Tessa McWatt is third author in Week 45 of year-long celebration
By
Mark Schadenberg
From
coast-to-coast Canadians have been celebrating 150 years of Confederation
throughout 2017.
The
City of Woodstock has joined in the party with added attractions at Cowapolooza,
a special concert in Victoria Park on Labour Day weekend, and other
festivities.
Joining
in the Canada150 recognition was the Woodstock Public Library (WPL) with its
2017: 150 Canadian Authors series. With three writers featured each week for 50
weeks, it depicts the true inventory of talent in our nation with published
efforts in fiction and non-fiction, plus many epic sagas.
Fitting
into the category of novel story-telling writing is certainly Farley Mowat.
Week
45 features Mowat and the wonderful Dan Needles, along with Tess McWatt.
I
haven’t seen a full list of 150 prose producers, but I wonder if the series is
building up to a crescendo to the likes of Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Mordecai
Richler, Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Stephen Leacock and Jane Urquhart.
FARLEY
MOWAT
In
the brochures available at the library, the Mowat books receiving the spotlight
are The New Founde Land, the autobiographical The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, along
with Never Cry Wolf, and The Farfarers. Many other publications could have been
included certainly, but the premise of The Farfarers makes it an obvious choice
as the novel ponders and alternative to the Europeans founding or arrival at North
America by giving credit to the Albans. Could British people fleeing Europe
have arrived in Labrador before the Vikings?
The
Boat Who Wouldn’t Float won a Stephen Leacock Award for humour.
Mowat,
who passed away in 2014 at the age of 92, was also a World War II veteran (Including
the Moro River battles in Italy), but many of his best known books dealt with
Canada’s north.
Mowat
was recognized on Canada’s Walk of Fame before he passed away. He was inducted
as an Officer of the Order of Canada back in 1981.
I
believe, five of his books were turned into
feature or TV movies: The Snow Walker (2003), Lost in the Barrens (1990), Lost in the Barrens II: The Curse of the Viking Grave (1992), Never Cry Wolf(1983) and A Whale for the Killing (1981).
Berton
also penned many important books, including Klondike: The Last Gold Rush.
DAN
NEEDLES
Dan
Needles is interesting in my opinion as most of his 1-actor stories /
plays have starred Rod Beattie as Walt Wingfield and surround the tales of
Wingfield Farms (7 books and/or plays from 1985- 2009) and the fictional locations
of Larkspur and Persephone Township.
The
Letters From Wingfield Farm evolved from a newspaper column, and over the years
the productions have been a staple across Canada in Beattie touring shows,
including the Stratford Festival.
Needles
has written his entire career as he also spent a tenure as a speechwriter at
Queen’s Park.
The
WPL series includes three books with Wingfield in the title plus With Axe And
Flask: The History of Persephone Township. This book was the Stephen Leacock
humour award in 2003. It is interesting to see how a series of characters in a
fictional village (rural area) evolve over a 25-year span.
Today,
Needles lives on a hobby farm he has named Larkspur.
Dan Needles
LINKS:
www.mywpl.ca
http://markroyallepage.blogspot.ca/2017/03/canada-150-is-about-recalling.htmlwww.mywpl.ca
http://markroyallepage.blogspot.ca/2017/08/have-you-seen-hoopla-at-wwwmywplca.html
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Passing along a big congratulations today
to the Woodstock Public Library
for its Canada 150 series promoting our nation's authors
