Happy Holidays to my Amazing Writing Group

Looking forward to a lively, in-person, holiday celebration with my writers’ group next week. We’ve been meeting mostly online since the pandemic and I know we’re all craving an in-person event. We’re going to eat, drink and be merry … together.

by Marianne Gopalkrishna

Only other writers can empathize with the ups and downs of this arduous profession. We get to hear each other's stories when they're just ideas twinkling from a distance ... not sure of whether they'll turn into a real published story. 

Thanks to each of them for sharing with me this long-distance marathon of words. So proud to consider these creative, determined and talented group of writers my friends. Goodwill wishes to

  Jodi Carmichael, as unique and lively as the protagonist of her most recent middle grade novel, The Unique Lou Fox. She's always got more award-winning stories under construction.

MaryLou Driedger, teacher, traveller, blogger, best-selling author of Lost of the Prairie, and the most energetic person I know. Her most recent middle grade novel Sixties Girl is a multi-generational experience. 

Deb Froese, writer, teacher, and amazing editor. Her editing skills are like those of an empathetic surgeon ... precise and gentle. Author of the young adult novel Out of the Fire, also available in German, along with a more recent picture book. 

Interlake Magic by Christina Janz

Christina Janz, writer, and multi-talented artist. She can refinish furniture into pieces of art.  It's just a matter of time before her adventures of two crazy old women bumbling about rural England find a home. 

Mel Matheson, artist, book designer, author and soon an MFA graduate.  Her picture book, Hokey Dowa Gerda and the Snowflake Girl, received Manitoba's best picture book award back in 2015.

Pat Trottier, teacher, writer and advocate for epilepsy support. Pat's tenacity shines in her non-fiction support book for new teachers, Relationships Make the Difference.

Larry Verstraete, teacher, non-fiction author and middle grade novelist. He's also a dog-lover as his two most recent novels featuring a dachshund named, Coop.

 Coop for Keeps came out in this past spring.  Coop's first adventure story, Coop the Great, got picked up by Germany's Little Tiger Verlag. 

Write on!

Ambivalence

Christmas seems mostly about nostalgia and it’s the traditions that help keep the magic going.  I admit that my Christmas flame is flickering on low this year. Family illnesses and other struggles have kept spirits down. But we have snow, we have darkness and we have cold. All necessary ingredients to let Christmas lights shine. 

I visited a Christkindlmarkt here in Winnipeg last weekend. Our local market is nothing like the European open-air events. It’s simply too cold for outdoor kiosks. This indoor market is basically a craft fair dressed up in Christmas colours. I went to get some holiday necessities … spices to make Glühwein and candles for my Advent centre piece.

I’m sure I’ll perk up as the season progresses. After all, the joy and gratitude that my immigrant friends exude might be contagious. An Iraqi family (Christian Kurds) I hope to share time with spent four years in a Turkish refugee camp. Their young children remind me of how wonderful it is to be in Canada … while my Ukrainian friends show me that home and family, electricity and water, peace not war, must never be assumed. Life itself is a reason to celebrate. 

Here I am, ambivalent about Christmas and yet it is the season of peace and goodwill. How dare I take it for granted?  Perhaps the scent of the Christmas tree will revive me.  Time to go tree-hunting! 

Just jotting down these thoughts has put some of Dickens’ Tiny Tim attitude into my season. “God bless Us, Every One!”

Fact or Fiction?

A friend and I talked about what we were reading the other day. She said she had no time for fiction. “None of it’s true, it’s a waste of time.”

Considering we’d both majored in literature back in university, I was rather stunned with her summation. “But fiction is a form of art.”  

        "Who has time for art in today’s world?”

I do, I thought to myself. I need art now more than ever. “Don’t you think art is a way to make sense of today’s world?” I asked. 

“I have no patience for art,” she replied. “It’s been replaced by technology. Why look at a painting when you can see a photograph?” 

I shot back, “But art isn’t there to mimic reality, it’s used to interpret reality. It’s not enough to have just the facts.”

She frowned. “It’s not? Tell me why.” 

“We need to know whose truth we’re reading. Who took the photo? Who researched the story? Facts might seem honest, but like numbers, they can be manipulated.” 

She raised her eyebrows at that jab. “Are you saying everything is fiction?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know … but I know that everything has more than one angle to it, more than one perspective.”  

“Of course,” she scoffed. “We need to trust our sources. You can’t believe everything you read.”

“In fiction, when you enter other people’s heads,” I offer, "you know that's what you're doing."

“Right,” said my friend. “I’d rather focus on figuring out my own brain.”

“Fiction can help with that,” I suggest.

“So can facts.”

Our talk ends as we agree to disagree. I’ll continue reading and writing fiction because I know that I’m not able to tell the truth … I can only interpret what I experience … and compare it to other’s perspectives.

Of course, I read non-fiction. I love it … especially memoirs with their limited, but authentic point of view. They become an important part of my research. Historical fiction weaves fact and fiction together. Those two strands grow into a braid of three perspectives … the facts, the story, and the reader. 

I’ve always considered truth to be a showing, not a telling, revealed between the cracks of a storyline.  How did Leonard Cohen put it? “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” 

For other thoughts on this fact vs. fiction topic:

https://annejanzer.com/stories-fiction-facts-truth/

https://stephaniestorey.com/blog/historical-fiction-history-or-fiction

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/aug/06/lying-historical-fiction

https://jennybhattwriter.com/hfcn-04-reading-historical-fiction/

https://www.cbc.ca/books/cheryl-parisien-wrote-her-historical-fiction-book-the-unweaving-as-a-way-to-embrace-her-m%C3%A9tis-heritage-1.7383541

 “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”    E.L. Doctorow

And isn't connection what we crave as humans … to understand and, in turn, to be understood?  

Hello

Every day is a special day for somebody or something.  Did you know that today is World Hello Day?  New to me but I like the concept. Supposedly it’s to highlight peace through conversation rather than through violence. Rather relevant to our current turbulent times. 

Hiking in the Bavarian mountains with
a Grüß Gott echoing in my ears

How to celebrate? It’s suggested we say hello to at least ten people today. Sounds simple enough. Through the course of a day, I often have a string of errands to run and a variety of people with whom to interact. Usually saying hello seems natural but there are times it feels forced … especially if it’s not intended as a preamble to further interaction. Strangers on our Manitoba streets aren’t prepared for random ‘hellos.’

I got used to strange hellos when I worked in Europe a long time ago. Walking about in between shifts as a serving person in a Bavarian mountain town, I’d be greeted with a ‘grüß Gott’.  It literally means ‘greet God’ and its intended to say, ‘if you happen to see God before I do, then say hello for me, ie. put a good word in for me.’ 

So hello, bonjour, Guten Tag, hola, ciao, waciye, and Grüß Gott.  Maybe world peace needs us all just to say hello to each other. To not be invisible to each other, but to see each other as fellow travellers and then keep going along our merry way.  Wouldn't we all feel a little better with a cheery hello directed at us? Have a nice day! 

Finding Sonder in Historical Saskatchewan

Closer to Far Away, Kristin Butcher’s newest middle grade novel (she’s published dozens) is set a hundred years ago in small town Saskatchewan. Lucy, the 13-year-old protagonist, struggles to accept the sudden death of her mother and copes by trying to be a replacement mother to her 5-year-old brother, a housemaid for her workaholic banker-father, and a busy-body nosing about her older brother’s unsavory new connections. 

It’s a stiff-upper-lip family and everyone seems isolated in their pain.  The death of the mother is the elephant in the room that they carefully side-step in different ways. Lucy resents any help from either the hired maid, Mrs. Jenkins, or her Aunt Faye. I couldn’t help but think of the Sound of Music where the orphaned children react with hostility towards the young novice nun, Maria, sent from the convent. In a poignant scene Aunt Faye says, “Life is all about change, Lucy.” (p.215) and I found myself shedding a few tears along with Lucy who finally releases the grief inside her. 

Kristin Butcher is a master storyteller with a warm and engaging style.  Like with her previous novels, most recently The Seer Trilogy, I sink into her fictional worlds knowing that I can trust the author to offer up both a page-turning plot and realistic characters. 

In Closer to Far Away, immersed in early 20th century life in rural Saskatchewan, during the alcohol-prohibition era, I witnessed a family’s grieving process. A truly sonder experience. What is sonder? It’s when you can feel empathy, compassion and self-realization all at the same time. And that’s what good fiction is all about. 

Owning our Stories

Brené Brown
from Wikipedia 

"True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are."

I came across this insight from Brené Brown and it resonated with me and the themes of my recent novel, Waltraut.                 

Waltraut sees herself as a victim … of bullying in school due to prejudice against immigrants, at church because of her ‘outsider’ father, and within her own family because of parental expectations. 

Her solution is to escape into books and her heroine becomes Nancy Drew. But Nancy Drew can’t solve Waltraut’s problems. It’s not until, as Brown says, she ‘owns’ her stories and accepts herself, that she moves forward. 

I hope Waltraut's story will help vulnerable young readers ‘own’ their stories so that they too can determine the direction of their lives. Our lives are story. Maybe we can’t choose the inciting incident or the page-turning plot points, but as imperfect first-person narrators, we get to choose the ending. Waltraut did. 

  “Owning our story and loving ourselves throughout that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” Brené Brown.

Nancy Drew modelled courage so maybe she really did help Waltraut find herself.

― Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. The link leads to a YouTube conversation about the book. 

Happy Halloween?

It’s been 5 years since I visited Russia's Kaliningrad region and finally I’m getting around to framing a few of those memories. Both Tainted Amber and Crow Stone are 

Top left: Baltic Coast at former Rauschen,
now Svetlogorsk 
Bottom left: linden-lined road in rural Kaliningrad
Right: house in former Kreuzburg, now Slavskoye

set in the Kaliningrad Oblast.  Grateful that I got to visit the area before the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. 

I follow a few Instagrammers who live in the Kaliningrad Oblast and they often post beautiful images of the former East Prussia. The Oblast is like a time warp … German ruins, battle memorials ... amidst Russian tourism.  

It’s stunning to realize that the average Russian seems oblivious to the current war, seems oblivious to the political crisis that their leader has created. How do Kaliningraders … wedged between EU countries and Ukraine ... even manage?  Perhaps they’re not as oblivious as they seem … perhaps they’re terrified to speak their fears.

The stylish, picture-perfect world of modern Russia shown on social media juxtaposed against the ruins of the last world war is bizarre. Terrible battles are happening so close by. The cries from Ukraine and from their own political prisoners must haunt those beautiful  ruins.  

While the remaining Third Reich structures crumble into rustic art, the horror of war, of revenge and misuse of power haunts our grim present.  Happy Halloween?

Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams by Shari Green

Set in Leipzig, during the fall of 1989, Shari Green's beautiful YA story is told in verse. The novel shares 16-year-old Helena’s point of view during the tumultuous dying months of the DDR. While her closest friend escapes to the freedom of the west, Helena knows that Leipzig is her home and that she’ll never choose to leave. Rather than run away, she would rather risk prison by following her idealistic father’s lead to protest for her freedom. An aspiring conductor, Helena falls in love with another music student who like her friend, also wants to escape to the west. Helena must make some gut-wrenching decisions when the Stasi threatens her family. I can't help but compare her choices to what's happening in Ukraine. Stay for your country or leave for your family. Not easy.

     

Nikolai church Leipzig
Wikipedia

The musicality of the author’s words, the rhythm, timing, cadence … all flow so effortlessly into the plot of a love story set in the weeks leading up to the peaceful collapse of the DDR. I was struck by the beauty and depth of this novel … like a musical score. Infused with rich historical detail, this is a poignant story where even a church, Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche, comes alive as a character representing  the power of prayer, hope and of song. 

A couple of my favourite lines, “… dreams are slippery things when I’m losing my grip, it does my heart good to know someone else believes I should hold on.” (page 83/4). 

“I am the conductor and it’s up to me to shape the discontent parts of my life.”  (page 197)

Another beautiful line, of many, near the end, “Around me, energy flits like fireflies, glinting on the faces of passersby.” (page 226)

Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams is shortlisted for the 2024 Governor General’s Award. 

Wild Children

My mom had it tough as the Second World War wound down on the eastern front. I explore the failed winter exodus from East Prussia in Crow Stone … my YA release from Ronsdale Press, from back in 2022. Of the three sisters, fictionalized in the novel with the names of Katya, Sofie and Marthe, only Katya (inspired by my mom) is taken into the Soviet Union as a forced labourer. She went through some difficult times in the open pit mines of the Urals near Chelyabinsk. 

But what happened to her two younger sisters? I understood little about their experiences. Things were just too terrible to remember, they’d tell me. Let the past be forgotten, they’d say.  I knew rape and starvation were common under the Soviet occupation. I knew they weren’t allowed to leave the former East Prussia, renamed Kaliningrad, until 1948. I knew that others in my immigrant church community had similar experiences … but no one would talk about it.

So now I’m reading The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, Alone and Forgotten, by Sonya Winterberg with Kerstin Lieff. It’s a heart-wrenching testimony of the horrors that lost children experienced in those stark years after the war. Unlike the dates in history books … the end of war doesn’t end the suffering. 

As a curious side note, the introduction to this book is by John Kay, the lead singer of the Canadian rock band called Steppenwolf. Born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad) in 1944, he narrowly escaped a similar fate that 20,000 young East Prussian children experienced. John Kay (born Joachim Fritz Krauledat) ended up in Canada in 1958 and went on to create memorable hits like “Born to be Wild.”  

Many children scavenged like wild animals in the desolate, bombed-out East Prussian countryside. My two aunts, fostering a lost toddler, and my teenaged cousins no doubt would have crossed paths with the orphans as they foraged for food trying to avoid Soviet revenge near the Lithuanian border. 

Kirsten Boie's novel about post-war friendship

Just finished the middle grade novel, Heul doch nicht, du lebst ja noch, by Kirsten Boie published by Friedrich Oetinger Verlag from Hamburg in 2022. Fast paced, engaging characters with unique points of view. 

First off, I opened this novel because of location. It’s set in Hamburg, the biggest city in the most northern state of Germany, Schleswig Holstein.  I'd grown up listening to Hans Albers’ music about the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s notorious red light distract. It’s the area that my father came from and I visited back in the seventies, wanting to know more about his background which I considered risqué and possibly immoral (compared to my evangelical upbringing). 

As a child, I was fascinated with my dad’s low German dialect … different than the Mennonite dialect spoken here in southern Manitoba … and yet similar. I knew that the windy, flat plains of northern Germany are close to Friesland where Mennonites originated.  

A second reason I wanted to read this book is because of the time. It’s not just set in Hamburg, it’s set in the ruins of Hamburg … in June, 1945 … after the war. Massive bombing by the Brits (or Tommies in book), reduce Hamburg to rubble. (Eerily similar to too many places in our world today.)  How does healing begin?

I also appreciated the 3 different points of view … kids between 10 and 14.  First there’s the Jewish boy Jacob, ‘a mischling’  who had called himself Friedrich to keep his identity hidden. His mother was a blonde Jew, like him, and his father an ‘aryan’.  Jacob viewpoint confuses the reader because he’s unaware that the war’s over … that it’s safe for him come out of hiding. Then there’s Hermann, with an angry father who lost both legs while fighting. Hermann has to help his father use the bathroom several times a day robbing Hermann of any hope for his own future. Then there’s Traute, whose family hosts a refugee family from East Prussia ... not unlike my mother's East Prussian refugee family.

All three kids want friends and somehow connect in the bombed ruins of post-war Hamburg. The author, Kirsten Boie, does an amazing job of showing the German point of view after the war. Even with my rusty German, I was able to gobble this book up. Highly readable and, unfortunately, still so relevant to our current violent world.

Loved this quote at the start of the novel ...
the past is not dead ... it hasn't even passed.

Orange

This past Monday was Truth and Reconciliation Day. This is the first year it's been recognized as an official holiday in Manitoba.  It’s more popularly known as ‘orange shirt day’ in memory of a little Indigenous girl who was so proud of her orange shirt for the start of school and yet forced to give it up when she went to a church-administered residential school. The last such school closed in 1996. Reconciliation can't be limited to one day ... it's a process.

Germany has worked on this process through Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  The long words of the German language may look intimidating… but this compound word means ‘making sense of the past.’  Germany accepts responsibility for the crimes of its Nazi past and promotes healing through awareness and education. The past can't be changed but future atrocities might be prevented.  Is it enough? Of course not. But what are the alternatives? That's why we need to keep telling our stories, writing our books, sharing our secrets.

Secrets of a lurid past continue to haunt former Soviet zones who have not reconciled with their histories. In Russia, gulag museums once highlighting Soviet atrocities are now closed and history textbooks for their youth are being re-written to better fit Putin's agenda.

In Canada, orange helps us remember. Orange for the children. Orange for reconciliation. Orange for the future.  Every Child Matters!

CBC Interview a Pinch Me! Moment

Ever since I had my own place, back in the seventies, my kitchen radio has been tuned to CBC.  Early shows like Basic Black, Vinyl Café, Writers and Company … current ones like The Next Chapter, Bookends, Q … and so many more incredible, mind-stretching programs. Not to mention the eclectic range of music and clever comedy. That’s where I was introduced to authors like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, Malcolm Gladwell, and so many more. CBC radio made, and continues to make, kitchen chores endlessly enlightening.  I think CBC radio programming has in many ways—for better (some might say for worse)—shaped my view of Canada.  

You can imagine my absolute delight when I had the chance to be interviewed by Nadia Kidwai from CBC Manitoba’s The Weekend Morning Show back in early September. My reasons for writing about shy, imperfect Waltraut got to be aired (and even replayed) on the CBC! It was an emotional experience. Getting some CBC swag just in time for sock season is only a bonus. 

To now have Waltraut included in the CBC’s kids' fall book selection is another one of those pinch me! moments. Who knew that following Nancy Drew’s advice to be curious, kind and brave could give me such opportunity. 

Thunder not bombs

Got caught in a downpour while walking through our local woods yesterday. Wet dog, rolling thunder and warm rain. It was great!  Obviously, I couldn’t take a picture and my words will never do it justice. Let’s just say it was a sensory experience … something to inhale and to savour like fresh bread. The dog, usually terrified of thunder, seemed braver while in the shelter of the gloomy, wet woods. Nevertheless, we didn’t dawdle to smell all those woodsy smells and he very much appreciated the towel rub when we returned home. 

I think of the wars happening on our beautiful earth and how for some that thunder, those stabs of random light, are malicious, angry and filled with hate. When I see an image of another bombing set in our present world … I’m reminded of the past my parents and millions of others experienced. As  survivors of the Second World War pass on, it’s vital we pass on their memories to prevent more war. How did that Patti Smith song go? People have the Power?   A bit of the lyrics: The power to dream, to rule to wrestle the world from fools

Peace on the prairies

Or how about Simon and Garfunkel’s Last Night I had the Strangest Dream.  Taste of lyrics:  Last night  I had the strangest dream, I ever dreamed before. I dreamed the world had all agreed To put an end to war.        

• Why am I so lucky to live in Canada where thunder is only thunder?  In chapter 18 of my new novel, Waltraut, my characters experience a thunderstorm while picnicking in a cemetery. It's a déjà vu moment for Waltraut's mother ... a character inspired by my own mother's fear of stormy weather and of war.

Lake Time

Lake Winnipeg, our inland sea
I should have given Waltraut a photo op here.
Thanks for putting her on Winnipeg's bestseller list!

from Saturday's Winnipeg Free Press

Summer in September is my favourite time of the year … it’s unpredictable and every warm day is now a gift. Storm colours may be moodier and more intense, but nothing beats the blue of September skies, against golden-tinged aspen, with the Canada geese in their v-shaped flocks streaming south filling the air with their squawks of freedom.  Entering the woods is like entering a golden snow globe of scattered leaves.

Tree fungi as colourful as  flowers.

Ha! How can you tell I’m just back my annual fall retreat at Camp Morton? What a place. Totally magical.  Enjoyed chats by the fire, rock hunting along the shoreline, fungal wonders, and, as always, glimpses of another time. Pure magic.

back to school

 

My neighbourhood is filled with schools.  I live close enough to hear the elementary school buzzer.  My kids never had to rely on buses or rides. A ten-minute walk and they’d arrive … whether it was kindergarten, middle years, or senior high. 

While my own children have walked on into adulthood … new kids now pass the house …  I get to witness the body language of young students. Some wear brightly coloured backpacks on their slender backs and skip with absolute glee. “Wait up!” their parents call when they look up from their cell phones. (Yes, it’s a sign of our times).  Other kids, move more slowly, dragging their feet as anxiety weighs them down. 

Middle graders often form small packs … girls quietly talking amongst themselves, boys several feet apart, guffawing and shoving each other along their zigzag way.  Not all of course … there are always the loners, the shufflers, or the ones wearing their headphones, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. And the cyclists … waving as they pass their friends on the sidewalks. 

Then there’s the senior high crowd. These now are mostly loners. Different start times for different classes. So many ways to drift apart.  Headphones on, unlike their younger counterparts, they don’t joke, they don’t push, and they definitely don’t skip. Cars squeal past driven by older classmates or some, with ‘novice driver’ in the back window, crawl with excess caution towards the overcrowded school parking lot. 

In Waltraut, my protagonist also lives close to a school. A chain link fence surrounds the playground and school patrols lord over a potentially dangerous intersection. You’ll have to read the book to see how she feels about the walk to Riverview Elementary, back in 1965.  In spite of the cell phones, maybe not so much has changed when it comes to getting to school on time. 

Glittered Past

My father was an avid reader and encouraged my own love of reading. When he passed away I inherited his collection of German language books. Many were about the war. After all, he might have been part of the Wehrmacht for about ten years, but soldiers had a very limited vision beyond their own circumstances. He read to figure out what the hell had happened between ages 18 and 32 when he finally came out of Soviet captivity. 

 In his collection there was one of my own forgotten books ... Tausend und eine Nacht. 

In my memory, the book, re-published by the Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, had been embossed with glittering gold lettering on the outside.  I remembered that the Ali Baba cave, depicted on the inside covers, glittered with more gold. 

My adult eyes were disappointed to find no glitter … no fancy gold embossing. It's only through the power of my childish imagination, that the images glitter like gold. 

Does that still happen? Do books still offer children that glitter using only plain colours
and words on a page? I sure hope so. 

Scurry Past

The juxtaposition of my sheltered life and Winnipeg's street people is a lingering memory from my childhood. I still see bloodshot eyes leering at me … still feel conspicuous and uncomfortable in my 11-year-old Sunday morning costume. 

Old hotel still stands in Winnipeg's core

Back in the 1960s, our immigrant church was located in the city’s core. Then, as now, the core was a mishmash of poverty and isolated attempts of ‘gentrification’.  After our church moved into the more prosperous suburbs, we’d still have to drive through the ‘Main Street strip’ ... past the seedy hotels and the loitering street people. From the cocoon of our family car, which was washed and polished, like me, for church, I’d stare at the Sunday morning homeless.

The McLaren Hotel was the largest of the Main Street strip hotels.  Others included The Bell Hotel and the New Occidental. Winnipeg’s Main Street strip continues to be a home to the homeless, the hopeless, addicts ... those needing mental health support.  Or maybe, some would just call them ... godless sinners. 

Just like in the 1960s, when my protagonist, 11-year-old Waltraut, scurries fearfully down the side streets to her Saturday morning language school, we continue to scurry past.

The Winnipeg Free Press reporter, Ryan Thorpe profiled Chris Hauch's study in a 2020 article entitled, Out of Sight, Out of Mind. It's a chilling read. 

Old church still stands, too!

Learning about Immigrants and Refugees

Having just written a book about my family’s immigration experience, I started looking around for other novels about the topic to recommend for further reading. I’ll include a small smattering of recent reads at the end of this post. But I’d first like to mention a nonfiction book for young people: Finding Home, The Journey of Immigrants and Refugees by Jen Sookfong Lee. Filled with pictures and interesting facts the book has ageless appeal but might be especially appealing to middle grade students.  Immigration is a universal experience that has been around … literally … forever. I was raised in the Christian tradition where Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden. The first refugees! My mother’s family became homeless because of communism in the former USSR.  My own parents started over in a new country when they were in their mid-thirties because of war.

Over the last six or seven years I’ve supported newcomers to Canada through weekly conversation settings. Becoming fluent in English in a safe café setting, helps newcomers become more confident in an alien culture. All have slightly different motivations for starting over. My South Korean student wanted to escape the stress of perfectionism in her country of birth. My pre-invasion Ukrainian student wanted a better life for her two daughters. My post-invasion Ukrainian student wanted peace and safety. My Iranian friend wanted freedom to be a woman ... equal to a man. My Iraqi friend wanted religious freedom. My Russian friend wanted prosperity and freedom of expression. My Chinese friend wanted to stop being in a rat race.  

My parents wanted a house, a garden and the opportunity to go fishing. They wanted to have kaffee and kuchen on a Sunday afternoon with friends. Friends … I think that’s what all newcomers to Canada want more than anything. To be included and to share a smile, a coffee, a tea or a glass of wine. 

Here’s a few more books I've been reading:

For Youth: 

Belonging by Nora Krug (graphic novel)

From Anna by Jean Little, MG

Uncertain Soldier by Karen Bass, YA

The Land Beyond the Wall: An Immigration Story by Veronika Martinova Charles

For Adults:

In Other Words: a memoir by Norbert Ruebsaat

Being German Canadian edited by Alexander Freund

Next-Generation Memory and Ukrainian Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction: The Seeds of History by Mateusz Swietlicki

Land Deep in Time, Canadian Historiographic Ethnofiction edited by Weronika Suchacka/Harmut Lutz

The New Girl by Cassandra Calin (graphic novel)

Call Me Al by Wali Shah and Eric Walters 

Finding Home: The Journey of Immigrants and Refugees by Jen Sookfong Lee

Dandelion: by Jamie Chai Yun Liew

Power of Names

Bishop Grandin ... the man behind the street

Winnipeg is a city that likes to use place names to honour people. Our city’s history is reflected in its names. Because of this we revise street names as our view of history changes. Other cities, like say Edmonton, use numbers. Personally, I like to rely on visual aspects of a place. The road along the river becomes River Road, the street with the big elms becomes Elm Street, etc.  Renaming streets creates confusion … but it does give us a glimpse at how dynamic our history is. 

Bishop Grandin Boulevard, a major Winnipeg roadway, was recently renamed Abinojii Mikanah meaning Children’s Road in Ojibway and Cree. This is meant to reflect the lurid history of Residential Schools.  It also reflects Canada's growth as it recognizes colonialism for what it was ... an invasion. 

Bishop Grandin, the man who designed residential Schools, has been disgraced. Rather than honouring  the man who was one of the masterminds behind their creation we want to remember the victims.  But we shouldn't forget this man. We should look at the banality and humanity of evil and realize that it looks very ordinary ... that you can't judge actions by faces.

History in names: former Frauenburg in Poland
Name change reflecting Hitler's defeat

The right to naming is the gift of power. Exploring my mother’s history was made more difficult because of the name changes of her childhood villages. Federofka became Kaliniwka, Kreuzburg became Slavskoye, Königsberg became Kaliningrad. Maybe we could try hyphenated names? But that might only add to the confusion. 

In my new novel, Waltraut walks with her mother down Churchill Drive. Churchill’s name adorns streets, towns, ports, schools. What’s in a name? A lot of meaning … a lot of history and a lot of politics. There are no Hitler Drives … anywhere in the world.  

Old Houses

Our family's house buried in snow back in 1966 ... 'Just like in Siberia' my mom liked to quip

Drove by the house my parents bought brand new back in 1964. It’s modelled after a show home featured in my upcoming release, Waltraut. My mom sold it after my dad died in 1993.  

2024

I meandered past last week, trying to be inconspicuous as I spied on the place. I took note of the changes but also the similarities. Some of the perennials, like the Maltese Cross, are still going strong and that must be the same evergreen my parents planted, sixty years ago.  Most noticeable were the Canadian and Ukrainian flags above the yellow and blue painted bistro set. How fitting that my Ukrainian-born mom has a Ukrainian flag fluttering above her dear old house. No doubt, she’d be speechless. Ukraine wasn't a country for most of her life. While it struggled for its identity around the time of Mom's birth, back in 1919, Ukraine never regained independence until 1991.

Scooting down the back lane, I spotted an SUV in the open garage my dad had built back in the sixties. The SUV had an “AirForce” license plate. My father, the former Luftwaffe pilot, just might be grinning his head off. What serendipity that this little dream house my parents bought back in 1964 continues to be a home to pilots and Ukrainians. 

1970s 
My parents liked to host German soldiers training at CFB Shilo

A few days later, overcome by curiousity, I found the courage, went back, and rang the doorbell. The owner was home and shared her background and her pride of the backyard garden where she grows tomatoes and cucumbers.  Her great-grandparents came from Ukraine about 1914 (that explains the Ukrainian flag) and her husband was in the Canadian Air Force (that explains the Canadian flag). And so, the once new house for new immigrants continues to be a home for former pilots and for gardeners. I bet her pickles taste yummy.

2024

Cooties and DPs

Homemade cootie catcher from 1966

When I was growing up, back in the sixties, DPs and cooties were synonymous. DPs, aka displaced people, were marked as different at school because of their possible cooties. While the ethnicities of displaced people may have changed, cruel childhood prejudices haven't stayed behind in the backwoods of the post-war period. 

Unfortunately, the displaced people of today still face stigma and prejudice. Our own ignorance makes us afraid of anyone different. In spite of globalization and a Canadian pride in being open-minded along with our generous immigration policies, kids continue to shun those who look different, worship different, and speak or eat different. And, sadly, the cooties we tried to avoid in childhood, continue to contaminate our adult lives. 

Here’s a link to creating cootie catchers. Maybe by interacting with each other through child’s play, we can catch those nasty, invisible cooties that lurk like viruses throughout our lives. If not educational, cootie catchers can be fun and fun always helps to bring people closer together.

Six blog posts left until Waltraut launches! Pinch me!  Pre-order from your favourite bookstore now and she'll be incredibly grateful!

1960s, Winnipeg, Immigrant Family

Inspiration behind Waltraut

So this is me and my little brother, circa 1965, dressed up for photos or for church … maybe both. Lord knows I didn’t dress up for anything else. My parents worked hard for every penny and our clothes were often homemade.  

I had an aunt in BC who could sew whatever I’d point to in a fashion magazine. Summer holiday visits with her always resulted in an improved wardrobe. She tried to teach me and I did manage to make myself some  clothes back in my teens. That was the only way I could afford to be ‘in style’… even sewed my fancy grad dress. Sadly, I’ve not kept up my sewing skills. They seem as foreign to me now as my lapsed accordion skills.

Truth be told, even at 10 or 11 that girl in the photo would much rather have been reading a book than learning how to stitch a hem.  Now she’s much older and living her dream … reading and writing to her heart’s content. She’s the inspiration behind my newest book, Waltraut, coming out in early September. Now what will she wear?

Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Ah, the scent of sun-dried sheets!

It’s my first summer with air conditioning. How did I ever allow myself such an indulgence? Not sure I deserve it. I’ve managed quite nicely, all these years, without. But when I had to replace the furnace this winter … something I can’t live without here on the Canadian prairies, I had the opportunity to upgrade to AC and thought it might help in selling sometime in the future. 

Before this, I relied on shade trees, closed curtains and fans to get me through the most extreme heat.  I'd reflect that human beings have survived centuries of heat while doing strenuous physical labour … surely I can sweat it out for a few hot days. But here I am … one of the privileged ones … using up more energy while expending less of my own. However, I still hang my sheets outside. That remains from my childhood and I'll continue to indulge in this privilege. The scent of sunshine-dried pillow cases has yet to be imitated.

Star Weekly, August, 1945

Meanwhile … war rages throughout summer in other parts of the world. How can this be? How can humans destroy blue summer skies with dark smoke and missiles? How can this be happening now …in 2024? Haven’t we learned anything from our violent past? I re-read a Star Weekly from the summer of 1945 … the first summer of European peace … even while the grueling Pacific war continued.  

In North America, people were heading to lakes, while in ruined Europe, women, who became known as 'trümmerfrauen' were cleaning up the rubbled cities. Meanwhile, both my parents, still unknown to each other, were helping re-build the Soviet Union as POWs  - one in above open pit mine, the other in an underground coal mine. 

Star Weekly, August, 1945

I sit and read in air-conditioned comfort, flicking through news reports of more bombings, more casualties. 

Yes, these are the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer for some ... I wish it were for all!

Time on the Beach

Lake Manitoba beach

I’ve spent some of the best moments of my life on shorelines … whether as a kid going to camp and singing around a sunset beach fire … as a young person soaking up sun on a beach towel surrounded by the smell of sunscreen … as a mom, building sandcastles with her kids … or as a ‘mature’ beachcomber hunting for garden driftwood. 

Sandcastle construction beside Lake Winnipeg

Even my 2019 research trip to Kaliningrad and Schleswig Holstein involved the beach. If ever there was an edge to sit on, the beach has promised me the best view … of waves, of clouds, of sunsets, of endless storied stones and, equally, of endless storied people. 

Baltic at Svetlogorsk (former Rauschen)

Summers are so short here in Manitoba and we’ve had our share of rainy days this year … so yesterday’s shoreline trip was a treat. Exploring with a couple of kids in tow reminded me of past beach magic. We returned to the city with pet rocks and some caged fish-flies. Great adventure! 

The fact that these kids, who’d spent years in a Turkish refugee camp, got to toast their first marshmallows, ended a rather perfect beach day.

Camp Morton shore

 

Happy Canada Day Weekend!

Happy Canada Day weekend! Hope you get to smile as you soak up some sun, splash in warm rain, smell some flowers, or eat some ice cream. It’s summer! Any thunderous sounds promise stormy weather, not war, and the inevitable fireworks that will ruin my dog’s night walk, are friendly fire. Last year at this time I was hanging out in a hospital, so I know the value of a good summer weekend!

Lake Manitoba

We’re far from being a perfect country, but we’re a democracy worth celebrating. Back in the sixties, my parents chose to become Canadian citizens and raised me to be grateful for its many freedoms.

To the newcomers who still arrive and embrace this freedom … may we learn from each other … and continue to celebrate Canada Day with gratitude. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to reflect the Canada we want.

Things to do:  get lost in a Canadian-authored book, learn some Canadian park history, listen to some Canadian music, walk through an urban park, visit a Canadian lake, eat some fresh strawberries with real cream, or sit around a campfire, surrounded by magical fireflies. 

So slap those mosquitoes and smile! This is our home!

Manitoba Sunset

About Joy

While working on my new book, Waltraut … which comes out in the fall! :)  … I explored the word schadenfreude. As a side note, of interest only to copywriters, editors and such, the word schadenfreude is a noun and while nouns are capitalized in German, a foreign word that has become a universal word, no longer needs a capital.  Interesting?  Maybe, to some.

Clouds or promise of rain?

Many English words and expressions have become ubiquitous throughout the world … but other languages, including French, (ex. Bonjour); Italian (ex. Ciao) and yes, German, have their own words that have become international. Often these are long, complicated words like sehnsucht, auf wiedersehen, or doppelgänger. Schadenfreude is a typical long German word that is actually two words, schaden, meaning pain and freude meaning joy. Combined the word means ‘joy at someone else’s pain.’ For example, we had a recent by-election in our province and no doubt there was considerable, schadenfreude amongst the winners. To be expected. Another type of schadenfreude would be when someone in your class, say a bully, comes down with a life-threatening illness. That would an unkind form of schadenfreude.  

While exploring the term schadenfreude, I came across the word freudenschade. This was new to me and also interesting. It’s more passive aggressive. Freudenschade means a lack of joy at someone else’s success. How many of us felt freudenschade at Putin’s recent electoral victory?  

And then there’s freudenfreude. Is this even a word? Apparently, yes. It means joy about other’s joy. I’m thinking empathy is a great umbrella term to connect us with other’s joy, pain and success. 

So whatever you’re feeling … schadenfreude, freudenschaden, or freudenfreude … it’s best to talk it out and return to the common word found in all three of these compound German words… freude (meaning joy). So freude to you, my friend, whatever language you speak.

Read more about these terms here. 

Joy of Joy