Whale in the Door

A Community Unites to Protect BC's Howe Sound

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Memories of the Galiano Literary Festival

Wonderful time at the Festival on Galiano. Hanging out with authors I admire at the magnificent Galiano Inn. My session was with Sarah Cox who wrote Breaching the Peace, an important revelatory book about the boondoggle that is the construction of the Site C Dam in the Peace River Valley. I began the session with my poetic musical telling of the Scientific Creation Story I learned from physicist Brian Swimme. […]

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Galiano Literary Festival February 22-24

galiano literary festival

Very thrilled to announce I will be a presenter at the Galiano Literary Festival held at the magnificent Galiano Inn February 22-24. Lee Trentadue and her team have selected many wonderful authors, including Darrel McLeod (Mamaskatch) Helen Humphreys (The Ghost Orchard) and Sarah Cox (Breaching the Peace). I will be reading from Whale in the Door as well as singing songs about Howe Sound on the morning of February 24. […]

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Knowing Our Place Book Club Winter

Braiding Sweetgrass

“A hymn of love to the world,” says Elizabeth Gilbert about the next book chosen for the Knowing Our Place Book Club. Written by a scientist and member of the Potawatomie Nation, Braiding Sweetgrass brilliantly combines Indigenous knowledge, scientific knowledge and spirit, as it explores what we can learn from plants. It is not the land that is broken, she writes. It’s our relationship to the land. Her book describes […]

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Knowing Our Place Book Club fall schedule

Knwoing Our Place Book Club Fall

Researching and writing Whale in the Door inspired me to create a book club to read Indigenous authors. It’s part of my Knowing Our Place initiative. The idea is to learn about Indigenous culture, governance and worldview from those who live it and write about it. The monthly gatherings take place at the Bowen Island Library. We began last March with The Truth About Stories by Thomas King. The group […]

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We Wrote We Folded We Sang for the Orcas

Folding for the Orcas

On August 11, the Alice McKay Room at the Vancouver Public Library was vibrant with young and old coming together to ask for more protection for the Southern Resident Orcas. Their letters to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans were folded into origami Orcas while poets Miranda Pearson, Barbara Pelman, and Marlene Grand Maitre read from the poetry anthlogy, Refugium: Poems for the Pacific, also published by Caitlin Press. Latash […]

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Fold for the Orcas at Vancouver Public Library

Whale in the Door" Fold for the Orcas

Looking forward to this very special event at the Vancouver Public Library from 2-4 pm on August 11 at the downtown library branch. My friend, Rebecca Duncan, dynamic Squamish Nation storyteller, will be telling the Whale in the Door story. There will be whale puppets and whale songs, poets reading poems about the Pacific, and I will be reading from Whale in the Door and singing songs about Howe Sound/ […]

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National Indigenous Peoples Day on Bowen Island

Bowen celebrates National Indigenous Peoples Day

For the very first time, we celebrated this important day on Bowen Island. The weather, the performers, the smiling faces all added up to an evening to remember, outdoors in front of the library. (All photos by Len Gilday) Rebecca Ducan, whose ancestral Squamish name is Tsitsayxemaat, enthralled everyone with the creation story of Raven stealing the Sun from Seagull. And she sent a shiver through the youngsters with her […]

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Signing at Armchair Books in Whistler

armchair books whistler

This was my first time for a bookstore signing for Whale in the Door. Here’s how it works. You sit in a bookstore surrounded by your books, waiting for people to take notice, ask about your book and maybe buy one so you can sign it. The whole afternoon was made enjoyable by the welcoming presence of Dan Ellis, the owner of Armchair Books, who had set up a nice […]

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Never too early to start caring about Howe Sound/Atl’kitsem

My friend, Mai Yasue, who teaches a course in Community and Conservation at Quest University in Squamish, sent me this photo of her darling precocious daughter Melia reading Whale in the Door. She captioned it “never too early to start”… Never too early to start teaching our children about caring for the place we call home.  Never too early to fall in love with this beautiful fjord. Never too early […]

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