Category Archives: News

New Life for Ten Days in Summer

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My publisher BWL was awarded funding under their CBF Accessible Audiobook application to produce a group of audiobooks. They’ve chosen my novel, Ten Days in Summer, to be one of the books. This is exciting new territory for my Paula Savard Mystery Series. BWL has found a narrator — Janice McNally. She’s from Ontario and has been to the Calgary Stampede, which forms the backdrop for the novel setting. Release is scheduled for early 2023. BWL says Janice’s voice sounds great. I look forward to hearing her 15 minute demo recording.

A Literary Tour of Ireland

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Irish writers were hot in in the 1960s and 70s. My university friends and I read Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett. My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, was a hit musical movie. Oscar Wilde was and still is remembered as a larger-than-life character even though he died in 1900. I encountered these authors and more during my visit to Ireland in June.   
On our first day in Dublin, my husband Will and I wandered by the colourful statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square. 

Monuments near the rock depict Wilde’s numerous witticisms. “Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much.” 
A few blocks away, in St. Stephen’s Green, we met James Joyce. 

Jonathan Swift, author of the satire Gulliver’s Travels, was our third Dublin writer that day. Swift served as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was known for his controversial opinions. He’s buried in the cathedral along with a woman, Esther Johnson, with whom he shared a mysterious relationship. 
 Swift in St. Patrick’s Cathedral
The next day, we boarded our tour bus and drove around the island. Our guide mentioned several times that Ireland has four Nobel Prize Winners for Literature, a lot for a small country. They are William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett, “who wrote the most boring play ever written,” she said about Waiting for Godot. We met Yeats in his home County Sligo on the northwest coast. 

I find Yeats’ 1919 poem, The Second Coming, written during the aftermath of WWI, sadly relevant today.                                             “The best lack all conviction, while the worst                                            Are full of passionate intensity.”
At the end of our trip, we returned to Dublin. Will and I went to MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland), housed in the city’s former Catholic College, which James Joyce attended. Inside there’s a photo of Joyce and his fellow students sitting under this tree that still stands in the back garden. 

The museum includes past and present Irish writers, but the focus is James Joyce. A movie and wall panels portray the author’s life. 

A 3-d map of Dublin marks locations in Joyce’s short stories and novels. 

The first draft of Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses, is displayed, showing the author’s colour coding method.

And here’s the first copy of the first edition of Ulysses. 

In my youth, I enjoyed Joyce’s first two books, but didn’t tackle Ulysses because everyone said it was inaccessible.  After my trip, I skimmed the first fifty pages and can boast that I sometimes understood what was going on. I see on the MoLI website they offer an online book club this summer called Ulysses – for the rest of us! The fortnightly sessions promise to demystify the novel. I’m not quite up to the challenge this summer, but maybe next year.

Orangeman’s Day in Northern Ireland

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Happy Orangeman’s Day — or not. 

July 12th is a holiday in Northern Ireland, commemorating the victory of Protestant William of Orange over Britain’s Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Ulster Protestants celebrate the day with marching band parades; Catholics escape the noise and traffic snarls to beaches in the southern Republic of Ireland. 

A month ago, my husband Will and I took a bus tour through Belfast, Northern Ireland. Union Jack Flags, red, white and blue banners, and posters of Queen Elizabeth II decorated homes and businesses in Protestant neighbourhoods in celebration of her majesty’s recent Jubilee weekend. Our tour guide said people would leave the decorations up another month for Orangeman’s Day. The splashy displays ceased abruptly when we crossed into Catholic neighbourhoods.


During The Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to late 1990s, Orangeman’s Day was often marked by riots and violence. Protestants would provoke conflict by marching into Catholic neighbourhoods. During that thirty year ‘irregular war’ that killed more than 3,500 people, I wouldn’t have considered a holiday in Belfast, but I didn’t give it a thought this year. We stayed in the Europa Hotel, which experienced 36 bomb attacks during The Troubles and was called the most bombed hotel in the world. Since then, the renovated hotel has gone high tech with ‘smart’ elevators and window blinds. 

View of at least 3 pubs from our room at the Europa Hotel

                               

Our tour bus stopped at the peace wall that divides the predominantly republican, nationalist, Catholic Falls Road area from the loyalist, unionist, Protestant Shankhill Road area of West Belfast. These peace lines are supposed to be removed by 2023, but they’ve become popular tourist attractions. Former IRA members conduct black taxi tours of the walls, complete with their versions of The Troubles and the current political situation. I found this image an unsettling reminder that the conflict isn’t over.     

This was brought home to me even more in Londonderry or Derry, depending on your political view. Ireland’s second largest city is located close to the Irish border and is about 75% Catholic (Belfast is roughly 49% Catholic). A local guide gave us a tour of the Derry walls, built in the 1600s as a defense against Catholic attacks. He said that during The Troubles Catholics, who lived largely across the river, weren’t allowed into the city gates. It’s hard to believe this is recent history. 

Aimed at the Catholic side of Derry

Since the Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods rise up from the river banks the city’s political divide is visible. Recently there has been some merging. Our guide said he grew up on the boggy Catholic side, but now lives in Protestant (London)Derry. During The Troubles, he knew people who had never ventured to the opposite side of the river. Since 2011, a pedestrian Peace Bridge has connected the two divides. Some suggest the bridge’ s ‘falling-over’ design reflects the shaky peace. Our guide noted that Brexit has refueled the push for a unified Ireland. He pointed out a section of sidewalk damaged by a car bomb, the first since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended The Troubles.   

                                                           Peace Bridge, Londonderry/Derry