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.
Ted Barris
This week we are rebroadcasting an episode which we made with historian and journalist Ted Barris in 2023. Ted’s 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: 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 … Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at War, 1950-1953. Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age, April 9-12, 1917 Breaking the Silence: Veterans Untold Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan. 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). In 2018, HarperCollins published Barris’ 18th book Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany about the famous 1943 attack on the Ruhr River dams that powered Nazi Germany’s industrial war production. The RCAF Association awarded Ted Barris and Dam Busters its 2018 NORAD Trophy for unequalled contributions to the preservation of Air Force values, traditions, history and heritage.� Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire was Ted’s 19th book and was long-listed for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction in Canada.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 had received Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee Award, recognizing extraordinary contributions to our community and Canada.� And these are just the books that have established Ted as the preeminent historian of Canada’s military.
Susan Statham
This week we welcome Susan Statham. Susan is an author, artist and editor. She’s a graduate of Algonquin College, the University of Waterloo, the Ottawa School of Art and the National Portrait Academy. She is president of the Cobourg Art Club and Chair of the Spirit of the Hills Writers’ Group. A former librarian, Susan lives in an Ontario hamlet with her husband and their French Bull dog, Arthur Conan Doyle, aka Artie. Susan has very busy life as a visual artist but she is also a novelist and the editor of Hill Spirits VI an anthology of writing by authors from our region. Today she is here to discuss her latest novel TRUE IMAGE.
Matthew King
This Sunday we welcome you to an encore presentation of an episode we made last spring with Matthew KIng. Matthew taught philosophy at York University for a number of years before, in 2015, he moved to the Marmora area—or, as he likes to say, “what Al Purdy called ‘the country north of Belleville’”—where he tries to grow things, counts birds, and takes pictures mostly of flowers with bugs on them. Over the last several years, catalyzed in part by winning the Spirit of the Hills Festival Poetry Prize in 2019, he has increasingly been concentrating his energies on poetry. In 2020 he won the FreeFall magazine poetry contest; in 2023 he was a runner-up for Plough Quarterly’s Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award, won Arc magazine’s “Award of Awesomeness” for June, and had a poem selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2024. Others of his poems have appeared in various magazines in print and online.
Patricia Calder
WORD ON THE HILLS Sundays at 1.00 (wordonthehills.com.)
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. 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, successfully submitted, 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. She has been 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. I FLEW INTO TROUBLE is about to be released.
Fabian Arciniegas
Fabian Arciniegas is a versatile Colombian-Canadian singer-actor. He brings a wide range of repertoire to life, from Baroque to Contemporary. Inspired by his love for chamber singing, Fabian discovered a passion for new composers and successfully toured in Canada and internationally as part of the series Crossing Borders. He has premiered new compositions by composers such as Saman Shahi, Chia Yin Wu, Mario Gómez Vignes and has performed with prestigious organizations including the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Opera in Concert among others. He is the creator and performer of The Colores, a show that invites audiences to engage with classical and contemporary music through pop music and storytelling. He is premiering his new show Yo And My Shadow in September 2024 as part of the Northumberland Festival Of The Arts.
Ken Morden
This week we welcome Ken Morden. Ken has run and owned several businesses – printing company, marketing company, horse breeding farm and an online art gallery.
Four years ago, he took up writing, fulfilling a long term objective to write a historical fiction of his family. Since then, he has written four thrillers and is currently working on a fifth.
He resides in rural Port Hope with his wife, Caroline, and 2 dogs and is president of two community arts organizations, Friends of Music and Spirit of the Hills Arts Association.
D’Arcy Jenish and Samantha Clark
D’Arcy Jenish has written histories of the Stanley Cup, the Montreal Canadiens and the NHL, an acclaimed biography of David Thompson and an award-winning account of the 19th century Canadian West – from the perspective of four great Indigenous leaders— Piapot, Poundmaker, Big Bear and Crowfoot. His most recent: The Making of the October Crisis: Canada’s Long Nightmare of Terrorism at the Hands of the FLQ. His play The Tilco Strike was produced at 4th Line Theatre in July 2023 and his two short plays – Ray’s Big Day and The Last Time- were performed at the Port Hope Arts Festival in 2022and 2023 respectively. He will be back at Port Hope again this year with Tick Talk – a play set at the Peterborough Westclox factory in May 1969 which will also be [performed at Northumberland Festival of the Arts, NFOTA 2024
Samantha Clark grew up in the Northumberland arts community; dancing competitively, studying voice, and volunteering in all aspects of theatre production. She studied Drama and English at Queen’s University and completed a summer intensive inside The Shaw Festival’s 2017 season. Sam then earned a Graduate Degree in Arts Management specializing in marketing from Queen’s and her Bachelor of Education from Trent University. This September will be Sam’s second year running the Port Hope High School Drama Department. Sam recently appeared in the staged reading of Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson at the Peterborough Theatre Guild but she feels most at home in the world of Musical Theatre. She has performed leading roles in Guys and Dolls (Sister Sarah), White Christmas (Judy Hanes), Company (Joanne),and in Nunsense (Sister Mary Leo).
Shannon and Jakeb
Shannon and Jakeb are a folk-pop duo known for their dynamic vocal synergy and vibrant performance style. Characterized by percussive guitar and soaring harmonies, their songs are honest and vulnerable with a lighthearted spirit. Shannon Linton is a classically trained singer whose love of singing harmonies found its perfect match with multi-instrumentalist and vocal powerhouse Jakeb Daniel. They are both proud to call Cobourg, Ontario their home, and to be part of its flourishing music community. Shannon and Jakeb have played the Blue Skies Festival, Cultivate Launch, Hibernate and Cultivate Festival. They are looking forward to returning to the Cultivate stage this September, hosting and performing a show at the Northumberland Festival of the Arts, and performing at the Shelter Valley Concert Series in October. Follow @shannonandjakeb on Instagram and Facebook for news and show upcoming announcements.
Shane Joseph
WORD ON THE HILLS, Sundays at 1.00 pm, archived at wordonthehills.com
Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers in Canada. He is the
author of eight 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 is widely
syndicated, he has a monthly column in The Sri Lankan Anchorman journal in Toronto
and is the Book Reviews Editor for Devour Art & Lit Canada magazine. His most recent
novel, Victoria Unveiled, will be released in September 2024. Shane is the owner and publisher of Blue Denim Press (www.bluedenimpress.com), a literary press he founded in 2011.
More details on Shane’s work, blog and book reviews can be found on his website
Word on the Hills Radio Program 