As I write this it is July 1st or Canada Day as we call it here in uh...Canada. So I'm going to post early this week. Because I secretly love Canada Day. I am not sure why - it really wasn't a big deal when we were kids. Probably because we had just gotten free from school and it just blended into that general bliss. I don't want to be too jingoistic but I do love our country. And mostly I love it for the countryness of it. The thing is we aren't so populated as our neighbours to the south and certainly not as populated as European countries or well anywhere I don't think. We have a lot of big vistas, rolling hills, mountains - for yes we too have the Rockies only our part of that range is quite a bit more rugged. I can say that with complete conviction having lived in the mountains on both sides of the border. The Canadian Rockies really rock. And the prairies are truly waves of gold and the north is awesome in the original meaning. I have lived in these provinces - Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Labrador (now called Newfoundland & Labrador but that is just silly - I didn't live in Newfoundland). So coast to coast to coast (Labrador being on the Labrador Sea). I have been to many National Parks and many Provincial Parks. If you ask me a favourite wild place in Canada I will not answer you - it depends on what I'm looking for. I love all of Nova Scotia - it's variety and beauty from stunning Peggy's Cove (near where I live) to the highlands of Cape Breton. Being the daughter of Manitobans I completely think the prairies are fantastic - the big sky, the space! I feel so at home in the countryside of the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, the stone farmhouses and jumbly fields. The foothills in Alberta (where I was born) bring out my inner cowgirl and British Columbia is so wildly beautiful with its towering trees, mountains and the Pacific Ocean lapping at its edges. Labrador is a different beast altogether - tundra, rivers, it's crazy beauty in winter, its quiet powerful presence at all times.
I love the art inspired by this wildness, Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, Maude Lewis, Tom Thompson. As a budding landscape painter I am thrilled in just the attempt to bring the beauty I see to others. The land of Labrador inspired my first novel The Crooked Knife which focused on some of the ecocide that is happening in that part of the world.
Into the forest by Emily Carr
Today, had it not been pouring with rain, the fella and I were going to take out the canoe he's been rebuilding all winter for its maiden voyage. We were just going to cross the road and go in from our lovely neighbours beach. We wanted to do it today because it is the anniversary of our second date when we went canoeing in Prospect Bay, 22 years ago. We don't mind a rainy day though. Last year we had terrible forest fires and we are happy to see the small brooks rise up again in our part of paradise.
So happy birthday to this land - which of course was already here in 1867 when Confederation occurred. If we can remember why this is a countryside worth preserving, that held peoples both First Nation and Inuit that are worth honouring, well then that would be truly wonderful.
And now for something not completely different...
The monthly meeting of the Insecure Writers Support Group is now in session.
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
The awesome co-hosts for the July 3 posting of the IWSG are JS Pailly, Rebecca Douglass, Pat Garcia, Louise-Fundy Blue, and Natalie Aguirre!
In keeping with my theme of landscape I am happy to post an article I wrote for Kate Juniper's site Juniper Editing & Creative in which I wrote a piece on writing and place.
Place as Character
Whether I’m writing a novel, a memoir, a poem, or a play, the very first thing I do is situate the story in a time and place, metaphorically giving the reader some ground to stand on. To me place is so much more than a location’s physical features: it holds a unique and particular culture, right down to the mannerisms of its inhabitants. Place is in the way an Inuk lifts his eyebrows for yes and scrunches them down for no. It is the slump in the shoulders of a group of old men looking out as they watch the ice on the bay breaking up in March when it shouldn’t break up until May. It is how one neighbourhood has persnickety front gardens and another is strewn with the corpses of trucks and piles of garbage next to front doors.
In most of what I’ve written, the place is a character in its own right, and so it needs the full treatment I would give to any other person inhabiting my story. What is the place’s history? How do its people treat it? What challenges does it face, and how does it respond? What story does it want, or even need, told?
The latest works I’ve been writing—mystery novels, poems, and essays—are all located in Labrador: a place my partner’s family came from and that he knows very well. We lived there for five years, during which time I grew to love and despair of the place in equal measure. It can be a very challenging environment—long cold winters, isolated communities, and a history of being misunderstood and pillaged for its natural resources. It is wild and beautiful and frightening. It intrigued me and infuriated me. Writing it into my work was a way that I could begin to come to understand it, or at the very least understand its impact on me.
Because I treat my location as yet another character, I look at what I imagine the place wants, just as I do my protagonists, my villains, and anyone else inhabiting the world I’m creating. Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, where I set an early mystery, seemed to want to be respected for its wild and dangerous side, instead of always being reduced to the single note of its view. Annapolis Royal, also in Nova Scotia, has an old and curious history that demanded I allow for a certain atmospheric quality given to it by its long history as a habitat. Where both Labrador and Peggy’s Cove are primarily their physical environment – the land and ocean itself, Annapolis Royal must include the buildings, the imprint of the humans who lived on that spot over the centuries.
Labrador struggles with being dismissed as the land God gave to Cain, a description of Labrador by explorer Jacques Cartier. He was alluding to Genesis 4, in which Cain, having killed his brother, is condemned to till land that is barren. Labrador is at once dismissed by outsiders as being an inhospitable place, unfriendly, and plundered by the same for its natural resources. Meanwhile, the people who live there—the Innu, Inuit and settler communities—try their best to protect it from large-scale exploitation.
Place, in my mind, is the very best way to evoke atmosphere, and is also so effective as a means to evoke emotion. Within a place are many locations: frightening (a dark wood on a moonless night); transcendent (a wild beach below the Northern Lights); comforting (a roaring fire, a chair, a lamp within a home the protagonist loves). It can help the reader understand a character by what they can ‘see’ of their surroundings (do they live like an ascetic monk, or a bohemian collector of oddities?) and how they respond to their surroundings.
Most importantly, setting the story in a tangible place that evokes the senses embodies the reading experience: it transports your reader to that different world, where they can sink into the story entirely, feeling safe enough to get lost. And I believe most readers would tell you being lost in a story is the very best place to be.
4 comments:
That was a lovely post about Canada. Your love for your country shines through. I too think of place as a character when I write. It's important when I read also and will read certain books because I like the way the author treats and writes about the setting.
Hi Karen! Thanks- I have loved your descriptions of places you've travelled so much so happy to give it back to you.
Happy (belated) Canada Day, Jan! I love your choice of theme for this month's post. A sense of place is so important in a story, and sometimes, a setting really does become a character in itself. It makes sense, too, because places have their own personalities and histories, just like people do.
Hi, Jan! What a wonderful post and tribute to Canada! I feel as you do about my native country. I've been briefly in Labrador and LOVED it! Well, except for the black flies ~ lol. My stories are always grounded in a place and time and are essentially a character too. That may come from living in isolated places and seeing how the land shapes a person and a community. Enjoy today!
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