A good story is a wonderful thing and I hear lots of them every day. But I've always been puzzled -when does a story change from something you tell your neighbour over coffee into something that is told to nation wide audiences on Oprah? How does a story turn from an everyday anecdote into a myth or legend?This autumn is proving a banner season for Coast authors who are definitely in the business of creating myths. An unprecedented number of them are seeing their work published in Canadian presses or they are doing it themselves as self-publishers.
Coast Reporter office is piled knee high in review copies, many of them with Coast interest.
First up, Pender Harbour poet John Pass has got to feel proud with his Governor General's Literary Award nomination for Stumbling in the Bloom. Then there's the Ekstasis Twins: my name for Al MacLachlan of Gibsons with his first novel, After the Funeral, and for writer Jim Christy on the theme of friendship and sex in a seniors' care home in The Redemption of Anna Dupree. (Both are published by Ekstasis.) Remember the droll columns from author Joan Proctor in a former newspaper? She's compiled her funny anecdotes in Happily Ever Laughter, while local Rev. Esther North and artist Helen Broadfoot have produced a charmingly illustrated children's book about the fox hunt. Two downright famous personalities, artist Greta Guzek and writer Howard White, have collaborated on a children's book, The Airplane Ride.
These books are all recommended but here's where it starts to get really interesting. Local resident and environmentalist Paul George weighs in with a mighty book of activist history that includes numerous Coast issues and people, Big Trees Not Big Stumps. The story of finding evidence of the oldest tree on the Coast truly gives me a thrill. It describes how a tree ring expert was left sitting by the road up in the Caren Range one day while others were hiking in the area, and how he spotted something shiny far across a clearcut. It turned out to be only a pop can, but it drew him towards the stump of a former gigantic tree, over 1,800 years old. This is a great story that feels close to home.
But two recently published novels by local authors stand out as significant: Halfmoon Bay author Michael Poole's Rain Before Morning (Harbour Publishing) and Sechelt writer Rosella Leslie's latest, The Goat Lady's Daughter (Newest Press). Both use local stories and characters to inspire them. Poole draws on a dramatic yarn from the First World War of deserters who hid in the woods and tragically shot a local boy. The scenes of the logging camps, the beaches, the "pocket-ta" of the boat engine are all familiar territory. His fictional town of Silva Landing could be anywhere on the Coast and when he describes the trail up to Mt. Elphinstone I'm with him all the way. I know those trails; I've hiked them. I know where this sad story happened.
These stories have become more than just local history; they have entered the realm of mythology. They are images that will intrigue readers and bring them to the Coast to see the places and people that they read about. Wait a minute -that's not unlike the Beachcombers. Even though the TV series has not been produced since 1991, visitors still arrive in Gibsons to this day to see if they can spot Relic at Molly's Reach.
Our stories, fictionalized so well, are our new mythology of place. Soon, visitors will show up at the Village Restaurant in Sechelt looking for Mag and Florrie or they will hike on Mount Elphinstone searching for the deserters' camp. We'd better be ready. Gosh, we have a lot of reading to do.
