The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
SECHELT, B.C.? Q: Why would the best books/authors festival in Canada be held in a place no one has ever heard of and can be reached only by sea? A: Beats me. Well, they must be doing something right, since the summer has produced the 22nd annual Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts and they had to beat off the customers with clubs (actually corn cobs.) Sechelt, for those who have never opened a book, is on the fjord-ridden coast north of Vancouver, looking across the mighty Georgia Strait where the Japanese current sneaks down between the mainland and Vancouver Island and delivers such warmth that they grow palm trees in Victoria (along with pensioners and politicians.) Got it? Every single known literary figure in Canada has found a way to get here over these 22 years and bookophiles plunk down good money to hear them yap and plug their latest best-seller. This summer produced 23 authors over three days and some of them actually talked to one another, something that sometimes is as dangerous as the running of the bulls at Pamplona. I mean you wouldn't want to have Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Clarkson in the same arena on the same day, which would be about as dicey as letting Pierre Berton and Mordecai Richler loose on the same evening. The ladies of Sechelt have PhDs in diplomacy. Earle Birney and Stanley Burke were here in 1984. Peter Gzowski, Al Purdy and Leon Rooke in 1985. W.O. Mitchell in 1986. You get the drift. The only way you can get here is from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, a 40-minute jaunt on one of those fat white bugs of the B.C. Ferry system (which Premier Wacky Bennett once claimed had more vessels afloat than the British Navy) to a spot called Langdale and head a half-hour north. Along the way you will run through Gibsons, made immortal by our late beloved Bruno Gerussi with his Beachcombers marathon series on the tube. The birth of the idea was modest. In 1983, six B.C. writers had a one-day event. Members of something called SunCoast Writers' Forge, they envisioned a summer festival to promote and present Canadian writers, editors and publishers, reading and chewing over literary and cultural issues. The emphasis was to be on the audience given access to the writers they had come to hear. If you can't get in a fight with Jack Webster (1995), David Suzuki (1988), Mel Hurtig (1994) or Rex Murphy (2002), what's the point of paying for the wine? See 'Writers' P.# Con't from P.# The third festival in 1986 included writers from outside B.C. and by 1988 it was clear this thing was headed for the stars and needed a permanent home. Sechelt's 'historic' Rockwood Centre was purchased and an outdoor pavilion ? made entirely of B.C. fir and cedar ? designed to take advantage of the land's natural slope for its 500 seats. Charlie Lynch (1989) called it "one of the wonders of the Coast." Everybody has been here. Michael Ondaatje, Doris Anderson and Vicki Gabereau (1993). Mavor Moore and Stevie Cameron and Shelagh Rogers (1998). Jack Granastein and Ms. Clarkson (1999). His Excellency John Ralston Himself did not make it until 2000. Berton of course was here by 1989, he of such an addict to writing that, having his 50th (and last) book to be published this fall, has returned to his typewriter ? no computer he, hurrah! ? to write a monthly column for the Globe & Mail. And this summer? People who can actually read line up at 9 a.m. and ? at $12 a pop ? can listen to ego-maniac authors until the moon rises. John MacLachlan Gray, who made Billy Bishop famous once more. Evelyn Lau, famous and sympathetic for starting out as 14-old prostitute. Ann-Marie MacDonald, an "army brat" who has become a TV star with a decidedly different lifestyle. From dawn to dusk, they empty the 500 seats after every author, to be filled up once again for the next ego. Practically all are sold-out items. They must be doing something right. X X X AND ANOTHER THING In 1990, the Festival added a new feature, the keynote Bruce Hutchison Lecture, in honour of the dean of Canadian journalism, who refused to leave his retreat in a Victoria garden. As the lecturer (ahem) told the audience, this scribbler was probably the only person present who knew Bruce Hutchison. I used to work for him. He never, for some reason, went to school until he was nine. He graduated from high school at 16, never tainted by a university education. At 90, he produced two books. He wrote his last column in summer of 1992 and died mid-September 1992. He once told me, "Foth, at the end of your life, if you recall all your acquaintances and acolytes, if when you die you have two close friends, your life has been a success." There went a wise man.
