This week we begin our December run of previously shared holiday shows. Today we hear story-tellers, Lynn Bilton reading a story for Ron Mackay, Chris Cameron drawing us into the life of small-town Canada as he reads from his book Thorneside Stories and various poets with poems about winter, Christmas, the Winter Solstice and other celebrations.
We hope you’ll enjoy this series.
Josée Sigouin is French Canadian and lives in Toronto/Tkaronto with her Chinese Canadian husband and their two sons. Watching South Korean films and television series in the mid-2000s launched Josée on a quest to understand the fascinating culture in ever greater depth. She has learned the rudiments of the Korean language, visited the Land of the Morning Calm multiple times, and read extensively about its past and present. She also turned her attention to creative writing, taught by Dennis Bock and Kim Echlin at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and mentored by Omar El Akkad at a writing residency in Bangladesh. An early excerpt from Our Fifth Season was shortlisted for the 2011 Random House of Canada Student Award. In addition to travelling, Josée enjoys cycling, gardening, and welcoming birds to her tiny garden. Our Fifth Season is Josée’s first novel.
This week our guest is John Hill. John is a retired lawyer living in Cobourg. Before retiring, he specialised in criminal and prison law, often representing some of Canada’s most notorious criminals. Now that he is retired, he has taken to writing. He is a columnist for Law360 Canada, an online newspaper for the legal community. He has contributed chapters to several books and has recently published three books of true crime stories based on his former clients. In 2022, he published Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement. Last year, he published The Rest of the [True Crime] Story, which was a finalist for the Best Canadian Non-Fiction Award of Excellence by Crime Writers of Canada. In July 2025, his third book, Acts of Darkness, was released.
Our guest this week is Sue Davidson. After finishing a Bachelor of Journalism degree at Carleton University, Sue worked on a weekly newspaper in Renfrew and then went on to complete a Master of Library and Information at Western University. She was a librarian in Ottawa for many years, working in departmental libraries with the federal government. Her interest in short stories began in the mid-1990s when she took workshops with Ottawa writer Richard Taylor. She attended a summer week-long workshop at the Humber School for Writers and, more recently, began courses in the Creative Writing certificate program at the University of Toronto. Sue has had three short stories published. Dread Comes at Daybreak is her debut novel.
This is an encore presentation of an interview with 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 bookstore since 2016 specializing in new books, new comics, greeting cards, magazines and gifts. A year ago Let’s Talk Books moved to new premises at 29 King Street and became Readers’ Nook. 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.
This week we welcome Liz Torlee. Liz lived and worked in England and Germany before emigrating to Canada in her twenties. She built a long career in both advertising and market research but is now devoted to her real passion: storytelling.
A Long Walk With Fate (2025), published by Blue Denim Press, is Liz’s third novel. The previous two, also from Blue Denim Press, are The Way Things Fall (2020) and In Love With The Night (2022). She had two short stories published in 2024: Flight, in the anthology Will There Be A Sunset? (Chicken House Press), and Narrowing the Field, in the Hill Spirits VI anthology Change, (Blue Denim Press.) Her story Orion Winked (2025), was one of four chosen to be engraved on a picnic table, as part of the town of Cobourg’s Picnic on Poetry initiative.
Ronald Mackay’s first book tells of life in an isolated village in Tenerife, one of the CanaryIslands, in the early 1960s. His second, recounts his exploits during the two years he worked in Romania under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In 2024, he published “Windows on My Worlds”, a collection of 31 short stories. They cover seven decades and are set in many countries. In these, Ronald tries to capture tiny insights into the joys and the heartbreaks of everyday life. Recently, he put aside a draft of a Cold War novel to prepare, in Spanish, stories that take place in Spanish-speaking countries. He’ll launch this new book in Tenerife in 2026, to coincide with his being embraced as “adoptive son” of the Municipality of Buenavista del Norte.
Our guest this week is Sharon Stevens. Sharon was born in Buffalo New York. Her first jobs were teaching high school English. But one day in 1968 she discovered Niagara on the Lake and realized that Canada was where she belonged. She entered a new career when she and a friend opened a restaurant across from the original Shaw Festival Theatre which was very successful. However problems arose, so she moved to Toronto. There she studied business administration at Ryerson (Toronto Metropolitan University) and found time to hitch-hike with her sister across Canada. After graduating she was hired by General Foods to manage one of their Crock and Block restaurants. But later the chain was purchased by the Keg company and Sharon left to set up yet another independent business.
She and her partner Rene bought a house in Trenton living there for 30 years. They loved to travel, visiting Portugal, all the eastern provinces of Canada and the Magdelene Islands among other places. After Rene died in 2014, Sharon sold the house and moved to Cobourg where she had friends. She soon settled in, participating in classes on memoir writing and joining and performing with local choirs. Music has always been an important part of her life.
This is the last of our August holiday encore presentations. We hope you enjoy it. Lois Gordon 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.
This week we welcome Richard Pope. Richard was born in Toronto and lived and birded there until 2006. He is a retired professor of Russian literature and culture. Richard is a long-standing member of the Toronto Ornithological Club, The Ontario Field Ornithologists, and the Willow Beach Field Naturalists. He is the author of a number of books about birds and their relationship to humans. He and his wife, Felicity, live and bird in Cobourg, Ontario. in Cobourg, Ontario.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 