Growling at graffiti

I cannot drive across our bridge without my blood boiling. Some idiot, and I use that term loosely, spray painted graffiti on it.

I wasn't going to take a photo of it because I didn't want to glorify the shite-head who did it but now I want to share with you how crappy this is. So let me get on my flip-flops and grab my camera and hustle out to take a photo. Yes, I'm still wearing my pink "Best Mom" nightgown. (It's crazy sexy. Makes Dave positively horn-swallowed, it does.) I don't have time to go get dressed. So wait a few minutes and I'll be right back.

OK? Hang on...

(Intermission)

Still there? So let me just say, I live in the boonies. A car goes by our house about once a year. OK, so maybe twice a year. My chances of going out to the car in my nightgown and flip-flops and being seen by another living human being are slim to none. Well guess what. There I was, trying to work the confounded car door clicker, when a truck went by. With some truck guy in it. I tried to put my arms casually over my flapping boobs so he wouldn't see I was braless. There was no point trying to hide hairy tree trunk legs growing out of too-short pink polka-dotted coffee-stained Best Mom nightgown. Maybe, I thought, he wouldn't notice my large pinkness beside the navy blue Jeep and the brown garage. But oh no, he waved.

Putting aside my humiliation I drove down to the bridge and snapped these photos:

It's cloudy here this morning so the grey skies don't do the "black bridge"
justice but it really is a beautiful landmark and one of the first reasons
I fell in love with this area.

Stupid mindless graffiti on the bridge. 

I love the bridge. LOVE! When we drove down this road for the first time to look at our future home, the bridge took my breath away. I remember saying to Dave, "Can you imagine driving to work every day and crossing this fantastic bridge?" I was squealing with excitement! Since then the bridge has given me many fabulous moments.

The first winter we were here we had an incredible snowstorm
and were literally snowed in. After a couple days of being
trapped at home (a wonderful magical time), the sun came
out and the plows cleared a path and Dave and I walked
down to the bridge.

Talk about beautiful. Why would anyone want to deface something like this?

Naturally we chose the bridge as a backdrop for
our wedding day photos.

So don't you just want to beat the living tar out of the stupid, worthless, useless, brainless, gutless, soulless, heartless, ball-less piece of walking talking turd that did this?

There are only a few bridges left like this in Muskoka. They're old and they're starting to decay but they're beautiful and historic and they say "Muskoka" just as much as the sparkling water of our lakes and rivers, and the dark majesty of our forests.

Meh. Soon as I saw it I wanted to get a sandblaster or some paint and get rid of it, but I was afraid someone would see me goofing around and call the coppers. So I wrote a letter to the newspaper and I called the township and apparently soon the public works department will come by with their anti-stupid-head disposal team and make the bridge pretty once more.

Speaking of pretty, I thought you should see me in my photography gear. (Yes, I'm embarrassed to be seen by a truck-guy but I'm willing to post it online. You guys are different though – you're my best buds and you couldn't care less what I look right, right? Hey guys?)

Terry Fallis, you're the best!

Kevin Smith, that actor and writer guy, was on TV the other day pontificating about his Big Life, taking questions from the audience.

This guy in the audience had two questions and his first one was a beauty, a dazzler. Smith answered with gusto. The guy with the question grinned ear-to-ear because he had asked a Good Question.

Then he came to question two. He was a writer too, he said. He’d been plugging away for a number of years and had never shown his work to anyone. “Would you mind,” he said, “having a look at it and telling me what you think?”

The audience, formerly eating out of the man’s hand, started booing. Smith looked discomfited.

On the chesterfield, in my living room, I writhed in embarrassment.

I had done exactly the same thing.

Not to Kevin Smith, of course, but to Terry Fallis, an award-winning Canadian author, the winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and 2011 Canada Reads, no less.

(Cringing as I’m writing this.)

Obviously I’m not the only doofus on this planet to seek validation at the expense of one’s dignity. Knowing there are others like me is not, in any way, comforting. It just makes me feel like a regular doofus. Not a special doofus.

I did my doofusying about a month ago at the North Words Literary Festival here in Muskoka. As well as fawning all over Margaret Atwood on the Friday night, I fawned all over three of the authors at an appropriately named Authors’ Forum on the Saturday night. The forum included a veritable who’s who of Canadian writers, including Richard B. Wright (Clara Callan), Claudia Dey (How to be a Bush Pilot), Charles Foran (Mordecai Richler, Mordecai: The Life and Times won the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction), Dr. Vincent Lam (2006 Giller prize winner for Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures), Gill Deacon (There’s Lead in Your Lipstick) and Terry Fallis.

The event was called “The Stories Behind The Books,” meant to give us mere mortals insight into how award-winning, successful authors get things done. So I was all about wanting to hear how they write because I am apparently challenged in that department.

I also wanted to do some fawning. Specifically, I wanted to fawn all over Richard B. Wright. We had a connection, you see. When my marriage fell apart a bazillion years ago, my good friend Mark treated me to a weekend in Toronto meant to cheer me up. Which it did. Unfortunately when his marriage fell apart a few years later, he wasn’t interested in a weekend in the country. (Can you blame him?) Anyway, while I was in The Big Smoke, I popped into a bookstore and saw a book called Adultery, written by an author I previously was unaware of, the afore-mentioned Mr. Wright. I snapped it up because my own marriage had suffered at the hands of my ex’s adultery so the topic was hot with me, to say the least.

 

The book was fabulous. Even though adultery turned out to be the least of the main character’s problems, and offered no insight whatsoever to my own predicament, I did enjoy the book and became a big fan of Mr. Wright who, I discovered, was FAMOUS and I didn’t realize it. His Clara Callan won him both the prestigious Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. That’s what happens in Canada, by the way. You can win the country’s top literary prizes and people still don’t know who the heck you are. When I was bragging that I had tickets to go see Margaret Atwood, for example, there were plenty of people I work with who had no idea who Margaret Atwood was. Which slayed me. Knocked me over completely dead. One of Canada’s Grand Dames of literature and they didn’t know who she was. They know all about Charlie Sheen and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, though. Makes me wonder if there’s any hope for future generations.

The point is (yes, there is one), I was all set to fawn all over Mr. Wright. I lined up after the forum, with a dozen or so other fawners, waiting to meet him. When it was my turn I described, in bated breath, how much his novel meant to me when I was recently separated. I guess I was hoping he’d be as interested and excited as I was.

“Uh huh,” he said. “That’s nice. What would you like me to say in the autograph?”

I felt like Fred Flintstone, you know, when all the wind blew out of his sails and the tuba made a funny rumbling noise and he shrank to a mere kewpie doll size.

Oh well. I had other fish to fry. I also wanted to talk to Dr. Lam because I liked the answers he gave during the forum. He seemed approachable and he was. But when I told him I had spent all my available cash on Mr. Wright’s books and wanted to buy his but couldn’t afford it, he got a dazed, scared look in his eye and suggested the public library. No, no, I said, I’m not poor, even though I am, sort of. Things got even more awkward so I excused my self before he called security.

The other person I wanted to fawn over was Terry Fallis. I hate to admit this but I had never heard of Mr. Fallis before. After hearing what I told you about Margaret Atwood, are you really surprised? But Mr. Fallis (from here on in I’m going to call him Terry because he’s too nice for Mister) really caught my eye during the forum.

He wrote a book a few years back called The Best Laid Plans. He shopped it around traditional publishers for a year and it was thoroughly and completely ignored. Not one to be discouraged, Terry recorded himself reading the novel and released it, chapter by chapter, as a podcast. People liked it. They really, really liked it. Encouraged by their reaction, he self-published the book. Again, folks liked it.

One day he decided to enter the book in one of Canada’s top literary contests for humour – The Stephen Leacock Award. This is one of the few literary contests that allow self-published books. One of the stipulations, however, is that 10 books be sent in with the entry form. Terry counted the books he had left in his garage. He had exactly 10.

He told me at the forum that, if he had nine, he would gave up right then and there, not having the further chutzpah and will to publish more books. But he had 10 books and he had the chutzpah and he entered the contest before he could talk himself out of it.

Well guess what.

He won! Beating out major authors from major publishing houses. He won, he won, he won!

“Twenty minutes don’t go by in a day when I don’t think, ‘I won the Stephen Leacock Award.’ It never gets old,” he told me.

Suddenly publishers wanted Terry Fallis. Not too much longer after he won the Leacock award, his book was picked up by McClelland & Stewart, one of this country’s most prestigious and oldest publishers.

The Best Laid Plans has done extremely well for Terry. In 2011 he won the Canada Reads contest put on by CBC. He has already published a second book, The High Road, and his star continues to rise. Just a week ago he announced he had finished another manuscript. 

It’s funny, I went from never having heard of Terry to admiring him greatly. He did what the rest of us dream of doing. He wrote a book. He was ignored by publishers. He said, “to hell with you,” and did it himself. And now he has the what must be too-delicious knowledge of knowing they were wrong and he was right.

How cool is that?

He was definitely the coolest guy at the forum. And he was nice to me. We struck up quite a conversation, me fawning, him laughing and smiling and giving me really wonderful answers to sometimes silly questions.

After talking to him for a few minutes I summed up all my courage and asked him if he ever read newbie writers.

“Yes,” he said. I think his sunny smile dimmed a slight bit, or maybe it was just Deerhurst Resort hadn’t paid their electric bill.

There was a slight pause. I spit the words out before I could change my mind.

“Would you,” I asked, “read mine?”

“Sure!” he said, dissolving me into a heap of happy bubbles.

Anybody who knows me knows I suffer from perpetually low self-esteem, especially when it comes to writing. Yes, I’ve been writing all my life, as a reporter – but that’s a completely different kind of writing than fiction. I only started writing fiction less than two years ago when I was encouraged by a blog buddy named CJ. She wrote Friday Flash stories once in a while (really, really good stories) and she talked me into giving it a whirl. CJ changed my life. The stories changed my life. I discovered I liked writing fiction and I was kinda, sorta good at it. I joined a writers’ group here in Muskoka and started mingling with people who wrote novels and I began to think about writing a book. It was so scary, though. Me? Write a book? It was almost too ostentatious to even consider.

As time as moved on, and I have continued writing, I am beginning to accept that I am a writer. I am also plodding through my novel. It isn’t easy. If anything, it’s probably the hardest thing I have ever done and every day I wrestle with self-doubt.

Sure, my friends and colleagues who have seen my work are encouraging. But I wondered how much of what they were saying was because they are my friends.

I asked Terry, who didn’t know me from Adam, to give me honest feedback.

“I want you to tell me if I suck,” I said. “I have to know.”

He nodded. He promised to be completely honest. I went home that night with a happy heart. The next morning, I sent him the first chapter of my novel and waited, heart in throat, to hear back.

In the meantime, I started reading his book and fell in love with it. He. Is. So. Funny. I dropped him a quick e-mail to say how much I liked the book and how good he is.

And, this is what he sent back.

(Cue happy music.)

Hi Cathy,

I’ve just read your chapter, and you’re good too! I really like Weezie. She’s my kind of heroine. You succeed in conveying a lot about her without just telling us. Funny too, and funny is hard. I’m a sucker for the kind of humour you’ve injected. The purple splotches on her face had me smiling and feeling for Weezie at the same time. I liked the finish too. I think you were right to end the chapter there. There’s not much more to say after the little guy loses his breakfast.

I don’t really have any criticism to impart. I quite liked what I read and think you’ve hit upon a wonderful voice. I think most readers will want to know more about Weezie and what sounds like a great ride.

My suggestion: keep writing and let Weezie do her thing...

Glad to have met you in Huntsville. Keep me posted…

Terry

WOO HOO!

I was squeeing all over the darn place when that e-mail came in. An award-winning author telling me to keep writing! My happiness ranneth over. It was just the inspiration I needed to buckle down and get my novel written. In fact, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo this year and for the month of November I will be immersed in novel-land. Forgive me if you don’t see me online much. I know this will be all-consuming. I don’t have much extra time in a day as it is and I’m going to have go give up some of my favourite things – including blogging, television, potato chips and sex – in order to find two hours a day for writing. (My kids never read my blog. They think I’m boring. Thank gawd.)

As for Terry Fallis, I am so impressed with this man. He is such a fine writer. As I’m reading, I laugh out loud – no mean trick, I can assure you. It takes a lot for me to laugh out loud at books. When he writes about his character, Daniel Addison, catching his wife with another man, I just about fell over laughing. Not usually a funny subject, but Terry made it hilarious.

I can relate to so many things he says in the book. Like this, for example: Addison lives in a boathouse. A BOATHOUSE! When my marriage fell apart, I moved into a boathouse! Who DOES that? Only me and Daniel Addison, obviously.

The other thing, one of his other main characters is named Angus. That’s my son’s name!

There are lots of other aha moments in the book but they’re not really what gets me going. It’s the writing that gets me going. The humour. The plot. The characters – all the characters are so well-written, so quirky, that they leap off the page.

This is how I want to write when I grow up.

Like Terry Fallis.

And until a month ago, I didn’t even know who he was.

I do now, though, and I’m singing his praises to the skies. Find the book. Read it. Or listen to his podcast. It’s still on iTunes and it’s still free. A bargain, for sure.

For links to his podcast and his book, you can visit Terry’s website here, http://terryfallis.com/

Thanks, Terry!

You really are the best.

Pay it Forward Blogfest

I don't know how I get sucked into these things. I woke up this morning with no intention of joining any blogfest, then Stephen Tremp mentions I got mentioned on Laura Eno's website and I see my pal Laurita Miller is doing it and, hell, I'm nothing if not a cool-kid wannabe... so.

HELLOOOOOOOOOOO PAY IT FORWARD!

(Man, I can't stop thinking of Kevin Spacey's iron-burnt face and Twister Helen in her tight-ass jeans looking for bottles of hooch in the kitchen light and that kid, that poor sad-faced little kid who did a bunch a sad-faced movies and then disappeared into kid movie star notoriety. I'm bad at names. And way too lazy to google 'em, cause really, who the hell cares?)

So here's the deal: I mention three blogs I really really like. And then you go visit their blogs and give 'em a follow, because you will love them as much as me, I promise. Then off I go like Red Riding Hood with a pic-i-nick basket and a Yogi bear in tow, off to visit as many blogs as I can muster. If you feel the need to get sucked in, here's the link to the linky list: http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/2011/09/paying-it-forward.html

Here's the hard part: narrowing down my favourite blogs to just three.

One of my favourite blogs, very, very favourite ones, doesn't have a lot of followers, doesn't get a lot of traffic and doesn't really care. My Great White North may have eschewed popularity but its purveyor, Deb, embraces humour, photography and a love for Muskoka, the rugged, beautiful place we both call home. Give Deb a chance to win you over. She will, I promise. Since I've been blogging she has become a friend and an inspiration. You can visit her blog here: http://mygreatwhitenorth.blogspot.com/

Lake Muakoka from the vantage point of Deb's deck.
Photo by Deb or Dave at My Great White North.

If there's anybody who can make me laugh out loud, it's Siren. I've mentioned Siren Song a few times because I can't get over how crazy-funny she is. Her latest thing is posing dead, dessicated frogs (or maybe they're toads – it's hard to tell they're so mummified), photographing them and putting words in their mouth through cartoon bubbles. Ridiculous fun but scathingly, cuttingly sharp at the same time. Yesterday she blogged about her Halloween display of zombies. Gotta love her. You can visit her blog here: http://sirentist.blogspot.com/

I feel a little lax about blogging lately, if truth be told. I'm trying to write a novel (hahahahah - how ostentatious does that sound!) and all my extra time that I used to devote to blogging and writing short stories is now devoted to novel-writing. I'm no Laura Eno or Stephen King. Every chapter comes down onto the page encased in blood. So I apologize for being distant - it's not that I don't love you all... because I do. You know I do. Blogging has changed my life, gave me the confidence to write this book, this tome, this blood-spattered albatross around my neck.

Seagull Cottage by Shelagh Duffett

I have one more blog to mention and it's one I think you'll enjoy. Shelagh Duffett is an artist living in Nova Scotia, Canada and she blogs at Alice in Paris Loves Art and Tea. This blog puts a smile on my face with its colourful whimsy, the chatty conversation of its host and its remarkably happy paintings. One of these days I'm going to dust off my credit card and buy one of her paintings, just because they make my heart smile. Shelagh blogs here: http://aliceinparislovesartandtea.blogspot.com/

One of the things I most enjoyed over at Shelagh's blog was her posting of this simple song. Take a minute and enjoy... it will make your heart smile, too. I promise.

Memoir Writing

Other than blithering on about Margaret Atwood, I haven't talked much about the North Words Literary Festival in Muskoka (Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2011), but I want to. North Words was one of the most inspiring, most fun, most fabu-lishus celebrations of the written word I have ever been to.

This year I signed up for a full day writer's workshop, the Margaret Atwood speech and an authors' forum but there was more I would have enjoyed, including a live book club, readings, and breakfasts with well known authors. Next year, for sure, I want to buy a weekend pass and go to every darn thing they've got.

When I signed up for the writer's workshop, I was more interested in the morning presentation (how to find a publisher and an agent) than I was for the afternoon (memoir writing). I only signed up for the afternoon session because I already had to book a day off work and, what the hell – lunch was included. And you know me, it's always about the lunch!

As a former newspaper columnist and a blogger, I thought the memoir writing workshop couldn't teach me anything new. I thought it might be leaden lessons for a bunch of old ladies who want to know how to write their boring life stories – boy, was I wrong. I mean, yes, the room was full of old ladies, including myself, as well as young ladies and some men of various ages; and yes, they wanted to learn how to write their life stories – but they were anything BUT boring.

The workshop was led by Cori Howard, an award-winning journalist who has written for some of the top newspapers and magazines in the country. She is the editor of the best-selling anthology Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood. Cori started The Mommoir Project to teach and inspire mothers to find their voices and inspire the confidence necessary to believe the mundane details of their everyday lives matter – and make compelling stories.

She started out by reading a few memoirs to us, including Lit by Mary Karr. The segment she read absolutely stunned me – I need to read the whole book asap. Yes, it was first person. Yes, it was a memoir, but it read like a finely crafted book of fiction, and the prose was undeniable – hard-edged, poetic and magnetic in its appeal.

Cori then talked about finding a moment, or a scene, from our own lives and how to write about our lives from the perspective of that scene. She gave us a half an hour or so to write something and then some of us read our stories out loud.

I was obnoxious – I know, hard to believe. But I was so excited about what I had written down that I started waving my arm in the air when she wanted to know who wanted to read first. Picture Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter and you get the idea. Other people were also excited to share what they had written and everyone was excited to hear what they had read. Laughter rang out through the Huntsville Public Library as funny bits were read. Tears were shed at other parts. By the time the afternoon was done, everyone felt a new closeness as well as a confidence that, hey, we could do this.

Cori's right – everyone does have a story to tell. Many stories, actually. All it takes is a little direction and inspiration to get them on paper.

Because I really am like Horshack, here's what I scribbled down:

It’s a wonder I don’t fantasize about the Maytag repairman. Not someone who goes ga-ga over a man in uniform, perhaps that’s the reason; maybe it’s also because Gordon Jump is the actor who is playing the latest Maytag man in the TV commercials, and I can’t think of Gordon Jump without thinking about the dumbass character he portrayed on WKRP in Cincinnati.

No, it’s not the Maytag man that keeps me coming to the big white boat of an appliance hulking in the back corner of our little log house. It’s the dirty socks and underwear that seemingly breed in the washing machine’s presence. My husband and two sons are veritable factories of filthy laundry.

Diesel oil, road dust and gasoline on Dave’s once-navy-blue work coveralls, the ones with “Angelo” on the embroidered nametag because, when he started working at the Huntsville Chrysler dealership three years ago, the woman who ordered work clothes ordered the wrong name. I don’t know how she mistook Dave for Angelo, but she did, and while she has been promising for three years to get Dave his own name on his own shirts, it hasn’t happened yet.

So I wash Angelo’s coveralls, and hoodies out the yin-yang from Angus and Sam. It’s all they want to wear. Hooded sweatshirts, even in the sultry thick of a mid-summer day. The hoodies belonging to Angus, who is 14, come back to me and the Maytag smelling vaguely of goat. It must be a teenage thing, this heady goaty aroma, a mixture of B.O. and, gawd, I don’t even want to imagine what else. I remember my boyfriends all smelled the same way. When I was 14, I thought it was sexy. Not so much, anymore. Sam, who is still only 11, has hoodies that smell clean, like fresh air, like sunbaked sand.

I inhale this 11-year-old hoodie fragrance, so beautiful it should be bottled, because I know that some day soon, it will change. I am tempted some days not to wash it, to put it away in a bottom drawer, to keep it as a sweet vestige of a time before everything changes, for good, and forever.

Meeting Margaret Atwood

Those eyes. Those dazzling clear blue eyes; maybe blue; maybe grey. Maybe both.

I can’t stop thinking of Margaret Atwood’s eyes.

When you see a photograph of her, on a book cover or the internet, you notice them right away, because you can’t help it. They’re stunning.

But when you meet her, and she’s sitting down only a couple of feet away, signing a book, it’s her eyes that draw you in. Those eyes, the ones that stared back at you from books since high school, now trained on your own imperfect self, and you think, when you can rustle up a lucid thought, “I am in the presence of Greatness.”

Rarely do you live in the moment, despite Oprah’s constant urgings to do so. But last night I did. Two minutes. Or so. The stage lighting at the Algonquin Theatre in Huntsville, Ontario, shutting out the hundreds of people lined up behind me, books clutched to their hopeful chests, like schoolgirls, shutting out their distractions, pooling Canada’s greatest writer, Canada’s most iconic author, and me, in a shroud of stillness.

“For Cathy,” she began writing in the book I had just purchased, “In Other Worlds,” her newest book, so new it won’t even be officially released for another week.

I wanted to ask her something.

“With best wishes,” she continued to write.

I leaned forward. She was just finishing “Margaret” when I blurted it out.

“Did you ever doubt your writing?” I asked, because that is what is in my own writer’s heart. “When you were starting out?”

She signed “Atwood,” with a messy flourish, and turned those amazing eyes up to meet mine.

I was struck by her resemblance to one of Canada’s most beloved prime ministers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, her curly hair, her clear, almond-shaped eyes; but also to my friend Mark’s mother, Mary Champion, a historian, a woman of intelligence. I was struck by the feeling that I knew her, that I had always known her, yet I knew nothing at all. Most of all, I realized that I was meeting a living legend and what I really wanted to know was, what is it like being this legend, this icon, this Atwood person?

Instead, I listened to her answer.

Our gaze locked for a moment. She seemed to choose her answer carefully, or maybe she was just sizing me up. Her voice was measured, throaty, as remarkable as her eyes, actually.

“No,” she said. “In those days I worried mostly about who was going to publish it.” At least I think that’s what she said. And she said more, of course, all kinds of interesting things about the publishing world when she was beginning her writing career. It’s just that, as soon as the words left her lips, as soon as they reached beyond the pool of stage lighting, they were as lost to me as if they had never been said.

And then, oh then, I interrupted her.

I did.

I can’t believe it.

I actually interrupted her, in mid-sentence, to say something inane about the many people who were lined up behind me, and not wanting to take up too much more of her time, but would you mind having a photo taken with me for my blog?

I am such an ass, sometimes.

There was a split second where my ineptness seemed to startle her. Then she asked me to come behind the table and stand beside her. As Dave took two photos, I joked about making me look skinny. She joked back (she is very, very funny), then she asked me what my blog url was, and wrote it down on a yellow sticky note. She wondered if I would let her know when I posted the photo, and my heart did a fast soprano trill, and I told her I followed her on Twitter, and how much I loved her Tweets, how funny she was.

“I’ll tweet you when it’s posted,” I said.

“That would be great,” she replied.

(Me and Margaret Atwood. Talking about Tweeting each other. Un. Bee. Leeeeavable.)

Before I left her side, before I stood up straight and walked off the stage into the chilled evening of the last day of September, before all that, I whispered in her ear, with such grave reverence that it almost brought me to tears, “It was such a great honour meeting you.”

I straightened up and those incredible eyes met mine one last time.

Then the next person came up and I walked away.

In the Air Tonight

The turn is on the cusp.

The fall turn, when there is a noticeable shift in the air, in the river, in the way we think.

As it is on our lakes, where temperature and weather's weird alchemy turn the water on the bottom over to the top, flip it like a pancake, pushing the sour suffocating depths into the sun and forcing fresh water down to the muddy bottom for scaly wintering creatures, so too is it in the air; in the trees. In our thoughts.

An Ugly Picture of Me

And from the Ugly Pictures of Me Department, here's a real beauty that was taken last Sunday during the book launch of The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock.

The two good-looking people on either side of me are author Andrew Wagner-Chazalon and photographer Bev McMullen. They hosted a rather nice shin-dig over at a fancy schmancy golf club ... the kind of place where they might frisk you at the front gate to see if you're rich or you're rabble. Nice place, yes, but man it was hotter than the hounds of hell in there. You mean to say you can afford to build a place like that but you can't afford air conditioning? I was dripping sweat. The back of my hair was soaked. Perspiration was running off my chin like a leaky faucet.

And there I was hobnobbing with people I'd never met before, introducing myself with soaking wet enthusiasm to people I have long admired. There was fellow blogger Malcolm Robertson, cool as a cucumber, and there I was all fat and flustered and soaked, goofily trying to be cool, and there was that look in Malcolm's eyes – that scared look like he was dealing with a lunatic. You know the look, right? You don't? Well, I'm pretty familiar with it. If you looked as bad as me, you'd know it, too.

Oh, and what's with my t-shirt? Why's it hanging all funny like that? It looks like I'm wearing a flour sack. OMG, and the neck is all stretched funny. Andrew and Bev are probably thinking, who is this flour-sack-wearing hick dripping sweat all over our shoulders? And why won't my eyes open?

To think I lost 19 pounds before this picture was taken. Can you imagine what I looked like before??? GAK.

By the way, the book is Fab. You. Luss. You can buy it at the Muskoka Bookhouse in Bracebridge or by going online at www.muskokabookhouse.com. I promise, there are no ugly pictures of me in it.

The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock

Bev McMullen.

I admired her long before I started working with her. I was working on the magazine Sideroads of Muskoka, in the Huntsville office, and Bev worked in Bracebridge, and even though the two towns are only 25 minutes apart and we worked for the same company, we never met. I think I saw her at a Christmas party once. She was as loud and gregarious as she was tiny. Like a little blonde blazing ball of personality.

Photographers from all over would submit photos to Sideroads and the best of them came from this woman named Bev McMullen. She had such an eye for it. Her pictures were always painted with rich, strong colour and other photos paled beside hers. I remember wondering who this Bev person was and, when we finally met, I was a little bit starstruck. 

Andrew Wagner-Chazalon. 
Omgawd, I never get his last name straight. For some reason I want to put a Chase in there. Like, Andrew Chase-Wazalon. Even now, as I write this, I am double-checking the spelling of his name. As with Bev, I knew of Andrew’s work with the glossy Muskoka magazine Beyond the City long before we met. Glossy makes it sound hard and unapproachable so maybe glossy isn’t the right word because everything Andrew does is approachable, like the man himself. When I started in Bracebridge, Andrew was away on a leave of absence, living in Australia with his wife and their children. He showed up one day with a big smile on his face and the trace of an accent. Bev describes him as an English professor and he does have that way about him. Bespectacled, bearded. Tousled curly hair. Khaki shorts and sandals, I think. Professorial, yes, but sweet, too. Always takes time to listen, no matter how imminent the approaching deadline. 

Tomorrow Bev and Andrew will launch the latest book they have published together. The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock is a purse-sized treasure of short stories written by Andrew with drop dead gorgeous photos by Bev, all about one rather ordinary place in Muskoka, the heart of Ontario’s cottage country. The launch takes place from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Rock Grill at Red Leaves Resort in Minett. If you’re in the neighbourhood, drop by and and pick up an autographed copy. Because the book is tiny in stature (kind of like Bev), it’s also not expensive. I think it retails for under 20 bucks – forgive me if I’m wrong, guys. But it is a sweet bargain at that price. For anyone who lives in or loves Muskoka, it’s a perfect gift; a perfect microcosm of one seemingly inconsequential place that harbours a ridiculous wealth of fascinating stories and, until now, hidden secrets.

“It’s really clear that this is a special place to many people,” says Andrew. “One guy told me he proposed to his wife up there. Someone else was married there. Another person has a stained glass art image of the place, which his parents gave him as a wedding present. People have scattered ashes up there. While I don’t know of any births, I’m pretty sure some babies have been conceived up there. It’s just a remarkable bit of landscape that so many people call their own.

“I was thinking about my favourite places in the world, and realized something: they're almost all rocky places. The Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand (an amazing hike around the mountain that played Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings); Gros Morne in Newfoundland; Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia; Mount Wellington in Tasmania; Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) in the Australian outback. And most of them have the added beauty of rock meeting water, a feature they share with Huckleberry Rock, as well as the added bonus of being able to sit up high and look down low. I think that's one of the reason Huckleberry Rock is so treasured, because it's one of the few places in Muskoka that allows that. Lots of rocky places, lots of water, but not that many places where you can climb up on a rock and sit high and look out over water far below you. It's also got the bonus of being a place where your view transforms dramatically as you climb. You start out in woods, and in a very short time enter a place where there are almost no trees. That makes it a more interesting place, too.”

If anyone knows an interesting place when they see it, it’s Andrew and Bev. They’ve done more traveling than anyone I know. Bev just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime journey with headhunters – and not the kind who find you employment!

Bev says, “Andrew and I are born adventurers and explorers, we quest to see new things and simply go to the ends of the world to have this wow effect. He to Australasia and me to the Orient and South Pacific and South China Sea. We have both travelled further and to other places but the itchy feet and need to escape is always there. Muskoka offers both of us the escape appeal as simply around the corner is something to marvel at; if that isn’t enough a two hour ride will take you to a ghost town, or a great mining town, or waterfall. We both love kayaking and canoeing.

“We were offered the project of doing the book on Huckleberry Rock last year. We worked on it diligently and Andrew did the writing and I did the photography and found stories as well. We both do everything to make the book happen. The fresh new idea of new size, great little stories and lots of pretty pictures with an affordable price point should be a hit. The traditional coffee table books sold for $50 to $60 and now people can’t afford them. Our books are a series and are great cottage and hostess gifts. We no sooner finish one book when we are on about the next. Both Andrew and I are obsessive about the need to create. We both, when time permits, will be writing about our travels. I have chapters finished and my publisher Yellow Toadstool has agreed to make it into an e-book so I will have some writing ahead of me this winter.”

Bev and Andrew seem an unlikely pairing. They don’t hobnob around the office and if you didn’t know they produced books together, you’d never even guess there was a connection. But people who know them, people who see them together professionally, or see and appreciate their work, say they carry on like an old married couple.

Andrew agrees. “Yes, we work well together. And there is a marriage-like element to it, as we learn to put up with each other’s idiosyncracies and draw on each other's strengths. We've laughed at the fact that many people don't know what to make of our relationship, particularly those who have seen Bev and me together but have never seen me with my real wife, Sharon.

“Bev and I started working together around 2002. She came into the office as a would-be freelancer – I thought she was another crazy photographer, until I saw her work. Then I knew she was a really talented crazy photographer. I soon had her shooting freelance assignments, then got her doing a column once I realized she had a real knack for finding interesting stories. Her columns – Chasing the Light, later renamed to Worth a Thousand Words – were very popular additions to the Muskokan (a local summer newspaper).

“We soon started going to stories together, because Bev can’t write and I can’t shoot! (Well, neither of us does the other’s job as well, at least). We started talking about doing a book, which resulted in Muskoka Traditions, which Boston Mills Press published in 2005. We then started work on a second, called Forgotten Muskoka, but that ended up getting left by the wayside while we worked on other projects. It will probably be revived, because there are too many good stories there to leave behind. I did a book without Bev (Grace and Speed, with painter Doug Dunford) while Bev worked on Carve Your Own Totem Pole (Firefly books). I was brought into that project as an editor and ghost writer, which was a lot of fun,” Andrew says. “When I came back from Australia, we started talking about doing another book together, which became The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock. The topic was suggested by a mutual friend who had a great love of the place. Bev had been shooting there for years, and had a great store of photos, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get stories. But the more people I talked to about it, the more I realized how special it was to so many people. Nobody had any big stories – no epic tales of adventure – but everyone has a little story. That just seemed to be the way to do the book – gathering those little stories, those anecdotes together. 

“I started out just mentioning the project to people, and soon found people telling me their stories, or telling me about people who had stories. Many of the didn’t make it into the book, partly because they’re still coming in. I’m planning to set up a facebook page, so people can go online and share those stories with each other.”

Stories .. it’s all about the stories, this book. Wonderful short real-life stories, all written with Andrew’s classic style. I’m not the only one who appreciates Andrew’s natural storytelling abilities. Bev happens to be one of his biggest fans.

“Andrew is a great writer, I compare him to Pierre Berton and Roy MacGregor. I truly love Andrew as a mentor and best friend, he is genuinely that nice, he never gets mad at me which is hard to believe.”

Andrew says his favourite story isn’t even in the book. “It's the story I was told by one of the guys who owned the property, and who ended up donating it to the township to make it into a park. He bought it as part of a package of land, and didn't really know what he had until someone took him up there. He looked out and said, ‘This is gorgeous. Too nice to belong to one person – it should be a park.’ That's such a marvellous sentiment, followed by terrific actions. I love the spirit of the place that inspired him to do that, and to then convince two other owners to sell or give away their land up there as well.”

Bev has hundreds of photos of Huckleberry Rock and it wasn’t easy for her to choose which of her babies to publish.

“Trying to sort the pictures for the book was hard for me,” she says. “Each image has a story or a tail, it was hard but Andrew was great and in the end I got what I wanted. However I did lose a disc and I was so upset because it was my best stuff. We found the disc when the book was on the press and was able to get a couple of those images of timed exposures into the final copy.”

Thank goodness for that. Already people have commented on how beautiful the cover photography by Bev is. The inside pages are just as beautiful.

I asked them, how do they do it? Have busy jobs and busy lives and manage to produce such exceptional books?

Andrew says it best. “Why do we keep writing books? I think it's because there are always more tales to tell. Bev keeps shooting, I keep hearing stories, and eventually we look around and realize we've got something that should be put into a book.”

Best of luck with The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock, Bev and Andrew. And best wishes also for all the projects you two talented folk produce in the future. Knowing you guys, there will be many more. It’s a pleasure for me to write about your latest book, and to see you in the kitchen, heating up coffee or putting a lunch salad together or talking about plans for the weekend. You’re one of the reasons I love getting up in the morning and going to work.

See you at the launch!

Coming Soon

Tomorrow I am going to have an entire story but this morning I have only a tease.

Two very dear people I work with are launching their new book on Sunday and they're inviting everyone in the Muskoka area to come help them celebrate.

Bev McMullen is a talented photographer and charming sales rep at the newspaper I work for in Bracebridge.


Andrew Wagner-Chazalon is the equally talented editor of some of the company's slickest publications, including Beyond the City magazine. Both are sweet and fun to be around, as well as being prolific collaborators on some pretty amazing books.

Their latest, The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock, is GORGEOUS and it's being launched this Sunday, September 4 at the Rock Grill, at Red Leaves in Minett. The launch runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. I am going to be there with bells on – wouldn't miss it!

I've been working on a wee bit of a feature story about Bev and Andrew. I plan on posting it tomorrow morning. I hope you drop by, give it a read and, if you live in Muskoka, pop by on Sunday to congratulate these two and give their talented hands a shake.

Till tomorrow then!

The Legend of Catfish Hunter

"CATHY! SAM! GET OUT HERE! GET THE CAMERA! I GOT HIM!"

Hell's bells, can't a person even loaf around on the internet for five minutes without some kerfuffle?

Dave's face is positively fuchsia. His eyes are as round as tennis balls and he's got this shit-eating grin on his mug.

"I got the fish!" he says as we run to the dock.

"THEE fish?" I ask.

"Oh YEAH," says Dave, without any regard to his daily limit on all-caps.

THEE fish is the fish of local legend. It is the Catfish Hunter to Dave's Grumpy Old Man. He has been trying to land this elusive pike since we moved here, almost three years ago. So many times he has been so, so, so close: a spit hook; a line severed by the pike's sharp teeth; divine intervention, oh, who knows?

Dave isn't the only one who has tried and failed.

"I had something on my line and there was this huge swirl, something BIG right at the surface, and then it got off," says Vic.

"I had the !$#@$%#^#%& on, too," says Dick, the sultan of swear.
"%#$#$^@!#&^(&*$#."

(Just a coincidence that our friends' names rhyme? I think not.)

Perhaps destiny was simply waiting for Saturday to arrive, when all the seaweed was aligned and Dave's Green Hornet was perfectly attuned to the cosmic tides of the river.

"Where is it?" I ask.

"In the canoe!" Dave says, like I'm stupid because where else would a fish be than in the canoe? Next time he asks where his keys are, or where the clicker is, I'm gonna say, "in the canoe."

Sure enough, there's ol' Catfish Hunter floundering in a few inches of water in the bottom of our boat.

"I had to put him somewhere. I yelled and yelled for you guys to come and you didn't hear me so I had to put him somewhere and run up to the house. Quick! Take a picture!"

Dave picks him up and hoists him proudly in the air. It's definitely not the biggest fish I've ever seen – pike can grow to be enormous. But he's bigger than most of the small bass we catch in the river and he was certainly a scrapper.

"Hurry up," Dave says. "I need to put him back. He's been out of the water too long."

I snap a couple of pictures and Dave places him in the water. We wait for Catfish Hunter to swish his mighty tail and disappear but he rolls belly-up instead. His gills are moving and his fins are waving slowly but this is not a good sign.

Sam and I say "oh no" in unison.

We all wanted Dave to snag the big fish but nobody wanted the big fellah to die.

Dave jumps in the canoe and paddles to Catfish Hunter, who is floating downstream belly up and whose fins are no longer moving. Things do not look good. Dave pulls up alongside him and grabs his tail and turns him upright. Then he swishes the fish back and forth in the water for a minute or so, to push water through his gills and oxygenate his bloodstream. Sam and I hold our breath.

"Is he...." I ask.

"I don't know," says Dave, and swishes the fish through the water some more.

It's like he is doing CPR on the fish; such is his determination. He is applying the same will to saving Catfish Hunter as he used to catching him.

He lets him go, waiting to see what happens. Waiting to see if he floats belly up again.

The fish swishes his mighty tail and disappears down into the black water.

"Woo HOO!" We all say.

Sam and I give Dave a standing ovation.

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of that which is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. 

– Anonymous

Muskoka Drive-In

Maybe 10 minutes away, that's all, but for some reason we'd never been to the Muskoka Drive-In until last Saturday.

To clarify, I had been there, once, to take photos for Summer Scene magazine, but I'd never been there for the experience. It's definitely photo-worthy, this place. Carved out of the bush, the drive-in is nestled between a couple of prisons (!), a family campground and a swamp. Trust me, you do not want to go there without screens for your car (and possibly a gun for escaped prisoners). Dave custom-fit some screens for the Jeep using an old dining tent and duct tape, and he put them up before we got to the drive-in. Smart thinking because there were plenty of folks doing the Muskoka wave trying to set up their screens on arrival.

I love this place, I do. It's so retro and the folks who work there are friendly. When we pull in to the admission gate, the gentleman gives us our tickets and a lollipop for Sam. The entrance looks just like I imagine a drive-in entrance should look, with a big marquee and a bunch of tacky signs advertising things like Shopsy's hot dogs. For me, hot dogs are an integral part of the drive-in experience.

I was talking to my mom the other day about going to the drive-in years ago.

"We went two or three times a week," Mom said. "There were three drive-ins close to where we lived, we could pack you kids in the backseat without worrying about a babysitter and it was cheap entertainment. At intermission we'd go and get those foot-long hot dogs."

"In the foil?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, smiling. "They were delicious."

Those hot dogs play a starring role at the Muskoka Drive-In, up on the big screen during the previews and intermission, asking patrons to make a visit to the refreshment stand for tasty treats and refreshing beverages. I don't know how old those intermission clips are but they're probably as old or older than me. Seeing them makes me feel young.

Like everything in Muskoka, the screen is built into the Canadian Shield (just like my favourite coffee place, where the order box comes out of a rock). When you're done hanging out here, you must go to the drive-in's website to see their Flintstone rendition of the screen. So cute!

The movies playing Saturday night were Transformers 3 and The Green Lantern. We'd already seen Lantern but were willing to see it again, especially since the second flick was free. Trouble is, only Dave could stay awake for flim #2. I fell asleep three-quarters of the way through Transformers (all those gears and fight scenes bore me senseless) and wanted to get out of the cramped Jeep to go home to bed but
Sam was adamant we should stay.

"You're sure you want to stay?" asked Dave.

"YES!" hollered Sam, who has two volumes: holler and whisper. "I WANT TO STAY!"

"You're not going to fall asleep, are you?"

"NO!"

"Okay," said Dave. I groaned and tried to find a comfortable spot to go back to sleep.

Ten minutes of tossing and turning later, Dave poked me and whispered, "Cath, are you asleep?"

"No," I said.

"Sam is."

I turned around and looked in the back seat. Sam was sawing logs.

"Home, James," I said.

Falling asleep in front of a flickering screen is an oft-repeated event in our house. Just the night before I took this picture of Dave, Sam and Misty, our dog, all sleeping in front of the TV. Just looking at it makes my eyelids heavy.