Tag Archives: book tour

April – May 2003

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot

This year, April seems to be full of death. Here in Toronto, the SARS outbreak is causing anxiety. People are dying from it, at a lower rate than first feared, but still, each individual is a person likely to be missed. Statistics don’t reflect true loss.

And overseas bombs are dropping, people are fleeing, aid isn’t reaching those who need it most. In some cities, anti-war protests are turning into pro-Iraq/anti-Semitic rallies. Intolerance is running high and individuals are dying from it. I encourage people to express their opinions, but no one should have to die for what they believe. In the back of my head I keep repeating the line from an old CeeDees song, I hope the world doesn’t blow up tomorrow. A form of prayer.

april 12Spring is my favourite time of year, but this year it’s overshadowed by CBC news broadcasts. The first bombs were dropped just hours before I got on the train to embark on the Milds of New Brunswick mini-tour. Under the circumstances, I was relieved I’d decided to go by train rather than air. In transit, there was no news and I liked that, a blissful silence, a let’s pretend world where I didn’t know what was going on. Through the night we travelled endless miles of snowy white flats, wet-iced streams and trees black-shadowed against a wasted grey sky.

But the television in the Moncton train station was tuned to CNN. When Kathy Mac came to pick me up, she found me glued to the American propaganda station, shaking my head in disbelief. The first words out of her mouth were, “You don’t need to be watching that.” It was three days before I realized Kathy doesn’t have a TV. Smart woman. I listened to the CBC radio news a few times, but found I wanted to be thinking about other things.

The reading at the Attic Owl Book Shop in Moncton was a great success. April 13We had a very attentive audience who enjoyed the reading and chatted with us afterwards. Next time you’re in Moncton, you really should check out Ed and Elaine’s store at 885 Main St. It’s one of the largest, friendliest, best organized, mostly used bookstores I’ve ever been in. Kathy drove us back to Fredericton that night. I tried to stay awake, to be an extra pair of eyes watching for moose on the road, but ended up passing out for a while.

We got off to a slow start on Saturday, but still made it to St. John early enough to have a look around and a quick dinner before reading. St. John is hilly with narrow streets and a wild system of elevated roadways entering and exiting town, so it’s virtually impossible to see that it’s nearly surrounded by water. The St. John Arts Centre is a great space used for performances and art exhibits. In all, there were five readers and a good-sized crowd. Another successful evening.

April 14Sunday we were off to St. Andrews, Canada’s oldest seaside resort, and the weather was nasty. We were barely out of Fredericton when it started to rain, then sleet, then snow, then rain torrentially, which it kept up for the rest of the day. I could see that St. Andrews would be a really lovely place in the summer and I’m sure their seasonal population is widely variable. We read at the Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre as planned, but the rain made for a small audience. We then drove up to the Algonquin, a resort hotel privately built in 1889 and later purchased by CP rail. The exterior is Tudor-esque and castle-like; the interior was reputedly used by Stanley Kubrick in filming The Shining. The drive home was somewhat less treacherous, as it was only raining and still daylight. I was glad of a hot shower when we got back though.

The travelling part of the tour over, we remained in Fredericton Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I delivered a lecture to Dr. McConnell’s Women Writers class at St. Thomas University. Although initially a bit intimidating, ultimately it was a very gratifying experience. The topic was my own novel, Swimming in the Ocean, and I was talking to a group of about forty people, all of whom had read it. At the end of the lecture, there was a steady stream of students asking me to sign their books. It was a marvelous experience and one I hope to repeat. That evening, I did a solo public reading to a small, but attentive audience, also at St. Thomas University.

I spent a good part of Tuesday taking a slow meditative wander through downtown Fredericton. Kathy had suggested I check out the walking trail that borders the St. John River. I scrambled up snow-packed stairs onto the footbridge that leads over the highway to the trail, but there was no trail. There was snow. It’d been melting at a furious rate, but was still at seat-level on the park benches. I gave up on the idea and, after exploring various shops and historic buildings, went back to the apartment. I usually go to galleries and museums when I’m in new cities, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I was feeling a strange agitation, perhaps the war I was trying to ignore, perhaps the need for spring air.

Tuesday night Kathy Mac and I did a one-hour live radio interview with Joe Blades of Broken Jaw Press. It was a relaxed event with chat and readings interspersed.

Even though Kathy and I have known each other for many, many years, this was the first time we’d toured in tandem. I’m hopeful we’ll find opportunities to do future events together, sometime, somewhere.

Wednesday morning I caught the bus back to Moncton, April 15where I had a few hours to wander around before boarding the train home. Once aboard, I found I was tired and retired to my single room early, opened the bed, turned out the light and watched small towns emerge from vast expanses of wilderness until I fell into restless sleep.

photos by Catherine Jenkins

©Catherine Jenkins 2003

June – July 2003

It’s all about balance, one of those things in which there can be an enormous gap between theory and practice, between intellectual understanding and living it. And being someone with a natural tendency to obsess on intricate and specific things for long periods of time (‘tis the nature of writers and editors) sometimes that balance can get radically off-kilter. Don’t worry, I’m working on it.

By this time last year, Swimming in the Ocean, the first novel, a novel it took me ten years to understand how to complete, was out and I was in full tour mode. But by this spring, I was in a mild state of depression, a place I hadn’t been for quite some time. I think it was brought on by a series of things happening concurrently: let-down from finishing the book at long last, tour exhaustion, financial stress, too long and cold a winter, and finding several people dear to me also suffering various stresses. I was seriously considering packing my bags and leaving (Toronto, that is), not that I had any place else in mind. It was more an escapist consideration than anything else. Realizing that no matter where you go, there you are, I stayed.

Things turned very suddenly. For several weeks, I found myself overcommitted to paying work, sometimes juggling three clients simultaneously, afraid to turn projects down, getting up at five or six in the morning to start work, just to try to get it all done. That phase seems to have passed now, allowing me some time and energy to get back to what I’m really here for: writing.

Depression is a low-energy state, a state in which it’s difficult to locate creative energy; too long without a creative fix can send me into severe depression. Being overworked is a high-energy (or high-anxiety) state, a state that, while invigorating, is a difficult one in which to locate creative time. I seem to function optimally when there’s too much going on. I need a great deal of stimulation to keep from getting bored; if I get bored, I also become depressed (something that keeps me away from routine jobs). I think a period of hyperactivity was necessary to snap me out of the state I was in. Since rebounding from these two extremes (both of which had a negative impact on my writing productivity), I now feel like I’ve relocated my centre, my balance.

My psycho-emotional life is a bit of a tightrope by times, an exercise in extremes – anyone who’s read Swimming in the Ocean is probably already aware of that. You may be relieved to hear that I’m considerably less volatile than I used to be. I’ve worked to understand what to avoid and how to explore difficult emotions, which are often necessary to the writing, more safely. Which isn’t to say I don’t go out on limbs anymore; I certainly do, but I usually tie off the safety rope first.

Although statistically people are more prone to depression the more times they experience it, personally I feel that the work I’ve done in understanding my depression has made me more conscious of when I’m moving in that direction and more able to redirect my energies more productively.

Although I have been offered the quick magic of pills to alleviate the symptoms of depression, I’ve always declined. I’d rather develop my own coping strategies, no matter how rudimentary. It gives me a greater sense of control. There’s no denying that antidepressants help a lot of people, but recent clinical evidence, which agrees with my experiential evidence, supports the notion that talk therapy alone can change brain chemistry. Unfortunately, I think we as a society are too busy or too lazy or too disconnected to sit down and do the work of actually figuring out what the problem is and would generally rather pop a pill to feel better, while not addressing our damaging behaviour. While medication can make talk therapy more approachable in some instances, the drugs alone don’t fix anything. They’re a little like putting a bandage on someone’s toe while gangrene is consuming their leg.

I recently heard stats on the rapid growth in the use of antidepressants in Canada. Hopefully this dramatic increase isn’t simply the result of mass-marketting campaigns by pharmaceutical giants out to pad their earnings reports, but I’m not sure what to make of it. If we, as a society, are becoming more accepting and supportive of people with depression and other mental illnesses, I think it’s a good thing and about time too. Denial, the inability to discuss psycho-emotional problems, even among families or with friends, is damaging and has caused tragedies to be needlessly repeated. However, if the dramatic increase in the use of antidepressants points to an increase in depression in our society (and there’s a lot to be depressed about in our world), that’s frightening. Maybe we all need to take a serious time-out this summer, reassess our priorities in life, turn off the news and stop trying to run our lives around the technology that keeps pushing us to produce ever-faster. What have you done for yourself lately?

I’ve gone back to playing the piano, working primarily on Bach Inventions (for now) in an effort to get my hands and focus back. I was surprised at how much better I felt and can’t figure out if it’s the playing or if it’s the Bach (used extensively in music therapy because of the soothing effect of it’s mathematical stability). I felt calmer and more in control. What surprised me even more was that when I got busy and stopped making the time to play, a friend of mine commented on the difference. I knew playing was helping me internally, but it was helping externally more than I’d realized. So I’ve been playing again this week and now that I fully appreciate the point, I shall continue.

This is the sixth summer I’ve been in Toronto and I have yet to really engage with the city. My presence here has just felt too tentative, but that’s beginning to change. This may be the first summer I’ve really enjoyed for a long time. I have tea plans with various friends, have made note of some historical walks, have picked up tickets to see the big Rolling Stones concert, and generally I’m just keeping my eyes and ears open for interesting opportunities.

Now that the mad rush is over, I’m settling in to complete the rewrite of the novel version of Pairs & Artichoke Hearts, the gender-bender romantic-comedy screenplay I wrote in ’96. I like the idea of publishing work in the order in which it was conceived, so I want to complete this project before turning back to the new novel, which is well on its way.

I need to produce, to keep on keepin’ on. It makes me feel alive, most comfortable in my own skin. And maybe someday, if I persevere long enough, the work will provide for me and I won’t have to spread my time and energies so thinly. That would make me genuinely and deeply happy. In this life, we aren’t necessarily rewarded for our efforts, at least not always immediately or as expected, but as a music teacher of mine once said, “I find the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

©Catherine Jenkins 2003

March 2003

After much deliberation and research, I’m taking the train to New Brunswick for the mini-tour this month. It’s a long train ride, twenty-four hours, but I’ve decided to splurge and get a single room for the overnight portion of the trip between Montréal and Moncton. I haven’t been on a sleeper car since I was a kid, so I’m sure it’ll be an adventure. Some people have expressed surprise that I’m not flying, given the time and distance. I find that, especially since 9/11, the cost, inconvenience and stress of flying has turned me even more against it.

There are many more train stations than airports in Canada so the chances of finding transportation to a less common destination are greater on the train. When flying to smaller centres in Canada, it’s difficult to do much comparison shopping on ticket prices because sometimes only one carrier flies to that destination. The train could’ve been considerably less expensive than flying if I’d been willing to sit in economy all night, but having done two twelve-hour train trips on tour last year (to Chicago and NYC), I know how uncomfortable that can get. The comfort of a single room makes the price of a train ticket about equal to that of a flight, so cost wasn’t a big deciding factor. But at least on the train I know that my ticket price is going toward travel, not toward airport and security taxes, which these days can add 25% to a plane ticket. I find airline ticket prices a bit deceptive and am pleased with the recent federal government announcement to enforce new regulations governing how airlines can quote prices.

Well, what about the time factor? Granted the actual flying time (roughly three hours) is considerably less than the overland route. But one also has to add the travel time to the airport (three-quarters of an hour to an hour), waiting and check-in time (airlines request two hours on domestic flights) and travel time from the airport at the other end (I have no idea). When flying, if one considers the actual time from home to final destination, it can double the travel time. On the train, I ride the subway to Union Station (about eighteen to twenty-two minutes), get on the train and go, so my overall travel time is little more than the time on the train itself.

I also find that when I reach my destination after a flight, I’m exhausted from dealing with the auditory and visual noise of the airport, the stresses of security checks, the engine drone, the questionable air quality on the plane and the thought that I’m suspended very far above the ground and that if anything goes wrong, I’m toast. And once I’m on the plane, there’s not much to see (clouds are fun, but they get a bit tedious after a while); there isn’t room to walk around and it’s generally not encouraged. The food is, well, uneven at best. Entertainment is limited to an odd and repetitive audio assortment or a commercial film, which inevitably I’ve either seen or studiously avoided. Sometimes I can sleep or read, but it depends on the amount of air turbulence and the impact of said turbulence on my occasionally delicate stomach.

By contrast, on the train there are fewer stresses to deal with. I can arrive at the station a comfortable time ahead of departure and board without having the change in my pocket accidentally set off a metal detector. There is a certain hustle and bustle to Union Station, but it’s nothing compared to Pearson Airport. Trains do have a drone of their own, but it’s the pleasantly rhythmical, purely mechanical, rather comforting drone of something solidly moving along the ground. I wish it was still possible to open train windows for fresh air, but at least you can catch a whiff at station stops along the way or between cars. I can watch the scenery or sometimes catch a glimpse of an episode unfolding in someone’s day as we speed by. I can even take photos from the window or the glass viewing dome. If I don’t want to stay in my room, I can wander the aisles and lounges. I may enjoy a pleasant dinner in the dining car (the chowder is apparently recommended on this trip). I can choose my own entertainment and read or write in the privacy of my room. And when I’m ready, I can bed down in a proper bed, knowing that the magic of travel will ensure that when I wake up, it will be far away from where I fell asleep.

Train travel provides a very different sort of connection between the journey and the traveller. The traveller remains connected to the earth for one thing, but there’s a very different consciousness about the distance, the terrain, the event of travel. I arrive with a sense of having seen where I’ve been, of really having travelled the distance and understood what changes the land has undergone to get there. Although there is a certain excitement getting off a plane hours later and finding the air, the light, the ambience radically different, it’s also a bit disorienting. The change is too sudden.

On a train, the travel becomes part of the adventure, while planes are just a sometimes necessary evil. I’m not afraid of flying, but I can’t say I enjoy it. I’ll fly if there’s no other option, for instance to get across a large body of water, but even then, if I could afford the time and money, I’d prefer to travel by ship. This may seem rather Victorian or Edwardian of me, but it’s so much more comfortable and enjoyable; I can take pleasure in the travel as well as the destination.

The federal government has recently announced changes for VIA rail, allowing it to grow (again) and become more competitive with airlines by adding high-speed trains on heavily travelled routes. I’ve seen an increase in the number of travellers resorting to the train. Ten years ago, it seemed to be mostly students and the budget-conscious; now I’m seeing businesspeople and government employees. And the trains are full! It’s a shame that so many rail lines across Canada have been abandoned, but it’s heartening to see that they’re regaining popularity and that travellers are giving them another chance.

©Catherine Jenkins 2003

June 2002

May was a month of travel as the Swimming in the Ocean tour began. My first reading from the new book was in Peterborough (my old hometown), then I read in Ottawa (where I lived for a couple of years), Montréal and Kingston. Travel tends to adjust my perspective in a unique way. New environments enable me to see things I wouldn’t notice otherwise.

Peterborough is a pleasant enough place, but it was frustrating to spend my youth there, especially because I’d already travelled in Europe and knew there was a lot more arts and culture in the world than Peterborough could offer. Nevertheless, it was fun to get my picture in the paper because of the new book and to have an enthusiastic hometown crowd at the reading.

Ottawa and Montréal kind of run together in my head as I was back and forth between them for a week. (Note to self: Don’t ever again agree to readings which entail this kind of travel!) I stayed for the week at my friend Péter’s house in Hull where we ate good food and I raided his rhubarb patch. I spent a whole day wandering around Ottawa, up and down Bank Street, the Sparks Street Mall and the Market. I love the smell of the Ottawa market. The outside stalls only have fresh flowers, fruits, vegetables and maple syrup (for half the price it is in Toronto). You can buy fish and meat and cheese, but you have to enter a store to do so. So as you walk through the outside stalls, you’re never overcome by the smell of protein.

I’m not as familiar with Montréal, having never lived there. I’ve explored the old city on previous trips but this time, because my time was limited, I stuck pretty much to the area close to the McGill campus. I was disappointed that avenue des Pins had no pines or trees of any sort and pleased that I could understand as much French as I did (although I’m a long way from considering myself bilingual). On the second trip, Péter and I drove in his car so we went to Fairmount Bagel and bought a couple dozen each. They really are the best bagels I’ve ever had; they’re not tough the way most bought bagels are.

So I came back from the Ottawa-Montréal leg of the tour with rhubarb (which I stewed and preserved), bagels (some of which I froze) and maple syrup (which is sealed until the next time I make waffles). I think the store of comfort food has helped make up for the mild exhaustion.

As with Peterborough, the moment I got off the train in Kingston, I found the air easier to breathe than the air in Toronto. I’d never had much of an opportunity to explore Kingston, but I had a sense of comfort, of familiarity once I started walking around downtown. Sometimes I can’t picture a place in my head, but once my feet are on the ground, the familiarity of it is somehow evoked. This trip I had more time to wander and found some interesting juxtapositions that revealed a lot about the town and its history.

As I walked up Princess Street, I found its intersection with Clergy Street dominated by St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. On the side lawn rested a cannon, one that anyone entering the church’s side door would have to pass in front of. The plaque revealed that this was Shannon’s Cannon which was used in Londonderry, Ireland to defend the (Protestant) faith between 1649 and 1688, was presented to one William Shannon of Kingston in 1865, was subsequently presented to St. Andrews Church in 1909 and then restored in 1990.

Continuing the walk along Clergy Street, I found it intersected with Ordnance Street and when I entered McBurney (locally known as “Skeleton”) Park, I was confronted by a cement-mouthed cannon with the word “Peace” graffitied to its side. To my right stood an ornate stone Celtic Cross placed in memory of the estimated 10,000 Scottish and Irish immigrants who were buried in this park between 1813 and 1865. To my left was a kiddie’s wading pool and extensive playground equipment. Kingston is a complicated little town.I’ve lived in Toronto for over five years and I’m still getting usedto it. One has to park one’s body somewhere and nowhere is ever perfect; every place has its pros and cons so there doesn’t seem much point in complaining too loudly. I’m looking forward to exploring the polar opposites of Picton and New York City next month.