Peter Behrens's Blog, page 581

Ontario Road

I'm on the book tour, which starts to seem endless. Airports and hotels. The only thing to do is to get in a car, get out of the city, find the country roads, and get lost. On Wednesday--no, Thursday--I headed out of Toronto, where I'm at the IFOA, for Belleville, Ontario, and a talk/reading the city's Public Library. Instead of zooming on the 401 freeway, I cut away at Port Granby/ Bond Head and followed a patchwork of little roads heading east along the northern shore of Lake Ontario. The round wound its way through very rich alluvial farmland and tiny Ontario farm towns: a very Loyalist/Irish Protestant landscape, "the Front" as it used to be known in Susannah Moodie's day. (viz., "Roughing it in the Bush"). I kept coming across tiny brick schoolhouses---"separate (Catholic) schools" from the days when public education in Ontario (and Quebec) was denominational.


The road was...well, let me put it this way: it was not the 401 Freeway.



It woke me up to a part of Canada that freeway travel had obliterated from my consciousness. The "Eat Slow" movement suggests we also need a "Drive Slow" movement, when we're driving at all...preferably in a recycled vehicle at least 25 years old.
           It's all in the details. You don't see anything at 70 mph. People hate driving now, and road trips, because their experience out there is on freeways, interstates, nowheresville fastfood colonies. There is a whole country out there. It's gorgeous and strange. I met a stonemason working on the 19th church at Wesleyville, ON, and he let me inside the building to have a look. Nothing fancy, but I do love that plainspoken Ontario style of brickwork. And the robin's egg blue paint was clearly the right choice. And the little organ has been there for 100 years.


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 I found my way into the town of Port Hope, and signed some copies of The O'Briens at Furby's Books. These Ontario towns look & feel so (Co. Tipperary) Irish to me. Settled as they were by Irish (Protestant & Catholic) in the 1830s


Not all brick either. Lots of stone foundations and stone buildings from the mid 1800s.

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And the Loyalists were here, even earlier, and did their best to rebuild Georgian New England in Ontario.

Kubota and Queen

           I've been on the road (in the air, mostly) around Canada for most of the last two weeks, reading & talking on behalf of my new novel, THE O'BRIENS, which is out in Canada now (House of Anansi Press), and comes out in the U.S. in March 2012 (Pantheon Books).  At the moment I'm in a hotel in Toronto and having some trouble remembering where I've been in the last 10 days. Oh yeah....Calgary, Banff, and Edmonton; but I think I've already posted about those places.  Well, I flew back to Maine  for a couple of days R&R, but then flew out to Vancouver last weekend. The Vancouver Writers Festival on Granville Island was wonderful, as usual, and in the middle of it I took off for 24 hours to see old friends--Blake O'Brian and Jenny Lee and their family--at their farm--Orkney Farm--on Denman Island. The trip started with a ferry out of Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, heading for Departure Bay on Vancouver Island: a 1:40 hour trip from the mainland to VI, across the Strait:
leaving Horseshoe Bay
I landed on Vancouver Island and drove an hour up the island's east side to take another ferry to Denman Island

Spent Saturday walking and exploring the farm with Blake and Jenny (also did a talk/reading at the Denman Island Arts Center). Blake is very proud of his shiny new Kubota.

The best thing about book tours is getting off track, seeing old friends, and exploring astonishing parts of Canada, such as Denman Island. (Below) is a actually a view of Hornby I., from the beach at Denman. It was supposed to rain (this is British Columbia--the coastal rainforest, after all) but it didn't.
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         Trees are large, out there.
         From Vancouver I flew to Ottawa for the Writers' Festival, and a talk reading at the Ottawa Public Library, and an early morning walk around Parliament Hill in bright October sunshine.

I ended up sitting in the morning sunshine, jet-lagged and dazed, at the foot of the Victoria Regina bronze on Parliament Hill; another grateful subject of Her Majesty.


This afternoon I flew to Toronto, where I'm reading at the International Festival of Authors this Saturday Oct 29 at noon. There's an IFOA interview, here. I read/talk at lunch at the Womens Art Association tomorrow, October 26; that's not open to the public, but an IFOA event at Hamilton 7pm Sunday October 30th, is; so is an event at the Belleville (ON) Public Library at 6pm on October 27th.

1959 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special

[image error] Our south Saskatchewan correspondent, Alex Emond, noticed the 1959 Fleetwood Sixty Special in Herbert, Sask. last week. Fifties exhuberance at its best, or worst. I think the perfect car for cruising the Great Plains, where parking is not a problem.

Oh and it's for sale, too.

Weather's Good There in the Fall

Four strong winds that blow lonely, etc. Thanks to Ian Tyson for the song, and Neil Young for the versions he's delivered over the years. I'm on the road in Alberta, Canada. Last night at WriterFest, the book festival in Calgary, I was lucky enough to read to an SRO crowd of booklovers at the Vertigo Theatre, on a powerful list with Wayne Johnston, Elizabeth Hay, Johanna Skibsrud and Anita Rau Badami.  We were introduced by Calgary's brilliant mayor, Naheed Nenshi, a reader/politician...really and truly. He says so, anyway. And I believe.
            Did an another event at Audrey's Books in Edmonton tonight.
           But what I've really been doing is driving a lot, and getting out and walking whenever I can.... wishing to reconnect with this powerful Alberta landscape that meant so much to me as a young man. Something about October out here: when I worked on a wheat farm October meant the harvest was nearly over and we could think about where we were going to head for to spend the money we'd been saving up all the summer.
      Aspens sharp yellow and shivering in the October winds, all along the foothills...I'm trying to write this post in 10 minutes before going off to dinner and the bookstore reading, so I think I'll just put up a couple of photographs from this week, and write more about context, along with some personal history, when I have a little more time.
          Strands of my own personal connections to Alberta: When I was 18 I came out west on my own steam and found a job as a hand on a cattle ranch in the Rocky Mountain foothills. I ended up going back for another season, and learned there most of what I know about horses and cattle, hayfarming and fence mending and small town beer parlours. I also learned just what I could and couldn't do on my own. The photo above was taken near Caroline, Alberta a couple miles from the GH Ranch, where I worked. Fall roundup was happening. I remember how tough it was  working cattle in those aspen groves: not exactly the wide open range. But the forest is good cattle browse, and our cows were certainly free-range, and organic as hell.
             Another Alberta connect for me: I put in time on a crew building and rebuilding hiking trails in the Rockies. This week I hiked from lake Louise to Lake Agnes on a trail we rebuilt in the mid-eighties. I remember hiking up that trail with Toby Clark, both of us toting Swedish rock drills on our shoulder.
            No rock drills, mattocks, and helicopters this time. No grizzlies, either. This photo is moi, up at Lake Agnes.

Below: Lake Louise was looking like, well, like Lake Louise. i.e., like nowhere else.

Driving west on the Trans Canada, that first glimpse of Castle Mountain is always a thrill:

Today the wind was blowing maybe 20 knots NW, (ref. Ian Tyson: those winds sure can blow cold/ way out there). Classic Alberta autumn, and the sky was mostly clear. Down south the aspens were still blazing yellow but closer to Edmonton things were starting to look bare. I stopped at Rocky Mountain House, and walked the bank of the North Saskatchewan River, and through the site of the 19th century Hudson's Bay Co. (and Northwest Company) fur trading posts. I think the No. Saskatchewan may be the most beautiful river on the continent.
       Back in in southern Alberta, on the Stoney Reserve:

  Looking forward to heading back to Banff tomorrow: dinner with old friends, then another event at WordFest in Calgary on Saturday.

round ranginess of earth

This poem, from David Rivard's fifth book, Otherwise Elsewhere, sums up how I start to feel ( as a green midge/ or/ as a pine tree) on book tours.  In Quebec, while driving home to Maine, after reading in Montreal.NOTETO MYSELF
Havingsurvived self-esteem(both low & high), likesurfacing
outof a to-dolistfor civil warinthe heart—
Havingbeena back-stabber (when saidbackwas my own) or
luckyDarwinianholderoftheAce of Spades,
inmy mind—Gettingto see myselfas agreen midge
oras apine tree looming likeafetching samurai
atthe edgeof ameadow—I get a littletired--&strangely
everywhereI goseemsonestepcloser to wherever I
 thoughtIwas when I leftforwherever
Iwanted to be.Giventhe roundranginessof earth, always
thinkingof myself—that'sit for me, tho. Enough. Nomore,thank you. No, really.

There is a there, there.

from Places and Novels, a piece I wrote for the blog, Canadian Bookshelf:
I need to seed a book in a place. In my mind I plant the idea of the book in one very specific patch of ground and hope it will grow from there. Until I know where that patch of ground is, I'm lost and the story, the book, that I'm trying to write does not come into focus. I can't grasp it. I have no traction on a story until I have a place...


The place I'm focused on now. Anyone recognize it?

My Brilliant Careerism, part 7

I'm on the Canada book tour this fall; my schedule is posted here. I'm happy to sign books, and love to see old friends along the way.


Last weekend in Montreal I read/talked/signed my new novel THE O'BRIENS at Westmount Public Library, and at the last moment decided to include a slide show of family--that is, O'Brien--photographs.

My Brilliant Careerism, part 6

I'm on the Canada book tour this fall; my schedule is posted here. I'm happy to sign books, and love to see old friends along the way.


Last weekend in Montreal I read/talked/signed my new novel THE O'BRIENS at Westmount Public Library, and at the last moment decided to include a slide show of family--that is, O'Brien--photographs.

French Appalachia

 Hwy 212, near Nptre Dame des Bois, QCOne of my favorite roads in the world: the route from the Maine coast to Montreal. There are actually many different ways to go, none of them involving major roads and all featuring moose--rather than traffic--as the main road hazard. This stretch near Notre Dame des Bois Quebec is on my current favourite route: Quebec Highway 212 from the Maine border at Cobourn Gore ME/Woburn QC to Cookshire, QC. Then to Lennoxville and on to Montreal.
             I like this drive because of the farms, villages and mountains. The mountains are les Appalaches,  elsewhere known as the Appalachians, which start way down in Alabama and end up as the Notre Dame Mountains in the interior of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula.
La Patrie, Qc Upland dairy farming near N.D. des Bois, Megantic County, Quebec.
               It is interesting how much borders matter. I've heard people say the Canada/US border is meaningless, barely noticeable....it is actually one of the more dramatic and telling borderlines in the Western world. For one thing, along most of its three thousand mile length it corresponds to a geographic divide, usually riverine. In most of Quebec, the border is a squiggly line between the watershed of the St Lawrence, and the watershed of the Atlantic coast of New England. North of the border everything (water, business, culture)  slopes to the St Lawrence Valley; south of the border it runs elsewhere. Civilizations--Amerindian and others--were shaped by this divide. (Likewise, in the West, the 49th parallel pretty much marks the divide of the Hudson Bay watershed and the Gulf Coast watershed (east of the Continental Divide in the Rockies, that is). The Canadian "Nor'West" was explored and organized into the Hudson's Bay Co. fur empire, along rivers running into Hudson's Bay: from where company ships would sail to England.
                 But I digress.
                 Cobourn Gore, Maine is about 2.5 hours from Montreal, but it feels a lot further away than that. Borders signify.

Montreal. Not Maine.

Autobody & Ballroom Marfa

AUTOBODY CURATED BY NEVILLE WAKEFIELDfeaturing the film NORTH OF SOUTH WEST OF EAST 
All events are free and open to the public.     _______________________________________________
(Fall is happening in Maine, with beautiful sunny days (so far). Apples have fallen, and been gathered;  breezes out on the Reach tends to NW; and we start to think of our winter home in West Texas.                 One of the reasons we like Marfa so much is events like this one, upcoming at Ballroom Marfa.                 Another reason we like Marfa is old trucks and the Marfa guys who work on them. Speaking of autobody, check out Hector Sanchez's work on our truck at H&M Auto in Marfa (just behind Mando's) )---PB
AutoBody , curated by Neville Wakefield, explores the mythology of the American automobile through the carcasses of an industry turned art. From Robert Frank to Richard Prince, the automobile has been the driving force of American freedom: its promise of escape provided in an image of mobility. However, as JG Ballard pronounced over 40 years ago, "the car as we know it is on the way out... for as a basically old fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashion idea: freedom." The American dream that it once represented, and freedom-the idea it once enshrined-may, like the car itself, be turning obsolete.
With a nod to those windshields that cinematized landscape, AutoBody features the newly commissioned four-channel video work, North of South West of East, by emerging artist Meredith Danluck and produced by Matthew Shattuck. Shot on location in Detroit, Michigan and Marfa, Texas, North of South West of East uses the car as an entry point, a subtle connective tissue, between the equally loaded but seemingly disparate archetypes of the Cowboy, the Rebel, the Immigrant, and the Actress. Eschewing the simplification of abstraction, the film employs the mainstays of narrative with a strong focus on temporality. Each of the four character's retention of the past, attention to present actions and future anticipation play out on separate screens simultaneously manifesting both mobility and stasis-the chronic existential crisis that is American identity.
Marfa local punk band Solid Waste and New York musician John Carpenter are featured on the film's soundtrack.
This is happening at Ballroom  Marfa in--where else--Marfa Texas. _______________________________________________
FRIDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2011 6-8 pm: Opening reception   with a performance by Mick Barr8:30 pm: Community dinner at the Capri   followed by a performance by Mariachi Las Alteñas   
SATURDAY, 1 OCTOBER 21012 pm: Exhibition walkthrough with artists