About Heather

Heather has lived on a Canadian Gulf Island for most of her life, but when she was ten or so she lived on a farm in Southern Ontario and that experience is fictionalized in the Patti Stories. However, many of Patti's experiences are a blend of that setting and of raising her own family of three girls in a rural setting on Saltspring Island. These stories draw on the realities of both places and it is this that gives Heather's writing that extra ring of truth.

Heather has been a teacher, a CUSO volunteer in South America, and has sailed the Pacific in a wooden schooner. She has two BA s from the University of Victoria, in English and Psychology and in Creative Writing. She has also published poetry and magazine articles.

She is presently writing an adult novel set on the West Coast.




Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Non-critical reading versus the other thing.

A problem with examining the elements that come together to make the Patti Stories work, as I have been doing in the discussion topics, is that the whole effect of the story that we experience as we read uncritically, swept up in the characters and their lives, can be lost. How often in the past have we resisted a critical* approach? These books sparkle, they pass on their attitudes fully contained within the text. So, why think about what they are all about? Surely that requires some difficult double reading?

I think that most of us do read uncritically anyway and we can do this with the Patti Stories so easily because the writing is particularly transparent. But if we wish to discuss the stories with others we have to think more closely if we wish to do more than say “Great book, eh?”

In a school context, (and I think these books lend themselves to classroom study) teaching critical thinking, trying to understand major themes and character motivation and the basic assumptions that the author brings to her writing, is important. We can use these skills in the broader context of our future studies, our work lives and our participation in our societies. For example, we are in the midst of an election here in Canada at the moment and an ability to peer through the verbiage to the broader messages of political parties is an essential skill.

Reading critically to understand the Patti Stories will give us the tools to understand a whole lot more.

* Critical in terms of careful study, not negative.


Thursday, September 10, 2015

Writing Little Guy.



Melaque, Mexico. 

While it might have been nice for Heather to have written this book in a lovely pastoral setting such as her characters inhabit, the first draft was written in a rented room in the little Mexican seaside town of Melaque. She had heard that Penguin wished to publish 'Life on the Farm', while our yacht Shiriri was anchored off Monterey, Calif., but they wanted a sequel as well. As we were soon sailing off across the Pacific after a couple of months in Mexico, the only time available for writing was before we left North America.

That is not us in the foreground. The headland gave some shelter from the waves but even so landing through the surf in our rowing dory could be exciting at times. And then there was launching ....
To begin with, we anchored off Melaque, Mexico, and rowed ashore with our daughter Anne through the surf each day to the writing room and laptop. Heather and I would discuss for a while and then I would take a long walk and return later to hear what had been written. Later we moved our schooner into a nearby lagoon and Heather took the bus each day to her room. In this manner a story about a girl and her borrowed horse living in Ontario came to life surrounded by palm trees and bougainvillea and close to the sound of Pacific surf.

This is NOT Heather's writing room!


I re-read the book today and can find no trace of our life in Mexico, but what I do find is an immense amount of interesting detail about horses, both ridden and driven, and an uncanny feel for the landscape of her characters. Heather has a map of this place buried somewhere inside, and this is all the more remarkable because while the first Patti story drew strongly from her own childhood farm life, 'Little Guy' is a blend of that setting and its characters and our life on Saltspring where we had horses, including an injured Little Guy. (As with Patti, horses came to us because they were injured.) Little Guy recovered and was ridden by our daughter Elaine at the Fall fair and carried away the top prize.

The real Little Guy was just as opinionated, just as much a teacher, and a tease, as the fictional little horse is.

We left Mexico, reefed down and headed for the South Seas.

The final manuscript of 'Little Guy' was mailed off to the publisher from a little post office on the island of Moorea near Tahiti.


Thursday, September 3, 2015

Patti's rural lifestyle parents.


Squash, pumpkins, will last until next Spring.

Patti does not come ready made but is part of a family and larger community. Those parents of hers though, what kind of weird throwback world do they inhabit anyway? All that farming and gardening and cooking!

Well, actually, Heather and I were talking this afternoon over tea ( while sitting in our rocking chairs beside the woodstove) about her own grandmother, Agnes Docking, who died some years ago, and remembering her little house in Vanderhoof, BC and her basement full of preserved food, - her big vegetable garden. And Heather's grandfather who was splitting his firewood each year well into old age, of the icehouse with its big lumps of ice stored in sawdust...... Heather was musing how it felt like she had skipped a generation and was living a life more like her grandmother's than her parents.

Heather has a large vegetable garden, rows of raspberries, blueberries, a large plot of strawberries, plus an orchard of fruit trees – plum, apple, pear, peach. And we keep enlarging our growing area, trying out new crops, each year. I too cut my trees down and make firewood each winter, keeping one year ahead of demand. We bought an extra deep freeze this summer to hold the bounty and Heather spends all summer canning, drying and freezing. So far she has wasted only one zucchini she harvested! And that's a feat! When we shop we stock-up in bulk and our basement has rows of big buckets and bins to store six months worth of supplies. We grow all our dried beans and potatoes. Funny, really, when I write this down, but it the way we have chosen to live.

So, if you wonder how it is that Patti's family lives the way it does, they come by it naturally. And the really spooky thing is that we have others on this island just ( well, perhaps not so extreme) like us!

Dried beans

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Outdoor learning and Patti




Children belong outdoors. We know that intuitively and an extensive and ever-growing body of research supports it. Kids who spend time outside everyday are healthier, happier, more creative, less stressed and more alert than those that don't. Several recent studies even show that time in nature or green space helps reduce ADHD symptoms.
But what about teachers who take children outdoors – more alert, calm and creative students are a plus to themselves, other class members and to teachers.

David Suzuki

There is interest these days in educating children outdoors rather than in a classroom. Through a variety of different channels parents and other educators are realizing that nature has and always has had an important role to play in making us completely human. So obvious really, but the industrial model or, still further back, the educational model of the monasteries has been the standard for a long time. Top down education, filling little minds from teacher to little ears, has ignored the complex knowledge that comes from interactions with our oldest teacher, the world of nature. The Patti Stories places us into a rural world that many people in the past experienced in their childhood years even as they plodded through the usual school program. Patti attends school but we see her mostly out on her bike roaming the countryside, playing with friends, riding her horse, building a log cabin and learning so much intangible, unquantifiable knowledge in the process.




I spent the really important years of my own childhood in just such a natural setting beside a bay on the BC coast. My parents were too preoccupied to think of sending me to scouts and summer camps and so I was free to wander the shores and forests, to venture out onto the bay on my handbuilt rafts, canoes and sailboats. To this day I feel competent at whatever I dare to venture, not because I know everything but because in my childhood I learned to be self confident as part of the natural world and a self directed learner. Patti is all about competence and confidence and perhaps a reader might think she is too good to be true, but a careful reading will show how she struggles but learns important life lessons. Life is not easy or simple but it is the important thing, and humans have a long, long history of learning and adapting to the greater world given half a chance.


Not everyone has nature at their doorstep as has Patti, but with luck they have parents who can talk things over just as Patti's parents do and these books do present a whole series of topics that flow from Patti's life-learning experiences ( see the sidebar direction to a separate page for discussion). We all can walk the woods, ride the trails, fight bullies, train chicks and horses with Patti and get to discuss and make her learning part of us, no matter what our age.


Our relationship with nature is probably the most important mind shift we need to make if the earth is is to survive with us on it. Divorced from it, whether through old religious or newer scientific paradigms, we know our children may fail in the biggest exam of all, but reacquainted with the natural world they might stand a chance. Heather writes from her own experience as a child and her whole adult life spent close to the big world that still exists beyond our self-involved human one.




Becoming a writer


Many years ago, after we returned to Canada from Guyana where we had been teaching with CUSO, Heather began to write a short story about some character in a tropical country and she showed me her first page.... Perhaps, no certainly I was insensitive because when I read that “Aleel could not steal” I bust out laughing. Oh, oh! She began again but this time the newly named character “Aleep, could not sleep” and, brute that I am, I laughed some more. And that was the end of Heather's creative writing for a long time.

When her children were in University many years later she began again in the Creative Writing program at U Vic. This time I did not laugh and anyway she had hit her stride at last. She had published an article in 'Cruising World' about our family's voyage in the Bahamas on our catamaran 'Amazon' and that portfolio got her into the program. But, it turned out, non fiction did not have the same draw for her that poetry and fiction did. Thus began some exciting and expressive years of writing where teachers and fellow students really valued what she wrote. And what she wrote came busting out after being bottled up for so long! Years of life and adventure provided the material and perspective and she provided the passion to express herself at last.


Heather's writing style benefited immensely from her studies in the Creative Writing department. Her writing seems very simple and transparent. We read her prose so easily that we step directly into the lives she has created. Her story advances mostly through dialogue that sparkles. I've read and talked over much of what she has written over the years so I am aware of how her life stories have been transformed into fiction and it still amazes me that she can do this so well. Technique can be learned through study but that something extra that stems from personality and expression is what makes the Patti Stories into great literature for all ages.

The real world of the Patti stories



In the first chapter of the first Patti book we are introduced to a reality that definitely has nothing to do with dragons or magic spells. Patti lives and grows in a real world, not in fantasy literature. On her parent's farm a mink has found a crack in the barn siding boards and killed all but one of the baby chickens the family was rearing. Dad and Jamie, her older brother, are staked out, shovels raised, waiting for it to return. And of course the curious creature does return and is killed in its turn. It must be so or it will return sometime later and kill more chicks. Mink will always find a way in. That is the reality of the situation.

Now, is this suitable subject matter for a children's book? Should not the reality of farm life be hidden away? I would say that there are lots of fairly grizzly things associated with farming, the making of food for the rest of us to buy from the meat counter for instance, that really does not need to be dwelt upon, but in this case we do need to meet the family and get a sense of their world. The reality is that these chicks if they had lived and produced eggs for sale would have contributed to the farm income. As both parents already work off-farm in the village bank and sawmill, the gentle farm life we might like to imagine is more a steady struggle to make ends meet. And yet they love the farm and the rich experience it provides for their family's life.

The Patti Stories strength lies in the author's skill in capturing the thoughts of children and placing them in realistic situations. And in Patti we have someone who thinks about and learns from her experiences. We all learn along with her.


Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Heather visits the setting of the Patti Stories.





A few years ago we had the opportunity to visit the farm just south of Ottawa where Heather experienced many of the events that found their fictionalized way into the Patti Stories. As usually happens on visits to one's childhood home it all seemed smaller and stranger. Time had been mucking about in the meanwhile with places stored away in memory: the old house still there but added to, tall hedges and trees where there had been none, and distances strangely abbreviated. What happened to the gravel pit, Joan's house, all the outbuildings? But the landscape remained even if fences had disappeared from the now larger fields, and the river was still there somewhere beyond the trees in the woodlot. There beside the house was where the ice rink was made....



What this brought home to me was how the stories Heather wrote were based on what was stored away in memory, altered and made into something new through her imagination. The actual place did not matter that much any more.



The Patti Stories and how they began.



Heather began writing the Patti Stories while taking a creative writing course at the University of Victoria. At first she wrote the true story of the fire in the field that she had experienced as a girl on a farm in Southern Ontario ('Life on the Farm'). Patti just seemed a good name for her main character, but of course as so often happens Patti quickly became her own person. The rest of the books were a natural progression spread over several years. 'Little Guy' was written in a borrowed room in Mexico while we were sailing to the South Seas, and 'Joan's Summer' began in Australia.

Now, as her husband I can recognize Heather in Patti, and I am happy to do so, that spunky child grew up to be a pretty terrific adult, but Patti lives in a family quite different from Heather's own childhood one. I can recognize Patti's family as related to the one Heather created for herself and has lived here on Saltspring Island, but only slightly - Patti has long since grown beyond Heather's personal experiences.

While the first two books were first published by Penguin, they are now republished, along with Joan's Summer by Promontory Press.

Like Patti, Heather has a million enthusiasms and projects on the go, plus she is already deep into a novel set on the West Coast, so I, Bill, her husband, have volunteered to manage her website and facebook account. Stay tuned!