email address Claire had given me was from a business in Dartmouth. Maybe she never received it. Maybe I should—
	But no. 
	No, I thought, let her be.
	There she was, in her car, singing, seemingly happy.  She looked great.
	The light turned green while I was still watching her. She pulled away and the person behind me blew their horn. In the rear-view mirror I saw an angry face yelling at me to move. 
	“Go, you idiot!” 
	So I did.

What Happened After

Emily Cann

         Gillian’s urn was strapped into the passenger seat and we were winding our way along the highway out to Lunenburg. It wasn’t one of those tacky urns that looked like a flower vase had a baby with a silver bullet—Gillian’s older brother was a wood carver, so when the family decided to cremate he offered to turn one on his lathe. The amber wood he used was streaked with blonde. It looked just like her hair in the summer. Gillian had the best hair. I was always telling her she could be an Influencer if she wanted to, but that was never something she cared much about. 

	I didn’t tell Gillian’s parents that we were going to Lunenburg. They had known about our graduation trip, of course, but I don’t think they thought we were still going. I told her parents I thought some time with the urn would help me ‘process my grief.’ That’s a line the family counsellor fed me when my mom sent me in for an emergency session. I told her I didn’t need it, but she insisted that losing your best friend when you’re seventeen kind of necessitates professional intervention. She was in tears herself when she told me about the appointment, so I didn’t fight her on it. 

	Gillian’s mom wiped at her eyes with a used tissue as she passed me Gill. Her nose was tinged with red, her face puffed out and blotchy from crying for so long. 

	“I hope,” Gillian’s mom sniffled, “this brings you some peace.” 

	Gillian and her mom yelled at one another a lot, but neither of them were especially prone to crying. They never tried to hide their fights around me. I was over so often it would have been nearly impossible for them to keep it bottled up the whole time. Gill used to race up to her room in the middle of an argument, leaving me in the living room or kitchen with her mom. Gill screamed things from the top of the stairs or slammed her door again and again until her mother stormed out of the house. 

	“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Gill said to me all the time.

	They fought about things I would never think to fight about. Gill not being able to lock her door or needing her mom’s approval to buy new clothes. Gill wanted to dye her hair, and when her mother said no, Gill took fate into her own hands and cut her hair herself. I was with her when she did it, hunched over the sink in the bathroom, hacking away at her perfect hair with a pair of kitchen shears. 

	When she was done, Gill looked at me and smiled this enormous, clown-like smile. 

	“It looks good,” I mumbled, staring at the hair carpeting the linoleum.

	“Don’t be such a baby, Renee.” Gill admired herself in the mirror. “It looks fucking fantastic.”

*

	The drive to Lunenburg was just short of two hours. The highway was bleached white from all the salt, even though the snow had been gone for weeks. Our small town had melted into the horizon of my rear-view. 

	Lunenburg looked exactly like the postcards. The buildings were painted bright colours and squished up close together. Gulls cried overhead and a startlingly blue sky reigned over the town. It felt like a dream world—so completely different from the world Gill and I grew up in. There was no residue of a failed rail system clogging the town’s centre. No ugly strip of fast-food joints and grimy bars. No grey clouds threatening rain in the corner of my eye. It was the kind of place where nothing could go wrong. 

	We went straight down to the waterfront, all the way to the edge of the dock. A sleek ship’s two enormous masts shot upwards into the sky. They towered so high they could skewer a cloud—but the only clouds in the sky were much further out, languishing high above the water. 

	“Afternoon, Miss.” A grizzled-looking man lumbered out on the dock towards us. “Fancy a tour?”

	“Uh—that’s okay. I just wanted to… have a look.”

	“Come aboard, we’ll have a look from there.” His voice was rough as sandpaper. “Whatcha got under your arm?”

	“Oh—that’s Gill.”

	The man looked at Gill then looked at me. 

	“You don’t say.” He frowned at me. “Ever been to the Bluenose II before?”

	“Nope!”

	The man had a very bizarre look on his face—like he was about to sneeze. Or laugh maybe.

	“Better get on the ship then. I promise we won’t leave the harbour.” He winked. “You ought to see it the way it’s meant to be seen. Plus you got the whole place to yourselves. Still a few weeks before the weather warms enough to lure them tourists out here.”

	He was right. It was odd, to be in this postcard place with no witnesses to its perfection. The quiet loneliness of this beautiful town was sort of surreal.

	He ambled past me to open the gate to the ship. His movements were heavy and slow, but the dock didn’t lean or squeak under his weight. Maybe he was a ghost. Maybe this whole town was a dream. 

	“The original Bluenose was built in 1921 right here in Lunenburg,” he said. “Wasn’t a ship in North America that could out-sail her. She was nicknamed Queen of the North Atlantic.”

	He was clearly eager to tell the story, so I played along. I let him give me the history lesson. Ghosts love to talk about the past. His blue eyes nearly dissolved as the sun crossed overhead and poured light onto the deck; two wide eggs focusing on something I couldn’t see. The ocean swelled and lifted the ship slightly, rocking me off balance. My guide was firm, as if he couldn’t even feel the tide.  

	“Held the title for seventeen years before she hit a reef and sank just off the coast of Haiti. But before that she’d sailed far and wide. The full length of the coast, at least. They built the Bluenose II in the early sixties. Less than twenty years after her sister sank.” 

	The guide’s hair was translucent grey and wiry, his sallow cheeks wind chapped. I imagined him at the helm of the ship, steering boldly into the open sea. Going down with his ship somewhere off the coast of Haiti. The last captain of the Bluenose. I wanted to reach my hand out, to see if it would go right through him, but I didn’t. Gulls screeched in the blue sky above and I wondered what it would feel like—to cling to something even as it dragged you down.

	The lines around his eyes deepened as he blinked slowly at me. He frightened me a little—this washed-up old captain, ghosting around the docks. 

	I leaned Gill on the railing, eager to look away. “Gill and I have been talking about coming here to see this view for a long time. It was her idea to come.”

	The captain was looking at Gill funny. I picked her up off the railing and shook her like a maraca. I don’t know why. It just felt like I needed to do something. He took a step back and I wondered what he thought of us. 

	A shadow crept across the deck as a brilliant white cumulus cloud drifted to shore. It swallowed the sun and the blues of the captain’s eyes faded into view. He blinked at me again and the past suddenly felt so far away. 

	I inched myself closer to the edge of the ship. The Atlantic Ocean apparently infinite. I clutched Gill under my arm and tapped the top of her like a drum. I gingerly twisted the lid off and leaned my body further over the rail. I don’t know why—I just felt like she should see. It sparkled differently than the murky grey of the Cobequid Bay, differently than the ice blue ocean off the shore of New Glasgow. This wasn’t the same Nova Scotia we grew up in.  

	I leaned a bit too far and a pale cloud of the ash that used to be Gill’s body spilled out and floated towards the ocean. My stomach dropped. If her parents knew I’d lost a part of their daughter somewhere on the coast of Lunenburg, they’d be furious. It’s not the kind of thing they’d find funny. Gillian and her mom had once been in a two-day screaming match over a cardigan Gill forgot on the bus. I turned the urn upright again, my hands shaking. 

	The captain cleared his throat. 

	 “Was that an intentional burial at sea?” 

	I shook my head. 

	Gill glittered beneath the surface. 
 
	Gillian’s ash settled deeper into the water. Maybe she’d be bound all the way down to Bermuda. I bet the water is azure as hell down there. Or blown East, to Newfoundland, to Spain, or Africa. Better than being permanently fixed to her parents’ mantel, I guess. God, that’s the last thing Gillian would have wanted. 

	The urn felt no lighter—like nothing had been lost. Gill would forgive me. She always did.

	“Has she been gone long?” 
 
	“Just a few weeks.”

	“Were you close?” 

	“We did everything together.”

	He scratched his ghost-beard, the hair silky under his touch. “How did she die?”

	The soft hair of his beard then sprung back, suddenly thick and wild again. Without the sun overhead, its translucence became opaque. He seemed more solid, too. Gill wasn’t glittering in the water anymore. The truth suddenly felt like such a silly, impossible thing.
 
	“Cancer,” I lied. 

	He bowed his head. 

	“It’s an awful disease. I hope you had the chance to say goodbye.”

	“Yep,” I said, breathing in sharply and patting the side of the urn. “I’m glad I did.”

	The last time I saw Gillian was the night before she died. Or maybe it was the night she died. No one seemed certain if she died in the middle of the night or in the earliest hours of the morning. There were no eyewitnesses or anything. No one switching their gaze between her rising and falling chest and that thin line of horizon to see which would break first. 

	We were in her room watching movies and I said, “Do you think my prom dress makes me look gross?”

	And she said “no,” because she always said no to questions like that. 

	“When you get married you have to promise not to make me wear an ugly dress.”

	“I’m not getting married.”

	“But when you do.”

	Gill tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay. Fine.”

	“But you have to wear an ugly dress when I get married.”

	“That’s not fair!” Gill laughed.

	“You’re so much prettier than me. It’s the way it has to be.”

	“You’re delusional. You can’t decide everything for me you know, Renee.”

	Gill was always saying stuff like that. But this time she really snapped. She said that I was being just like her mother, trying to control everything. 

	I don’t know where I will find a bridesmaid dress small enough to fit an urn. It will have to be custom-made, I guess. 

	“It’s good of you to do this,” the tour guide offered. “I bet it means a lot to her parents, that you’re taking her to see the things she never got a chance to.”

	“Well this is what we always planned on,” I said, “so… you know.” I shrugged.

	“Not everyone would be so generous.”

	“Oh—it’s not generous at all—not really.”

	 I hugged Gill close. She felt so smooth in my hands. So light and cool. The blonde streaks in the wood were like strands of gold. A gust of wind swept across the ship from somewhere far offshore, salty and sour. I lifted Gill up gently so she could get a taste of the air. She swirled around the urn like a tornado. I replaced the lid gently, trying to hold that faraway wind inside. I felt my grip start to loosen on her—and then she was weightless—or I was weightless, I’m not sure. The smooth edges of her started to pull away from my fingertips as the brine of the ocean stung my nostrils. I looked as far as I could into the blueness of the sky and water. There was nothing out there. Not for miles. For a second, I had this odd feeling that I was completely apart from the world. It was so lonely and tragic that I thought I might just melt into nothingness right there on the deck of the Bluenose II—and that’s when I could no longer feel Gill in my hands anymore. 

	The urn barely made a sound as it broke the surface of the water. 

*
	Before I left her house on that night, Gill said “Are you sure you can’t stay a little longer?”

	And I said, “Yes.”

	Which was a terrible thing to say, considering what happened after.  

*
	Gillian bobbed lazily in the water. 

	“That’s my best friend,” I whispered. 

	The tour guide stared at me in shock. I stared back. I wondered what I looked like to him. 

	He circled the deck in a panic. His feet hit the wood boards hard, sending quakes throughout the ship. It wasn’t very ghost-like at all. It was terrifyingly, earth-shatteringly real.

	“I have a net, hang on, we can still save her. Hang on—hang on!”

	He ducked under a rope with a dinky sign that said Employees Only and returned moments later with a net attached to a long pole. It looked like the kind of thing you used to clean your pool. 

	“We use this when people drop their sunglasses over the edge. I think it’s big enough to catch the urn too.”

	I watched him wrestle with the net as Gillian kept bobbing out of reach. She was sinking lower. She was taking on water, I realized. I hadn’t fastened the lid on tightly enough. Gillian’s ashes were being flooded with ocean water. Good God, now what would I tell her parents?

	After a few minutes of agony, the tour guide finally secured the urn in the net. As soon as he captured it, the lid came completely loose. A mixture of Gillian and ocean water sloshed out of the urn as he hoisted it up. Swaths of sunlight reached out from behind the clouds and Gill captured the light in tiny fragments in her ashes. The guide rested the urn gently on the deck of the ship and replaced the lid before stepping back, his head bowed to the ground. 

	I bit on the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I scooped Gill up and cradled her against my chest. A little water still churned inside. The rest of Gillian had been dissolved into the azure blue of the South Shore. 

	I looked down at the urn. There was nothing left of Gillian in the world, now—except the particles spreading themselves out in the water, glittering and dazzling in the sun. She was so beautiful. The kind of person nothing bad could happen to. When her mom called to tell me what happened I almost laughed. She couldn’t have, I remember saying. We had so many plans. 

	The tour guide sniffed. His eyes were red. A few stray tears twinkled in his beard. 

	“I’m so sorry,” he said. 

	I poured what was left of Gill’s diluted remains back into the ocean and tucked the empty urn under my arm, hoping her parents would never open it. Never know all that was left of her was air. 

	In the corner of my eye, I saw a grey sky starting to collect on the horizon, the town’s bright colours muted. The gulls screeching was loud and ugly overhead.  

	“It was my fault,” I said. 

	I stumbled off the deck, Gill’s empty body under my arm. The rain started before I reached the car. Everything brilliant now dim. What a waste, I almost said out loud. This place was no different than the rest. 

For the Love of Ponds

Ann Martin

Swimming in a Mirror

Watch its shimmering vastness through slanted light from the morning sun. The surface is smooth as glass in the still air, reflecting spruce trees which fringe the shoreline. Strait trunks and green branches, brown and scraggy at the top, are illuminated on the pond’s metallic pallet. It is irresistible. Step in, turn around and let yourself fall into the water. A steadying shock and you are floating in liquid steel. Kick and breathe. Breaststroke now and the water is at eye level, swim slowly so the surface tension is not disturbed. Foam bubbles and bits of dust float on the oily surface, an insect walks past. Time slows down as your body absorbs the cold and your mind clears. You hobble out over rough rocks on numbed feet and dress with shaking hands and leaden fingers that struggle to button up your shirt.

I was seven or eight years old when I learned how to swim. It was in a pond with the other children from the community and no adult supervision. I don’t remember how these outings were initiated – there were no cell phones or internet, and the four-way party line would not have been put to so trivial a pursuit. Summoned by the enchantress summer, Celine and Elaine held my hands as we trudged along the dirt road to Slaughter’s Pond, walking single file where the path narrowed, ducking under branches and batting blackflies hungry for young flesh.

Elaine showed me how to pinch my nose with one hand and surge forward in a running motion with head underwater and eyes closed. Non-swimmers were not allowed to pass a submerged boulder called First Rock. I practiced and practiced until I was gliding forward without the aid of my feet like a wriggling guppy, gaining my admission to the open expanse that lay between First Rock and Second Rock. So bounded, I perfected the doggie paddle and was generally recognized as a ‘good swimmer.’ Older children could jump off the Drum, a large rusty receptacle weighted down with stones. We told each other to stay clear of the weeds for fear of getting tangled up in them and pulled under. A child had drowned in this pond once. Some said she swam out too far, others that she went too close to the lily pads; either way it was a fate you could suffer if you failed to follow the children’s unwritten code.

When it was time to go home, the girls would retrieve bars of Ivory soap and bottles of Herbal Essence rolled up in their towels, and we would get back in the pond and scrub ourselves clean from the afternoon swim. Girls changed in a hidden clearing close to the path, and boys further out by the river. The boys got the better spot. It was evident by their hoots of laughter and the zigzagging, tumbling action visible through the trees. Every now and then a rambunctious boy would burst into the girls’ side causing pandemonium. “What did he see?” “Did he see anything?” were the important questions arising from the helter skelter of the intrusion. To this day, I can change out of my bathing suit into dry clothes under a towel without an inch of indecent flesh showing.

On week-ends we went with other families to LaManche for a swim in the deep pool where the river runs into the ocean. Tiring of the stouts and fast flowing water, us kids would run off to explore. We played in the foundations of abandoned houses, washed out by a tidal wave. The screams and laughs of our parents and their friends bubbled up from the falls and we heard words like “skinny dip” and “in the buff.” A suspicion formed in my mind and lay dormant, not ready to be understood.

Going Deeper

Early adolescence is like swimming in June when the pond has two levels of water: a warm layer on top and cold on the bottom. You float to stay on top, and water that seemed cool at the beginning turns hot in contrast to the cold below. Your feet recoil from the touch of slimy grasses and soft sinking mud. There are rumours of eels, leeches, and hidden springs. Hot and cold become confused and you can no longer tell which is which.

My family moved to St. John’s when I started  junior high school, and I traded in pond swimming for chlorine, scratchy eyes, and social acceptance. At first I looked down on the children who smoked behind the school and told my mother about it in shock and dismay, but survival meant shifting alliances. Soon I was hitchhiking with other girls from the west end of Water Street along Waterford Bridge Road to the Bowring Park swimming pool where we hung out with a crew from the west end.

  The summer after high school, I did a French Immersion course in Moncton, New Brunswick. The monitors took us to Fundy National Park to see the tide and swim in Bennett Lake. A couple of young people from British Colombia waded into the lake and dove-in, emerging at the surface in strong strokes. No inch-by-inch acclimatization. No walking out and swimming back. No splashing, veering, tiring effort to move forward. This pair matched each other’s pace in a confident front-crawl and swam up the middle of the lake until they were out of sight.

It was a powerful realization for my 16-year-old self: I longed to be able to swim like that more than anything else in the world. That September, I started first year university at Memorial and enrolled myself in swimming lessons with children nearly half my age. I tolerated young girls whispering in the change room, looking in my direction, and soon I was able to join a master’s group at the pool in the basement of the Phys Ed building. Racing through Memorial’s underground tunnels at lunch to stake my territory in the undivided choppy water, churning with other swimmers. In summer, we were free spirits in search of secluded places to swim topless, bathing suits rolled down around our waists.

Glaciers Retreat

The story boards on Signal Hill describe the impact of the receding glaciers on the topography of the island of Newfoundland. As the melting glaciers receded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, they left the landscape dotted with thousands of freshwater lakes or “ponds” as Newfoundlanders, fond of the diminutive, call them. These ponds were originally sources of food and transportation for the Beothuk, the indigenous peoples who were living on the island when the English, Irish, Basques, and French arrived. The Beothuk names for the ponds that sustained and nourished them can never be known.

Settlers named ponds after the people, like, Healey’s Pond, Neary’s Pond, Paddy’s Pond, Cochrane Pond, Whiteway Pond; or place like, Bay Bulls Big Pond, Topsail Pond; or topography, like

Sugarloaf Pond, Peak Pond, Long Pond; or animals, like Beaver’s Pond, Duck Pond; or whimsy, like Little Punch Bowl, Big Punch Bowl, Tea Cup Pond, Octagon Pond.

Children are ready made swimming buddies. I had three children during my thirties and like everything else during that phase of life, swimming was for them. Our week-end outings were fueled by their energy and enthusiasm. There were mishaps, like when my dreamy eldest slit her foot open on broken glass; and heroism, like when my stalwart middle child pulled her carefree younger brother from deep water at the Trestle. The love was passed on and now they are in their 20s and let me tag along sometimes.

In middle age, I learn patience, and look for ways to stop the days from passing by so quickly. In my mind’s eye, I am alone, in a recurring dream, riding my bike up a sloping road by the shoreline, with the dog running beside me, endless sky and infinite blue ocean spreading to the horizon. The wind is pushing me forward and I realize it’s the way to Freshwater Pond.

Pandemic Angst

In the summer of 2020, I went back to work in my office on Forest Road after four months of lockdown in a bubble of just my husband and son. I felt like a mole coming up into the sunlight and wanted to escape from the anxiety fuelled days of the early pandemic – my son driving my husband back- and-forth to the hospital for radiation treatments and our daughter delivering groceries to the doorstep. Me, with a bleach bottle, washing shoes, floors, light switches, even the food we ate. Now, the cancer was gone and I was leaving the house every day. I had heard from my kids that people were swimming in George’s Pond just behind the building where I worked. Surrounded by grey-green sandstone cliffs, George’s Pond is nestled in the lee side of Signal Hill.

After work, the strong sun melted away my stress on the path up to Burma Road. I set my knapsack under a bush, quickly undressed to my bathing suit, luxuriated on the grassy bank, then stepped down onto flat rocks neatly placed for easy access to the water. We had all not long escaped from lockdown and were enjoying the comradery of other swimmers. “This used to be back-up for the water supply” a man from the Battery explained “but we would come up here when we were youngsters and swim after dark.” In August 2020, Parks Canada put up “No Swimming” signs and our refuge was no more.

You are floating on a foam noodle, enjoying the water, when four otters approach. You stay very still while they pop up and down inspecting you from all angles. They must consider you uninteresting, as they swim away toward the shore. You see them in the weeds tossing up small silver fish, chewing and gulping them down. A hiker stops and you point to the otters. You tell her that you swim here a lot, but the hot tired hikers coming off the trail never get in for a swim.

“I’m getting in” she laughs, “because I am a mermaid.”

She is from the Philippines, an archipelago of thousands of islands, where she swam every day growing up. You get it.

“Pleased to meet you” you say, “I am a mermaid too.”

           

The Car Jacking

Kent Jones

When I was very young, there were a spate of car jackings in American cities. It was a trend. I don’t think it occurs much, if at all, now. People would get robbed or roughed up, stranded, or just taken along for a joy ride. I don’t recall hearing that anyone got killed but it probably happened. It certainly could have happened.
	My father was a quiet man, a “still waters run deep” man. I can’t remember him raising his voice in anger although I always knew when he was angry about something. While most kids got spankings in those days, and some “the belt”, I never received any of that from my father. However, he did not suffer fools gladly and he didn’t put up with nonsense from anyone. He was born into a Presbyterian farming family and as an adult had a career as a “large animal” (farm animal) veterinarian, so he had a great respect for hard working family farmers and how they managed their farms. He particularly admired Amish farmers that lived throughout eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania because, as he often said, “they pay in cash and they take good care of their animals.” He could shut down a dairy farm if the cows were not properly cared for, and on occasion he did. And his decision was final. There were no appeals courts for those decisions back then.
	One Sunday afternoon in summer, I went along with him to the Akron Veterinary Hospital, a business and hospital facility he shared with three partners/colleagues. Twice a day, every day, he would clean the kennels occupied by cats and dogs who were boarding there or convalescing following surgeries or other illnesses, and give them fresh food, water, and blankets if they needed them. Those who were able--- the bigger dogs mainly---were let out of their kennels and put in “runs”---large penned areas where they could exercise for fifteen or twenty minutes a day. I was five or six years old at the time and going along to the hospital for me was like going to the zoo, and he let me help with stuff where I could and if it was safe to do so. I loved my Dad.
	We drove from Silver Lake---home---through Cuyahoga Falls and across the Cuyahoga River to the “Expressway” and on to the city of Akron, maybe seven miles in total. There was very little traffic to speak of and once we got into the city of Akron, virtually none. We exited at East Market Street and headed for Buchtel Avenue. It was a great day. We chatted as we zipped along in our aging Pontiac station wagon. I remember him telling me about driving cattle trucks to earn enough money to attend veterinary school, and how back in his day the cattle weren’t secured with tethers so as they’d move around in the back of the trailer it made steering difficult, particularly in the wintertime in upstate New York. He always talked to me like I was an adult so I learned things that baby-talking parents didn’t, and couldn’t, communicate to their kids. He swore a bit, too, and I picked that up and sometimes surprised other adults with some colourful banter.
	My father smoked unfiltered Chesterfield cigarettes and he had one going as we pulled up to the stop light at the intersection of East Market Street and Buchtel Avenue, and waited.
	There was a fair-sized guy standing on the sidewalk near us with his hands in his pockets. He was by himself. There were no other cars on the streets and no other pedestrians on the sidewalks. Although it was Sunday, this was downtown Akron, a tough factory town in America’s “Rust Belt.”
	All of a sudden the guy rushed up to my father’s window, reached in, grabbed his collar with a big fist and said, “Move over, mister, we’re going for a ride.”
	In a heartbeat, and without hesitating, my father stuck the Chesterfield in his mouth, rolled the window up on the guy’s arm, attaching him to the car in a trap, dropped it into first gear and floored it.
	He wound that old Pontiac up to, I don’t know, forty, forty-five miles an hour maybe, then rolled the window down, sending the would be car-jacker tumbling in the road behind us.
	At that point, he took the Chesterfield out of his mouth and flicked it out the window, turning to me, who was petrified, and shaking, and said “Are you okay?” He was steely calm and expressionless.
	“Yes, Dad” I replied, my voice cracking.
	Then we drove straight to the Akron Veterinary Hospital, cleaned the kennels, put the large dogs in the exercise "runs", gave all the animals fresh food and water, and made sure that any of them who needed clean, warm blankets had them.

Grandma is Another Word for Mom

Roberta Laurie

	I tapped my Shave-and-a-Hair-Cut knock on the front door of the white and blue bungalow, but I didn’t wait for an answer. I walked in. “Hellooo,” I called.
	“Hello.” It was Josie’s voice that day.
	“How’s Grandma?” I asked. 
	“She just went back to bed, but I bet she’s still awake.”
	I slipped off my shoes and left them by the door. In the living room, Alice sat in her chair across from the TV. She looked up from the throw she was crocheting. The colours were beautiful: rich burgundy and pale baby-girl pink. She gifted that throw to my grandmother. Now its scalloped edges drape the arm of the love seat in my living room.
	“Hi, Alice.” I didn't want to talk, so I waved and hurried into my grandmother’s room. At the age of forty-one, I was back in school working through a communications degree. I needed to get home to finish a paper on the history of literary journals. 
	My grandmother sat on the edge of her bed. Her walker pushed to the side. “Hi, Gram.” I raised my voice to be heard.
	Grandma looked up. Her eyes brightened. “Oh – Bertie. What are you doing here?” She sounded so surprised. 
	“I came to see you.” In my head, my voice sounded loud, too artificial.
	“How did you know where to find me? Do you live here now?”
*
	To this day, I don't like sleeping in. Even on weekends, sleeping in feels more like guilt than pleasure. I marvel at people who spend their holidays in pajamas, but Grandma used to say that you needed to get up and get dressed so you could seize the day.
	I see Grandma throwing open the door of my childhood bedroom. Good morning, good morning. Another new day is dawning, she'd sing. If I dared to curl back under the covers, I just encouraged another cheerful verse, and the blankets would be whipped off my bed with a flourish. "You don't want to sleep your life away," she'd call over her shoulder with the expectation that I'd be up and in the kitchen for breakfast shortly, and it was always best to comply. 
	At the nursing home, Grandma spent her days near her bed: lying in her bed, sitting on her bed. She could even see her bed from the living room. It became the centre of her diminished world.
*
	Grandma was still sweet and gentle. She reached out her hand and touched my face. “My pretty girl. My pretty, pretty girl.” She wasn’t as stubborn or bossy as she once was. Her edges had been worn down by years of loss — loss of her husband, loss of a son, loss of her home, loss of her independence. When she visited my house, she let me bathe her swollen legs and change her diaper. When I drove her to see the doctor, she would put her hands on my shoulders and allow me to maneuver her from the wheelchair into my car. She felt her helplessness in those moments. "Getting old sure isn't for sissies," she'd say.
	It was her body that began the dying first. In the beginning she needed a cane to walk, then two, then a walker. The last three-and-a-half months of her life, she was completely bedridden.  
	But the mind, it creeps away when no one is watching. Grandma stopped phoning me. Then she stopped answering the phone. When I went to visit her Camrose house, I cleaned feces from the smeared toilet seat. I found dirty underwear bundled together in her closet. She'd forgotten to pay her bills. She no longer wanted to visit the doctor or get the hearing aid she needed. She sat in her chair at the end of the table and ate Voortman and Rainforest cookies, forgetting she had just finished her Meals on Wheels. She became quiet. It was easier for her to listen and pretend she understood than speak herself. 
	I knew she'd never wanted to live in an extended-care home, but that became the best unhappy option.     
*
	When I think back on a childhood spent with my grandparents, I remember my grandfather's unconditional love, and I remember my grandmother's carry-on pragmatism. 
	I wish I could ask Grandma what her dreams were. She told me once that when she was a child, she wanted to dance on stage. She made the mistake of telling her mother and was never allowed another ballet lesson. Even as she aged, if the music was right, Grandma would get up and dance the Charleston. As she swung her arms and laughed, I could almost imagine her in a flapper dress. Another time, she told me she would have liked to be a nurse. I suppose she remembered her mother taking in veterans after the First World War. She realized none of these dreams. Instead, she gave birth to eight children — include me and she raised nine. Once she was finished raising us, she looked after my grandfather during his final years of heart disease and the many trips to the hospital. 
	On the day of my grandfather's funeral, the family gathered in the backyard of the Camrose house for a photo. Three rows of children and grandchildren squinted into the June sunshine, but not Grandma. She stood next to me and my expanding pregnant belly. Even if I stare closely at the photograph, I can't tell what she was looking at. Nothing it seems. Her eyes were far, far away.
	It wasn't until then that she had time for herself. Grandma lived the last twenty-three years of her life without "her Bill."
	But still, she carried on.
*
	After six years in a small extended-care home, Grandma needed a higher level of care, so I moved her to a larger facility. In this new "home," she spent the early days of a new year waiting for an assessment by the occupational therapist. Until she had the assessment, she wasn't allowed a walker. She wasn't allowed a grab-bar next to her bed either; even though these were the tools she'd become accustomed to using. Five days after she moved into her new home, she woke in the night and tried to walk across the room, but she couldn't walk, so she fell and broke her leg. 
	After she broke her leg, she became completely bedridden. The doctor decided not to cast the fracture — something about infection — so she lay immobilized. When she wasn’t sleeping, she spent her days looking out the window. She couldn’t see much, but she could see the sky. Every three hours, the nursing staff turned her, and she would sing, “Blue skies shining on me. Nothing but blue skies can I see.” And then she would scream. And scream. And scream.
*
	Even as a child, I admired my grandmother's pragmatism. She had the ability to keep on keeping on: dinners served predictably at the teak kitchen table in the tiny dining room, sheets changed once weekly, ice cream after a trip to the dentist. These trivialities were the web that gave order to my small, unpredictable life. They held my world together.
	Grandpa was the fun one. The one who told me stories at bedtime, let me win at Monopoly, and led me down the old mountain trails.
	But Grandma, she was strong. She was there when I was sick. When I had a cold, she boiled a pot of water and insisted I breathe the steam. When I developed coughs that shook my entire body and hurt so badly that I sometimes cried, she placed extra pillows under my head, spooned out cough syrup, and sat nearby until I slept.
*
	A month before she died, Grandma had an appointment with her osteologist. He wanted to see her at the hospital's Emergency Department. He'd be able to see her sooner that way, I was told. 
	Her diapers were fresh. She had taken pain medication. The ambulance picked her up at noon. I went to meet her at the hospital. She was calm, even cheerful at first. I carried on a conversation of loud one-sided banter while we waited. 
	At the check-in desk, I explained that arrangements had been made with Grandma’s osteologist, but I was told that was impossible. She needed to wait for an emergency doctor to see her, just like everyone else. 
	The hours passed, and Grandma was no longer calm. She'd become restless and frightened. Lying in the hallway, the pain medication was wearing off, and I was frantic. After polite queries of "Will the wait be much longer?" and "Grandma is overdue for her pain medication," I walked to the nursing station and demanded a doctor see her.
	A doctor did come – eventually — still chewing his supper, but by then, I didn’t care. Grandma needed pain meds. "The nurse will bring her pain meds after I've examined her," he told me.
	 As Grandma screamed, he removed her bandages. “Oh, don’t do that. Oh, please don’t do that. Please stop. STOP THAT. STOP." 
 	 A thick, black, dead piece of skin, about the size of a small fried egg, fell off the bottom of her foot. Underneath, an open wound oozed moss-coloured pus. Another bedsore rotted away the flesh on the inside of her knee. Grandma screamed in pain. "The doctor will be finished soon," I said and patted her hand.
	The doctor bandaged her wounds, and the nurse gave her pain meds, but Grandma didn’t stop screaming. “Oh nurse, help me. Help me please. HELP ME NOW.” 
	"Would you like some water?" I said. But she sucked the straw too quickly and choked. She gasped and coughed, her eyes wild with fear. (She drank thickened water at the nursing home.) 
	I held her hand when she let me and waited as she cried, “Oh nurse, help me. Please help me.” I didn’t know what to do.
	The beds were separated by curtains so thin you could see the outline of the next bed over. A porter came. "I've been asked to move her." And he whisked her away. “We can’t have her disturbing the other patients,” a nurse explained.
	She was moved to a separate room. It was far away from the other patients, far away from the staff. Forgotten.
	I no longer knew what we were waiting for. I wondered if anyone did. Was it an x-ray, a medication, an ambulance, an expert? No one could tell me. Grandma screamed throughout the night until the ambulance came to pick her up the next morning. 
*
	Grandpa sowed the vegetable garden. I'd watch him build a willow trellis for the tall telephone peas he grew every year, and every year, I'd wait impatiently for the pods to fatten. As he aged, gardening became too much for him. He stopped planting peas. I helped him hill the potatoes and thin the carrots.
	But Grandma, she tended the flower beds. 
	I'm sure I got my love of flowers from Grandma. I love the magic of the purple monkshood and the fire of the orange speckled tiger lilies. By the time we moved to the Camrose house, I was old enough to help with bedding plants: joyous yellow marigolds and hardy pink petunias. With me at her side, Grandma dug the holes with a small trowel. Right behind her, I'd plunk in the seedlings and pat down the earth. After Grandpa died, I'd come to visit, and she'd say, "Would you mind planting the annuals? I can't get down on my knees anymore."
	Grandma loved all the flowers, but roses were her favourite. Roses covered her good china. Tiny embroidered roses accented the collar of a favourite sweater. When we went to the opera, she wore Ombre Rose, her favourite fragrance.
	On one visit to the nursing home where Grandma lay in bed unable to move, I brought her tulips. Her eyesight was clouded with cataracts, so I chose a bright pink and put them nearby where she could see them. When I came in the next day, the tulips were on the other side of the room. "Why were Grandma's flowers moved?" I asked the staff. 
	She had been eating the petals.
*
	It's the seeming trifles that became precious with time.
	After I left home, I'd phone Grandma with my baking questions: "How long should I blind bake this crust? Can you give me your Johnny Cake recipe?" 
	When I visited, I'd let myself in through the side door. Grandma would be sitting at her end of the table, cigarette in hand and a cup of tea, always in a delicately flowered teacup. "Bertie," she would exclaim as though there was no pleasure in the world greater than seeing me standing in her kitchen. I would hug her and kiss her cheek.
	Grandma was ready with recipes and articles: "I cut this article on the Hubble Telescope from the Journal for you," she might say, and most often, I was politely uninterested. Or she'd say, "I think you'll like this recipe. Wait while I copy it out." I still have these recipes written in her sweeping cursive. 
*
	In those last months, when I visited Grandma, there was no one to greet me. I'd wait in a slow elevator as it clunked up to the third floor. The doors slid open. I'd hope to see Grandma in the common area, but she was never there. I'd walk down the hall, but long before I reached her room, I'd hear her voice: “Oh Father, help me. Please help me.” 
	This horror continued for three months.
*
	The family was gathering. 
	I stood next to Grandma's bed, her oldest daughter across from me. I heard her whispers, "Oh, Mom. Oh, Mom."
	I looked at Grandma. Her eyes were fixed on the foot of her bed. As I watched, she lifted her arms as though she were reaching for someone who wasn't there. "My Bill," she said through dry lips. "My Bill." Then she lowered her arms, and her eyes lost their focus. I knew then she was letting go.
	Although her heart beat for another four days, she never spoke again. 
*
	At our Camrose home, Grandpa dropped the needle on Count Basie, and 1930s big band jazz filled the house, but I'd beg for Tchaikowsky and leap through the air imagining I was Clara of the Nutcracker. Other times, I'd ask for our record of Strauss waltzes, and I'd imagine myself in a swirling gown dancing the "Blue Danube Waltz." As I worked my way through the grades of Royal Conservatory piano, Grandma asked me to play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata,” then Brahms' "Waltz in A-flat Major,” then Chopin's "Waltz in C-sharp Minor." Grandma herself almost never played by then, too embarrassed by long years without practice.
	Many times, I must have been the youngest in the audience at the Jubilee Auditorium. While I waited for the curtain to rise on La Boheme or Rigoletto or The Merry Widow (my favourite), I'd listen to the oboes and cellos, the violas and flutes warming up in the orchestra pit. I'd gaze at the red velvet curtains and feel smaller than small under the height of the grand auditorium ceiling. The skirt Grandma sewed me for these occasions was red velvet too, and I felt extravagantly elegant, not at all out of place among the other ladies in their long evening gowns.
	After I left home, after Grandpa was gone, Grandma still listened to music. Now a small CD player she received one year for Christmas next to her on the dining room table. Sometimes she listened to the Three Tenors and Andrea Bocelli, others it was Louis Armstrong and Willy Nelson while she read Prevention Magazine or cut recipes from Better Homes and Gardens.
*
	In that last extended-care home, Grandma died to the heartbreaking voice of Andrea Bocelli. There was a CD player in what they called the Family Room; although Dying Room would have been more apt. We set it to play on repeat. "Con Te Partirò" marked the four days of Grandma's passing. I've not been able to listen to it since.
*
	I’m left with an image. In this image Grandma's leg was broken. She had pneumonia, and it was all almost over.
	They had showered her to break up the fluid in her lungs and brought her back to her room on a stretcher. Lying on her back, she was choking on the fluids. They bubbled out of her throat. Her eyes were wide and filled with fear. I watched as she gagged and coughed. 
	Grandma had been taught to act like a lady by her mother, and she passed that on to me. “That’s not fitting for a lady” still rings in my ears. Grandma corrected my grammar. She reminded me to take my elbows off the table. At Christmas and Easter, we dressed up for dinner because it was the "proper" thing to do. Even in the years she lived without running water in her remote mountain home, Grandma kept her blouses ironed and hair styled. When I picked her up from the nursing home, she'd say, "Let me put my face on, Bertie," and she'd reach for her compact mirror, which she kept next to her bed and used to apply her bright red lipstick. 
	I thought of this as the two middle-aged women whipped off the white sheet that covered Grandma’s pale, wet flesh. My sweet, proper grandmother, who in fifty years of marriage, never once let my grandfather see her stomach because she was ashamed of an old appendix scar. 
	With methodical hands, the women worked quickly, rubbing body lotion into arms, legs, and belly. “They’re almost finished,” I murmured. Grandma answered with a smothered sob and fought for another breath. 
*
	When I talk about my grandmother, I'm really talking about my mother. Grandma was my mother in every way that mattered. She tended me when I was sick; she met with my teachers for parent-teacher interviews. She was there when my biological mother was not.
When I was eight months pregnant, Grandma came to visit. "Let's go to The Bay," she said. "You should have a proper table lamp." In those days, I was living on the fourth floor of a walk-up apartment in downtown Edmonton, furniture cobbled together from hand-me-downs and as-is discounts. Grandma wanted me to have something nice.
We took a taxi to The Bay. Once we arrived, Grandma marched me and my unwieldy belly upstairs to the furniture department where, with minimal input from me, she picked out the lamp she thought I should have. It was (and is) lovely. Tall and grand with a pleated off-white shade and gold accents. Its cut-crystal base marked with an old fashioned pin-wheel pattern — how very Grandma. In the years since, I've replaced the shade, and I've had the switch repaired. But I still have the lamp. It sits on my dresser next to a black and white photo of a little girl. The little girl looks out at the world through large dark eyes. Her hair is done in ringlets and pulled back with a big white bow. She holds a bouquet of cloth roses. The little girl is Grandma, my mom.

Tributaries

Shruti Raheja

April 2018 · Twillingate

Springtime, and the pack ice in Twillingate harbour winks its greeting as I drive down Main Street for the first time, searching for my temporary lodgings. It looks as though someone forgot to put juice in the Christmas slush and left it out to chill in the bay. My pupils, glazed over from the four-hour drive, awaken as young April sunlight squeezes through Notre Dame Bay clouds, glinting off the pearls of ice and making my eyes stream. I squint, my vision hazy with tears that gather in the corners, and the colours of this town blur together: teal houses, ashen skies, and red sheds liquefy in front of me. I drive past the Anchor Inn twice, looping back to find my side street. I finally pull up to the little clay house perched on the water’s edge where I’ll be watching the horizon smoulder with melted fire every evening.

At the very least, I will be able to take in those sunsets on the days when my hospital duties do not keep me working all night.

The pace of life in Twillingate allows me to fill my lungs more often. The spring smells like damp earth and the tentative sweetness of flowers that are not quite ready to open their petals; winter lingers on in these parts, and who can blame those flowers for staying cocooned just a little bit longer? Each gulp of hopeful, crisp air brings a small amount of life back into a body that has been worked to its limits this past year. This rotation feels like an opportunity to try and remember why I went to medical school, in the first place. I fill my free time with hikes that trace the jagged shoreline of this grey, thunderous bay, my boots crunching on exposed yellow grass that bristles insistently between enduring piles of snow. I visit a tiny café in Crow Head and burn my fingers as they clutch hot mugs filled with drinks that defrost me, pooling in my stomach with a localized heat that seeps slowly across my body. I allow some pleasure and contemplation back into my days. During work hours, my mission is to re-cultivate the enthusiasm that has eroded along this journey, with its interminable call shifts and toxic learning cultures chipping resolutely at the joy that used to come naturally when serving others.

Here, I try to focus on the stories patients tell me.

So, on the day that you come into the clinic, I put down my pen and charts. I take a break from the furious note-writing, the probing histories and physical exams, and I sit down to listen. You haven’t been feeling well, but it’s probably nothing. You are terrified of missing work. Your boss is not an understanding man, and you have bills to pay. You have lost so much weight, and there are pains in your back that you describe as poking, but your blue eyes tell me that stabbing might be a more appropriate descriptor. Still, your stoicism astounds me. I marvel at your forced nonchalance as I take the long way home.

The harbour ice sparkles innocently from a distance, but on closer examination, these bony bits have jagged edges. If asked to bear too much weight, they can swallow people and boats. These floes appear invincible at first glance, like the steadfast children of icebergs crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in Twillingate’s port. And yet, they can scatter at a moment’s notice. It all depends on how the winds blow. It depends on the outside temperature. It depends on what else is in the water.

A week later, you come back to the health centre. This time, you get admitted to the hospital, then sent to St. John’s. Before leaving, you say a heavy goodbye to your close friend who works down the hall from us.

We hear about the diagnosis made in town. We are unsurprised but heartbroken. The x-rays of your spine are full of pack ice. There is disease crammed into every corner of your body. It started in your blood, and it is everywhere now. 

I never saw you after that day because you didn’t make it back to Twillingate in life. But when I think of that town and the months I spent living there, I like to picture you jumping between ice floes in the harbour, as you must have been tempted to do as a child, when the grown-ups weren’t looking. It’s not dangerous to you, anymore. Not on this new journey. I yearn for the kind of freedom that must come with throwing caution to the winds. I mourn for the hours of my life spent pressed up to hospital windows, watching from the inside as ice drifts in the distance, each of my exhales fogging the glass ever so slightly.

November 2018 · Nain

This medevac airplane is so small, I swear I can feel it tilt every time the nurse sitting next to me leans towards the window. With my hands clamping the armrests, I try to covertly lean in the other direction, a helpless attempt to balance a situation well beyond my control.

My third year of medical school is behind me, and Labrador has called me to marvel at its towering peaks and boundless black spruces. The landscape stretches out beneath us as we fly north over an endless expanse of forest, its wild, snow-dusted foliage sprawling in all directions. Thousands of trees breathe peacefully under our wings; they are smudged together, like a pastel drawing after the artist smears their thumb across the page. We are gliding over areas that appear completely untouched, and while I know better than to believe this impression, I am mesmerized by how pure the land seems, with umbilical rivers wrapped round this taiga, gushing with oxygen and life.

You overdosed on beta blockers while at your home in Nain today. An excess of cardiac medication for a heart that seems inconsolable. You are almost four hundred kilometres north of Goose Bay, and I happen to be working with the doctor on call for medevac. Before I fully realize what is happening, I am whisked onto this tiny plane with staff frantically sorting through medical equipment, opening bag-mask valves and loading syringes for your arrival.

While the nurse and respiratory therapist discuss their clinical management plans, reviewing charts and documents about hypoglycemia patterns and seizure thresholds, I allow my gaze to drift out the window. Some of the water bodies we pass are self-contained pockets, ponds of royal blue that shimmer in the afternoon sun like marbles tossed carelessly across the land. Others form a network of water vessels, feeding into one another like secrets growing in strength until they spill out into the Labrador Sea.

Tributary. The word for a river or stream feeding into its parent. It is also the word for a small vessel that drains into a bigger vein, carrying blood back to the heart as it seeks more oxygen.

The airstrip in Nain is carved into the shoreline, with mere inches to spare between runway and water. I exhale all the air from my lungs as we approach the ground, my stomach muscles clenched, and do not breathe in again until wheels touch gravel and the plane slows to a halt. There are no lights on the airstrip, so we are on an unforgiving timeline to depart before sunset.

We clamber into the back of the truck that has come to collect us. I should be focused on the task at hand, but the sky is blazing in siren-red as we scramble to and from the clinic in a matter of minutes. I stop to take a single picture, because I may never see Nain again in my life. The sun dawdles on its way to the horizon as though it knows we need a few more seconds.

When we are back in the air, the staff sighs with relief. But you glance at the syringes with eyes so wide they fill your whole face and deny the boluses we try to offer. Halfway through the flight back, you start to tremble violently until we have no choice but to push glucose into your veins. Consent becomes blurred by your flashing pupils and rapid blinks each time you feel a seizure coming on. This pattern continues the entire ride back to Goose Bay, a repeated reluctance to accept these feeds while your body betrays you, time and again.

Tributaries circle back to a heart that keeps beating, but a disturbance along the way can be devastating. Serum osmolar concentrations maintain balance, and ensure every cell acquires the nutrients it needs to survive. Even the heart cells depend on this equilibrium for strength and fortitude as they simultaneously deliver blood outwards and receive it back from the vena cava. Your body is starving for glucose. Its cells ration sugar like they are living through war.

Shadows drop like dominoes across the land, and I can just barely decipher those waterways twisting and weaving their paths along the coast. Their turbulence is palpable, but they carry themselves with precision, all the same. As we sail our way out of this hushed northern sanctuary, they seem to calm down with every mile that brings us closer to Goose Bay, their race towards the next milestone easing into a relaxed jaunt. A carefree dance with the confidence that everything important is within reach.

March 2019 · St. John’s

Watching someone gasp to fill their lungs has always made me short of breath, as though my mirror neurons are in overdrive when faced with pain and sorrow. It’s my last week of clerkship, and I’m on elective with some of the sickest patients I’ve ever encountered, back on the medicine floors with specialists in St. John’s. I had hoped for a more relaxing conclusion to the toughest journey I have taken in my life: a journey that has left me with far more questions than answers. In the true spirit of medicine, however, I am thrown one final curveball and assigned to the respirology team in town.

I gown up to see you on my first morning, pulling mask bands around my ears and displacing my glasses in the process. I tug hospital gloves onto my already-sweaty hands and the stench of rubber fills my nostrils. When I am finally ready to enter the room, I find you perched on the bed, furiously trying to occupy yourself with crossword puzzles in this stifling isolation chamber where air and patients are forbidden from escaping. Although we know you don’t really have tuberculosis, you have to stay here until the test results return. Your only interactions are with people whose orifices are sealed tightly against you.

I try to ask about your symptoms, and to assess your heartbeat despite the countless layers of clothing and skin between my stethoscope and your ventricles. Every time you start to speak, however, your sentences dissolve into coughs and splutters, your face growing increasingly crimson with each attempt to move air. I watch you heave some shallow, rasping breaths in and out, my own heart pounding as I wonder if I should call a nurse. In the end, we are both discouraged, and decide to try again tomorrow.

After long days at the hospital, my greatest solace is to venture outside with the dog, who pulls me into the smells and textures of our shared world with unrelenting curiosity. On this particular evening, we tread onto a footpath that begins down the street, guiding us along a river we have visited many times before. The gurgling, gushing rush of the water brings me peace, and we pause on the boardwalk for a moment, allowing those droplets to lightly spray us as the sky fades into an inky slumber. Gryff sniffs at a riveting patch of grass and I pause, shivering slightly, goosebumps erupting on my arms as a breeze passes through.

The following day, your cough is marginally better.

I walk along the river every evening that week, watching bubbles float up from under the surface as the current seems to poke fun at our limited human capacity for oxygen dissolution. I think about how the river’s lungs stretch outwards every year when it floods, bringing new life and nutrients to its inner world. It inhales deeply, long enough to last hundreds of days, and envelopes those vital elements into its ecosystem. It breathes in so powerfully that it creates life in this process.

Tidal volume. The amount of air that moves in and out of the lungs each time we breathe. Repeated infections and autoimmune disease can cause scarring, rendering the alveoli stiff and reluctant to expand. They resist every attempt at inhalation. How does it feel to have your body refuse that action so essential to life? What does it mean to have your laughter stopped short because you do not have the lung capacity to spare? I want to ask you these questions, but I hold myself back. These are not the kinds of questions I am being trained to ask.

The truth is that I, too, have been struggling for air lately. Four years of studying medicine have led me to conclude that, despite my strongest efforts, I simply do not belong here. The sight of an ECG makes me almost physically ill, and I would rather be studying novels than memorizing algorithms for disease management.  These years have eroded my compassion, and I yearn to serve my community in ways that draw more tenderness and less resentment. I am unsure of what comes next, but I know that the current will not carry me forward the way it will deliver my classmates into their respective careers. With great trepidation, I am stepping aside, clinging onto the tentative optimism that there must be something, anything, that comes more naturally to me.

The tributaries I’ve traced are still with me, though. They course through me like courage as the river rounds a bend. They belong to the people who have trusted me with their stories, and I carry them with gratitude as my pounding heart propels me forward.

 

Let me tell you about Ray

Chris Pickrell
 
“Let me tell you about Ray,” Laney said to me one afternoon. We were in the parlour of her apartment. I had moved in a month earlier and we’d exhausted all the small talk two new people might use to kill time. It was November in Vancouver, a miserable time in an awful city of grey skies and dampness, so we sat, Laney and I, in the small parlour of her apartment drinking coffee. “This is the best view in the city,” she’d said when I’d come to see the place. It was the back half of a second-floor apartment above a tourist shop in Gas town. You had to enter by the alley, a harrowing experience like all Vancouver’s alleys, then climb two long flights of stairs. Inside, the large window, the only window in the apartment, looked over the low buildings behind us, out into the harbour and across to the opposing shore.
       I was sitting in the green chair when Laney began to tell me about Ray. 
       “He was tall, like you,” she said. I took a sip of coffee. 
       “And he came from the prairies, like you.”
       “Alberta?” I asked.
       “Saskatchewan.”
      	I went back to looking out the window. Those monstrous orange cranes that unload the cargo ships were silent, were almost always silent; they stood as gigantic sentinels guarding the edge. I craved for them to awaken, to straighten, to turn and stalk through the city extracting some monstrous orange revenge they felt they were owed. 
      “Oh yeah?” I said, eventually.
       “Yes,” she said, “He came here to be an actor.”
       I tried to think if I knew any actors from Saskatchewan. “And how did it go?”
       “He almost got a part in a commercial,” she said, “But not quite. He wasn’t much of an actor. After a few auditions, I think he figured it out.”
       “A failed actor from Saskatchewan,” I said.
       “He wasn’t a failure,” she said.
       Then, some part of me couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the story that felt like it was becoming a lesson. “I need to stretch my back,” I said. If I sat too long in the green chair my back would start to ache. “I think I’ll go for a walk.” And then I almost said, “Can we take a rain check?” but in a city where it rains every day that cliché felt too depressing. “Can we save it for later?” I asked.
       “Sure,” she said. 
      
       When the weather relents, if the weather relents, Vancouver is a wonderful city for walking. And it is not so big as it thinks. It wears its perimeter like a halo, where the clean people circle around the Harbour, the Sea wall, False creek, and with a little cut through the better streets, avoid what stalks inside. I walked where the tourists walked, where boats bobbed in the dark seawater like giant water beetles. I walked where the people wore raincoats. But without one, as the relentless dampness soaked through, I felt as if my soul was mouldering.
	Hours passed. I was walking, but I was shuffling towards nothing. As I grew exhausted, I let my steps slip back down to Gas town and up the stairs to our apartment.
       Laney was in the parlour when I arrived. It was only late afternoon, but once the sun begins to weaken, the saturated clouds invite the evening gloom prematurely. I should have gone to my room and changed but it didn’t matter; the green chair was so deep I could wear it like a blanket.
       “He got a job,” she told me, “I’m not sure doing what, he never quite said, but it helped.”          
       “That’s good,” I said. It felt like the right thing to say. 
       “It didn’t last, though,” she said, “Some people aren’t built for structure.”
       Some unknown organ under my stomach convulsed. Why had she told me that? Why was she telling me any of this? I felt my face go blank. I felt my soul, though I know there is no such thing, go blank. I stared out the grey window into the grey fog of blankness. I wanted to dissolve; like fog; like rain.
       Outside beside the harbour, the silent cranes stayed silent. Cold, wet steel resisted, but surely not forever; how long could I stay like this? Surely I was rusting; surely I was weakening. I longed to topple into the cold, cold water. Aching, I rose from the deep green chair and went to my room.
 
       A long stretch of days passed over me. I left my room to walk and eat but little else. I can recall no clear thoughts from that time, only feelings: a visceral sense of dread and weight and a fear to go near deep water. This fear pushed me inland, away from the harbour and the Sea wall, into the lower parts of the city. 
       The city is a prison. With no car, no bike, no bus pass, those glorious mountains may as well be in Saskatchewan. Locked out of decent places by looks, I shuffled bench to bench and, swept by the judgement of those clean eyes in raincoats, I drifted into the other places, the real prison: All around me, I saw the chafe marks and scabs where the Vancouver shackles had torn through the flesh. 
       On a bench one morning late November I was very lonely. It was not raining but the sky was infinitely grey. Near me on the pavement a flock of sparrows fought over a puddle of fresh vomit. A man sat down at the other end of the bench. I recognized him from my walks, had seen his tall, thin body haunt the lower streets. He opened a damp newspaper but was not reading it. I closed my eyes and braced. I knew something bad was coming. I tried to rise but could not. He leaned back and crossed his legs, “Anything I can get you?” he asked. He was looking straight ahead. It did not feel like he was speaking to me but he was speaking to me. His top leg bounced over the other. With only a slight turn of his head, his eyes shot in my direction. They were deep blue atop a terrible red. His arm reached across the back of the bench, close to me but not touching. I said nothing. I was too scared. My breathing became slow and shallow. Without looking at me fully he said, “Anyway, if you need anything, come find me, I’m around.” He stood up. As he walked away, his limbs flopped loosely down the hill.
       I went back to my apartment. I took a long, hot shower. When I got out, I shaved. I threw my old cords and my old sweater in the garbage, noticing only then how bad they smelled, how the reek of desperation, the rotten-waft of the chronically unemployable had impregnated their fibres. I pulled on a collared shirt I had saved from my student days and a clean pair of pants, then, before that sense of cleanliness wore off, I went out to look for a job. As soon as I found one, knowing some money was coming, I spent my small savings on a raincoat and a bag of coffee for Laney.
       
       “After that he got a girlfriend,” Laney said. I can’t say why, or perhaps would rather not, but this turn of the story shook me; had my coffee been on a saucer it would have quivered, made little nervous tinkles as it broke the smooth motion from hand to mouth. Was this the salvation Laney was trying to teach me? If it was, I did not want it. I shifted, I might even say bristled, deep in my green chair.
       “She was very pretty,” Laney said. “And Ray himself was quite good-looking, at least when he smiled.” I heard her sigh, which surprised me. “I don’t know where he met her,” she said, “but all of a sudden she was here all the time. They’d be up all night here in the parlor, looking out the window, talking, laughing, planning.”
       It was strange to imagine this couple, connected to me only by the tether of my landlady, sitting in these same seats, presumably happy, looking out this same dismal window yet not feeling dismal, feeling, perhaps, happiness. 
       “It picked him up a bit,” Laney said. Our positions made it hard to see her face, but I felt her scowl, “Though I can’t say I liked her much.”
       I realized I hadn’t yet spoken, hadn’t yet given her any encouragement or even a sign that I was paying attention. Quickly, I said, “It’s good that you cared though, Laney. I’m sure he appreciated it.” I don’t know why I said that, maybe because I meant it. She straightened in her chair and gave two tiny nods in quick succession.
       “They made a go of it. And they were a nice-looking pair. But I think as soon as Ray was feeling better he got tired of her. She was very tiresome. Near the end, there were some awful bouts of crying that came out of that room.” I realized then that that room was, of course, my room, “Then one morning she showed up all in black, looking perfectly done up and cold. I knew what was about to happen. She went into the room and I don’t think she stayed five minutes. When she came out, there were no tears in her make-up this time and in those long heels she wore she just clacked right back down the stairs.”
       I didn’t know how to parse this. Did I even care? And how was this related to why Laney wanted to “Tell me about Ray.” I didn’t see any lesson here. 
       “Ray was alright,” she said, “He started working again. In fact, he really got going. He’d be up most of the night, right here in the parlour, drawing plans, I don’t know for what. But the light in his eyes came back, for a while.”
       Suddenly, I felt my own energy give out. The image of Ray, energized, hunched over our small table and working, exhausted me. A seductive weariness tugged me down, as if some hidden force demanded I balance the high of his manic ghost, as if the cost of his recovery required I re-pay that stolen fire. I became deeply frightened.
       “I’m sorry, Laney,” I said. I stood up from the chair and stretched, “I think I need to take myself for a walk.” She looked surprised but I saw her hide it, “Whatever you need,” she said. I rose, put on my raincoat and went out.
 
       Ah! That weary Vancouver landscape. I found myself begging the sky to relent, praying, in that abstract, absent way of the atheist, to let the sun come through. So deeply did I need that light I would have accepted any god. Any god who would deign to dip a finger and redirect a tiny beam, for me, today, and, I prayed, bend that light to help me; I was not answered. The dreadful grey mist persisted. I teetered down to the harbour and the dark, black seawater. I passed a man and his friend emptying crab traps. Wearing coarse rubber gloves, the man used a crude wooden tool to measure their shells then, with an unceremoniousness that suggested he was numb to their fates, tossed the under-performers back into the water. “It’s nothing but crabs down there,” he said to his friend, “The ocean floor is filthy with them.” 
       After I had passed beyond their hearing I stopped. I looked into the water. It was black and impenetrable. I imagined my body falling onto a seafloor filthy with crabs, their terrible scavenger claws snipping and stuffing hunks of my flesh into their greedy crab mouths. The image of Laney’s parlour came to my mind: warm enough, dry enough, a window against the elements, a chair that could hold me until I ached. I began walking.
       I began walking, but I did not turn home. I walked without purpose. Where was I going? How badly I needed that answer to be anywhere that wasn’t nowhere. 			
      Like the tiny rivers of fallen rain obeying Vancouver’s decline, I found myself drifting into lower downtown. 
	The man from the bench appeared as a vapour materializing from the cloud. He wore a long coat. Above the tops of his unlaced boots his pants were roughly cut like someone had knifed away the dirty hems. He smiled as I drew near. “What do you need?” he asked. He smelled bad, a deep, scorched, reptilian smell, an outdoor smell, like the greasy smoke from the burning of rotten wood. “Nothing,” I said, and then, agitated, afraid, my voice growing hoarse, I said, forcefully, “Leave me alone.” 
       “Anything you like, boss,” he said. “I’m around.”
       I headed towards home. Had I begun to call my room in Laney’s apartment home? That thought was only slightly less sinister than what the man on the street was offering. I walked past where I should have turned and moved towards the water. 
	Where the tourists’ footsteps ended, tents appeared beneath the trees. I had seen their fringe from Laney’s window. One of them was the same garish orange as the sentinel cranes. Up close, it was filthy and it was not a tent at all, only an orange scrap of tarp tied with twine to a pair of trees. Beneath it was a dead patch of ground and an abandoned pair of muddy boots. I walked on. The tents spread out and multiplied: they were small, low, fortified with the remnants of everyday garbage: grocery bags, pallets, aluminum bars, shopping carts. Crooked mud paths seamed between the shelters. On long lines of twine hung clothes that would never dry. 
	A low, prehistoric grunt rose from a nearby tent. I knew it was aimed at me. I felt its meaning: It did not ask my name or history, nor did it demand why I had come, it asked only one question: Are you a threat? But it was enough to stop me, to shake me. I awoke. I was cold. I turned and walked home.
	Laney was not in the parlour when I went in. This surprised me. I assumed she’d be waiting, I assumed she’d been watching, I expected her to say, “I saw you down there.” But she wasn’t home. I went to my room, got under the covers and stayed there until morning.
 
	In the morning, when I left my room and entered the parlour, the light was unnaturally bright. The sun was out and the room was glowing. I blinked against it. I sneezed. Laney, in the burgundy chair, laughed. I laughed as well. An ancient shiver shook through my body. I went to the kitchen and made us coffee.
	For a long time, Laney and I stared out the window at the harbour and the bright hills beyond. Even those giant orange cranes looked better, healthier, as if today was the day they’d stretch out their old stiffness and do some lifting.
	What I saw that morning, written in the green hills across the bay, was how I had to leave. That message, those green hills – was that all it took? One sunny morning? That thought was humiliating but it wiped away my delusion – showed me how close I’d come to achieving that terrible freedom I thought I wanted.  I looked out: The harbour water stayed dark, but sunlight glittered its surface. I watched a slow boat heading for the open ocean and I smiled, I squinted, I almost cried at the too-simple metaphor. 
	I was teasing these thoughts, fresh to me, and comforting, as if a sentence had been rescinded, when Laney said, “Listen, Ray, get out of here. Go back to Saskatchewan, or Alberta, or anywhere. But get out of here. I saw you down there yesterday.” She was looking out the window at the boat. “Here.” She nodded at an envelope on the table. “It’s a bus ticket,” she said, “It will get you as far as Calgary.” She set her mug beside the ticket with an authoritative clack. 
	I picked up the envelope, opened it. The ticket was dated the next day. I set it back on the table and looked a long time at Laney as she stared out the window. I had always thought her older, but the bright light revealed she was not. Her skin was smooth and she had gentle freckles I hadn’t noticed. The hair I’d taken for mostly grey shone blonde in the sunlight. She turned to look at me. Her eyes were clear. I said nothing. She stood and went to her room but did not close the door. I watched out the window until the slow boat left the frame. Then I rose from the deep green chair. My back no longer ached. I left the ticket on the table and walked down the narrow hallway. 

Finding Gwen

Connie Boland

“What’s all the news, Mother?” 
Frank rubs his grease-smudged fingers with a dirty rag as he leads Gwen to a battered 1955 Chevy Station Wagon. “It’s a real beaut,” he says, thrusting a hip forward to push a crowbar into a dented passenger door. The wagon reeks of burnt rubber, and cigarette smoke. Frank retrieves mouldy beach towels, globs of chewing gum, and butts tattooed with pink lipstick from under a threadbare seat. “I might save this car for something special,” he says. “Is that grease?”
Gwen leans into the vehicle.  “I think it’s wine,” she says, scraping the stain and sniffing her finger. “I bumped into a lot of people on the way over here. All of them dressed to the nines and acting like it’s perfectly normal to be strolling down Broadway with cameras filming every step.” 
“They’re just excited.” Frank crowbars the beaten-down hood, and wipes his rag along an oily dipstick. “First time there’s ever been a movie crew in this town, so folks don’t know what to do with themselves. Watch yourself.” He drops the hood, stepping backward to avoid a cloud of rust. A whistle shrills and Frank checks his watch. “Four o’clock, quittin’ time,” he says. “Can you get the lights?”
Frank took over Kennedy’s Wheels & Deals after his father, Cal, died. In a tiny office that smells like sweat, gasoline, and Aqua Velva aftershave, Gwen pats a sagging swivel chair with her right hand. The heart-shaped diamond on her wedding ring catches the light, winking like a shooting star. Gwen touches Cal’s framed portrait before switching off the humming overheads, and turning the homemade sign to Closed. Outside the clapboard building, she rattles the front door. “Once. Twice. Third time’s the charm,” Cal used to say. 
Mother and son walk home side-by-side. “I’ll get that stain out,” Gwen promises. 
            
The daily newspaper is spread out like a road map. “I hear Gordon Pinsent’s an ok fella,” Frank says, tapping one of three front page articles devoted to the actor and his low budget movie, The Rowdyman. “Even though he’s from Torooonnta.”
“He’s from Grand Falls, and can you move that, please?” Frank’s wife, Sandra, holds a steaming casserole dish. “Edith’s cousin’s brother-in-law knows Gordon’s family. He told Edith they’re good people.” 
Frank refolds the Western Star, tosses it to the floor, and yanks a linen napkin from under his fork. “Maybe Edith knows if Gordy needs a used car,” he says, wiping his hands. “I’ve got one that’s perfect for movie stars.”
“I’m sure you do.” Sandra lays the dish on a ceramic trivet protecting the faded yellow tablecloth. “I hope this one has all four tires turning in the same direction. 
“How was your day, Mother,” Sandra asks. “How was the park?” Fifty excited high school students dressed in starched uniforms waited in a natural amphitheatre. Polished instruments lay in open black cases on the grass. Gwen and the band leader were responsible for idle kids, anxious parents, dozens of actors, and crew. “Did you talk to anyone?” Sandra leans toward her mother-in-law, so close Gwen could have eaten the fried onions off Sandra’s quivering fork. “Did you see Linda Goranson, or Will Greer?  Is Gordon as handsome as his photo?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in movie stars,” Gwen says, scraping back her chair. She relents at the crestfallen look on Sandra’s face. “It was like a circus, and too windy to shoot the scene,” Gwen says. “We’ll try again tomorrow. Anyone for dessert? I made apple pie and there’s vanilla ice cream to go with it.” 
 
An hour later, Gwen has found solitude on the second floor of the two-storey house. Her grand-daughter’s bedroom is a nightmare of white and pink, gauze and tulle, that Sandra refuses to redecorate, insisting that her only child will eventually come home. “I don’t want you living alone,” Frank had said after Cal’s funeral. “It’s better for everyone if you move in with us.” Heartbroken by the sudden death, Gwen donated Cal’s clothing to the Salvation Army. She sold their house and the tools Cal used to restore vintage automobiles.  “You don’t need anything,” Frank had said. “You might as well get rid of it all.”
In her borrowed room, Gwen tosses satin pillows toward a castoff Easy Bake Oven. She curls like a question mark into the Chatty Cathy comforter. Gwen is reaching under the canopy bed for her diary, hidden in pink shag carpet, when Sandra’s voice rips through the open window. “Mother! Come, meet our new neighbour!” 
The stairs descending into the living room seem steeper, the wall photos more crooked, than usual. Gwen baby-steps through the kitchen. She blinks against the natural light and walks across the muddy backyard. Sandra is standing on tiptoes, her fingers gripping a white picket fence. “Mother spends a lot of time in her room,” she whispers just loud enough for Gwen to hear. “I think she has a man under her bed.” 
Through gaps in the fence, Gwen spies green eyes, auburn hair, and a white blouse dotted with red cherries separated from their stems. A woman wearing denim palazzo pants is smoking a cigarette, pursing her red lips to blow sweet smoke into the cool air. “I was just asking Mrs. LeDrew what brings her to Corner Brook,” Sandra explains. “It’s not often we get a woman staying alone at the boarding house.”
“Ms.,” the stranger corrects, arching a manicured eyebrow toward a razor straight bang. “Or better yet, call me Bet.” She wiggles, and makes jazz hands. The cigarette tumbles to the ground and is crushed under a white open-toe sandal. “Hello,” Bet says. “What are you up to this lovely tell your mother kind of day? That’s a line from the movie,” she adds.
Bet is The Rowdyman’s continuity girl. “I take care of details,” she explains. “Have we met? You look familiar.”
“I don’t think so,” Sandra responds. “Between working at the mill, and keeping our home and my husband’s business organized, I don’t have time to follow movies. My husband operates a used car dealership,” she adds. “Top of the line. Anything you need, he has it at our lot off Broadway.” 
Bet smiles. “I love everything Off Broadway.” 
“Then you must drop by. Mother is our cleaner, when she’s not at the high school.”
“Are you a teacher,” Bet asks. 
Gwen shakes her head. “Not any more, but I help with the band.”
Bet steps closer to the fence, squinting. “Did I see you at the…oh, that’s my ride.” Bet backs away from the fence, turning toward a car with the radio blaring Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. “Nice meeting you, Sandra. See you tomorrow, Gwen. Fingers crossed there’s no wind. Those maple trees were really shaking today, weren’t they?”
Back in her bedroom, Gwen pulls out the locked diary. She keeps its key in the jewelry box Cal cobbled together when they were in high school. 
 
April 15, 1971
I don’t know what I expected today. For Gordon to sound like a movie star, I guess. John Wayne or Paul Newman. I love how he worked with the kids. Joking about the girls trying to keep their skirts down, and the boys hoping the wind would blow them thigh high. Gordon laughed when I called out a student for lying on the grass near the girls’ brass section. His voice is like music.
After the kids left the park, the crew moved over by the swimming hole. I watched from behind a maple tree that smelled like wild mushrooms, dew, and the promise of summer. Gordon lounged on the grassy bank, whispering in Linda’s ear, running his fingers through her long hair. He nuzzled her neck. Just like Cal would do. Bet knew I was there.
 
*****
The next morning, Gwen is counting band members when Bet marches up to her, holding a clipboard like a shield. Woodwind instruments gleam in the early morning light. A clash of symbols ignites a round of nervous laughter. “I need two students, a male and a female, for close-ups,” Bet says, striking items off a handwritten list with a ballpoint pen.
Gwen shakes her head. “I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be fair.” 
“It’s a few, five-second shots. Just pick someone who can work with a camera. Please.”
 
Lying on her bed that night, Gwen taps her pen on a clean page before writing.
April 16, 1971
In the end, I could not pick and choose. Kids dream of being in a movie. Being famous. Important. But what about those who are overlooked?
 
*****
Gwen dabs the stain with industrial cleaner. “It’s not wine,” she says, rubbing gently. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s starting to fade.” She glances up as a silver Lincoln Town Car glides into view.    
“Now that is a feat of modern engineering,” Frank says, peering out from under the wagon’s hood.
The Lincoln rolls smoothly to the curb. A door swings open, and Bet extends a manicured hand. “You must be Frank,” she says. 
“And you must be Mrs. LeDrew. Welcome to Kennedy’s.” Frank bows. He stutters like an engine that has popped its sparkplugs. “We offer monthly, weekly, daily, even hourly, rates.”
Gwen expects Bet to laugh. “Actually, I need a favour,” she says instead. “Our driver can’t be on set tomorrow. Are you available, Gwen?’
“Me?” Gwen straightens so quickly she smacks her head on the roof. “Available to drive a car?” 
“You do have a licence? I mean, with running a car lot and all.”
“Actually, I don’t.” Gwen blushes. “I mean, I can drive, but Cal said I didn’t a license, so I never bothered.”       
“Mother isn’t a confident driver, but I’d be happy to help,” Frank says, dropping the hood. He cups Bet’s elbow, guiding her toward the office. Gwen winces as the door slams.         
 
April 17, 1971
What was I supposed to do? When Bet looked back over her shoulder, I saw something in her eyes. Shame? Embarrassment? Anger? At Frank? At me? I think we’re the same age. Under the makeup, stylish clothes, and dyed hair, Bet must be in her early sixties. Maybe I should have driven the car. Maybe if Frank hadn’t been there; maybe if Cal were alive. 
 
*****
Thick, brown liquid flows over Frank’s chicken dinner. “So, how was it,” Sandra asks, tipping the gravy bowl.
“My dear, it was almost a calamity.” Frank pushes the newspaper off the table. “We were at the bank. According to the script, Gordon was supposed to run down the steps and dart in front of the car, and I was supposed to almost hit him. Well, don’t you know he stumbled, and my bumper grazed his leg. He’ll have a bruise to remember me by.”
Sandra’s eyes are as round as a dinner plate. “Oh, dear! What did Gordon say?”
“He said I owe him one,” Frank laughs. “Mother, aren’t you glad I saved you from that?”
Gwen pokes with a knife at her untouched meal. 
“Mother,” Frank says. “Are you listening? I said…”
Gwen flinches when Sandra touches her hand. “You look a little pale,” she says. “Go on and lie down. I’ll clean the table.”
            “But I’m not finished my story,” Frank says. “Guess who’s coming to dinner tomorrow?”
 
April 18, 1971
I miss you, Cal.
*****
Gwen is peering into the oven when the doorbell rings. She glances at the clock on the kitchen wall. The guests are early. Her apron is splattered with turkey blood, and her cotton blouse is soaked through. “Can I help?” Bangles collide when Bet waves her arms, dispersing clouds of steam, and threatening to upend a goblet of white wine into the mashed turnip. “What are all these bowls for,” she asks, sipping the sparkling drink.
“Potatoes. Carrots. Corn. Cabbage. Salt meat.” Gwen points as she talks. She wipes her flushed face with a damp dish towel, and retrieves a small cloth bag from a deep pot. Gwen unties a dripping bundle like a five-year-old opening a Christmas present. “Try this,” she says, handing Bet a heaping tablespoon of pease pudding. “You’ve never had anything like it.” 
 
April 19, 1971
I don’t think Bet will eat pease pudding again anytime soon, but it was a lovely evening. It’s been a long time since I sang, and played piano like that. Cal loved house parties. Of everything we owned, I wish I could have back the piano. It was the only thing we bought that we couldn’t afford. 
Gordon was eloquent. He talked about his painting. Leaving Newfoundland. His life in Toronto. His writing. Timing is everything, he said. Ask yourself if this is your season, and listen, really listen, to the answer. If you don’t listen, there’s no point asking the question. 
                                                                        *****
Bet is standing on the sidewalk when Gwen and Frank leave their house the next morning. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she says. “Dinner was delicious, and Gordon enjoyed the conversation.”
“Glad to hear it. Perhaps we can do it again,” Frank says.
A car pulls to the curb behind them. Marvin Gaye’s Mercy, Mercy Me fills the quiet street. “My ride’s here.” Bet turns toward the music. “Don’t forget our date, Gwen.”   
“What date?” Frank’s eyebrows jerk toward his wrinkled forehead.   
“It’s nothing,” Gwen shrugs. Mother and son walk toward Broadway, an old mill basket with last night’s leftovers neatly packed inside swinging between them.
 
The mill whistle is blowing when the women meet at Woolworths. The department store smells like fried dough, homemade bread, and French fries. Children with milk mustaches spin on chrome stools. Three teenage girls are giggling over the string of photos. 
“Booth or counter,” Gwen asks. 
“Booth,” Bet says. “I see an empty one in the back.”
The women slide across vinyl cushions. In the open kitchen, hamburger meat sizzles on the grill. A milkshake machine whirls non-stop. Gwen waves, nods, and smiles. 
“Popular lady,” Bet says.        
“Only to the students I didn’t fail.”
Bet laughs. “That makes sense. I grew up in a small town but after my parents died I never went back. Sometimes, I miss the connection of belonging somewhere.” She plucks a menu from behind a bottle of vinegar, upending it onto the Formica table. 
“Had a little accident, did we?” A waitress pulls a plaid cloth from her apron pocket. She swipes at the liquid with one hand, and removes a chewed pencil from behind her right ear with the other. “Not quite ready? That’s fine. I’ll give you another few minutes.”
“That age thinks we’ve got one foot in the grave,” Bet says. “They can’t comprehend life after thirty, let alone sixty.” She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Everything smells delicious. What do you recommend?’
Gwen hesitates over the list of daily specials. “Well, Cal would say fried chicken because its cheap. Frank would suggest the Shopper’s Delight because there’s lots of it.”
“That’s great, Gwen,” Bet shrugs. “But what do you say?”
The waitress reappears before Gwen can answer. “Are you ready, Miss Kennedy,” she asks. 
“I’m not sure,” Gwen hesitates.
“I’ll have the meatloaf, with extra mashed potatoes and gravy,” Bet orders. “Former student,” she asks after the waitress lays down paper placemats and forks. 
“From a couple years ago,” Gwen says. “Smart girl, played in the band. Sang in the church choir. She went away to university but was horribly homesick. Her boyfriend stocks shelves at the pharmacy. I guess she’s here to stay now.”
Bet stirs her fountain drink with a straw. “I want you to be my production assistant.” 
 Gwen blinks. She reaches for her napkin, drops it under the table, and covers her mouth with her hand. “But I don’t know anything about the movie business.”
“This isn’t about making movies,” Bet says. “I need someone who is organized and gets things done.”
Gwen chews her bottom lip, a habit from after her father died. “What do I have to do?”
Bet reaches into her purse, and pulls out a list. “Tomorrow, we are shooting a party scene. I need three local couples, drinking glasses, ginger ale, beer, ice, pretzels, and a guitar.” 
Gwen shakes her head. “Let me think about it.”
 
April 20, 1971
Bet is as direct as an arrow. Maybe it’s the mainland way, to say exactly what’s on your mind. I always order grilled cheese and salad. Today, I had a hamburger, fries, with gravy, and an orange float. I said I would give the job a try. Cal would be shocked. Frank is horrified.
                                                                        
*****
A week later, the Continuity Girls meet at the backyard fence to trade stories. “And then the scene was held up for another eight hours for weather,” Gwen says. “One of the crew pulled out a bottle of rum, which was brilliant. It stopped Gordon’s shivering long enough to shoot the scene.”
“I think you’re enjoying this.” Bet hands over another call sheet, and turns toward the boarding house. 
“Wait.” Gwen scans the page. “This is more than organizing a few details.”
“But you sang the other night. You have a beautiful voice.”
“That was in the moment, for a small group. This is, this is, different.”
“It’s a studio track,” Bet says, folding her arms over her chest. “It will be you and the musicians. Try it before you say no.”
Gwen walks slowly across the muddy yard, toward the house. She pauses under the kitchen window. “It’s been days,” Frank is saying. “When is mother coming back to the lot?” 
“I don’t know. I never see her,” Sandra answers. “Foolishness is what this is. Pure foolishness.”
 
April 27, 1971
I can’t believe I did it! I’ll write more later. Right now I just want to lie here and remember the feeling. 
*****
“It says here that filming is almost over.” Frank lowers the newspaper to stare across the table at his mother. “Good! We need a bit of normal around here.” He drops the newspaper without folding it. “Are you going to sit and eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” Gwen says. 
Frank spoons scrambled eggs onto his plate. “Like I said, we need a bit of normal around here. Are you coming to work?”
Gwen raises her mug, blowing on the caramel-coloured liquid to cool it. “Not today,” she says, watching Frank tear into a strip of bacon. 
“That’s too bad,” he says. “The real work is piling up.”
 
April 28, 1971
The last scene is done, thank God. An accident at the mill. So real. So loud. The machines chewing up wood, spitting out paper. A man stumbling, then hanging by his fingers. Clinging to a slippery rail. Disappearing. Devoured. It was too much. Too real. Too close to the accident that took dad. Mom was never the same after he died. She lingered for years, living a half life. Am I like her?
 
April 29, 1971
 
April 30, 1971
 
May 1, 1971
 
May 2, 1971
Bet’s voice reaches across the fence. It flows into Gwen’s bedroom window. “But I haven’t heard from her since we filmed at the mill.”
“Mother is resting,” Sandra says. “She isn’t well.”
“Can I see her?”
“She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Just for a moment?”
“I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
“But I leave for Toronto in an hour. Can you give her this, please?”
In her grand-daughter’s bedroom, Gwen burrows deeper into the comforter. 
 
May 12, 1972
On the anniversary of Cal’s heart attack, Gwen unfolds the handwritten note. 
“The producer loves your voice,” Bet had written. “She wants to meet with you, to discuss other opportunities. You can stay with me. I miss you.
Gwen stares out the bedroom window, considering. 
 
May 13, 1971
I don’t know what to take with me. I wrapped Cal’s photo in my favourite cardigan. I packed my slippers, and my jewelry box. I changed out socks for underwear. Shoes for hats. Slacks for blouses. I think I’m ready
.
Gwen’s suitcase bangs against her legs as she walks across the used car lot. In the tiny office, she leaves a handwritten note on the desk that once belonged to Cal. She picks up the telephone and dials zero for the operator. 
In a big city halfway across the country a telephone rings. 
Once.
Twice.
Third time’s the charm. “Of course I’ll accept the charges,” Bet says. “Hi Gwen, what time does your flight get in?”

Aimee Wall: An Interview

Erin Bruce

This interview was conducted during the Marble Mountain Literary Festival, in Steady Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, October 2022. 

Erin: I was reading an interview in the MUN Gazette that Laura Kaplan’s The Story of Jane inspired you in creating your own novel. So, what drew you to that text and this subject in particular? 

Aimee: It’s funny that it becomes hard to trace it back, but I knew even before I heard about Jane that I wanted to write about abortion and reproductive justice more broadly. I think I was doing some of that cursory looking around and I saw at the time there was very little about Jane out there. Now there’s a movie that has just come out, there’s a recent documentary, there’s a lot more talk about Jane. This was in 2015 and I saw an article and when I started looking around a little more, I found Laura Kaplan’s book. Kaplan was part of Jane. I immediately ordered that and read it and was completely taken with the story. It’s such a great story and felt so rich in terms of narrative. In thinking about fiction, I really loved the fact that they didn’t all really get along- and she doesn’t sugar coat that in the book. There was so much there that I thought, I want to use this as kind of a framing device. I admire what they did and the immediate question that came to my mind was, what if I make a Jane now and what if I make a Jane in Newfoundland. 

Erin: So, this story of Jane helped to inspire your own novel, do you see any similarities between 1960’s Chicago and present-day Newfoundland, with regards to that lack of available reproductive healthcare for women? 

Aimee: I mean it’s quite a different context, but there are similarities. The fact that 1968 Chicago is pre-Roe v. Wade, abortion is not legal, and the setting of my book is contemporary Newfoundland. Yes [abortion is] legal, but accessibility is the problem across the board here, not legality.  So that was where I felt like I could draw a connection, and that even in the course of Jane—it was really only four years that they were operating like that—they saw a shift between the kinds of people who were looking for help, because as restrictions started loosening around the country, white women, rich women, women of a certain social class, were able to travel, were able to access abortions in a different way than people who had less means. Not everyone in rural places has the time and the money, and, frankly, the freedom to travel. If you’re in a situation where you don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing, or you can’t take a trip to St. John’s from around the bay, you’re not going to be able to pull that off. It becomes something that some people can access and not others. It becomes a question of privilege, really. I felt like there were parallels despite the fact that they are quite different contexts. 

Erin: Did you intend to highlight the need for better and more accessible reproductive healthcare in Newfoundland?

Aimee: Yeah absolutely. I was certainly thinking about the situation in Newfoundland that has, my entire life, been something that you think: well, if I was in this situation when I was growing up, what would I have done. It’s very unclear. When you’ve grown up in a place it’s hard not to feel like you’re personally affected. You live in a body that can get pregnant; you’re going to think about these things. It just felt like I could never get over that feeling of precarity. If I moved out of St. Johns or if this had happened when I was a teenager, what would I have done? So, I think there seems to be a cyclical conversation that comes back up in this past year because of what happened in the States. People are talking about this more. To me this has been a problem for a long time that people have been complacent about. I think you just said reproductive healthcare, it’s that too. It’s not just abortion services, it’s where can people give birth, it’s how are they supported, it’s the whole spectrum of reproductive care that is in a pretty dismal state. 

Erin: I really appreciated the significance of Jane and that anonymity. What would you say the significance of the anonymous Jane is and how does remaining anonymous help the women in their endeavour?

Aimee: I loved this group of anonymous women who are all Jane because then it really makes it all about the work, you know. I wanted to have some context for understanding Jane more broadly when I was just doing research, that’s why I read a couple of books about what was happening in radical feminism around this time. Like in New York, Jane wasn’t really involved in this, but what was feminism at the time, what was happening? Here were all these groups, they all eventually splinter and fall apart because somebody wants to be the leader. This is human nature. The Jane thing, they really tried. I don’t think that they were necessarily hyper-successful either, but I liked the levelling of this as a service. It’s a group of people but it’s not about us individually. Of course, they had legal reasons for protecting themselves. But it’s a beautiful concept, it’s optimistic.

Erin: An important theme of your book is the shame surrounding abortions. Why do you think there is still that shame surrounding abortions, even in todays’ society? 

Aimee: It really has lingered in a way; I think there’s probably a lot of different factors contributing to it. I think the fact that people still really don’t talk about this very much (and I do believe in peoples’ right to their own privacy) but I’ve often felt frustrated with the fact that when abortion rights are on the chopping block or when they’re threatened to be, one of the reactions of people who are pro-choice is to say “well I had an abortion.” I always think you shouldn’t have to; we shouldn’t have to be in that position. We should be allowed our private lives; we shouldn’t have to put our guts on the table to ask to be treated like people. But, at the same time I also believe in openness about it because it’s extremely common. The stats are far higher than people think and there’s still a lot of de-stigmatization work to be done. When you engage in anything that’s shrouded in secrecy it’s going to contribute to a feeling of shame. Let alone the fact that some people were raised in a Christian religion that has certain views about this or that, and they just inhale a lot of media that’s very sensational. There’s a long road to go. 

Erin: The character of Kara is one I found I found interesting. Who or what did Kara represent?

Aimee: It’s interesting, nobody ever asks about her. She served a few different purposes for me. I wanted to bring somebody in who was more obviously from the outside. Marthe is seeking to differentiate herself from this person that she’s not so different from. I felt like I could bring in this person who on the one hand, does represent a different view. She’s coming from academia, she’s coming from the states, she doesn’t have a knowledge of Newfoundland specifically. But Marthe is kind of coming from the outside too. She’s from Newfoundland but she’s kind of waltzing home. And so I liked what that could bring out in terms of Marthe’s character, but also just bringing in another perspective of someone that might be going about this another way and who might have their own interests at heart, might be more interested in their own career and their own journey, which I think is unavoidable. People get involved in movements and in groups for all kinds of different reasons, and sometimes it’s many reasons at once. It doesn’t delegitimize it that you also have a self-interest. I felt like it was important to bring somebody in to complicate the pure mission aspect.

Erin: Was Kara intended to highlight the need for more accessible reproductive healthcare within rural communities, or was she simply looking to seek academic and professional gain, or was there a grey area where she was looking to do both? 

Aimee: I thought about it as a little of both. I didn’t want to cast her entirely as the villain, that would be too easy. She certainly has her own interests at heart, and I hoped to ride the line of her being not just this outside villain that comes in, and she’s the one who messes everything up. She kind of forces you to recognize that the other ones aren’t pure either. She is meant to be complicated.

Erin: I think all the characters are so multifaceted and complicated, and the interpersonal relationships between the women I found to be so complex. What was the significance of the relationship between Ruth and Marthe specifically? I thought their relationship was so multifaceted, but why were they so important to one other within your story?

Aimee: That relationship was where I started, that’s very much the heart of the book, it’s the main relationship of the book, and there were a lot of things I was interested in exploring there. I was very interested in what happens when you put somebody on a pedestal, Marthe really has her (Ruth) on a pedestal and then she has to fall off of it. When she does, what do you do? How do you continue especially if your relationship is now not just a friendship. It’s wrapped up in this project, this larger thing and how do you get past that? That was really where I started, and you know, all these things about their different relationships to Newfoundland came into play. I liked that they were from different generations so they would relate to their home differently. They would have different conceptions of feminism, they would have different conceptions of everything that they’re bringing to the table to be Jane. They’re coming from such different places and that felt important to me. I didn’t want it just to be about all people my age or all people of a certain generation. 

Erin: I was questioning their relationship throughout the text and the different layers of that. To summarize everything, why do you think it would be important to have more available literature like yours surrounding this subject? 

Aimee: One of the main things that was a driver for me was that I felt like the only times I was ever seeing abortion depicted, it was in one of a couple of ways. It was set in the past, where it’s not legal, like a period piece that’s really grim and the arc of the story (is) that it’s hard to access this, that’s the climactic event. Because it’s the climactic event of the story, you start to think of it as the climatic event of this person’s life. Or we’re in a dystopian future where all reproductive rights are suspended, and I thought you don’t have to make a new world; we already live in that. I really wanted to write about abortion in a way that highlighted the fact that this is still an issue. I didn’t want the act of an abortion, or the event of somebody having an abortion, to be the turning point of a plot. There’s a film I really love by Agnès Varda, a French filmmaker, and it’s called One sings, the other doesn’t. It’s from the 70s. It’s about two women, two friends, and in the course of the movie they both have an abortion illegally in different ways, but it’s not the defining moment of either of their stories, it just happens, you never see that. For many people this is one thing [abortion] that happens in their life, and if we’re lucky life is long and it’s full of many experiences, and most people who have abortions already have children. We never see that; we only see three different iterations of the story. It was a lot of frustration on that front, that this is a part of life that we need to see, and we should talk about. I don’t want to reduce our lives to that either, I wanted it to be one thread in a life, and to consider what that looks like. Of course, I did take it as a larger theme in the sense of the Jane group. In terms of an individual person in the narrative, I didn’t want it to be anybody’s defining moment, so that was the large part of the drive. 

Sue Sinclair: An Interview

Hannah Jenkins

This interview was conducted following the Marble Mountain Literary Festival, in Steady Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, October 2022.

Hannah: Can you tell me a bit about your personal journey to becoming a writer? Were there any works that stood out to you, or moments that sparked an epiphany? Or would you say your arrival to the state of “author” was more of a slow drift? 

Sue: I grew up as your classic shy-bookish-kid, so it makes sense that I wanted to be a writer very early on.  I didn’t read much poetry, but I do have very vivid memories of the poems I was introduced to in grade school.  I remember that they made the world itself feel more vivid—poets as different as e. e. cummings and Yeats. Doing my master’s degree in creative writing, i.e. being mentored by Don McKay and Jan Zwicky, was life-altering: learning from people whose lives revolved around poetry and who saw poetry as a form of deep moral attention that they tried to bring to all aspects of their lives. That’s something I still try to do, every day. 

Hannah: Can you tell me a bit about your writing process? What does it look like for you to complete a poem, or a collection? 

Sue: It looks like a lot of drafts stapled one on top of the other!  I do a lot of revision, as most writers do. Both writing and revising are ecstatic processes for me, where I enter a form of heightened awareness, concentration and attention that is incredibly pleasurable. A “flow” state, as psychologists say. Writing demands a lot of energy but, as with most things, you get out what you put in.  Reading poetry helps to put me into the associative, permeable, perceptive state from which a poem can emerge.  

Hannah: Your work often seems to focus on ideas of nature, humanity, and art - especially in contrast to the inorganic, or the “manufactured upheaval” as it is described in the synopsis for Almost Beauty. What are some of your thoughts on the entanglement of industrialization and art, especially as we move into a world more and more dependent on technology? Is something lost, gained, or merely rearranged with this shift?   

Sue: I’m not someone who gravitates toward technology, and I’m wary of the fragmentation of attention that I’ve felt it bring into me over the course of my life so far. I personally don’t find the calls of innumerable posts and sites and messages and screens helpful when it comes to creating art. I feel protective of immersive, deeply focused experiences—and art-making is, for me, one of those immersive, deeply focused experiences. But it’s too simple to say that technology is bad—I see its value, particularly when it comes to sharing art. I live in a small city, and I don’t have the same kind of in-person access to museums and galleries and readings and performances that a big centre offers…but I can get a lot more access thanks to the internet. 
 
Hannah: While reading your work, I noticed many of your poems are inspired by other artists or artistic works (i.e. poems inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as Orpheus and Eurydice). Can you speak on the importance of connecting to not only the literary world, but to works in other artistic mediums, such as visual art? What is the benefit of this sort of cross-disciplinary exploration and inspiration?

Sue: That’s true, I do find other works of art inspiring! What I said above—about reading poetry as helping me into the associative, permeable, perceptive state in which a poem of my own might emerge—applies to experiencing other genres of art too. There’s something, too, about desiring other modes of expression/exploration/relationship; I mean, words can’t ever do justice to the astonishing particularity and radical interrelatedness of the world itself, nor can paint or sculpture or dance or song or any genre…but I can feel the reach in other works of art, and feeling their different ways of reaching can awaken me to fresh possibilities within poetry. 

Hannah: Having a background in editorial work for both Brick Books and The Fiddlehead, can you offer any opinions about what editorial boards are often looking for when selecting works for journals and anthologies? Have you noticed any significant shifts in styles or topics of writing being submitted over the course of your career? 

Sue: The biggest shift that’s happened over my lifetime has been the movement toward decolonization and diversification, particularly around race. I used to go to literary events at which seeing a brown or black face was rare, and as a white person I didn’t bat an eyelash, I’m ashamed to say. The surge of identity politics has changed all that, is changing all that. The array of voices being published in mainstream literary venues is much, much wider and more exciting. I’ll also say that within the world of poetry, there used to be clearly defined camps: you were a lyric poet, a formal poet, or an experimental poet, and there could be significant friction between the different camps. Now there’s a tendency to cross those boundaries, and much more openness to the variety of ways there are for a poem to be. It feels to me like we’re moving toward a healthier literary ecosystem overall.  Emphasis on the “-ing” in “moving.” 

Hannah: There are often criticisms lodged against the publishing industry for its reliance on personal connections and, unfortunately, class. As someone who has worked in publishing, what are your thoughts on the accessibility of the writing profession for people who may have never attended post-secondary, cannot afford a literary agent, or experience other financial, social, or even physical accessibility barriers? Do you have advice on how to navigate the industry, or insights into how the industry may be changing in recent years regarding accessibility and inclusion? 

Sue: Good question. I do think access is an issue. It is possible in various ways to pay for literary relationships and to benefit from them—it’s not that those relationships can’t be built otherwise, but they can be built more easily with money. I’m aware that I myself am a teacher in an institution that requires students to pay tuition, so I’m part of a pay-for-access system. Most agents are paid a percentage of any deal they get for you, but you’re right that some folks can’t afford that cut. On the other hand, it’s cheaper than it used to be to submit to journals—usually free, whereas in the past you’d have to bear the cost of mailing both to and from the journal. It's possible to find free ways of connecting to folks with expertise and cultural power; for instance some public libraries and universities support writers-in-residence who can be consulted for free—anyone in NB can go to our UNB writer in residence for support and advice. Attending readings is often free and can be a good way to connect to literary community. Increasingly, festivals and other literary venues are taking varying financial circumstances into account, offering free or reduced fees to those who need it. I’m saying these things in case they’re useful to anyone who is trying to live a literary life under strained financial circumstances, but access does remain an issue. #metoo was a moment in which abuses of cultural power were revealed, and that has been helpful in leading to extra scrutiny of how publishing decisions are made. My thinking is that the more people involved in those decisions the better; the less chance there is of favouritism to friends. I’m pro editorial collectives. And the question of how to create more access is something we— “we” who are part of literary communities—need to keep in sight and be creative about.  
  
Hannah: Many writers find themselves struggling to create something both beautiful and substantial. According to your biography in Almost Beauty, you hold a PhD in Philosophy and wrote your dissertation on “the intersections of ethics and beauty”. Can you tell me a little about this intersection, and how it may be impacting or informing your current artistic practice?

Sue: I wanted to study beauty because I didn’t understand it, didn’t understand its power. And where there’s power, there’s ethics. I still don’t understand it—particularly as there are so many ways of conceiving of beauty, many of which are not just different but incompatible. I mean, is beauty a kind of perfection or does it require the imperfections of a wabi sabi view of beauty? I love beauty—whatever it is! —and I often experience it as nourishing and energizing, but I’m always troubled by what gets left out or neglected when we focus on what we find beautiful. That’s one of the ethical worries. I don’t know that my questioning of beauty informs how I write poetry but it sure informs what I write; these concerns show up in the poetry, which is another way of exploring the same questions I studied as a philosophy student.

Hannah: Do you have any opinions on the roles of truth and clarity when writing creative nonfiction, particularly poetry? More specifically, how strongly do you feel a poet ought to stick to concrete facts when faced with the poetic devices that, by their very nature, often lend themselves to ambiguity as well as emotion? When dissecting systemic issues in an empathetic way, do you feel, ethically, that a poet ought to forgo the poetic to remain clear (like is expected of an essayist)? 

Sue: Poetry occupies a peculiar position in that there aren’t categories of “fictional poetry” and “non-fictional poetry” as there are for prose. In writing poetry, there’s no expectation that you’ll identify your work one way or the other. So, readers probably shouldn’t be making assumptions that what’s written in a poem is or isn’t true to life. We know that fiction and non-fiction can be slippery categories in prose too—the rise of “creative non-fiction” really drives that home! That said, if in a poem I’m addressing a real place, creature, event, or circumstance, I feel strongly that I should avoid misrepresenting it. That’s basic respect; that’s Relationship 101, and I do think of poetry as a form of relationship. What counts as misrepresentation can be complicated, though. For me, it doesn’t mean foregoing having a particular perspective on a real place, creature, event, or circumstance, nor does it mean foregoing metaphor or other devices that perhaps present that entity in the light of the imagination. But I think there are apt and less apt ways of bringing imagination to the world; there are ways that increase understanding and ways that impede understanding. I have no problem with comparing a line of traffic to a dragon—that’s illuminating. I have trouble with representing all bees as honeybees—that’s obfuscating. 
To your last question, my hope is that the poetic and the clear (or perhaps the illuminating) are compatible—that I don’t have to choose. I’m trying really hard in my work not to choose.   

Shelly Kawaja: An Interview

Dylan Farrell

This interview was conducted following the Marble Mountain Literary Festival, in Steady Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, October 2022.

Dylan: “Some writers are born, the rest of us are forged in boredom” That’s what you wrote in your piece The Power of Boredom. How would you say your upbringing in a small town like that affected your writing? Looking back, are you glad you were able to take the time to write back then or would you still have preferred to live in a more lively community?
Shelly: I wouldn't change a thing. I think it's easier to have an appreciation of lively places and exciting cities than quiet moments and your own thoughts, but this is where writers need to spend a lot of time. I grew up reading. I read heaps of books - not always age appropriate. And tried to copy the characters in the books who always kept notebooks or wrote their own stories. I was always writing. Always chatting about ideas. I was probably an annoying kid.
Dylan: In The Power of Boredom, you also mention thinking you would never return to rural Newfoundland ever again. In returning there however, you found time to begin writing again. Would you say you were more inspired by lifestyles within rural Newfoundland than you were in a much larger area?
Shelly: We, my family and I, moved from St. John's to Norris Point in 2015. By then I had lived in a few places; St. John's, Halifax, Mississauga, and a few large cities overseas in China and South Korea. I think when I moved to Norris Point I was able to see rural Newfoundland through a different lens and recognize what it has to offer. Space, freedom, quiet, community. It also helped me remember what I was like before I got caught up in being busy all the time. What it was like to be young and curious. I mean, I was still busy, I had two young kids, but it reminded me to slow down and enjoy the quieter moments. To intentionally shut everything out and get lost in my own head.
 Dylan: Adding on to the previous question, Shot Gun is a very relatable story for someone who grew up in a small community. I come from a small community myself and I could just picture people I knew in those positions. The shifty guy who buys beer for kids, the young girl pregnant at 14, the father who is not mature enough to be a father yet. These are all real people that someone from that type of upbringing could easily imagine. Was that your intended purpose when you wrote that story? Were you influenced by people that you knew coming from a small community or did you just come up with them as characters without inspiration?
 Shelly: Yes, the characters in Shot Gun are all familiar to me. Every one of them is completely made up, but I pulled inspiration from the world I grew up in. I don't think my intention was to put that world on display, but to tell a story about how a cycle of loathing can be passed on from one generation of women to the next. This happens everywhere, in every outport, town and city, but I just gravitated to that particular setting. I think I often gravitate to these kinds of settings. As dark as they are, I think there's a romantic quality to them, but I'm not sure if I knew how to capture that very well when I wrote Shot Gun.
Dylan: Speaking of Shot Gun, you have a pretty diverse bibliography of work under your belt. Fiction, Non-Fiction, short stories, a novel. How do you prepare yourself for writing a short story like Shot Gun as opposed to how you prepared yourself for writing The Raw Light of Morning? Which would you say was more difficult to get a grasp on or to plan for?
Shelly: It's necessary to write short stories. And read them. Experimenting with different genres is helpful, too. I actually wrote the entire first draft of The Raw Light of Morning before I ever wrote a proper short story in my adult life. The first draft of my book was terrible, and I had read enough books in my life to know it. I shelved the manuscript and set to work writing short stories. Every story, fiction or non, tackled some idea I wanted to explore and some kind of craft technique I wanted to learn. Shot Gun was about character and setting and writing a story with a closed loop. Dialogue came later in another story. Then it was learning how to spiral deeper into emotion. These short pieces were all preparation for me to go back and re-write The Raw Light of Morning, but along the way, I fell in love with short stories, too. I find myself reading more short story collections these days than novels, and I'm still writing them.
 Dylan: Writing a novel definitely takes a lot of work. How long did it take you to write The Raw Light of Morning? How many different drafts did you go through in the creation stage? Is the final product of the novel relatively close to your first draft or did it change drastically from your original ideas?
Shelly: It took six years to write The Raw Light of Morning, on and off. There isn't a single sentence in the final version that was in the first draft. I wrote it, shelved it, then took it apart, dissected it and wrote it again. I couldn't say exactly how many drafts there were. I find it helpful to think more in phases. There's the early phase where you generate something from nothing, then the middle phase where you try to figure out what you wrote and how to make it accessible to other people, then the third phase where you bring it into sharper focus. Each phase has lots of drafts. Lots and lots of drafts. Tons of fun really.
Dylan: As all writers know, rejection is just a part of the job. Not every piece of work you send somewhere is going to get picked up, but that doesn’t mean you are a bad writer. Do you have any experience yourself with having work rejected for anthologies or writing contests or getting published? How did you cope with rejection when you first began writing?
Shelly: I expect every single piece I send out to be rejected and am never disappointed. It isn't personal and I never take it personally. Every single magazine and contest is run by a small group of very busy people doing their best to support new writers. If you want them to notice you, you have to work for it. Keep writing, keep submitting. Every rejection is progress.
Dylan: In trying to get The Raw Light of Morning published, did you submit to multiple publishers? Many authors submit their work all over and choose which publisher they feel the most connected to or confident in. Was that the same for you? Or did you pick the one and hope that they would take it?
Shelly: I sent it everywhere. Every now and then a rejection note will still land in my inbox. That's how long it can take to hear back! I also had requests for the full manuscript after it was under contract with Breakwater. It was a thrill to write back and say it was no longer available. Breakwater picked it up (I think that still took about two years?) and they've been very supportive of the project. I'm delighted to be a Newfoundland published author.
Dylan: How much input did your publisher have in the creation of the final product of The Raw Light of Morning? Did they give you notes on things they thought you should change? Did you get a say in what the cover looked like or did they take over those responsibilities? Did they assign you an editor to help with the final creation process?
Shelly: I had two editors. The first, Kate Kennedy, focused on the big picture to make sure there were no holes or gaps in the story. The second, Claire Wilkshire, took it through the copy editing phase. There was a lot of back and forth with both editors and the book is better for it. Putting a book out there really is a team effort. Rhonda Malloy, in-house designer at Breakwater, designed the cover. She had some input from me, but the art was all her.
Dylan: What advice would you give to an up and coming writer who is struggling to put themselves out there? If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to yourself when you first began writing, what would you tell yourself?
Shelly: My advice is to separate writing from publishing. Block out all thoughts of publishing when you write. Protect your internal creative space from outside forces, and internal forces, too. That voice that says you can't do it or shouldn't do it or whatever it is that crap voice likes to say. Drown it all out and focus on the work. Write and let your writing tell you what it is you want to say. And who you are. Think less, write more. I'd go way back and tell myself that, too, because I didn't give writing the time it deserved until I figured that out much later in life.
Dylan: As we mentioned before, The Power of Boredom talks about having nothing to do in a small community and how that affected you. How did the pandemic and having to stay inside affect your writing? Did you find you were able to get more writing finished or did you struggle with getting anything done?
Shelly: I wrote a lot during the pandemic. Writing was my safe haven during a very dark time.
Dylan: I myself have tried to write but I find myself lacking motivation a lot of the time. I also have a lot of self-doubt that my work is not good enough to submit to anywhere. What advice would you give me based on your own writing journey?
Shelly: For me, motivation comes from curiosity. Try to have a routine where you write at a certain time every day. It doesn't have to be serious. Write anything, just do it to see what happens, and eventually discover what your writing wants to tell you.

Mark Anthony Jarman: An Interview

Jessica Warford 

Jessica: How does your writing process look? How has it changed since writing your first book?
Mark: It’s very messy, haphazard. I take very rough notes, not knowing what will get used later; I am always collecting. Often fragments; I don't worry about complete sentences or punctuation. Then I enter the rough notes into a new doc in my laptop and start polishing. I took notes in Marseilles, where we saw four Afghan refugees picked up by the police at a train station. So that incident becomes a hook, and I can build a piece around that core, but also slip in other bits that may not be connected, e.g. pink flamingos and wild horses and bulls in the same area, the amazing Camargue region in the Rhone delta. It's also where Van Gogh mutilated his ear. So that detail is going in somewhere. Same with the Drunken Widower in Trogir: I need that guy to build the piece around; without him, no story. But I can add tons more around that character and incident, can add local history and any tangents I want. I assume my writing and process has changed over 4 or 5 decades; be sad if it didn't. I leave more space now, and I try to consider the reader more than I did when starting out. At first, I wrote for the page, but now I hear it more and will look for words and phrases that sound right. I also hope some images have a Jungian power, suggesting older or shared knowledge, such as fear of the ruffian on the stairs or a weir and house by a canal that seems both familiar and dream-like.
Jessica: What draws you toward fiction and essay writing more than other forms of writing?
Mark: I’ve done a novel, a play, a slim volume of poetry back when I was more sensitive, but I like shorter pieces; they suit my brain and my inclinations.
Jessica: At what point in your career did you begin thinking of yourself as a writer?
Mark: I was a bookworm, always read as a kid, and started writing in Jr High. I wrote a story where people were down in a mineshaft, and I eventually killed them all off. I loved the book Catch-22, and my older brother bought me On the Road, and I thought I'd like to do that, hit the road and write. It seemed possible, the way a garage band is possible. Reading and writing melted into each other a bit; no real moment of enlightenment.   But CW workshops at UVic and Iowa were a giant step, very helpful. What was harder was realizing later that I was a teacher and not making a living as a writer. I was in denial about that fact. I got in trouble applying to travel to China as I said I was a writer; they are very suspicious of writers. Teacher would have been better. Teaching CW has been really good, pays the bills, and I enjoy it and meet good people.
Jessica: At your “Beginnings and Endings” workshop at the Marble Mountain Literary Festival, you mentioned that you draw inspiration from small moments that happen around or to you - is this the case for both short fiction and essays? How do you determine which moments will become an essay and which will become a short story?
Mark: No formula or science; it just depends what I'm working on. I've always done both and think they are the same for me in terms of technique: words, scenes, character, dialogue, imagery, transitions, finding a start and end. I've never worried about genre or pigeonholes. There are essays hidden in all of my story collections, and no one ever commented. In my book Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, I used a newspaper clipping about a knifing at a party in New Brunswick, but my project was set in Italy, so I moved the knifing to a party in Naples. It's hard to write a party scene; it's a good CW assignment.
 Jessica: What do you think are the most important elements of good writing?
Mark: I tend to value language more than plot, but I admire writers who are good with plot. I’m not. I need the drunken widower to walk into my field of vision or need the people in the hospital beds around me. A character is needed. They give me stories. I try to be open to that.
Jessica: How did you get started working with The Fiddlehead, and what do you enjoy most about working with the journal?
Mark: I volunteered when I got the job at UNB; poet and editor Ross Leckie asked me, and I said sure. I felt a bit excluded by gatekeepers when teaching at UVic, so it was nice to be wanted at UNB. It's a drag to be rejecting a lot of good work (we get hundreds of stories and can take maybe four an issue, so no shame in getting turned down), but it's great to send that happy email asking for someone's story. It's very good for CW students to read the slush piles; you can learn a lot by seeing what is out there, what others are doing.
Jessica: What’s the worst part of publishing? 
Mark: Waiting. I lack patience. I started doing multiple submissions decades ago when it was really frowned upon. But I didn't want to wait a year for the word no, so I hit a ton of mags at once. Now that's more normal, but not then. Also, I was not prepared for the business side of writing; reading On the Road and hitchhiking to BC does not give you that business acumen. You hear this from musicians too. It's not fun when a book is ignored or when a manuscript doesn't find a home. That said, I've been really lucky with many good editors wanting to publish me even though I'm not very commercial. I love writing and can't stop; I can't imagine NOT writing; on planes, I look around and want to ask, What is that like, not to be collecting and jotting? The essay order in Touch Anywhere to Begin jumps back and forth between several trips and places, creating an almost dizzying, back-and-forth effect - was this on purpose? Why did you choose to order the essays in this way? I wanted connections and repeated motifs throughout, but I also wanted variety, a mix, like slow and fast songs on an album, and not putting all of Asia in one section and Canada in a separate room. I want the places to bump into each other and resonate, to mingle. I like that the jumps may be dizzying; dizzying is good.
Jessica: Do you have a favourite essay in Touch Anywhere to Begin? Why is it your favourite?
Mark: No favourite. I feel Venice is the heart of the book, but I get a kick out of the meat and metal essay in the Balkans, and the hospital piece makes me laugh, even though it's set in a stroke ward. It was like being in a slightly farcical play, doors opening and closing, strange characters crossing the stage.
Jessica: What is the most valuable piece of advice you've been given about writing?
Mark: My first CW teacher WD Valgardson said to write in scenes which I hadn't thought of. Also, concrete words vs abstract. Mamet's book on directing film says to get into a scene late and get out of a scene early. Learning to edit your own words takes time, but is valuable. But really, nothing beats reading good writers. As Cormac McCarthy says, books come out of books.
 Jessica: In Touch Anywhere to Begin, you jump around in time within the essays themselves; why do you do this?
Mark: Sometimes I have to jump in time or change the tense to add details or a different scene or memory. I like jumps, but I try to make it smooth. Sometimes a shift is imposed by the material, like the Secret Spritz bartender showing up again much later on his boat with a Cuban flag. I have to wait to bring him back near the end for structure and unity, but also a gut feeling about what goes where. I like present tense the best, but I have to depart from it at times.
Jessica: There is a lot of emphasis on food throughout Touch Anywhere to Begin. Why do you focus on food? Is it simply enjoyment, or is there something else you are trying to portray by narrating these scenes?
Mark: Food can be enjoyable and a big part of travel, but also crucial to survive. Sometimes there are cultural differences in meals. In Croatia, I had a stew with squid and chickpeas (the chef's grandmother's recipe), and it was the best meal ever, stunningly tasty. As a kid in Alberta, I did not look forward to eating squid. Sometimes food is a quest, a mystery: in China, I had to tryndishes like fried bullfrogs, my only chance. In Austria, I had to try horsemeat, even though I was uncomfortable with that as a dish.   In Lunenburg, we had a meal that was world-class, but the next time we went, it was bland. Meals can be a gamble, but I do like to try, and I hope for those really memorable ones. But that said, sometimes I travel like a hobo, picking up discarded oranges from Tangiers after a street market is over (they were good, very sweet) or eating a cheap sandwich in the graveyard and saving my money. Venice is expensive, and the food often mediocre because they have so many tourists pouring through. But once in a while, you stumble on that worthwhile and quiet place hidden down a lane.
 Jessica: Do you have any other trips planned? Will you write about them?
Mark: I was in Marseille earlier this year and have written two pieces so far on that trip. Marseille can be a bit rough, but there are so many good towns within 30-60 minutes by train that I'd go back to that part of the world. I also want to write about the Gaspé peninsula, which is much closer to New Brunswick and beautiful.


 

Contributor Biographies

M.E. Boothby (she/her) is a neuroqueer, temporary, human-shaped assemblage of matter and microorganisms, created in Ontario but currently existing in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, on the traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq. She is a PhD candidate at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, with a special interest in nonhuman imaginings. She has a soft spot for monsters, mycorrhizal fungi, sassy cephalopods, and other misunderstood entities.

Connie Boland is a member of Qalipu First Nation and Benoit’s Cove Band Elmastukwek First Nation living in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her work is published in regional, provincial, and national newspapers and magazines, as well as in several anthologies. Connie is a freelance journalist, Adult Basic Education instructor, and amateur photographer who adores hiking, sunsets, her family, and, of course, writing. 

Erin Bruce is a recent graduate of Memorial University at Grenfell Campus, having completed her Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature. Erin will be attending Memorial University in the fall, where she will be starting a Bachelor of Education Degree.

Emily Cann (she/her) has been writing her way back to PEI ever since she left. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Broken Pencil Magazine’s “Deathmatch,” Tendon, and Estuary Magazine. Her poetry has been shortlisted for Room Magazine’s annual poetry prize. Emily holds an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, an MA in English from the University of Guelph, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She is working on her first novel.

Aidan Chafe is the author of the poetry collections Gospel Drunk (University of Alberta Press) and Short Histories of Light (McGill-Queen's University Press), which was longlisted for the 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He has also published two chapbooks Right Hand Hymns (Frog Hollow Press) and Sharpest Tooth (Anstruther Press). His work has appeared in journals and literary magazines in Canada, United States, England and Australia. He lives and works on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples (Burnaby, BC).

Kersten Christianson is a poet and English teacher from Sitka, Alaska. She has authored Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig), What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press), and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books). Kersten chases road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.

E.C Daly was born and raised on the east coast of the granite island portion of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Daly taught chemistry before retiring. Then a different alchemy called and Daly began writing poetry; periodically submitting here and there. 

Terry Doyle is from the Goulds, Newfoundland. His first book of short stories, DIG, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, The ReLit Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, the NL Book Award for fiction, and the Alistair McLeod Short Fiction Award. His first novel, The Wards, was published in 2022.

Clay Everest is a poet from Halifax currently living in St. John's. He has a Masters in English from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and his poetry has appeared in untethered, Riddle Fence and Event. In 2020, his poetry manuscript, No Subject for the Inexperienced, was awarded the NLCU Fresh Fish Award.

Dylan Farrell is a graduate of Grenfell Campus’s Master of Applied Literary Arts Program. He is from Port Aux Basques, NL.

Joel Robert Ferguson is a Canadian poet of working-class settler origins who lives in Winnipeg, Treaty One Territory. His work has recently appeared in The Columbia Review, EVENT, Prairie Fire, Queen's Quarterly, Qwerty, and Riddle Fence; his debut collection, The Lost Cafeteria (Signature Editions 2020), was awarded the 2022 Lansdowne Prize and nominated the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

Stacy Gardner is a published poet (ROOM, City Voices, Black Moss Press, Women Writing Letters, etc.) and playwright (original work produced/staged in both Toronto and St. John’s), who is originally from Corner Brook, NL. After 22-years of a life lived in Toronto, Stacy now lives in St. John’s, but makes time every summer (and the odd winter carnival) to ‘go home’ for a spell; reconnect with its river bend, highway curve, and mountain face – to ruminate, roam and surrender to place. A background in social work, journalism and the arts, Stacy has always felt at home with stories.

Hannah Jenkins received a BA in English Literature from Memorial University of Newfoundland (Grenfell Campus) and is currently completing a master’s degree in Applied Literary Arts. With a focus on poetry and creative nonfiction, Hannah’s work has been featured in various anthologies and journals. In 2022 her debut poetry collection, The Birds Come Back in the Spring, was published through Engen Books. Hannah is the current Writer in Residence at the Corner Brook Public Library and is serving on WritersNL’s Board of Directors as the Youth Advocate.

Kent Jones received his BFA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a post-graduate degree from The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, England. He has exhibited his paintings, prints and drawings in solo, group and juried exhibitions worldwide since 1971 and has received numerous national and international awards. In 2015 he was given the Long Haul Award by Visual Arts Newfoundland and Labrador for lifetime service/achievement to the arts of Newfoundland and Labrador. For the last ten years he also has been writing non-fiction short stories which have been presented in live readings and published in literary journals.

Tracy Kreuzburg is currently a Creative Writing Diploma student on the Grenfell campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). She also works for MUN’s Grenfell campus Sexual Harassment Office. She was born, raised and resides in Corner Brook, NL, and writes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. She has two grown, exceptional daughters, and is a new grandma to her treasured granddaughter, Sylvie.

Roberta Laurie teaches in the Bachelor of Communication Studies program at MacEwan University in Edmonton. When she isn’t teaching, she's writing, editing, or hiking the Rockies. Her debut book, Weaving a Malawi Sunrise, was published by University of Alberta Press. She is currently writing a memoir inspired by a box of letters left behind by her father. You can read more about Roberta at https://creativewhispersblog.wordpress.com.

Marion Lougheed grew up in Canada, Belgium, Benin, and Germany. Later, Lougheed attended MUN, SFU and now York University. Her poem "Rooftops" won the Prime 53 Poem Summer Challenge, and "Pavane for a Dead Letter" was featured in the LCP's Poem In Your Pocket Day series. Lougheed runs Off Topic Publishing and ML Edits. She also writes fiction, which has appeared in This Will Only Take A Minute: 100 Canadian Flashes (Guernica Editions, 2022), Reflex Press and The Arcanist, among others. Lougheed's work was shortlisted for the Sunlight Press Flash Fiction Contest, longlisted for Furious Fiction and the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize, and chosen as a finalist in the "Dystopian" category for Globe Soup's 7-Day Writing Challenge. In addition to writing and editing, Lougheed is working on a PhD dissertation in social anthropology about international schools in Germany.

Ann Martin lives in St. John’s where she works as a lawyer. She is the mother of three young adults. Her short stories have been published in Riddle Fence. 

Robin McGrath is a writer living in Newfoundland. She did 25 years of research in the Canadian Arctic and lived in Labrador for twelve years. She is the author of a number of award-winning books, including two volumes of poetry, Escaped Domestics, which won the Henry Fuerstenberg Prize for Canadian Jewish poetry, and Covenant of Salt. 

rob mcLennan was born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob and currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), and a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Chris Pickrell is an emerging writer distilled from the east coast, dripped across most of the provinces, now concentrated in Toronto. Previous publications include “Death of a Teenager,” runner-up winner of the 2020 University of Toronto SCS Penguin Random House prize and published in their annual Chapbook Three. He is also the author of the non-fiction textbook Advanced Botanical Prescribing, into which he snuck as much literary writing as possible.

Shruti Raheja (she/her) is a recent graduate of Memorial’s Master of Arts program in English, situated on the traditional of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq. She can usually be found on the East Coast Trail or in the kitchen baking cookies.

Jessica Warford is a student in Grenfell’s Master of Applied Literary Arts program She holds a B.A. in English from Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, and has recently completed an editorial internship with Breakwater Books.

Cheri Croft Wilson is a retired educator who specialized in children’s language and reading differences. Her love of poetry was particularly inspired by John Thompson and Herb Burke at Mount Allison University. She has two daughters, a son-by-marriage, 2 grandsons, a grand horse and a grand dog. Life is best outdoors or curled up with a good book. Halifax is home, when she is not in Corner Brook or at the shore in NB.