On Wednesday afternoon, award winning author and political columnist Richard Gwyn read from his biography of Sir John A. MacDonald. I wish I could tell you about that session, but I was busy watching The Beer Store guy load the beer truck at our store.  I would much rather have been at the Festival, but oh well.

I did make it to the evening session though, and it was excellent.

Paul Quarrington was the first presenter. He is both an author and a musician, and included both of his talents in his performance. Quarrington didn’t read from his most recent novel, The Ravine - although he did manage to work it into the conversation and encourage us to buy it a ~few~ times – instead, he read from King Leary, which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour (1998), and this year, won CBC Radio’s Canada Reads competition – which means it has been named the “one book that every Canadian should read”.  

A rocking chair for those who like to rock...

 In addtion to being a prolific author, Quarrington is the singer/guitarist for the blues/roots/country ensemble Porkbelly Futures. My favourite of the songs he sang at the Leacock included a chorus based on The Friendly Giant’s opening theme …a nostaligic gambit that works, I think, for most Canadians.

 The second reader was Randall Maggs reading from his illustrated poetry collection Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. Maggs’ work on Sawchuk, according to Stephen Brunt of the Globe and Mail:

 gets closer than any biographer to the heart of the darkest, most troubled figure in the history of the national game. This may be the truest hockey book ever written. It reaches a level untouched by conventional sports literature… His Sawchuk is real.

Wednesday at the Leacock was truly entertaining and truly Canadian, given its hockey theme. The Vezina Trophy – which Sawchuk won 3x, was also present.

Neither of my pictures of Magee turned out very well, but here is one of Quarrington and the Vezina trophy.

Paul Quarrington @ Leacock Festival 2008

In previous years, the official opening of the Leacock Festival was on Wednesdays – after the Laurentian University students’ reading, which was advertised as a pre-event, and was held on Tuesday evening.

This year, the Festival opened on Tuesday afternoon, and the LU students’ reading is part of the Festival proper, which is cool.

The first session featured Christopher Dewdney, author of 3 books of popular non-fiction, including The Immaculate Perception and Last Flesh.  He’s also written 11 highly acclaimed books of poetry, and won first prize for poetry in the CBC Literary Competition (closing date for submissions for this year’s competition is November 1, 2008, by the way!) He also participated in the TO Star’s Earth Hour article series, with On The Sprawl Apocolypse.

Dewdney read from his most recently published work, Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time, which Harper Collins Canada describes as:

a voyage through the seasons of a single year as Dewdney explores the world, encountering friends, family and strangers. Out of these anecdotes and incidents, the author teases extraordinary insights about the nature of time and how it influences us. Illuminating and complementing the book’s content, this deeply personal discourse links the literary past, present and future.

The other reader was novelist and short story author Barbara Gowdy. Gowdy is the author of several novels including Mr. Sandman, The White Bone (which is told from the viewpoint of an elephant), and The Romantic. Her most recent novel is called Helpless . 

Helpless is the story of a child abduction, told from various points of view: the abductor, the abductor’s girlfriend, the child and the child’s mother. Harper Collins Canada says

Helpless is Barbara Gowdy’s brilliant new novel, a provocative, gripping story of an unthinkable act and a mother’s heroic love for her child.

The New York Times review describes Gowdy’s writing:

Gowdy writes as if she’s on a sinking boat and needs to throw out all the dead weight. The only words that survive are the ones that matter: no extraneous evidence of her research, no long-winded descriptions, no self-indulgent frills of characterization.

The novel was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and nominated for The Giller Prize. To hear Gowdy reading from Helpless, visit Authors Aloud. Or, to read an intertaining interview by Toronto Life Magazine, click here.
The student reading in the evening featured 12 students – most of us, previous Laurentian writing contest winners – reading poetry or short stories. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, even though the event was rather under-attended. And it was great to have a chance to catch up with people I haven’t seen in eons.