A map that commemorates the extensive literary history of the Sunshine Coast has been released for circulation, a month before its ceremonial debut at the Art and Words festival in Gibsons next month.
The Sunshine Coast Tale Trail project was birthed by the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society following a 2023 event, which marked a century of renowned authors who lived and worked on the Coast.
Under the direction of society president Cathalynn Labonté-Smith, the group secured financial support from Heritage BC, a non-profit outfit that traditionally allocates funding to bricks-and-mortar preservation.
“SCWES set upon a fruitful journey that will connect and benefit the Coast for generations to come,” announced Labonté-Smith in a post published by The British Columbia Review. Labonté-Smith noted that the literary map is British Columbia’s first to be published outside of Vancouver in nearly a decade.
Researchers Jan Degrass and Mike Starr compiled a list of writers and storytellers by consulting historical publications and cemetery records. Both Degrass and Starr are published authors themselves: Degrass released her latest novel, Winter of Siege, early this year, while Starr published his non-fiction memoir Friends in Nicaragua last month.
The writers’ society consulted with representatives of the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives and tems swiya Museum. A key priority, explained Labonté-Smith, is to broaden the definition of storytellers beyond the authors of printed books.
The finished map — designed and illustrated by Coast artist Jana Curll — includes traditional sháshíshálh and Skwxwú7mesh sníchim place names for notable literary heritage sites. Writer and publisher Stan Dixon, a shíshálh Elder, and legend compiler Donna Joe (also of the shíshálh Nation) are among the featured individuals on the map.
Some of the region’s earliest associations with the written word include Muriel Wylie Blanchet — whose 1961 memoir The Curve of Time remains in print — and former Roberts Creek novelist Hubert Evans, who wrote Mist on the River in 1954. Living authors, like Halfmoon Bay’s Daniel Heath Justice (author of The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature) and prolific Langdale playwright David King are also included on the map.
Authors’ affiliations with geographic locales can include home communities, places of work, or settings that inspired specific publications.
Award-winning artist and songwriter Joni Mitchell is included in the listing for Ruby Lake. L.R. Wright, whose murder mysteries led to a forthcoming television series by Fox Television, is attached to Sechelt — the setting of her best-selling stories.
Curll’s map includes whimsical illustrations that guide Sunshine Coast visitors to significant literary hotspots from Gambier Island to Egmont. An accompanying website — available online at taletrail.ca — provides an interactive guide to encyclopedic listings of writers. More than 900 storytellers, with biographies and photographs, appear on the site.
Copies of the map are available from tourism outlets across the Coast, and can be downloaded from taletrail.ca. The mapping project will be officially released at the third-annual Art and Words Festival, scheduled to take place Aug. 22 to 25 at the Gibsons Public Market. The festival features artists and writers who collaborated to create original collaborative works.
Disclosure: the Coast Reporter’s arts and culture writer contributed to the Tale Trail online database.
