Chris Cameron and John Unruh

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This week’s episode is a repeat broadcast of our interviews with Chris Cameron and John Unruh about podcasting.

Chris is a musician, freelance writer and editor. His first book, a memoir of his singing years, Dr. Bartolo’s Umbrella and Other Tales from my Surprising Operatic Life (Seraphim Editions), was published in 2017. His book of humorous fiction, Thorneside Stories: A Mix of Sun and Cloud (Iguana Books) was published in 2022. Christopher brings his respect for the beauty and power of words to his editing and feature-writing at Watershed magazine. For three years he was co-host and sound editor for Word on the Hills. He enjoys playing bass and singing with the trio What Fun! He continues to marvel at his luck, doing what he loves in beautiful Northumberland County.

John Unruh is a Northumberland writer concerned with the value of broken things and how communities come together to fix them. He’s also a consulting technical writer and editor. John grew up in Winnipeg and moved to Cobourg in 2001 where he began working as a documentation specialist and editorial advisor. John volunteered to set up and run the ticketing system for the Northumberland Festival of the Arts in 2022 and has become a highly valued source of answers to technical questions. He has published two short stories in Hill Spirits V, Blue Denim Press, and a poem in 101 Portraits, Wet Ink Books in 2022, as well as other stories in previous years. He has also written several novels which are in various stages of completion and has made a podcast series of his novel Ziggurat.

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Catherine Hudson

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This week we welcome Catherine Hudson. Catherine’s new book “Get Your Cow out of My Kitchen!” is a stirring collection of short stories that reflect upon the many animals that have impacted the author’s life. Each entry is a beautiful tribute to a special animal friend and highlights just how special the connection between animal and human can be. A lover of animals since she was a child, Catherine fell in love with bull terriers after watching the Disney film “The Incredible Journey”, as a teen. By the time she was in her early forties, Catherine had become one of the top bull terrier breeders in the country and, along with competing with her dogs, she started her own obedience school, “My Bark Avenue Academy,” which she still runs today. Currently, she resides in eastern Ontario, with her dog Ladybug and can be found daily surrounded by her many four-legged students both adults and puppies.

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Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy

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This week we are rebroadcasting our interviews with Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy.

Abigail Miller is Archivist at the Northumberland County Archives and Museum. She is responsible for building the strategic vision and overseeing operations at NCAM. Abigail holds a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology and Folklore, graduating from Memorial University and the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College.

Katie Kennedy is Curator for NCAM, focused on authentic community collaborations. Katie graduated from University of Ottawa with a BA in Classical Studies and was educated in the university’s Museum of Classical Antiquities. Katie is currently enrolled in the Ontario Museum Association’s Certificate in Museum Studies and is a participant in the OMA Conference Mentorship program.

Abigail and Katie tell us about their work and plans for the new archives and museum, now under construction, which will share a building with a rebuilt Golden Plough Lodge and is due to open in the summer of 2024.

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Hugh Brewster

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This week we welcome Hugh Brewster to the programme. Being able to create books about history is a dream job for Hugh, since he’s always been enthralled by history. As an editor for Scholastic from 1972 to 1984 in both Toronto and New York, he was involved in the creation of Scholastic’s Canadian children’s publishing program. Between 1984 and 2004 he was the publisher of Madison Press Books in Toronto where he helped to create a number of successful books for both adults and young readers, including Exploring the Titanic, which has sold over one million copies and Titanic: An Illustrated History, which provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie.

As an author, he has written fifteen books including Anastasia’s Album (1996) which won both the Silver Birch and Red Cedar Awards.  And he has won multiple awards for many of his other books including Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, a Governor General’s Award nominee in 2007, and From Vimy to Victory which was a Finalist for the T-D Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Norma Fleck Award in 2015. An adult book RMS TITANIC: Gilded Lives on a Fatal Voyage was a national bestseller and published in six countries in 2012. He has written several plays and LAST DAY, LAST HOUR: Canada’s Great War On Trial was presented in the fall of 2018 as the centerpiece of Cobourg’s Armistice 18 commemoration which he helped organize. His latest book, published in Fall ’22, is UNSINKABLE LUCILE: How A Farm Girl Became the Queen of Fashion and Survived the Titanic. 

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Jay Dart

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This week we welcome Jay Dart. Jay is a Canadian drawist, author and designer whose practice includes bookworks, animated videos and mixed media installations. Dart’s work has been shown in galleries and art fairs including exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Regina and recently at the Art Gallery of Northumberland; as well as internationally in Paris, New York, and Amsterdam. He is the recipient of multiple grants and honors including from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and a National Magazine Award for editorial illustration. His work has been featured on CBC Radio and TV including a profile on The Exhibitionists. He is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Fine Art programme. Currently, he lives and draws with his family in a small hamlet outside the sprawl of Toronto, and he teaches Drawing and Design at Durham College and Sheridan College.

J D Carpenter

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 This week we welcome back J.D. Carpenter to Word on the Hills. David was born in Toronto in 1948. Some years later, he graduated from York University with a B.A.Hons. and then from Queen’s with a B.Ed. He worked as a journalist for Daily Racing Form in Montreal, Windsor, Fort Erie and Toronto before becoming a teacher. After four years of teaching elementary school, he began 25 years of teaching English and then became Head of Department for Special Education at Leaside High School in Toronto He is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent, A Road through the Corn: Prince Edward County Poems, 1982-2022 was published by Cressy Lakeside Press in 2022. He is also the author of six novels, including a series featuring sleuth Campbell Young and his friends set in the racing world so familiar to this writer. He is at present working on the final draft of Black Tupelo, the concluding volume in this series. The County Murders (Cressy Lakeside, 2016) has a new protagonist, a journalist based in a small town in Prince Edward County.

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Shelagh Mathers (S M Hurley)

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Author Shelagh Mathers retired from her law practice in 2020, just as the pandemic moved into full gear. Though she misses the people she worked with she doesn’t miss the practice. And she quickly settled into retirement and did a fun turn as a co-host of a local radio show, The County, Naturally. Recently however she stepped back from that to focus full time on Book # 3 in her series about Augie De Graaf, Prince Edward County Crown Prosecutor, which is now proceeding apace. Her second book in this series is called The Sevens and was published in 2020. She now spends a lot of time at the cottage with family, including a new granddaughter, who, like all grandchildren, is the most wonderful thing in the world!

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Jennifer Bogart

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This week we talk to Jennifer Bogart. Jennifer is a writer, with three adult novels and two middle-grade books to her credit. For many years she was a publisher and editor at Morning Rain Publications and then became the owner of Let’s Talk Books, Cobourg’s independent book store. The store was featured in a Globe and Mail article in 2019 and is now celebrating its seventh year in business. She frequently hosts writers, whose books she admires and arranges very successful readings for them, as well as organizing a number of book clubs at the store for readers of different genres.

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Patrick Muldoon

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This week we talk with Patrick Muldoon. Patrick is the Branch Supervisor of the Warkworth Public Library, which is a part of the Trent Hills Library system.  He has always loved libraries and reading.  Patrick has degrees in English Literature and Education and before coming to the library, he had a 27 year career as an elementary school teacher.  The highlights of his teaching career included introducing children to Shakespeare and touring the county with student performances of many Shakespeare plays. Since retiring from education, he has been working at developing the collection and programs at the Warkworth Library.  His plans for making the Warkworth Library a dynamic community hub are well under way and he is here today to share what has been happening at the library, and his upcoming plans.

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Pat Calder

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This week we welcome Patricia Calder. Pat is a photographer and writer who loves nature. After retiring from a busy career as an English teacher, she has lived in the quiet village of Colborne where she writes in a sunroom overlooking Lake Ontario in the distance, her gardens at closer range, and birdfeeders. When she is thinking, she has a pleasant view out her window to inspire her stories. During her career as a teacher, she taught in 13 different schools, colleges, and at York U. 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 Rainforest to capture images of the Spirit Bears, and mounted several solo shows around Northumberland County. As a writer, she published a novel, Roadblock, and several stories in newspapers and anthologies locally; the most notable were “Stand down, soldier” written during the war in Afghanistan, and “The Gifts of Alzheimer’s” published in the Globe and Mail.

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