In conjunction with the 50 Canadian Things exhibition at the Arts Centre in Sechelt, author Jane Urquhart will read from her book, A Number of Things (published by Harper Collins) on Thursday, Aug. 10 at 8 p.m. in a special event organized by the Sunshine Coast Arts Council.
Urquhart’s eight novels have won her national and international acclaim, including the French Best Foreign Book Award for her first, The Whirlpool, the Governor General’s Award for The Underpainter, the Trillium Award and the Harbour Festival Prize. Most have been national best sellers and contenders for major awards. The Stone Carvers, for example, was short listed for the Governor General’s and the Giller, and long-listed for the Man Booker. She has also been awarded ten honourary doctorates and the Order of Canada and is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
For her reading at the Arts Centre she will be surrounded by works of art that her most recent book has inspired. The book is a series of 50 vignettes – brief, non-fiction examinations of artifacts, garments, architecture, handicrafts and those items that some Canadians see every day: a canoe or a cross cut saw.
Why Urquhart to write this quintessentially Canadian book? Extensively researched history of Canadians has always been a big part of her books. In Away she describes early settlers from Ireland arriving in Ontario. In The Stone Carvers she describes the galvanizing effect of the Great War on soldiers who are memorialized at Vimy Ridge.
And why objects? As Urquhart writes in her introduction: “…the history of an object itself – the how and why it was fashioned; whether it is organic, or mercantile, or spiritual in nature, or a combination of the three – opens up like a fan to reveal a much much larger picture.”
In an example, she ponders a beaver hat and realizes that it makes her think not only of the animal and its traits, but of the fur trade and all that meant to colonial Canada.
Tickets for $20 are available at www.share-there.com or by calling 604-885-5412 and you can hear Urquhart speak at the Arts Centre in Sechelt on Thursday, Aug. 10 at 8 p.m. Hard cover books for $32.99 will be available for sale and signing by Talewind Books on that evening.
