Dropped Threads 3

by Marjorie Anderson

  MAGGIE DE VRIES

  After five years as children’s book editor at Orca Book Publishers in Victoria, I am in the middle of a transformation, from commuting editor to at-home writer who edits. All of a sudden “at home” means more to me than it ever has before: husband, cats, garden, friends, family. I wrote “The Only Way Past” because I wanted to tell about learning to face life squarely, no matter how hard that might be, and now I find that the life I am facing delights me.

  M. A. C. FARRANT

  I was born in Australia to a wandering mother and a Canadian seafaring father but, luckily, at age five, was settled on Vancouver Island to be raised by my father’s sister. These events are the subject of my memoir, My Turquoise Years (Greystone/Douglas & McIntyre, 2004), and of the piece included in this book—my early training about men and Amazon housewives. I have also published seven books of humorous and satirical short fiction. Writing full-time and occasionally teaching at the University of Victoria, I live near Sidney, B.C.

  LIANE FAULDER

  I’ve lived most of my life in Edmonton, though I came to love Toronto while a journalism student at Ryerson. As a feature writer with the Edmonton Journal, I’ve learned to work with the material that comes my way, and that’s been helpful in my life too. My contribution to this anthology was inspired by my two sons, Dylan and Daniel. Being the mother of boys came as a shock to me, and I’ve been figuring out why ever since.

  NATALIE FINGERHUT

  After eight post-secondary institutions, five cities and four careers, I have finally found a happy place for myself as an editor in Toronto with the love of my life, Rob Winters, and our beloved Raphael. Though the misfit’s journey to personal acceptance is long, the rewards are many, namely being able to pass time at bar mitzvahs by talking wrestling with the guys and debating diapers with the gals.

  MARIE-LYNN HAMMOND

  I’m an air force brat; got my love of storytelling from my Franco-Ontarian maman; became a singer-songwriter, with detours through playwriting and broadcasting; now work mostly as a writer and editor. My remaining sister and my niece make life worthwhile, along with all critters great and small and my dream of someday doing flying changes on a little black horse. Why this essay? Because I want humans to remember we’re animals too and ought to stop fouling our nest. Because maybe you don’t need a guru, a therapist or a million bucks; maybe all you need is a cat.

  HARRIET HART

  I’m migratory, a snowbird who winters by the shores of Lake Chapala, Mexico, and summers on Kagaki Lake, northwestern Ontario. Born on a prairie farm, I’ve been cast in many supporting roles on my life’s journey from Manitoba to Mexico: daughter, sister, wife, mother, divorcée, other woman, friend, employee, landlady and stepmother. In retirement, I play the leading lady in my personal drama. I wrote “She Drinks” to share how I quit drinking and did it my way.

  FRANCES ITANI

  I grew up in a Quebec village and began to travel and study at age fifteen, when I finished high school. I’ve been writing for more than thirty years, and my books include Deafening and Poached Egg on Toast. I was born with energy and optimism of spirit, and am thankful for both. I love children and have two of my own, now adults. Voice and language have always been of interest to me in my work. I wrote “Conspicuous Voices” as a tribute to the extended family that surrounded me in childhood, one more thing to be thankful about.

  MELANIE D. JANZEN

  Three years ago, I decided to leave my rewarding teaching career to return to university to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Womens’ Studies and Education. It was through my coursework, my amazing advisers and my research in Uganda that I have come to truly appreciate the extraordinary circles of women in my life. My life in Winnipeg is further enriched by the unwavering support of my husband, Keith, our foster daughter Cayla’s teenaged antics and the love of my family and friends.

  GILLIAN KERR

  I live in Toronto where I have a career in food marketing and retailing. My profession has taught me the shortcuts available in supermarkets that make it possible to serve food with pride and love without having to sacrifice the best part of a Saturday afternoon. I have been writing creatively for five years. Many people have asked me how I learned to cook. “Tiny Tomatoes” is an answer to that question as well as a reflection on the ways creativity is taught. It asks: what do our talents owe to the passion of our teachers?

  CHANTAL KREVIAZUK

  I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for my first twenty years, then moved to Toronto when I released my first album. Now I commute between Los Angeles and Toronto, where I live with my husband and our sons, Rowan and Lucca. Our life together is fulfilling, juggling the demands and joys of parenthood, the rich careers as artists and writers/producers, and the work we do for organizations such as Warchild Canada and the Canadian Mental Health Association. My career has taught me there is so much more to living in this world than self-perpetuation and consumerism. Therein lies my greatest discovery.

  SILKEN LAUMANN

  My life is a medley of parenting, inspirational speaking and writing, friends and family and time for my own growth and reflection. It is wonderful when a writing project can touch upon all of these. Writing this piece was cathartic in that it provided an opportunity to reflect on all that is contradictory as well as all that is beautiful in mothering; I find myself more peaceful in the experience now. I live an alternately harried and peaceful life in Victoria, B.C., when not travelling for speaking engagements all across North America.

  JODI LUNDGREN

  Words and movement have impassioned me since childhood. Victoria-raised, I earned a doctorate in English at the University of Washington while training and performing as a modern dancer. I published a novel, Touched, and have recently written another for young adults from the perspective of a teenage dancer. After spending two years as writer-in-residence at Thompson Rivers University, I now live in Nanaimo, B.C. In “Pitch: A Dancer’s Journal,” I explore the place where discipline and exhilaration coincide.

  ANN-MARIE MACDONALD

  I am a novelist, a playwright and an actor. I have performed in theatres across Canada and in numerous television series and feature films, including Better Than Chocolate. My plays include Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Belle Moral: A Natural History. I am also the author of two novels, Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies.

  C. B. MACKINTOSH

  I was born and raised in Walkerton, Ontario, but my heart found its home in Banff, where I work among artists and walk up mountains on my lunch hours. I wrote this piece because my husband saw the call for proposals, and my mentor, Marni Jackson, suggested, “Write something about the mountains.” Writing is, and has always been, my trail through the wilderness. I am currently navigating my first book.

  BARBARA MCLEAN

  Permanently a farmer, temporarily a teacher of English and Women’s Studies, I combined my passions in my book, Lambsquarters: Scenes From a Handmade Life. As a shepherd I am acquainted with grief and interment, for keeping livestock inevitably results in deadstock: stillborn lambs lie buried in the bush and extinct ewes sprout alfalfa in the fields. The death of my parents makes it possible to print the story of what I discovered through finding my sister’s ashes.

  HEATHER MALLICK

  I am a constant reader, a feminist, a socialist, a francophile, a columnist and a number of other things. My first book, published by Penguin Canada, was a diary entitled Pearls in Vinegar, and I am now working on two new works of nonfiction. My essay, “The Inoculation,” written with much wincing and disinfection of typing fingers, is intended as a donation to women and girls, in the hope that it might direct them away from similar disasters.

  BARBARA MITCHELL

  I am a writer and a university lecturer living in Peterborough, Ontario. I was raised in High River, Alberta, where, at the age of fifteen, I met my husband on a piano bench. For the past fifteen years we have been involved in a writerly duet—two volu
mes of a biography on his father, W. O. Mitchell. “Finding My Way,” about family connections and disconnections, was sparked by my musings about the time spent buried in Mitchell history and the recent discovery of my own repressed family history.

  BERNICE MORGAN

  I was born in Newfoundland and have lived all my life here—a place that fills my imagination, exhilarates me and drives me to despair. My parents, Sadie Vincent of Cape Island, Bonavista Bay, and William Vardy of Random Island, Trinity Bay, came into St. John’s during the Depression. Stories about the outposts they left behind provided the background for my novels, Random Passages and Waiting for Time. Wartime St. John’s is the setting for most of the stories in my third book, Topography of Love, and I hope the novel I am now working on will lead me eventually into St. John’s of 2005.

  LORRI NEILSEN GLENN

  I was raised in railway towns on the prairies and moved to Nova Scotia over twenty years ago. After years as an ethnographer, a professor and an author of books on research and feminist issues, I began to write poetry and essays, and now wonder what took me so long. The ocean, the prairie horizon and stories of dauntless women inspire me equally. I was appointed Poet Laureate of Halifax for 2005–2009.

  PATRICIA PEARSON

  I was born in Mexico City into a Foreign Service family and spent my childhood trotting after my parents from country to country, occupying myself by writing stories and telling fibs. One of which was that I was born in Mexico City “during an earthquake.” This love of embellishment was tempered by a career in journalism, but has recently been given free rein again in my novels Playing House and Believe Me.

  BETH POWNING

  I spent my childhood in a creaky, mouse-ridden farmhouse in northeast Connecticut. I studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and in 1972, at the age of twenty-three, moved to New Brunswick with my husband, Peter. I’ve written about our remote maritime farm in the memoirs Seeds of Another Summer, Shadow Child and Edge Seasons. My first novel, The Hatbox Letters, drew upon my memories of my grandparents. I’m one now myself. Maeve and Bridget live just down the road.

  JUDY REBICK

  I have been an activist on various issues since my late twenties. I’ve just turned sixty and am still at it. Young people always ask me how I have stayed active for so long without getting discouraged, so I thought I would contribute a piece on how my life as an activist was born in personal rebellion and moved on from there.

  SUSAN RILEY

  After twenty-five years writing for newspapers and producing for the CBC, I studied law at the same time both my children were in university. I am now working as a lawyer, living between Winnipeg and an island in Lake of the Woods and writing about things that matter to me. I wrote about Larry because his story inspired my daughter and me, to our surprise, one sad fall weekend.

  LAURIE SARKADI

  I moved to the Northwest Territories as a young woman and travelled the Arctic as the Edmonton Journal‘s northern correspondent. I’m still here, raising a globe-tripping family in the wilderness, grateful for the natural grandeur and insightful people in my life. (“Hi Mom!”) Sometimes I work at the CBC, sometimes I write songs … and once, I had the luxury of spending months at home in silence to write “The Bear Within.”

  BARBARA SCOTT

  I work as a freelance writer, editor and creative writing instructor in Calgary. My first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Quick, won the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize and the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction. I recently co-edited an anthology of essays on the experience of publishing a first book, entitled First Writes, and am currently at work on a novel. In writing “Tethers” I realized that while my relationship with my mother was difficult, it led me to the writing life I treasure—her greatest gift to me, even if unintentionally given.

  JODI STONE

  I like to spin yarns. I spun them in Edinburgh for a few years, then in Liverpool. I returned to Ontario to spin some more and wove a family instead. While writing, editing and publishing provide me with immense satisfaction, my husband and son are my greatest joys.

  CATHY STONEHOUSE

  I grew up in the UK and emigrated to Canada in 1988, receiving my MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 1990. I’ve published poetry, fiction and non-fiction in a wide range of Canadian magazines and anthologies, edited the literary journal Event for three years, and currently spend my time chasing after my not-quite-toddling daughter and making notes for future writing projects on the backs of envelopes. This essay pushed its way out of me during the first raw months after my (living) daughter’s birth. Writing it has felt like a partial completion of the unfinished journey that was Gracie’s life.

  J. C. SZASZ

  As a child I hated reading, but the Bobbsey Twins series inspired me to write my own stories. In 2006 Napoleon Publishing/RendezVous Crime will publish my short mystery “Egyptian Queen” in their Dead in the Water anthology. My novel, The Change Agent, is currently seeking a publisher while I write its sequel. My family and I enjoy skiing and kayaking on Vancouver Island. I am honoured to write about the humble heroes of the Nanaimo Crown Counsel office.

  ARITHA VAN HERK

  I’ve been asked if I am a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes, but I consider this a false division. I teach and write, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in a wonderfully challenging juggling act of words and ideas. I have been teaching Creative Writing and Canadian Literature at the University of Calgary for twenty-two years, and what is best is being able to make my living reading books and being able to hide in the biggest library in the city.

  JANICE WILLIAMSON

  This essay, part of a book-length manuscript, “Hexagrams for My Chinese Daughter,” is dedicated to my daughter, Bao, and my mother—and to Cecile Mactaggart, a generous mentor who knows the transformations of mothering, writing, travel and Chinese dragons. I’ve written, taught and rabble-roused at the University of Alberta since 1987. My splendid daughter (now eight) and I garden beautifully at latitude 53.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  An anthology is a satisfying collaborative effort in every way, and I offer warm appreciation for the following contributions:

  Ann-Marie MacDonald for gracing the book with her writing talents and creative insights in the Introduction;

  All the women writers who had the courage and creativity to offer intimate glimpses of their lives in the form of proposals and essays. I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to read them all;

  Lorna Crozier, whose magic with words in the poem “To See Clearly” provided just the right image for our title;

  All those at Random House, especially Tanya, Marion and Anne, whose warmth and professional expertise have enhanced this anthology experience greatly;

  The memory of the wisdom and guiding light of my friend Carol;

  My brothers Jim and Fred, whose word wisdom I rely on, my sisters Sylvia and Louise whose enthusiasm for these anthologies has always been there, and my new sister-in-law Grace who has joined the web of family writing-support services; and

  My husband, Gary, our four daughters and their families and all my wonderful women friends who stand beside me loyally during my project passions.

  Anderson, Marjorie, “Foreword” Copyright © 2006 Marjorie Anderson

  Atwood, Margaret, “Polonia” Copyright © 2006 O.W. Toad Ltd.

  Callwood, June, “A Thought, or Maybe Two” Copyright © 2006 June Callwood

  Coveart, Tracey Ann, “I Am a Mother” Copyright © 2006 Tracey Ann Coveart

  Crozier, Lorna, “Animal Lesson” Copyright © 2006 Lorna Crozier

  Curtis, Andrea, “The Writers’ Circle” Copyright © 2006 Andrea Curtis

  DePledge, Norma, “My Father’s Last Gift” Copyright © 2006 Norma DePledge

  De Vries, Maggie, “The Only Way Past” Copyright © 2006 Maggie de Vries

  Farrant, M. A. C., “The Gospel According to Elsie” Copyright © 2006 M. A. C. Farrant
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br />   Faulder, Liane, “About the Boys” Copyright © 2006 Liane Faulder

  Fingerhut, Natalie, “In Praise of Misfits” Copyright © 2006 Natalie Fingerhut

  Glen, Lorri Neilsen, “Believe You Me” Copyright © 2006 Lorri Neilsen Glenn

  Hammond, Marie-Lynn, “Creature Comforts” Copyright © 2006 Marie-Lynn Hammond

  Hart, Harriet, “She Drinks” Copyright © 2006 Harriet Hart

  Itani, Frances, “Conspicuous Voices” Copyright © 2006 Itani Writes Inc.

  Janzen, Melanie D., “The Road to Kihande Village” Copyright © 2006 Melanie D. Janzen

  Kreviazuk, Chantal, “Over the Rocks and Stones” Copyright © 2006 Chantal Kreviazuk

  Laumann, Silken, “Uncharted Waters” Copyright © 2006 Silken Laumann

  Lundgren, Jodi, “Pitch: A Dancer’s Journal” Copyright © 2006 Jodi Lundgren

  MacDonald, Ann-Marie, “Introduction” Copyright © 2006 Ann-Marie Macdonald

  Mackintosh, C. B., “Moss Campion” Copyright © 2006 C. B. Mackintosh

  Mallick, Heather, “The Inoculation” Copyright © 2006 Heather Mallick

  McLean, Barbara, “From the Ashes” Copyright © 2006 Barbara McLean

  Mitchell, Barbara, “Finding My Way” Copyright © 2006 Barbara Mitchell