Brussels Airport Opens on April 3rd, 2016

Three flights out of Brussels airport today. Like the rest of the world, I am watching to see how long it takes to recover from the dastardly terrorist attack that happened there two weeks ago. As I also wonder about another attack in Pakistan. But I have a special interest in Brussels because I have a ticket on Brussels Air to arrive there in the middle of April. Will enough flights be restored by then for mine to take off from Toronto and land in Belgium? I hope so as I still intend to go as part of a Friendship Force Toronto Outbound to stay with the hosts of two clubs in Belgium. One in Leuven, the other in the Belgian Coast area. A new experience for me! I have not traveled with this international club before and am very interested in seeing a country through the eyes of people who live there, from the insider's eyes.

Not much more to say for now. I will watch the daily reports on the status of flights and at some point soon check on the status of mine.

Zaventem, Belgium

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THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

 As I work with one of my writing groups on my memoir, Restless, I am drawn back to the place and time where I spent the early years of my life. Years away now and another era entirely. Once upon a time, I thought of it as a novel entitled Frontier Days. That novel later became, Ile d'Or, and it was published fnally in 2010, and was my second published book.That proved to me that dreams are worth following and that the long, circuitous journey of my life had been worth following. Not that there was much choice. When I look back on the journey, I did make choices, but the passion for writing never disappeared. And aside from my family as an ongoing priority, nothing else could ever dislodge it. I am grateful to have lived long enough to see dreams realized - the late arrival of wonderful grandsons and the excitement of published books!

My Books:
One Day it Happens (short stories) 2007
Ile d'Or (Novel) 2010
Would I Lie To You? (Novel) 2014
The White Ribbon Man (Mystery) scheduled for  2018
Publisher: Inanna Publications

Unpublished:
Children's stories for ages 3 to 7
Big and Little
Bow Wow the Elephant
Barker
The New Baby

LIFE OF A WRITER: WINTER 2016

ALL THE BEST TO MY FRIENDS AND  COLLEAGUES IN 2016!

The good news is another  book has been accepted for publication. I finally completed a mystery, The White Ribbon Man, which will be published by Inanna Publications, the press that has done my three books thus far. You will have to wait a while  to read it as publication is not scheduled until Spring 2018. There is the possibility that it will get moved to the fall of 2017, so while  I am hopeful that will happen I am not holding my breath. For the publisher, this timeline is an indication of a vital and full program, whereas it is harder for the author who has to wait to experience the satisfaction of holding and sharing the actual book. Nonetheless, it is good to know that Inanna, a feminist press, is now such a well established and respected press.

Also, I now have two thriving grandsons. One in southwestern Ontario is interested in business and Japan and is about to launch out on a university program in the fall. The other, in Montreal, will be 2 in April and is learning to talk in both English and German. French will come later! They both are  joys to have in my life. I value my far flung family and my friends most of all, although the passion for my writing and learning new things  sure takes up a lot of time! All of these ... family, friends and writing as well as dancing and travel and art and culture have given these "retirement" years meaning and purpose beyond expectations and I am grateful.

There is a possibility that my sister and brother-in-law will move from the west to Toronto in 2016 to be closer to their children and grandchildren. And friends in Toronto who are also  selling their house this year might in the course of their search find an apartment  closer to me. On both counts, fingers crossed!


The purpose for starting these newsletters was to update you on book and writing developments. But 😀 I suspect 😉 the tidbits around other aspects of life interest many of you just as much. And yes, I do get asked about my travels. I have decisions to make soon about that, depending on both money and time and, of course, health .You may find out what destination/s rise to the top in my next newsletter.

Happy dancing! Happy travels! Whatever you do, enjoy the journey.  Enjoy life.

With all good wishes for your health and happiness in 2016.

Mary Lou Dickinson

LIFE OF A WRITER: FALL REPORT. 2015

Another season, fall, is over and winter will soon be with us, if it is not already. Over the fall, I went on doing readings from Would I Lie To You? and meeting people. I read in Hamilton at LitLive on October 4th and in Chatham as a guest of the TriCounty Literacy Network on October 30th. I was the guest at a book club in Toronto on November 16th where I spoke about my latest book and told stories about my experiences of writing over the years. Also was invited to another club in November to talk about my previous novel, Ile d'Or. There are many ways to spend time with a book club, including Skype these days. So bear in mind that distance is not a barrier.
What strikes me most at the end of a year of doing readings and telling people about my novel Would I Lie To You? is how different each experience is. There is always something unexpected even if the formats might be similar. Of course, that keeps it interesting and also means one has to remain alert. Sometimes this is disconcerting, at others exhilarating. Take the experience of meeting other authors when I share the 'podium.' That is one of the highlights of the period of promotion for a new book as is meeting people who are curious and buy the book and those who have already read it. It leads to stimulating conversation and challenging questions. As the work up till then has been solitary, this period is an opportunity to reconnect with the world in a very meaningful way.

 

 

So thank you to all who have invited me to events and who have come out to enjoy them. Aside from that pesky summer pneumonia, it has been a stellar.year. And I hope you also had one and are looking forward to another.
 

 

 

Life of a Writer. Memoir. New Prologue. October 2015

PROLOGUE

The adventurous stories about Uncle Billy I heard as a child left me uncertain about what was real and what was imaginary. Even though my two siblings and I were told many tales about Billy’s discovery of the Banff hot springs in Alberta, he seemed so far away. That changed in the mid 1970s, when I was on a trip to western Canada with my then husband and our two children and we stopped for a couple of days in Banff. While walking down the main street, I spotted a wax effigy in a shop window. As we drew closer, I saw that it was of William McCardell.

“”Do you know who that is?” I asked the children.

They both looked baffled.

“Your Uncle Billy.”

“You mean he’s related to us?” Andrea asked, her voice rising in excitement. At the time, she was eleven, her brother seven.

“Yes.” I was excited, too, remembering Uncle Billy’s hot springs discovery. As a worker building the railroad tracks that extended across Canada, his story was one of adventure, curiosity and often recklessness. No wonder, I thought, that until then he had always seemed like a fictitious, larger-than-life, character to me. Although as it turned out, the man who discovered the Banff Springs, along with his brother and another man, was actually relatively small.

“Tell us about him,” Andrea said.

“I don’t know very much. Maybe if we go into this store and ask, they’ll have more information. And when we get home, we can ask Nanny.” (Their maternal great grandmother, who was still alive at that time).

For me what this man had long ago been was one of the imaginary characters in the stories I made up as a child in the northern Quebec bush.

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

Phil did not seem too interested. “I like the stories Grandad tells.”

My father told stories about South Africa where he lived until his family left for Canada, via England, when he was five years old.

“I remember one about a dog,” Phil said. “It was a small dog.”

“That was the one that saved Granddad’s life. It killed a snake that crept up on him.”

“What happened to the dog?”

“Poor dog died, too.”

But in this act of loyalty, he had saved my father from being poisoned by a puff adder.

“And there was another dog,” Andrea said.

“Yes, there was.” The other one was in a book Dad had read both to his children and grandchildren. Dad loved that dog, too. He loved the way Jock ran free on the Bushveld.

“Let’s go in,” Gord, my then husband, said. “We’ll see what we can find out.”

So we did, and were fascinated by a variety of historical figures on display. We soon fastened on the one of our ancestor. And it was in encountering Uncle Billy’s effigy that the stories of my childhood suddenly became real. As time went on and I discovered more about the various forebears in my family, what struck me was how my ancestors had a role in the creation of a country. From Uncle Billy’s work hammering in the ties and rails of the tracks to the west coast, his discoveries of the hot springs and, apparently, also of oil (along with someone called LaFayette) to other stories about another even earlier pioneer on the other side of the country, Louis Hebert, the first settler in Canada. Another ancestor of our mother’s, he had farmed on the St. Lawrence long before the railway was even contemplated.

So after both children were asleep in our hotel room in Banff, I felt compelled to jot down thoughts about the connections all of this led me to ponder. Until finally Gord said, “You’ll be exhausted tomorrow if you don’t get some sleep.”

Of course, he was right.

I did not know then that a year later our marriage would be over. Maybe he did not yet either. Or that one day I would have published books. I simply kept on writing for another half hour and finally, after that, fell asleep.

Those early thoughts became the starting point for this memoir. Yet I knew even then that if there were any value to writing it beyond my need to create some perspective on my own life, it would only be apparent much later. What began with scribblings about Uncle Billy went on to become tales about the frontier town where my own story started. And even that was in another era with a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.

So, what follows is based on my life. I have moved from the frontier country to an urban setting and from one century to another. And over a very long apprenticeship, I have moved from my early scribblings to publish books. This has been my life. It is my life.



 

 

Coast to Coast in the Summer of 2015

September  4th, 2015

Hello Friends and Colleagues: 

A summer bookmarked by the St. Lawrence River as it becomes wider near Riviere de Loup and English Bay in Vancouver was indeed a good one. It began with the Jazz Festival in Montreal before visiting a friend on the St. Lawrence, a quick trip into Quebec City en route home to Toronto and ended with a West coast family visit. (In the spring, this was preceded by readings in Montreal, Winnipeg and Saskatoon).

 

On a lovely summer evening in the middle days of July, my friend, Ruby, held a party in Toronto to celebrate my latest book. It was such a treat in itself as well as coinciding with the visit of American friends. So Clare and Jack were also able to be there. People mingled, I read from Would I Lie To You? and a recent children's story (Big And Little) and answered questions. It was relaxed and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as according to all reports, did the guests.

 

It was after that I came down with pneumonia and spent most of the next four weeks sleeping. I did not expect to make it to Vancouver at all and in fairness to a library where I was going to read, I cancelled the occasion. At the last minute, I found I could fly, but it would have been too soon for a public appearance. Indeed the fatigue lessened very slowly and I paced myself carefully for quite a while. Still, it was a good summer!

 

Upcoming in Fall 2015:

Oct. 4th. 7:30 pm. Lit Live. Reading. Hamilton, ON (Please come out if you are in the Hamilton area!) 

Oct/Nov. possible. Chatham, ON. Talk and read! 

Nov. 16. Toronto, ON. Book Club Speech and Discussion.

 

And on it goes! Although at this stage I am able to begin to give more attention to the writing itself again! Happy Days!

I hope your summer was both healthy and enjoyable!

Mary Lou
 

This Might Explain Why It Has Been So Long Since I last Posted Anything!

It was a beautiful day on Saturday when the family of my children's father bid him farewell. RIP Gordon. The three adult children, the first two mine, the third Joanne's, were all amazing. Their father would have been so proud. Perhaps surprising for a writer, I have very few words. Just a succession of images -miso soup, seeing a childhood friend in the church, a photo of Gord as a child, blue skies when rain and thunder were forecast, vignettes of people. As a series of disparate paintings I sometimes have pass inadvertently before my eyes that I have never tried to put into words, these images are beautiful. It was a very moving day when all the children and many relatives gathered around their father, uncle (Leslie, Michael, Susan)...(it was a shock to have a woman greet me warmly as Aunt Mary Lou and to have no idea who she was. Soon became clear!) with much insight, sharing and love. Phil arrived in Montreal from Germany the evening before, put his family in a taxi (his 15 month old son very upset and baffled) to their home in Montreal and flew onto downtown Toronto.(He will be happy to be home again). He appeared in his most casual attire (another image), was a pall bearer and spoke very movingly. My older grandson was also a pall bearer. My son in law spoke and then my son did, both with much insight into a complex man and father they brought once more to life in their words, and with contrasting style and content, the two men were the central and focal and unusual part of a very traditional Anglican service that, at Gord's request, his younger (half Jewish) daughter, Thea, had arranged. Andrea, my daughter, was there, often long distance, helping her out at every step and she wrote the lovely obit that appeared in the Globe and the Star. A procession right to graveside after the service. A gathering afterwards at a home in North Toronto. Joanne and I were so very proud of all three children.

The fatigue in the aftermath of the pneumonia lessens so very gradually, but each day is slightly better than the one before. I have not yet made the decision about going to Vancouver, but I did ask the publicist to cancel the one reading the publisher had arranged, a nice one, too , at a library I have been to in North Vancouver. It did not seem fair to keep them on hold or to have to cancel at the last minute. It would have been just a bit too much pressure for me right now, too. I will see the doctor tomorrow to ask some questions, as I am still really tired and sometimes a bit shaky. Even so it feels as if the trajectory is in a positive direction. And I do have a suitcase out!