New things

WESTPORT. Well it sure was nice to wake up in my own bed this morning. September is turning into a busy month and I have been roaming the province for more than a week.

After a trip to Toronto (to start work on a new research project for the Archives of Ontario), I had gone to Guelph and the Erin Mills Author Festival (see blog, September 10th) before heading to Ottawa to spend a few days with Nancy, my partner. Then, it was back to Toronto for some more Archives work, then to Sudbury to visit my daughter Hayley who has just started studying social work at Laurentian University and, finally, another quick visit to Ottawa before returning home last night. 2,400 kilometres in 8 days.

Before leaving Ottawa, I attended a Raw Food Festival with Nancy to find out more about eating healthy vegetarian food that is not cooked. It sounds weird but we are both really interested in all kinds of different foods and diets. We don't eat a lot of meat anyway and the exhibitors at the festival had all sorts of interesting samples to try. Lots of sprouts (my favourite was turnip -- and spicy radish), a pizza made with a crust of crushed seeds and nuts with pumpkinseed paste and all kinds of crunchy vegetables, and, thank godness, wonderful desserts. And these deserts were all good for me -- no chemical additives or artificial sweeteners.

I'm not sure I will give up grilled vegetables or chicken burani on rice but it is always interesting to try something new, especially for a writer. I love travelling to new places, meeting new people and being introduced to new things.

My biggest adventure of the summer was my first flying lesson in a glider. We were towed to 1,000 metres by a plane with an engine and, when the tow cable was released, we spent a half an hour gliding gracefully above farm fields alongside the Ottawa River. The instructor handed over the controls to me for half the flight and we swept and soared under the clouds. It was wonderfully quiet -- no droning or engine roar. Even when we nosed down into a deep dive, there was just a rush of air as we hit 170 kph.

Two weeks later, some friends took me kayaking for the first time and I learned how much tippier kayaks are than canoes. A wave and a blast of wind almost dumped me and I spent the rest of the paddle sitting in a sloshing puddle of water. Luckily I didn't tip right over but it was very close.

I love visting new places as much as trying new things. Each year, I visit about 50 schools -- usually across Canada but occasionally in the United States and sometimes beyond. Over recent years, I have been to the Middle East twice (Bharain and Qatar), Houston, rural Ohio, Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and all over Ontario. Visiting schools always gives me a chance to meet the people who live in the communities which is way better than just passing through a town as a tourist.

When I was in Hopedale, Labrador several years ago, I was invited to the village's annual Guy Fawkes bonfire on a blustery November night. All the families came out to stand around the huge fire to celebrate a British tradition even though most of them were aboriginal. But the kids seemed to know a lot more about hotdog roasting than they did about the traitor who had tried to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

My week in Prince Edward Island included watching the tail end of a hurricane hit the island in the middle of my visit. Because there was no power in the schools I was supposed to visit the next day, I got to spend an afternoon wandering long beaches, inspecting the damage that the storm had inflicted on the shoreline.

In Regina one February, I got a first hand taste of really cold weather when I wandered the streets in temperatures that dropped to -45 C. I wrapped a scarf around my face for the first time since I was a little kid walking to school -- and, of course, my glasses immediately steamed up and froze solid.

Some authors end up writing stories about the people they meet during their travels -- Robert Munsch is very famous for this -- but I haven't done that yet. Instead, I tuck my memories away in my notebooks and brain, pulling them out now and then to slip some fact or character into a story that I am working on. Incidents that have occurred during school visits or peculiar teachers I have met, are likely to find their way into future episodes of my Bug and Frogger novels but I don't think I will base entire books on a visit. But you never know . . .

Anyway, September is the month when I sort out what cities and towns I will be visiting in the coming school year so I will let you know later where my travels will take me. I am hoping to head to the Niagara region and hopefully back out west.

Cheers,