August 2018

Do you believe in ghosts? Yes, I’m talking to you. Well, do you? Do you believe in ghosts?

I’ve always been fascinated by things that go bump in the night. I remember as a child devouring the old Usborne volume on ‘Ghosts’ and being ecstatic when I stumbled upon copies of Fate magazine. My imagination was filled with stories of the restless dead that left my heart fluttering with panic. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if I actually encountered a spirit that refused to rest in its grave despite being bound with wards and blessing. It was terrifyingly thrilling.

We’d just bought a cabin on a small island off the west coast of Vancouver, British Columbia, and it had a dock.

The contract concerning the dock had this line: “Section 6.1c, Moorage Law Covenants: You must provide without compensation temporary accommodation to any vessel that is disabled or that seeks shelter in weather conditions that would render it unseaworthy.”

As a youngster I was thrilled by the adventures of Jim Hawkins in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but never gave too much attention to the real nature and history of pirates, even as I went on with my education and eventually became a museum director. The sea, however, has always been a fascination for me, and I answered that interest by being commissioned in the Naval Reserve and doing a fair amount of sailing as a crew member on “tall ships” on the Great Lakes, the Caribbean, and even across the Pacific to Hawaii.

I was invited to attend the British Home Child Reunion on July 22, 2018, in Kitchener, Ontario to launch my new book, Marjorie Her War Years: A British Home Child in Canada. The event was organized by Lori Oschefski of the British Home Children Advocacy and Research Association. It was held at the Waterloo Region Museum.

Reunion: the act or process of being brought together again as a unified whole.

Dundurn Press, a leading independent Canadian publisher, is hiring a senior publicist in our Toronto office for a one-year maternity leave contract. The senior publicist’s primary responsibilities are to manage the publicity department, successfully plan and secure publicity for a selected number of titles each publishing season, and to develop and maintain strong working relationships with media and authors.

Duties and responsibilities: