MEMOIR. Draft Prologue. When Gold Was Worth $37 An Ounce.

Come to Val d’Or for your first million.*My father went to the golden valley because of gold, but I don’t think he thought it would lead to his first million. I'm quite sure he never reached a million. But it was certainly because of the gold that he, a mechanical engineer, was hired by Sigma Mines to design the hoist and to oversee the technical aspects of its operation. It was the first home of my parents who were married in 1935, the same year they moved into a company house built for the first residents at that mine in northwestern Quebec. Here they lived for thirty years and this is the town where they raised three children.

The impact of this town, and others like it across the north in that era, was to create a tribe of northerners, something that remains in one’s blood for a lifetime. Yet other factors and themes are the basis of whatever myths sustained our family. Myths that are likely at the very root of what created the life trajectories of each of the three children, my two younger siblings and me. Each of us might answer differently the question of how and why we’ve followed particular paths, yet there would be some commonalities drawn from the themes of the isolation of a mining camp in those days — the sound of the whistle at the mine as well as the blasting underground, the French language surrounding us, the family silver, the focus on reading in our lives, the English dictionary, the fireplace. Or could it have been mainly the experience of our father going to war that formed us? Was it his focus on overseas as well as on ancestors and family trees? Perhaps it was our father’s alcoholism. And our mother’s joy in good company, good food and dancing.

I knew early and only too well the impact of the alcoholism, but I wasn’t aware of the importance of most of these other themes except as underlying refrains. And even underlying that perhaps it was after all the gold that had the greatest impact on all of us. The gold about which we knew so much more than we were even aware of knowing. For we children of the company houses all knew the price of it. $37 an ounce. We knew that it was melted in a hot furnace and poured out in a liquid stream into rectangular pans to create gold bars that were then hidden away somewhere none of us knew about. We knew it was because of it the miners went underground to that dark place where only men were allowed to hack and dig into the rock, looking for it. We knew these things, but we ignored them as we played games, went to school, made friends who came and went in our lives when their fathers moved from one mine to ours and then away again.

Some of the men probably did make their first million in the frontier era of the gold mines. Probably not by mining. More likely on the stock market or by high-grading. There were always men who brought out bits of gold from underground, hidden in their mouths, in their clothing, in their lunch buckets. High grade gold it was called because it was of the highest grade and consequently the most valuable. And there were ways of selling this stolen gold down the line through mob contacts in places as far away as Montreal, Buffalo and New York City. Like so many things children know, this was something we overheard the adults talk about. We knew who was suspected of high grading and who had put money into the stock of some penny mine that had gone into production and created wealth for owners off in some city, but also for them as a result of that.

I don’t know about my father’s success on the stock market, but he did invest in some of the larger gold producers. He tended to his finances, but in reality he left most of that to my mother. It was his job to draft and design and to go underground to check on how the equipment worked down there. And in 1942, after his third child was born, he went off to join the army. I do know that he was proud of his family, particularly of his antecedents. And it was my father who showed us family trees and how to read the hallmarks on silver. 

Most of this held no interest for me, or only peripheral interest. Except, I suppose, for the gold that was not possible to ignore. Until I went to a writing studio in Banff in 1992 long after my father died and discovered a story there about someone known to us as our maternal grandmother’s Uncle Billy. Of course, we had been told this story but never in as vivid a form as I found it there in a manuscript in the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

As children we had only known this ancestor of my mother’s as Uncle Billy and the story told about him was that he had discovered the Banff Springs. Like gold, another discovery of something of the earth. But it was more than that that struck me as I read from his manuscript. It was in those moments, sitting quietly with his huge, unpublished material that I began to realize ways in which all the different branches of our family had a role in the creation of our country. From the grandfather who worked in gold mines in South Africa before emigrating to the gold mines of northern Ontario. From the discoveries of Uncle Billy in western Canada of the hot springs and apparently also of oil. From the ancestor who settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence, who was the first settler in Canada. And it was at Banff I realized I wanted to explore more the small role of the nuclear family to which I belong in this wider picture. And these themes began to resonate as I delved into my own life and history, tying it to that of a family and a country.

Everyone has their own story, of course, and every Canadian’s story is part of the larger whole that is our country. I just hadn’t thought of it that way before going to Banff and it is because of that discovery that I began to write this memoir.

*“Dans son rapport annuel de 1934, le Service des mines du Quebec rapporte que ‘la ville connue sous le nom de Val-d’Or, située sur les lots 61 et 62 du canton de Dubuisson, et sur le bloc 14 du canton de Bourlamaque, a déja une population considerable.’

A l’été1944, un vaste panneau apparait a l’angle de la 3e Avenue et de l’Avenue Centrale.

On peut y lire:

‘Val d’Or , Québec.

La croissance de population la plus rapide au monde

1934, population: 5 prospecteurs

1944, 7,500 personne prospères.

Une augmentation de 1,500 %

Venez a Val d’Or, pour votre premier million.’”

(*Société  d'histoire de Val-d'Or)

What Are You Reading?

When I read, I feel a sense of well-being when language is poetic and has surprising images and metaphors, when stories are intriguing. I am delighted with books of that exquisite caliber that soothe, transfix, even transform me. This is the gift of well-written fiction. I have been reading practical books about the financial mess that has taken over on a global basis, but it was only when I picked up a couple of novels recently that I was satisfied at this deeper level.


These novels were:

• Itani, Frances. Requiem.

• Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat's Table.

There are many other novels on my 'books to read' list and I will try to mention them at some future date. In the meantime, I'm interested in the recommendations and comments of others. Both for my own interest and for anyone else who drops by this site for ideas about writing and reading.


Oh, by the way, I've been rereading my own novel, Ile d'Or, before my next book club appearance. And I would like to recommend it to readers as an interesting read that will intrigue and surprise you and give you insight into aspects of Canadian life and history.

WRITER'S BLOCK.

I can't imagine there is a writer who has not experienced writer's block. In the days when paper was used, fear of 'the blank page' captured the condition. There ought to be a contest for the number of ways  a writer avoided sitting down to confront this page. Or nowadays, 'the blank screen.'

What would your list look like?
Mine might involve:

• making a phone call. For me this is usually a terrible solution that distracts me further from work and creativity, but wonderful for that ongoing sense of isolation that occurs when facing the page. 
• Putting the dishes away. Well, after all, like the laundry, the ironing, making the beds, taking out the garbage, it needs to be done. Just not now!
• Going for a walk. For me usually a wonderful solution in that ideas begin to flow then. I usually wait too late to take this walk and have gone through all my other time wasting techniques to no avail. When following a more ongoing routine than I do now, I took an early morning walk and then another late in the day when I wanted to make the transitions in and out of writing. Lax as this may sound, it created a structure and discipline of its own.
• This summer when I was on crutches and couldn't walk I took up baking when I wasn't sure where or how to start on some piece of writing. Now that the crutches are almost gone, I will have to go back to walking a lot as I gained 10 lbs. Oh happy day! 

I think you get the picture. You probably do a lot of the same things. Or similar ones. When someone asks me what to do to start writing, my immediate thought is 'Sit down.' So I sit down at the computer at some point and open my word processing program and begin. If one manuscript has left me blank, I start with another. That may start me working in an entirely different direction for a while, but I usually have a number of things on the go and rather than writers' block, my problem is often focus. But we could talk about that another time! Or not.

What about you?

• 
  

So You Want to Write. Some Questions to Ask Yourself

People seem endlessly fascinated by the routine writers follow. Often they don't know how much work it involves and isn't simply a matter of some inspiration that carries a story or book to completion. While an idea may come in a sudden flash, the story that follows may take months to write. And when do I do that writing? 


The flash has sometimes come in the middle of the night and I have then spent the night writing something that became the backbone for a story. But the ongoing work of writing and revising happens during the day for me. Generally in the morning. Although I've had various routines to fit different stages of my life. One period when I took time from employment at the various places I worked to make ends meet (and sometimes because I believed in and/or enjoyed the work), I found working during my children's school hours was the only time I wouldn't be distracted too often.

When my children left home, I fit my writing time around my other employment. I made a point of not working on Mondays at the job and taking that day to write. I had the good fortune of job sharing with someone who wanted Fridays off so I was able to follow that regimen for quite a few years. Since retirement from outside employment, I don't write at the same time every day. However, I have a minimum amount of time for writing each day that is on the low side and I make sure to meet that. What I find is that I more often than not exceed it. But at the same time, I don't feel as if I am missing out on what the outside world has to offer that I want to explore.

The questions to ask yourself if you, too, think you want to write likely go something like this:

1. Do you have a deep need or a strong urge to share a story? You may know that everyone has a story to tell, but that not everyone can write. Can you write yours? Are you willing to spend a minimum of an hour or two a day on this? Are you willing to spend more time if you find the story requires more to develop?
2. Are you willing to revise and revise and revise?
3.  Are you able to face rejection when you send your work to editors/publishers? Do you know how difficult it is to find a publisher?
4. Do you know how difficult it is to find an agent? The agent is looking for someone who has already published a book or two, the writer without a book published has difficulty getting their work looked at at all. Sometimes it seems like a mug's game.
5. Would you consider self publication?
6. Do you have any idea how rapidly the whole face of publishing is changing? With electronic media as well as the traditional book publishers now in the field, do you have the energy to learn about what is going on so that you can make the best decisions about submitting your work?And what kind of contract you need when it is accepted?
7. Are you aware that it is difficult to get most books reviewed anywhere, that books have a short shelf life and require as much time devoted to them after publication if you want sales as during the writing process?
8. Are you willing to put a lot of time and effort into promoting your book once it is published, in whatever format?
9. Are you aware that only a small number of writers make significant amounts of money from their writing? 
10. Are you going to sit down today and start?

If you don't seem to have a choice about whether you write your story or not even if you find your answers to the above questions discouraging, just get cracking!

AND GOOD LUCK TO YOU!