Robin Timmerman says she never wanted to be anything but a writer. However, like most authors, she has had many types of ‘day’ jobs, including secretary, part-time journalist, mother and grandma, and for most of her working life as a painter/decorator with her husband in beautiful Prince Edward County. Robin is a long-time environmental activist (starting with a Ban the Bomb March at fourteen!) and conservationist (served three years on the conservation authority of Prince Edward County). She launched the Bee Friendly campaign in PEC, and gets a special kick out of combining her concerns for the natural world with her stories.
Novelist, Laurie Scott is a retired teacher who was born and raised in Picton, Ontario. She began her career in Alberta, but soon returned to Prince Edward County, the only place that has ever felt like home. Laurie has many interests and is regarded as an accomplished artist in Prince Edward County, selling her work at local galleries and donating her time and talent to various organizations. Writing a novel has been a long-term goal that was realized in late 2017 with the publication of In Like a Lion. Laurie’s next novel, A Murder of Crowes, is nearing completion. It is the second in what she hopes will become a series of at least three crime novels, featuring the same main character.
Donna Wootton is a poet, novelist and resident of Port Hope. She has published an e-book titled Isadora & Lucia and her short stories, poems, and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies. In 2009, she wrote a creative nonfiction account of her father who was a charter inductee into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, called MOON REMEMBERED The Life of Lacrosse Goalie Lloyd ‘Moon’ Wootton (Ginger Press, Owen Sound) . Her haiku poetry has been published in Japan with the Asahi Network. Donna released a her new novel WHAT SHIRLEY MISSED in October 2019.
James Ronson is a life-long traveller and educator. At the age of fifteen, he hitch-hiked across Canada and has explored the nooks and crannies of every province across the country. He has taught in downtown Toronto, Burns Lake, British Columbia, and most recently, in Whitby. James began writing in his teens by publishing a war gaming zine called “Berserker”. He later wrote for the varsity newspaper at the University of Western Ontario. His first novel was a work of crime fiction called Power and Possessions. (Hidden Brook Press, 2015) At the centre of the story is a romantic triangle turned deadly. Through his connection with the Society for International Hockey Research, James became interested in J.G.A. Creighton and early hockey history. That interest was the catalyst for his most recent book, Blood Fire and Ice, published in 2019.
Today we talk to Janet Stobie. She is a writer, family counselor, storyteller, and ordained minister, During her nineteen years in parish ministry, Janet was particularly appreciated for her work with young people and children and she has written a number of books for children both ones which are biblically based and some which deal with current social issues. Dipping Your Toes, one of Janet’s recent books, is a valuable worship resource, containing 44 complete devotional worship services as well as a guidebook for creating your own devotional worship services. Please join us as Janet tells us about her writing.
Welcome to our third programme made specially for the season. There are stories: Gwynn’s, a true story set in Africa about the special understanding between two outsiders, her mother and their Malawian gardener, and mine about a socially ambitious and stage-struck donkey You’ll find more music here than usual, as both Chris Cameron and Marie Lynn Hammond sing two very different Christmas songs. And Chris reads a story about the carol, Silent NIght, and a poem, “Dear Santa”, written by the late wife of long time member Derek Paul..
We hope you enjoy the show and wish you happy holidays!
Please join us for the second of our holiday programmes, This time you can hear stories by Diane Taylor, Antony Di Nardo, Kim Grove and Ronald Mackay. And if you want still more variety, Gwynn and Chris read a couple of their own favourites about the season.
This week we are broadcasting the first of three holiday shows for 2019. Shane Joseph starts with a reading of his recollections, some good and some not so good, of past Christmases. Then Linda Hutsell Manning reads an excerpt from her recently published memoir, describing one of the highlights of the educational year, the Christmas concert at her one-room school. Al Seymour has a story about the joys of sledding and how his protagonists overcome a group of bullies.And Les Robling remembers how the holiday was celebrated during his youth in Wales.The stories are interspersed with a little music, commentary and best wishes for the season from your hosts Gwynn Scheltema, our new team member, Chris Cameron and Felicity Sidnell Reid.
Novelist Shelagh Hurley grew up in Ottawa. In truth, she grew up at the cottage on the Rideau Lake system, which her parents bought and built in the early 60s, so it’s very much in her bones. It’s on the same lake as the Queen’s Biology station. Each summer as a child she saw adults spending their time pooting about having a blast– that’s how it appeared to her, but of course they were doing all manner of research. She thought this wonderful, so she went to Queens, did a biology degree and then a Masters in New Brunswick and then back to Queens to do a PhD, which got hijacked by her going to law school which is another story. She’s been a small-town lawyer her entire career, over thirty years, in Picton. She’s always written, both as a lawyer (but only some of that writing is fiction), and as “writer”. Blackwater Bluff is the first novel she’s let out of the gate. Along the way, there were children and the vagaries of life, and always the cottage, to which she and her partner will retire in the very near future. Then she hopes to get back to where she started, chasing birds and insects, and writing.
Caroline Everson was born in England and came to Port Hope with her family as a young child. She still lives there today. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a BA in Geography, and has worked in banking, retail, advertising & small businesses while raising three children. She also found time to write. In the past, her work has been published in local newspapers and magazines, and she has won two writing contests with her short fiction. Some of her stories were included in “It Ain’t Shakespeare”, a collection published by Cobourg’s Pollard Writers Guild in 2004. Caroline’s first book sale came in 2007. “Ali Runs With the Pack” was part of an educational program from Scholastic Canada. Her picture book, “Song on the Wind”, was published at the end of 2017. It’s an end-of-the-day poem, beautifully illustrated by Anne Marie Bourgeois.
