Dave Vaughan’s journey through the world of drama and storytelling is eclectic. In the neon glow of the early 1980s, Dave first stepped into the spotlight, breathing life into characters on stage in productions like “Inherit the Wind” and “L’il Abner.” However, the allure of the stage soon gave way to the pragmatic call of engineering, leading Dave down a divergent path in the transportation industry. For nearly three decades, Dave’s creative spark simmered quietly, overshadowed by the demands of his career. But in 2010 he made a triumphant return to the performing arts. This time, the silver screen beckoned, and Dave answered. His pivotal moment came with “Hokum,” a film by Jared Bratt that not only showcased Dave’s compelling lead performance but also benefited from his co-writing. This award-winning project marked a turning point, steering him towards the art of scriptwriting, a skill he honed at George Brown College. The transition from actor and scriptwriter to novelist seemed a natural progression. His debut novel, Ballet of Deception, weaves a tapestry of intrigue and drama. Not content to rest on his laurels, Dave is currently putting the finishing touches on his second novel, Babe Lincoln’s Twisted Tale, due for release later this year.
Recent Programs
Shane Joseph
Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. He is the author of seven novels and three collections of short stories. Shane’s second novel, After the Flood, a dystopian novel of hope, released in 2009, won the Write Canada Award for best novel in the futuristic/fantasy category. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies all over the world. His blog at http://www.shanejoseph.com is widely syndicated, he has a monthly column in The Sri Lankan Anchorman journal, and is the Book Reviews Editor for Devour Art & Lit Magazine. His most recent novel, Empire in the Sand, was released in September 2022. Shane is the owner and publisher of Blue Denim Press (www.bluedenimpress.com), a literary press he founded in 2011. He is responsible for editing, formatting, cover design, production, distribution, and promotion at his press. To date, the press has published over 40 titles (fiction and non-fiction) in paperback and e-book formats. In particular, Shane loves editing to release the story from within the words.
Patricia Calder
Patricia Calder is a writer and photographer who loves nature. As a photographer, she created a website, showed her horse images at the Royal Winter Fair, visited Sable Island to photograph the feral horses and BC’s Great Bear Rain Forest to capture images of the Spirit Bears, and mounted several solo shows around Northumberland County. As a writer, she has published a novel, Roadblock, short stories in anthologies, and articles in newspapers; the most notable of these were “Stand down, soldier” written during the war in Afghanistan, and “The Gifts of Alzheimer’s” published in the Globe and Mail. In recent years she has edited and published her Grandmother’s WW2 scrapbook, written a commentary on the series of documents, and helped prepare and arrange the material for publishing in The University of Windsor’s digital archives where the story of her Uncle Jack will be stored and available to readers from anywhere and at any time. Presently she is working on a fictional account of Jack Calder’s life as a navigator in the RCAF and a newspaperman and his relationship with his mother based on such letters as have been preserved, articles, written during the war by Jack Calder and Pat’s own close relationship with her Grandmother.
New Year’s Eve episode
This week we present our final holiday show for 2023. This is an encore presentation and you’ll hear stories from Les Robling, Tom Pickering (read by Chris Cameron) and from Ronald Mackay. Jessica Outram sings a Christmas song and Anne–Marie Burrus and Felicity Sidnell Reid read a poem. Please join us!
Happy New Year to all our listeners!
Holiday Show for Christmas Eve 2023
Join us to revisit our Christmas show for 2017. Gwynn and Felicity read Christmas stories and poems by famous as well as less well known authors and wish you our listeners a very happy Christmas and New Year
Holiday Show for 2023
Welcome to our new holiday program for 2023, with music from Matt Kowalyk , and poems from Gwynn Scheltema, Katie Hoogendam, and Felicity Sidnell Reid. Especially written for this episode, there are short stories by Ron Mackay, a long time member of our writing community in Northumberland, now living in the Netherlands, but still keeping in touch and from Chris Cameron our guest co-host today, with a story about a writer who seeks inspiration and to break his writer’s block by retreating to a cabin in the snowy forest.
Please join us today and enjoy encore presentations of some of our previous Christmas shows in the last weeks of December.
With all best wishes for the holidays and for 2024 from all at Word on the Hills.
Frances Boyle
This week’s programme is a rerun of our interview with Frances Boyle who visited Cobourg last spring to give a reading for The Cobourg Poetry Workshop’s Third Thursday Readings series. Frances is, most recently, the author of Openwork and Limestone (Frontenac House, 2022). Her earlier books are the poetry collections This White Nest (Quattro Books, 2019) and Light-carved Passages (BuschekBooks 2014), Seeking Shade (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2020) an award-winning short story collection, and Tower, (Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2019), a novella. Frances’s writing has appeared throughout North America and internationally. Raised in Regina, she has long made Ottawa home, with involvement in the literary community including serving on the board of Arc Poetry Magazine for more than 10 years.
Sher Leetooze
This week we welcome Sher Leetooze for another visit with us. Sher
wanted to write all through school, and to that end submitted material to the annual High School Year Book. In 1994 she published her first local history book and it was an instant success.
Sher went on to publish the history of all the other townships in the former county where she lives. From this sprang other books, WW1 Nursing Sisters, Clarington’s Home Children, a History of
the Churches of Old Durham. In between these she wrote a trilogy following the people known as Bible Christians from England to their new homes in Canada. She then went on to compile genealogy source books, gardening books, wild plant books and a couple of cook books. Her latest endeavour has been in the world of fiction – a book of short stories, a novella, The Queen’s Pawn, and a novel just about ready to go to the printer called Finding Sean McRory.
Allan Seymour
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
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.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 