A postcard from Toronto
Today marks the day of Word On The Street Toronto – and it’s 27 years old this year. That means for 27 years, they’ve been sharing and revelling in the wonder of books. Quite a remarkable journey for any literary festival. And just look at the backdrop!
Toronto – skyline (c) John Cameron
My Canadian literary journey started when I was about five and I ‘met’ the lovely Anne of Green Gables, who made her home on PEI. From that moment on, I wanted to travel there through books, and soon. By the time I’d discovered Three Pines and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Canada was at the top of my reading list!
These are just a selection of books to showcase the range of theme and genres at the festival this year:
Malaika’s costume
This is a lovely story by Nadia L. Hohn all about family and community: a little girl living in the Caribbean is missing her mom who’s moved to Canada to work. Malaika is worried that in her mom’s absence her Carnival costume is not going to be as good as it could be, and even worse, what happens if there is no costume at all?
This is a poignant story about how a little girl copes with her mom living overseas, especially at a time when the people of the Caribbean celebrate their culture in this iconic festival. The rich colours of the illustrations and the warm message about missing someone in the book really made me smile. It makes me realize how I’ve missed people when travelling.
I Am Not a Number
To really see what Canada is like through the eyes of a child, there’s no better book than I Am Not A Number by Jenny Kay Depuis and Kathy Kacer. Jenny is a member of the Nipissing First Nation and has written a tale of a young girl, Irene, who is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school.
Being taken into a new and unfamiliar world, she’s confused and frightened. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from despite being told to do otherwise. This is a book which has merged two unique insights into the Canadian identity: how two cultures can mix and live side by side whilst conserving what makes them great, and how understanding of both is the best education there is.
Out of this World
Once in while, a book comes along which shows you a world you would never thought existed. What about a city the size of an oil rig off the coast of the Maritime provinces? Canadian science fiction hasn’t been this good since I spent time with Alias Grace.
Company Town
Company Town, the new book by Madeline Ashby, has the unique landscape of an oil-rig the size of a city, just off the coast of the Maritimes. It’s called New Arcadia, with a nod to the past Owned by the wealthy, powerful Lynch family, the island city is populated by bio -engineered people apart from one, Hwa.
Hwa is a fighter and so is valued in the community and when there’s a series of murders on the island, Hwa is the one chosen to look into the problem.Company Town is obviously built on stormy waters if the Maritime Provinces are anything to go by.
First Nations Culture
Take Us to Your Chief
Drew Hayden Taylor has single handedly taught me so much about the First Nations – not just their humour but how they view other First Nations as well as Canada as a whole.
In his new book Take Us to Your Chief, he frames classic science-fiction tropes in an Aboriginal perspective. I would never have thought about comparing the cultural implications of alien contact to those of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, or thinking about how someone from the First Nations could retain his identity in space for example.
Drew has spent 15 years writing and researching aboriginal humour. He’s certainly helped me understand and learn even more about Canadian spirit.
Wrist
An author to watch this year is Nathan Adler who is a member of the Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation. This First Nations culture and literature is one of the most fascinating and unique in the world – tales of folklore, heritage, and the heartbeat of Canada today and yesterday. In his debut novel Wrist, Nathan writes about nature as a character in itself:
A forest doesn’t know what the future holds, but it is patient.
His book reads like a song and illustrates a story, heritage and rich culture in one swipe of the pen.
