Month: November 2023

Allan Seymour

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Part 1:

This week’s show is an encore presentation of an episode we made with Al Seymour last Spring. Recently Al has been involved in organizing a series of walks in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, who visited Cobourg in 1842, which will be taking place on December 7th, 8th and 9th followed by entertainment by well-known local artists, all in aid of the Cobourg Museum and the Sifton Cook Heritage Centre. Al Seymour grew up just north of Cobourg in Creighton Heights, attending Cook’s School, Dale Road and CDCI West, before venturing off to the University of Guelph to earn a degree in Microbiology. For the next 40 years, Al worked in the GTA as a microbiologist. Five years ago, Al and his wife Kathy Toivanen retired to Cobourg. Al is a busy retiree – active with the Cobourg Museum, renovating his home, spending time at family cottages, church, skiing, hiking, walking, and gardening. And writing: Al has written 3 books: an historical novel, a children’s short story, and a political thriller. Only the short story has been published so far. He has “parked” his incomplete WWI story but is finishing the first draft of an 1850’s saga.

Part 2:

Marsha Smoke

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This week we talk with Marsha Smoke. Marsha is the CEO and President of Moccasin Trails, a company dedicated to environmental principles and policies to protect the land. That is the impetus behind Moccasin Trails Access Matting Solutions, an Alderville-based business which takes Marsha all over Ontario and beyond. The company’s name, Moccasin Trails, comes from a story Marsha learned from her elders about the history of the grass dance.

Marsha believes in the power of storytelling to educate and heal and says there needs to be ongoing dialogue and more opportunities for residential school survivors and their families to share their stories. She sees Orange Shirt Day as giving people that opportunity. She is a one of the driving forces behind the Dibaajimowin Cultural Centre which visits towns and villages, often setting up their HQ in the tipi they travel with as they did in Port Hope this year and to Colborne where the community was invited to join in the special commemorative ceremony in Victoria Square Park for knowledge sharing and reflection, moments of silence, story-telling, flag raising and a smudge ceremony. Orange shirts were available for purchase to support the Dibaajimowan Cultural Centre.

Ted Barris

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This week we are rebroadcasting our most recent interview with Ted Barris in honour of Remembrance Day. On Dec. 29, 2022, Rideau Hall announced its Honours list and Ted learned he would be appointed Member of the Order of Canada, “for advancing our understanding of Canadian military history as an acclaimed historical author, journalist and broadcaster. His writing has regularly appeared in the national press, as well as magazines as diverse as Air Force, esprit de corps and Zoomer. He has also worked as host/contributor for most CBC Radio network programs, PBS in the U.S. and on TV Ontario. And after 18 years teaching, he recently retired as a full-time professor of journalism at Toronto’s Centennial College. He is the author of 20 bestselling, non-fiction books, including a series on wartime Canada including Juno: Canadians at D-Day, June 6, 1944 … Days of Victory: Canadians Remember 1939-1945 … Behind the Glory: Canada’s Role in the Allied Air War. His 17th book, The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, won the 2014 Libris Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award (shared with astronaut Chris Hadfield). Ted’s 20th book, Battle of the Atlantic: Gauntlet to Victory was published in the fall of 2022 and immediately landed on the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestsellers lists. Following the book’s publication, Ted received word that he’d received Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Award, recognizing “extraordinary contributions to our community and Canada.”

Linda Hutsell Manning

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Linda Hutsell-Manning’s publications include four picture books, three juvenile plays, two mid-grade novels and Polka Dot Door scripts as well as a literary novel, That Summer in Franklin, a two-act comedy,   A Certain Singing Teacher, which was premiered by VOS Theatre, a memoir, about her experiences as a teacher of eight grades at S.S.#2 Hamilton Township; a one room, one stove, cold water tap elementary school west of Cobourg from  1963 to 1965. She has also written many pieces of short fiction and poetry published in literary magazines. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she now lives near Cobourg Ontario where she writes in a century farmhouse. www.lindahutsellmanning.ca.  Her children’s story Finding Moufette, has just been released by Pandamonium Publications.