My Love Affair With BC Ferries (or why I hate flying)

I wish I all my travels could be taken aboard a BC Ferry.

Consider air travel vs ferry travel:

  • On a plane you’re strapped into a cramped seat with minimal leg or elbow room.  If you have a window seat and nature calls you have to climb over your travel mates or ask them to get up. This ‘call’ usually arrives just as they’ve fallen asleep.  On the ferry, however,  window seats aren’t boxed in and you can opt to sit alone if you’re not feeling friendly. The seats are spacious, cushy, you don’t need to strap yourself in and there’s no problem accessing aisles. You can walk around the ferry for the entire trip if you don’t feel like sitting. You can even shop aboard the larger vessels.
  • Washrooms on airplanes are scary, noisy, cramped spaces and there are very few. If one becomes “unusable” for any reason, the line-ups for the remaining few become long. Washrooms on ferries are numerous, spacious and, in my experience, clean.
  • Unless you’re flying business class, food on flights is limited and expensive and your first choice is usually unavailable once the flight attendant reaches your row. (Same with the beer and wine.)  On BC Ferries there are a lot more options as well as tables for dining.
  • The scenery from the window of a BC ferry is spectacular and ever-changing as compared to the view of  endless sky and clouds when you’re in the air. (And you see nothing if your seat mate has closed the window screen.)
  • Boarding a ferry does not require frustrating security checks and you don’t have to pay extra for your bags.
  • Turbulence is more unsettling than rough seas – there’s further to fall.

Part of my love affair with ferry travel is that feeling of suspended time. There’s nothing you have to do but read, nap, nibble or eavesdrop while seated in a comfortable lounge. Much the same may be said of air travel but with the comfort factor removed and if you forget to bring nibblies you’re out of luck.

I never grow tired of watching ferries come around the point and glide into the bay, majestic giants, quiet and snow-white against a backdrop of blue ocean and moss green mountains.

It’s a shame that air travel is far faster and you can visit significantly more places than with ferry travel.

Perhaps the greatest reason I love ferry travel is that it always coincides with the start of  beloved cabin time, or time spent with a dear friend. Perhaps that’s the real reason I look forward to riding BC Ferries.

Orangutan extinction?

The rainforest in Sumatra and Borneo is being cleared at an alarming rate to make way for palm oil production. This deforestation has caused critical habitat degradation for the orangutan  who could become extinct in 5-10 years if the palm oil industry continues at its current pace.

Palm oil is a cheap, edible oil that can be found in 40 – 50% of all household products, from baked goods to shampoo and other cleaning agents.  Its production in Malaysia is a complicated issue but there’s so much at stake, from mammal extinction to climate change and indigenous rights.

It’s hard to find products that don’t contain palm oil and even harder to know how to make an impact on the palm oil industry, but we need to be aware and do what we can. In the words of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

More info can be found at:  saynotopalmoil.com

 

Fan Mail

Sometimes a book comes along and you simply need to reach out to the author and tell them what their story meant to you. I did that today.Gracefully Grayson

I’ve been doing a lot of research on transgender issues for a writing project I’m working on. I’ve read dozens of books – memoirs, novels, picture books, non-fiction. All of them have helped me better understand the transgender experience.

And then I read a review of Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky. I was surprised to find a novel for young people on this subject that I hadn’t yet stumbled across. It wasn’t in my library (they need to get a copy!) so I had to request an interlink loan. (The book was shipped to my library from another city.)

I gobbled up the story in one sitting. As I told the author in an email, the best word to describe this story is ‘tender’. And brave, just like the protagonist, who, baby step after baby step blossoms into the person she was meant to be.

In a way, this is the book I was hoping to write, but I couldn’t find my way, so I changed directions. I’m so glad Polonsky pulled it off, and so beautifully.

Reaching out…

making a difference 1 Last week I received a Facebook message from a woman who asked if I’d taught at a particular school close to 30 years ago. I had. She said she’d been a student in my class when she was in Grade 3. She’d recently read a post on Social Media about favourite teachers and it made her think of me.

This woman, who is now 41, went on to tell me that she remembers that I was always ‘happy and fun’. She shared a few of the funny things she recalls from my class (like how to use the tune from the Mickey Mouse song to spell my name) (I still use that song to teach people how to spell it) and how she began to come out of her shell that year. She finished by thanking me for being an ‘amazing teacher.’

I was so grateful to hear from this woman. I would have been in my early 20’s then and was definitely wet behind the ears when it came to teaching. I felt like an imposter, not a ‘real’ teacher. Apparently I did okay.  🙂 Hearing from her has reminded me of how important it is to reach out to those who have made a difference in our lives and to thank  them. Let’s do it before it’s too late.

Be an encourager. Scatter sunshine. Who knows whose life you might touch with something as simple as a kind word. Debbie Macomber

 

making a difference 2

Mom’s The Word 3: Nest 1/2 Empty

Moms the wordI’m so excited that I soon get to see these women perform in their new theatre production, Mom’s the Word 3: Nest 1/2 Empty. I’ve been following their careers since they staged the first version of Mom’s the Word, a collection of stories that poke fun at the joys and challenges of raising toddlers.  Their second show in this series – some years later – dealt with raising teens and it was just as wonderful. Now they’re on their third production where their children are leaving the nest (or not).  Their marriages may have evolved as well. Alison Kelly (second from right) and I swapped parenting stories on the side of the soccer pitch for many years so I know first hand where some of her material comes from. Continue reading →

A Writerly Crisis of Faith

Apathy_Bear_by_MrsGeeI’m writing a new novel. This one is for an adult audience, not my usual genre which is young adult. This is new territory for me. I spent months doing the research, and now I’m well into the story.  I’ll probably spend another year completing it before I’ll shop it around to publishers. If it’s any good and with a little luck it will get published and then I’ll start another one. Such is the life of a novelist.

But there’s always that chance that I won’t find a publisher for this one. It’s an extremely competitive field. I might have missed the boat with the topic which may be passé by the time the story is complete. Am I wasting a couple years of my life working on something that will simply grow mouldy in a file cabinet drawer in my basement? Every day I wonder if my time would be better spent working in a soup kitchen, bringing meals to the elderly, volunteering in a hospital – all things that would help make my community a better place.

This is the dilemma faced by most writers. Hugely successful ones sign contracts before a project is written, but for most of us, writing is an act of faith. We enjoy the process, but we also hope that our words  will  find an audience to entertain, inform, or simply be thought-provoking. But there are days, like this one, when the words aren’t flowing and the passage of time stares me in the face and I wonder … is this the best use of the time?

Life imitating fiction

whiskey-jack-blogIn my book, Dancing in the Rain, the character of Brenna entertains the tourists on Grouse Mountain by hand feeding the whisky jacks, a bird commonly found on the mountain. I liked the idea, but had never actually done it myself. Yesterday I spotted a group of them in in the trees while snowshoeing on Mount Seymour . I put out my hand to see what would happen. Immediately a  bird landed on it, looking for food. Because she was so friendly I shared my Cliff bar with her. Nothing makes me happier than being up close to wildlife.

Standing up…

… for what I believe.standing-up-2

These are the 2 facts that led me to a plant-based diet over twenty-five years ago.

1. More than half of the grain grown in the US is being fed to livestock rather than consumed by humans.  The US could feed 800 million people with that grain.

2. It takes 4,000 gallons of water to support an omnivore diet per day compared to 300 gallons to support a plant based diet.

I knew that by giving up meat I alone couldn’t change the fact that millions of people around the world don’t have access to fresh water and food, but it felt like the right thing to do. Since then I’ve learned that meat-heavy diets create more climate change than all cars and planes combined and I’ve seen photos of the atrocities animals suffer because of our wide-spread practise of factory farming. My resolve to maintain a plant-based diet has only intensified.

Lost Boy

news-flash-2I’ve signed a book contract for book #11! The  working title is Lost Boy and I believe it is due out in 2018. Thank you Orca Book Publishers!

Lost Boy is a follow-up to my earlier book, Sister Wife, which dealt with a young girl living in a polygamist community. She was forced to marry a much older man who already had multiple wives.Sisterwife wp

Lost Boy tells the story of a boy who also grew up in that community and was forced to leave after it was revealed that he was having a secret and forbidden relationship with a girl  (the main character in Sister Wife.)  Boys like him are pressured to leave these communitites to reduce competition with the elder men for wives. They are dubbed the ‘Lost Boys’. Raised to distrust the outside world, when they finally run away or get pushed out they must learn to live in an unfamiliar society. They have little education and few skills. They believe they are beyond spiritual redemption.lost-boy

Unfortunately, communities like my fictional one are still flourishing throughout North America. Here in BC stories of the polygamists in Bountiful are in the news today. In writing this book I set out to explore what life would be like for one ‘lost boy’.