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Illustration by Sarah Farquhar
Like many Canadians, I wrote a book last year. Not a novel with a tricky plot twist, or a treatise on the state of Canadian-U.S. relations (which would have been timely). I wrote a memoir.
It’s my first published book, and so I’m not known in literary circles − no one knows me, except for a handful of hearty souls in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley who may have read a piece I have published in the local paper. Why Are You So- is set in various locations across the country: Calgary, Yellowknife, Winnipeg and Grand Beach, Man.
Something strange happened in my family in 1973, when I was 10 years old. My dad went bankrupt and we had to move to another town where he got a job, and that place was about 1,750 kilometres due north in the Northwest Territories. This event changed the course of my life and I wrote 240 pages about it.
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I understand how to sell things. My career was in retail. I owned a couple of stores for nearly 20 years. However, I know next to nothing about selling books. So I have been stumbling around armed with a comprehensive Book Marketing Handbook from my publisher Friesen Press, and I have learned a few key things.
Libraries and bookstores in Canada generally like to carry books by “local” authors. I have been turned down from bookstores only a two-hour drive away: “Kelowna authors just don’t seem to sell.” At a provincial level, I received this very polite rejection from a Saskatchewan bookseller: “Due to a lack of Saskatchewan-related content, it is not something we are interested in carrying.”
That surprised me. I would think that reading a book about a little Canadian girl who grew up in Calgary would be of some interest to a memoir-loving reader from Dartmouth, or Brandon or Montreal, too.
When I arrived in Yellowknife a month before school started, I read Anne of Green Gables and Lost in the Barrens. I had walked to the library, dirty and tired and a little disoriented from the two-day drive and the 24-hour daylight. The librarian was kind enough to show me around and help me check out the books.
I had never been to PEI, but I loved reading all about Anne Shirley and the descriptions of the farm where she lived on the island. I had an aunt that reminded me of Marilla and I wiped away more than one tear when Matthew died.
When I moved on to Lost in the Barrens, I will never forget Farley Mowat’s description of the clouds of blackflies that surround every person and animal when you go much further north than I was in Yellowknife.
The whole “local” author issue is superpuzzling. I thought being Canadian was good enough.
I was born in Winnipeg and have lived in North Vancouver, Calgary, Yellowknife, Abbotsford, White Rock, Calgary again, and am currently in Kelowna. I think that makes me a super-duper Canadian. A Western-Canadian Canadian, if you like. But does that mean my e-mail to the library system in PEI will be immediately binned for my non-localness?
Right now, trade barriers between Canadian provinces and territories are making headlines as Canada faces a vicious trade war with our closest neighbour and ally, the United States. Our government leaders across the country are being urged to put aside their regional differences and make Canadian trade between regions our strength − a way to mitigate the economic pain sure to accompany any U.S. tariffs.
I never thought literature should be on the list of things Canadians should start sharing across regions. But it’s clear our idea of “local author” needs to expand well beyond the next cornfield or fishing town – “local” should extend to the whole country. There’s so much we can learn from each other.
Let’s break down those regional boundaries. Let’s trade in ideas, creativity and stories, too.
I have never been a nationalist per se. I don’t fly the Canadian flag at my Kelowna condo, but I think I will start my next round of e-mails with a slight change to my opening: “Good day, my name is Cathy Burrell and I am a Canadian author.”
Cathy Burrell lives in Kelowna, B.C.
