Welcome once again to Word on the Hills with me Felicity Sidnell Reid and our studio editor Anne Sidnell. This week we’re broadcasting our new Christmas program for 2024. Our guests today are storytellers well known to you, Gwynn Scheltema, Christopher Cameron, Ron Mackay and poet, Katie Hoogendam. Gwynn’s story, set in Zimbabwe, recalls how her mother celebrated Christmas in a tropical setting, while Ron’s story is about a young woman struggling to achieve her ambitions in Tenerife. Chris has once again written a new story for this show and Katie will read one of her collection of poems, which she has just released as a chapbook to celebrate the Winter Solstice.
Holiday show 1
Welcome once again to Word on the Hills with me, Felicity Sidnell Reid, my co-host Gwynn and our audio editor Anne Sidnell. The approach of Christmas and the holiday season prompts us to make different kinds of programmes from our usual ones. It is a season for stories and poems and songs, so instead of interviews with one writer, we have asked a number of them to read their work for us. This is a re-run of the show we first broadcast in 2019. Today we welcome Shane Joseph, Linda Hutsell Manning, , Chris Cameron, Allan Seymour and Les Robling to read for us and singer songwriter Marie-Lynn Hammond, who will sing one of her own songs.
TJ Best
TJ Best is the host and organizer of a monthly poetry Open Mic called First Tuesday Muse in Madoc and has been published in a number of journals in both Canada and the United States including: The Waterwheel Review, Ghost City Press, Untethered Magazine, and above/ground Press. TJ (formerly known as Tamara ‘tah-mah-rah’) is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. After spending many years in Toronto, TJ moved to the Quinte Region in 2011 and homeschooled their two children for ten years. TJ is also an experienced Community Worker with a focus on client support. In addition to these many “hats”, TJ also maintains a medicinal garden at a historic site and is passionate about outdoor education.
Al Seymour
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, senior food manufacturing manager, logistics consultant and then started his own contracting firm specializing in sustainable buildings and quality renovations. Al also was committed to making his community a better place; co-founding three charitable organizations and chairing each at the start. (FOODPATH – now Foodbanks Mississauga, The Erin Mills Youth Centre, 3rd Erin Mills Scout Group) Seven 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.
Christopher Cameron and John Unruh
This episode is an encore presentation of our discussion with Chris Cameron and John Unruh about podcasting.
Chris enjoyed a successful career as a professional opera singer, retiring in 2009 and then began a new career as a 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 September 2022. Now Christopher brings his respect for the beauty and power of the written word to his editing and feature-writing portfolio at Watershed magazine.
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 with his wife and son in 2021. In the past year John has become a highly valued source of answers to technical questions. This year John has published two short stories in Hill Spirits V, Blue Denim Press, and a poem in 101 Portraits, Wet Ink Books. In 2021 he published The Mime and the Girl in the November Issue of The Green Shoe Sanctuary In 2004 his story Angelic won a contest and was published in On Spec Magazine. He has also written several novels which are in various stages of completion.
Marie-Lynn Hammond
Alongside a music career as a singer-songwriter and co-founder of the seminal Canadian
Folk group Stringband, Marie-Lynn Hammond has, for the past 40 years,
written magazine and newspaper articles; essays, including over twenty radio essays;
stage plays, all professionally produced; one feature film (co-written); a handful of
short stories; and poetry. More recently she’s co-written, with writer Michael
Kaufman, a young adult novel, Moon Storm Rising, under the pen name Kayden
Quinn.
Moon Storm Rising is part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, with strong environmental
themes. And while set in the real world, it features an unusual fantasy element that
perfectly symbolizes the inextricable link between humans and the rest of the natural
world. The book is available on Amazon.
Marie-Lynn has also worked as a copy editor for the last three decades. She copy-
edited Esi Edugyan’s first Giller-Prize winner, Half-Blood Blues, and she’s proofread
or copy-edited books by, among others, Joseph Škvorecký, Linda Spalding, Paul
Watson, and business writer Rod McQueen, and co-translated into French a book of
poems for children by Dennis Lee
Lois Gordon
Lois is a writer and editor. She has published several humorous essays in anthologies and articles which have appeared in lifestyle magazines. Her second mystery novel, “Death at Iron House Lodge”, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis “Best Unpublished Novel” award in 2016, and several essays have won awards. Currently, she works part-time as an editor for a digital marketing company. Lois wrote her first stage play four years ago for a community theatre in Ancaster, Ontario. The new experience rekindled her passion for writing and she has since written three more scripts for the amateur acting company. Since moving to Northumberland three years ago, Lois has volunteered with community theatre and the Northumberland Festival of the Arts, hoping to become more fully involved with the vibrant arts scene in the county.
Marie Prins
This week we welcome Marie Prins the author of a middle-grade, time-travel book THE GIRL FROM THE ATTIC, published in 2020 from Common Deer Press. Her picture book WHO’S WALKING DAWG? was launched from Red Deer Press on October 15, 2024. Her short stories for children, memoir, nature pieces, and poetry can be found in the Hill Spirits Anthologies II – VI. She lives with her artist husband Ed Hagedorn in a historic, octagonal house in Colborne, Ontario.
Linda Hutsell Manning
This is an encore presentation of one of our interviews with Linda Hutsell-Manning. Linda’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 been released by Pandamonium Publications.
Janice Barrett
Janice Barrett is a proud mother of three. She worked at the Unemployment Insurance Office in Hamilton from 1973-1988 at which time she became a stay-at-home mom. She was a freelance journalist for The Weekend Focus and The Grimsby Independent newspaper where she was given her own column. An article she wrote for The Ottawa Citizen garnered attention from the producer of W5 who invited her to be a guest on their show, which she declined. She was the opening act for Coast to Coast Canada’s Tenacious Literary Series held at The Laura Secord Homestead. She gave a seminar at The Niagara Falls Literary Festival on How to Write a Memoir. The first play she wrote, Dearly Departed, won a playwright contest where she was paid and a snippet of her play was performed at The Essential Collective Theatre. That afforded her an interview at The Tarragon Theatre. Her first historical fiction, Authorized Cruelty was published on October/1st/2023. Please join us for our conversation with Janice.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 