Late Nights On Air
A little while ago I was asked to be part of a blog tour being written by the author of Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay. I've recently finished the book and will post my review early next week but first, please enjoy Ms. Hay's post from the far north.
May 14, Yellowknife
The old insomnia kept me company last night. It almost always does after an evening event – over-stimulation, too much talk, too much smiling, not enough to eat. At one a.m. I was reading with tremendous sadness the obituary of Arthur Kroeger, a marvelous civil servant, who died at 75 of kidney cancer. His excellent history-memoir of his Mennonite family, Hard Passage, I read last year. I put down the newspaper and slept for a few hours. At four-thirty I was awake again and Yellowknife was already saturated with light. A chorus of sleddog-barking went up from Joliffe Island in Yellowknife Bay. Half an hour later, a great quacking of ducks overhead. Then croaks from a raven. Then gulls. It is wonderful to be back here in this month of sounds of all kinds.
We flew from Whitehorse several days ago on First Air, a northern airline kind enough to provide its travelers with a box lunch. I’m traveling with my husband, and this portion of our trip is very much work and pleasure. In the last few days I’ve given a reading at the library, visited two classrooms to speak to English Lit and Northern Studies students, been interviewed up and down and inside out. Mark, who works for Oxfam, has also been doing interviews, talks, school visits.
Last night was the main event for me, an evening organized and conducted with great care and imagination by NorthWords Writers Festival and CBC North to celebrate Late Nights on Air as a book inspired by Yellowknife. Bruce Valpy read from his play about John Hornby, Patrick Scott from his book of stories of the Berger Inquiry, I read a Yellowknife section from early in the novel, then several of us formed a panel to reminisce about radio in the 1970s. I had the enormous pleasure of reconnecting with George Tuccaro, the sportscaster and personality, and Bob Carr, the technician, both of whom I knew well from the moment I started out in 1974.
The little radio station where I began is now a Subway sandwich shop. A reporter took me into it and said, “Now what would have been going on over there where that guy is slicing meat?” I would guess that where the guy is now slicing meat we used to have our little announcer-operator office, too small to have more than three or four desks.
Memory is a mug’s game, of course, constantly creating fictions that have their own truth.
Today we have lunch with the mayor, then visit an activity centre for seniors. This last should be relaxing, the elderly being far easier to satisfy than classrooms of teenagers.
The before and after of Yellowknife; our overnight on the Yellowknife River; our visits with old friends – all of this I will write about tomorrow.
May 14, Yellowknife
The old insomnia kept me company last night. It almost always does after an evening event – over-stimulation, too much talk, too much smiling, not enough to eat. At one a.m. I was reading with tremendous sadness the obituary of Arthur Kroeger, a marvelous civil servant, who died at 75 of kidney cancer. His excellent history-memoir of his Mennonite family, Hard Passage, I read last year. I put down the newspaper and slept for a few hours. At four-thirty I was awake again and Yellowknife was already saturated with light. A chorus of sleddog-barking went up from Joliffe Island in Yellowknife Bay. Half an hour later, a great quacking of ducks overhead. Then croaks from a raven. Then gulls. It is wonderful to be back here in this month of sounds of all kinds.
We flew from Whitehorse several days ago on First Air, a northern airline kind enough to provide its travelers with a box lunch. I’m traveling with my husband, and this portion of our trip is very much work and pleasure. In the last few days I’ve given a reading at the library, visited two classrooms to speak to English Lit and Northern Studies students, been interviewed up and down and inside out. Mark, who works for Oxfam, has also been doing interviews, talks, school visits.
Last night was the main event for me, an evening organized and conducted with great care and imagination by NorthWords Writers Festival and CBC North to celebrate Late Nights on Air as a book inspired by Yellowknife. Bruce Valpy read from his play about John Hornby, Patrick Scott from his book of stories of the Berger Inquiry, I read a Yellowknife section from early in the novel, then several of us formed a panel to reminisce about radio in the 1970s. I had the enormous pleasure of reconnecting with George Tuccaro, the sportscaster and personality, and Bob Carr, the technician, both of whom I knew well from the moment I started out in 1974.
The little radio station where I began is now a Subway sandwich shop. A reporter took me into it and said, “Now what would have been going on over there where that guy is slicing meat?” I would guess that where the guy is now slicing meat we used to have our little announcer-operator office, too small to have more than three or four desks.
Memory is a mug’s game, of course, constantly creating fictions that have their own truth.
Today we have lunch with the mayor, then visit an activity centre for seniors. This last should be relaxing, the elderly being far easier to satisfy than classrooms of teenagers.
The before and after of Yellowknife; our overnight on the Yellowknife River; our visits with old friends – all of this I will write about tomorrow.
posted by Heather at 8:17 AM
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