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A new chapter

Whistler is writing its own festival for readers and writers

A few years ago, Stella Harvey broke her wrist while she was skiing.

Hopped up on pain medication, she was wheeled out of emergency and ran into someone she knew. News travelled quickly. By the time she and her husband, Dave, got home there were three messages on her answering machine asking if she was all right and offering help. "I'm a city girl," Harvey says, "but I love that about a small town. And now it's home."

Harvey shared this story over tea in the village after I told her that a dental hygienist who was cleaning my teeth recently relayed, excitedly, that the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, the event Harvey first started in her living room 12 years ago, was selling tickets at an even faster rate than last year.

Buoyed by $30,000 from the Resort Municipality of Whistler's Festivals Events & Animation funding, this year's festival is on track to be the biggest yet. It's stacked with award-winning headliners and, a few days before the event on Oct. 18 – 20, just under 400 people had bought over 1,000 tickets, compared to 400 people in total last year buying 600 tickets. To top it off, nearly 70 per cent of those tickets were purchased by people outside the resort, from as far away as California and Ontario.

Those numbers could go a long way to securing future funding for the festival from the FE&A pool, which is designed to help grow existing events and draw visitors during slower seasons in the resort. But the festival couldn't have reached this point without the enthusiastic support of locals who have volunteered or attended the festival without fail over the years, Harvey says. "It really has been the support of this community that has brought its success," she says. "From 20 people in my living room, then you have 100 people, then you have 300 people. Lots of times it was only Whistlerites who came and now, so far this year, about 68 per cent of people who have bought tickets are from outside the corridor. It's shocking."

But the festival has grown incrementally each year, and Harvey says she's taken lessons from each installment. For instance, at first she shied away from attention-grabbing headliners and, instead, focused on those authors who needed a boost. "The (first) time I had one headliner, it drew a lot of people in, but when you have a combination of headliners or people who are well known on the same stage with people who are less known, you shine a light on those people," she says. "A lot of times people end up buying that person's book or they find a new author they didn't know about. That's a big part of why I do it."

This year authors and participants, like Will Ferguson, Patrick deWitt, Lisa Moore and CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi, will take part in conversations, workshops and panel discussions. The workshops, meanwhile, range from crafting memoirs to revising drafts and writing for magazines.

As locals might know, it was only a couple of years ago that Harvey — also a writer — almost gave up the not-for-profit festival. She and a small group of dedicated volunteers had been putting it on for a decade and it was exhausting. Coupled with the death of her mother, she wasn't sure she could continue. "I often wondered if people were getting sick of me because I'd be knocking on doors saying, 'Let's go for coffee and talk about the Writers Fest,''" she says. "After a while you wonder if you should just give up, if it's worth it. But then I have this other side to me, the pushy broad side, the stubborn side, and I just can't give up."

The next year, the festival received $4,000 in FE&A money. Not a lot compared to the recent funding, but it was enough to put on their Jazz & Wine event. That event ended up overselling. "I can't tell you (how much it meant)," she says. "Even last year, the $4,000, for us it meant a great deal."

The RMOW has also been watching the growth of the festival over the years. "This year we've invested $30,000," says Mayor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden. "The idea is to generate additional room nights and, apparently, there are 80 room nights already booked at the Fairmont (the majority of the workshops and events are taking place at that hotel). One of the purposes of the FE&A funding is to try and level out the peaks and valleys of occupancy... There is a criterion that's used when people apply for FE&A funding. Certainly the past record of performance of a festival comes into play."

For author Ania Szado the festival lineup and offering of workshops is on par with any of the other writing events across the country she's been to. Chosen as this year's writer-in-residence, a program run through the festival, Szado adds that Whistler as a whole has proven to be inspiring.

"I think it's very impressive," she says of the festival roster. "There's an awful lot here, no matter what your interests are, whether you want to learn or listen, there are so many ways to connect with people and get insight into different aspects of writing. The authors that are coming, I'm really excited."

She will be teaching the historical fiction workshop, but hopes to take in more of the festival as well. Events like these are valuable to the literary world, she says. "It's a chance to share your work with readers and (introduce) new readers to your book," she says. "It's also a wonderful opportunity to meet other writers and feel the sense of community both with writers and with readers. The other thing that is really lovely is whenever you are part of a festival you meet the people who make these things happen that have such passion for getting readers and writers together. It's really gratifying and quite amazing how much work and commitment people like, in this case, Stella Harvey, put into putting these things together."

While Harvey learned two years ago that she wouldn't be able to let the festival go entirely, she hopes that someone might take it over eventually. To that end, she says she would like to secure enough funding — perhaps through ticket sales revenue — to hire one employee or hand the festival over to a larger organization. "It's going to continue," she says. "I'll take everybody kicking and screaming with me, but I think for the long term, it would be really nice to have at least one staff member who is dedicated to making this a success. Then I could mentor or support it."

She stresses, again, that she was overjoyed with the additional funding this year, but it goes quickly — even with recently implemented cost-saving strategies like sharing authors with the Vancouver International Writers Festival. "We pay the writer's union fee, transportation, hotel, per diem. One author could be $1,000 and that's not a headliner," she says.

This year, though, one workshop — Memoir Writing — Where to Begin? — has already sold out and many others are close to capacity. Harvey dreads turning people away throughout the weekend, but as she admits, it's a nice problem to have. "Last year we sold out all our major events," she says. "In fact, I had to turn away people on the Friday night, which I absolutely hate to do. I like to be inclusive, so it's really hard when you have to say, 'I'm sorry, there's no room.'"

Still, it's important to her to maintain the intimacy of the festival that gives it its charm, both for writers and readers. "There are going to be a lot of people, but there's a lot of opportunity as well for having a chat with an author and meeting an author and sharing a glass of wine," she says. "I think that connection is really important to people."

For more festival information and tickets visit theviciouscircle.myshopify.com/pages/festival-2013

 

The Sisters Brothers

By Patrick deWitt</p>

Excerpt

I was sitting outside the Commodore's mansion, waiting for my brother Charlie to come out with news of the job. It was threatening to snow and I was cold and for want of something to do I studied Charlie's new horse, Nimble. My new horse was called Tub. We did not believe in naming horses but they were given to us as partial payment for the last job with the names intact, so that was that. Our unnamed previous horses had been immolated, so it was not as though we did not need these new ones but I felt we should have been given money to purchase horses of our own choosing, horses without histories and habits and names they expected to be addressed by. I was very fond of my previous horse and lately had been experiencing visions while I slept of his death, his kicking, burning legs, his hot-popping eyeballs. He could cover sixty miles in a day like a gust of wind and I never laid a hand on him except to stroke him or clean him, and I tried not to think of him burning up in that barn but if the vision arrived uninvited how was I to guard against it? Tub was a healthy enough animal but would have been better suited to some other, less ambitious owner. He was portly and low-backed and could not travel more than fifty miles in a day. I was often forced to whip him, which some men do not mind doing and which in fact some enjoy doing, but which I did not like to do; and afterward he, Tub, believed me cruel and thought to himself, Sad life, sad life.

 

Caught

By Lisa Moore

Excerpt

Slaney broke out of the woods and skidded down a soft embankment to the side of the road. There was nothing but forest on both sides of the asphalt as far as he could see. He thought it might be three in the morning and he was about two miles from the prison. It had taken an hour to get through the woods.

He had crawled under the chain-link fence around the yard and through the long grass on the other side. He had run hunched over and he'd crawled on his elbows and knees, pulling himself across the ground, and he'd stayed still, with his face in the earth, while the searchlight arced over him. At the end of the field was a steep hill of loose shale and the rocks had clattered away from his shoes.

The soles of Slaney's shoes were tan-coloured and slippery. The tan had worn off and a smooth patch of black rubber showed on the bottom of each shoe. He'd imagined the soles lit up as the searchlight hit them. He had on the orange coveralls. They had always been orange, but when everybody was wearing them they were less orange.

For an instant the perfect oval of hard light had contained him like the shell of an egg and then he'd gone animal numb and cringing, a counterintuitive move, the prison psychotherapist might have said, if they were back in her office discussing the break — she talked slips and displacement, sublimation and counter-intuition, and allowed for an inner mechanism he could not see or touch but had to account for — then the oval slid him back into darkness and he charged up the hill again.

 

Finding Jim

By Sue Oakley-Baker

Excerpt

Before heading back to Canada, we rafted Nepal's Karnali River.

Neither of us were water experts, so we decided to hire a company. A 20-hour bus ride and two days of trekking later, we arrived at the put-in for the Karnali River. The lead raft guide took one look at the river level and said, "Holy shit, I've never seen the water so high. It's really pushy."

As the guides worked to prepare the rafts, they noticed we were short one life jacket. The Nepalese fellow who would steer the gear raft drew the short straw, and the rest of the crew wrapped him in a foam sleeping pad and some duct tape, hoping that would keep him afloat if an accident occurred.

The guides piled the gear in the middle of the rafts. Seven clients sank into the sponsons around the edge of each boat, toes hooked under a rope to keep from falling backwards. There was only room for six people, but we crammed in.

We began the trip with three strikes against us: heavy boats, one man without a life jacket and an abnormally high, fast-flow- ing river. We would be on the river for 10 days and navigate 20 rapids, some as difficult as Class IV plus. The international scale of river difficulty describes Class IV using words such as "dangerous," "boiling" and "violent." Ignorance was bliss for me. It didn't occur to me that an established rafting company recommended by a North American guide would put its clients at risk. At the time, I did not know that liability is less stringent in Nepal than in Canada and that companies do not rely on return clientele.

On the first day, we stopped at the only village we would see for the next several days. The guides bought a live chicken and strapped it face down, clucking, to the front of the gear raft.

The Karnali ripped 20 of us from our rafts that day. Some people floundered in the pumping, grey-brown river for more than three kilometres before a guide caught up to them and pulled them out. The metallic taste of the silt water lingered in my mouth until after dinner.

On our second day on the river, the group crouched around the sandy campsite listening to the lead guide.

"The river is down 1.5 metres this morning, so it won't be as pushy or as fast. We are going to stay closer together today and be more careful."

People murmured. We knew what lay ahead: a snaking canyon four kilometres long whose vertical rock walls blocked the sun and strangled the river into frothing whitewater areas called God's House, Flip 'n' Strip, and Juicer.

"I know there is talk going around. People are scared about what happened yesterday. But we've got everything under control. Today will be better."

People spoke in hushed voices as we boarded the rafts and pushed off into the current. Downriver we heard what sounded like the roar of a waterfall. Rounding a corner, the water picked up speed. Our raft plunged first into the boiling rapids and a wave higher than the length of our five-metre boat reared up in front of us.

"Paddle!" the guide yelled as we hit a wall of water. The wave pushed our raft vertical to the sky and we stalled. In that second, I saw the cavernous black hole on the backside of the wave. I groped at air with my paddle. And then I plummeted.

Our raft went end over end. All I could see were bubbles and black. When I surfaced and opened my mouth for air, another wave slammed me back under. I thrashed. My life jacket fought against the sucking action of the river and pulled me to the surface in what seemed like slow motion. I remembered the instructions the guides gave us in case we tipped: "Hold on to your paddle. Try to grab hold of the side of the boat and then try to get on top of the boat to help the guide flip it back over." I grabbed the side of our overturned raft and the guide pulled me on top, along with one other rafter. Water streamed from his face and hair as he shouted, "Reach down and hold onto the cord alongside the boat!" We mimicked his actions and squatted to grab the elastic cord. "Okay, now on the count of three, pull up and lean back hard!" he commanded. We obeyed, and by the time I realized what was going on, it was too late. We catapulted back into the river. I squeezed my paddle and lunged for the side of the raft again. The guide was already inside and hauled me up by the life jacket. Instinctively, I scanned the waves for others who needed rescue. Within five minutes we had the whole team aboard and were plunging our paddles into the water.

A dozen strokes later our guide pushed his whole weight into the rudder and shouted for the people on the left to paddle hard.

The raft was too heavy for a last-minute change in direction. The river swept us toward a "hole," a "keeper," a whirlpool that sucks things in and swirls them around underwater like a washing machine and spits them out or, sometimes, keeps circulating them.

The hole vacuumed the left side of our raft and dragged me underwater. Kicking with my legs and beating my arms, I surfaced underneath the raft. I gulped some air and forced myself underwater again and groped my way out. I hung on to the cord on the side of the raft and tried to catch my breath as water crashed against my face.

 

Indian Horse

By Richard Wagamese

Excerpt

Father Quinney and Sister Ignacia protested at first about my age and small size and the effect that breaching rules would have on the rest of the children. But once Father Quinney saw me play, things changed.

"He has a God-given gift for it, Sister," he said when Sister Ignacia pressed the issue.

I kept my morning job, but now I wore the skates when I shovelled. Once the ice was cleared I would pull one of the nets from its place on the snowbank and dangle my boots from the corners and practice hitting them with wrist shots. I created skating drills for myself. I did figure eights in both directions. I did them skating backwards. I set up lines of pucks and practiced cutting between them at as fast a speed as I could manage, switching between skating forward and backwards as I did it. I'd watched figure skaters on Father Leboutilier's television, and I started to mimic their movements in my play. I made spinning turns, abrupt changes of direction on one foot. There wasn't a nuance that I didn't try to incorporate into what felt like flying, being borne across the sky on great wings. I loved that. I was a small boy with outsized skates, and in the world that hockey had created I found a new home.

I'd never heard from my parents. Maybe they couldn't find me. Maybe their shame over abandoning us in the bush was too great. Or maybe the drink had taken them over as easily as hockey had claimed me. Some nights I felt crippled by the ache of loss. But I knew that loneliness would be dispelled by the sheen of the rink in the sunlight, the feel of cold air on my face, the sound of a wooden stick shuffling frozen rubber.

 

419

By Will Ferguson

Excerpt

Would you die for your child?

This is the only question a parent needs to answer; everything else flows from it. In the kiln-baked emptiness of thorn-bush deserts. In mangrove swamps and alpine woods. In city streets and snowfalls. It is the only question that needs answering.

The boy's father, knee deep in warm mud, was pulling hard on fishing nets splashing with life. Mist on green waters. Sunlight on tidal pools.

1.

A car, falling through darkness.

End over end, one shuddering thud following another. Fountains of glass showering outward and then — a vacuum of silence collapsing back in.

The vehicle came to rest on its back, at the bottom of an embankment below the bridge and propped up against a splintered stand of poplar trees. You could see the path it had taken through the snow, leaving a churned trail of mulch and wet leaves in its wake.

Into the scentless winter air: the seeping odor of radiator fluid, of gasoline.

They climbed down on grappling lines, leaning into their descent, the lights of the fire trucks and ambulances washing the scene in alternating reds and blues, throwing shadows first one way and then the next. Countless constellations in the snow. Glass, catching the light.

When the emergency team finally arrived at the bottom of the embankment they were out of breath, their voices forming ice-crystal clouds.

Within the folded metal of the vehicle: a buckled dashboard, flattened roof, bent steering wheel, more glass and — in the middle — something that had once been a man. White hair, wet against the skull, matted now in a thick red mud.

"Sir! Can you hear me?"

His lips were moving as the life poured out of him to wherever it is life goes.

"Sir!"

But no words came out, only bubbles.

2.

Doors glide open, the sheets of glass parting like a magician's gesture as the West African air swarms in. The heat outside is so strong it pushes her back into the airport. She shields her eyes, stands a moment as the bodies shove past her.

On the other side of the pavement, a chain-link fence keeps the riff-raff at bay. Riff-raff and relatives. Taxi drivers and waiting uncles. Shouts and frantic wavings, hand-inked signs reading TAXI 4 YOU and LAGOS ISLAND DIRECT. She is looking for her name among these signs. Even with the jet lag and nausea weighing upon her, even with the flight-induced cramps in her calves and the heaving cattle queues she's been corralled through, the customs officials that rummaged through her carry-on looking for stashed treasures only to throw her disheveled belongings back at her in disappointment, and even with the skin-shock of airport air conditioning coming up against the blast-furnace heat outside, even with that, perhaps because of that, she feels oddly elated. Calmly excited.

Sweat is forming, the condensation that comes from colliding weather patterns. It trickles down her collarbone, turns limp hair damp, and damp hair wet; it beads into droplets on her forehead. Somewhere: her name. She sees it waving above the mob on the other side of the chain-link fence. But just as she is about to walk across, a voice behind her coos "Madam?" She turns, finds herself facing an armed officer in a starched green uniform, sunglasses reflecting her face back at her in a wraparound, panoramic mirror. "Madam, please. You will come with me."

It is almost a question, the way he says it. Almost, but not quite.

"Madam. You will come with me."

She pulls her carry-on closer: the only luggage she has. "Why?"

"Airport police, madam. The inspector, he wishes to speak with you."



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