BAYFIELD – Five local personalities will defend their favourite Canadian reads in Bayfield Reads 2013 this weekend.
On Sunday, Feb. 10 at 2 p.m., the stage will be set at Bayfield Town Hall for the five defenders to pitch their top choice from the Canada Reads list.
Steve Baker, principal of Virtual High School, defends Lisa Moore’s February, the story of Helen O’Mara, who lost her husband Cal when the oil rig, Ocean Ranger, sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine’s Day storm in 1982.
Sharon Brown, a retired teacher, defends Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse. Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse is the story of Saul Indian Horse, a resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, who takes readers on a journey back through the life he’s led as a northern Ojibway, with all its joys and sorrows. Indian Horse unfolds against the bleak loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibway man.
Tony Eyamie, artist and owner of Patina Studios, defends David Bergen’s The Age of Hope. It is the tale of beautiful Hope Koop, who grows up in small town Manitoba in the mid-1900s. She appears destined to have a conventional life that includes church, marriage to a steady young man, But as the decades unfold, what seems to be a safe, predictable existence overwhelms Hope.
Pat Rowe, of St. Joseph Museum and Archive, defends Jane Urquhart’s Away. This novel is set in Ireland and Canada, tracing a family’s complex and layered past. It takes the reader from the harsh northern Irish coast in the 1840s to the quarantine stations at Grosse Isle and the barely hospitable land of the Canadian Shield; from the flourishing town of Port Hope to the flooded streets of Montreal; from Ottawa at the time of Confederation to a large-windowed house at the edge of a Great Lake during the present day. Graceful and moving, Away unites the personal and the political as it explores the most private, often darkest corners of emotions where the things that root people to themselves endure.
Peter Smith, artistic director of the Blyth Festival, defends Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, which recounts the saga of Athanase Tallard, the son of an aristo-cratic French-Canadian tradition, of Kathleen, his beautiful Irish wife, and of their son Paul, who struggles to establish a balance in himself and in the country he calls home. First published in 1945, and set mostly in the time of the First World War, Two Solitudes is a classic novel of individuals working out the latest stage in their embroiled history.
In the national event, five celebrity personalities will pick from the same five books in a February debate. The debates will air on CBC Radio One Feb. 11 to 14 at 11:06 a.m. and again at 8:05 p.m. You can watch the debates Feb. 11 to 14 on documentary channel at 7 p.m., with a repeat at midnight. An encore presentation of the debates will take place each day on CBC-TV Feb. 12 to 15 at 1 p.m.
For more information, visit the Canada Reads website.
Tickets for the local event, $5, are available at The Village Bookshop, which is organizing this event.
