Every Storyteller has a Story

"Always change your underwear, in case of an accident."  

"And always wear lipstick when you leave the house. You never know who you're going to run into."

Recently I attended a good friend's grandmother's funeral and it was one of the most moving tributes to a life I have ever seen. The memories were so vivid and fond and I got to know and respect this woman so much more than I had a chance to in the few brief encounters that we'd had in this life. She was bold, kind, and vibrant. A woman who raised amazing children had loving grandchildren. Who had life stories that spanned continents and a lust for life that lasted until the very end.

The characteristics of her life that stood out to me of course had nothing to do with her job. I don't even know what it was. The things that stood out were images of flowers on a sunny windowsill. The constant desire to sing, loud and proud (I do remember singing with her). The funny quotes and sayings that she would repeat often, like the ones above. And those that were left behind that painted a picture of a life well lived and well-loved.

What always strikes me when we mourn the loss of a great life is that we don't tell people while they are here how much they mean to us. How much they have impacted our lives and the mark they have left. After the loss of Alan Rickman and David Bowie (and many others this year), a lot of people commented that we should have been giving them accolades while they were alive. Well to those people I would say that Mr. Rickman and Mr. Bowie (such wonderful talents) got their fair share of recognition for their amazingness during their lifetime. But what about our everyday stories of incredible people? I would argue that it's just as important to honour these stories because we are all cogs in the wheel of the world and our time in it.

The King of Casa Loma

In that vein, I thought it would be fun to do a living tribute or two this year.  And being a writer at heart (and in my DNA I think, if I'm as like my Dad as I'm told I am), I've wanted to write about my Dad's amazing feat of writing The King of Casa Loma, a biography on Sir Henry Pellat who built Casa Loma. 

My dad is my writing hero. He has so many more ideas and is so much more creative than I think I will ever be. If he wasn't writing he was inventing things, or writing comics before comics had a convention, or taking beautiful pictures before camera phones made every last one of us a budding photographer with artificial filters. I can barely type out a few blog posts a year and he wrote a book, back when being a published writer wasn't as easy as signing up for a blogger account.

Most writers, like actors, don't experience heaps of success. Rejection is a daily occurrence. It's not for the faint of heart. It's a tough road...and I'm so proud of my Dad for tackling such a risky endeavour for a vocation. His writing story inspires me and makes me want to continue to write and get done what I set out to do. 

So here's the story. My Dad is a natural-born storyteller and his thirst for knowledge and to connect with other people and their stories is off the charts. I was one when my Dad published his book so I don't remember much, but here's how he tells it. Or how he answered my probing questions as we were driving home the other day.

Writing a Book Back in the Day

We lived across the street from Casa Loma and at the time there wasn't much written about its builder, who was a prominent banker in Toronto before he went...oops...bankrupt. My Dad thought there was a story there. I mean he built a castle! So he got started by researching through the Toronto Archives, conducting interviews with those in the know (including the niece of Sir Henry Pellat, Mary Pellet).

Another amazing feat, almost unheard of for lesser-known writers nowadays, is that he wrote a pitch and sold it before the book was started. Now this is at a time where typewriters were the means of writing. We're not even talking about one of those typewriters with white-out keys built in. You made a mistake and you had to "white it out" with a bottle of Liquid Paper. If you made too many mistakes in one draft, you'd have to decide what the tipping point was to make it look unprofessional enough to have to type it all from scratch. 

So pitch accepted, off he went for a year of research and writing. What amazes me about this and all of what he did is that it was not so easy to be a researcher and writer back in the day. I mean we're not talking long-hand Shakespearean times, but there were no search engines. Finding the name and contact information for a source wasn't as simple as typing the name into Google and seeing what came back. This was work. Blood, sweat and calluses from handling all of those actual documents. 

And then there was the writing itself!  My general writing style is fill-in-the-blanks. I type out a general outline. Then dump text in when I think of it. I make notes in different programs and cut and paste them over. Even now, for bigger projects, I use software called Scrivener to sketch out chapters, connect to character sketches, move things around, track changes, etc. This is a luxury (and also a bit overwhelming) compared to what was available back in the day. Paper, typewriters and pens. Back then you really had to commit to a chapter idea when you sat down to write.

And if you wanted to move things around you literally had to cut and paste. With scissors, and tapes and glue, all arts-and-craft-like. I can't even imagine. So being a writer when he wrote this book took more patience than most people today have. Had personal computers not been invented into existence, Chapters might not even exist. Back then, just getting your words on paper was an exercise in frustration. Printing copies at Kinkos was not an option. Your BRAIN and a well-worn dictionary were your spell check. 

The Writing Process

So how did his process work? Timelines were created based on research. He would bike my toddler self off to daycare and head to offices either in Queen's Quay before it was a shopping/office Centre, where he would browse the Canadian Opera Company costumes during his break, or at an office on Bloor street that was not the hubbub of activity that it is today. His desk was made up of stacked boxes. He would set out to write each chapter based on a general outline and would write the chapter straight through, start to finish, based on identified themes. Editing consisted of cutting and pasting pages to alter flow etc. 

Then it was published! Woohoo! And interviews on the CBC and other local radio stations, an appearance on a Children's show, and participation in the Gordon Sinclair circle on TV (Mr. Sinclair provided the forward to the book) followed. 

Writers were of a different brand back in the day. The amount of patience, persistence, and commitment puts me in awe. I love this story as it inspires me to persevere through difficulty, create, and continue to tell stories.

And it's all about the stories.

Postscript: My Dad just reminded me that as a 4-5-year-old I would say to people "My Dad wrote a book...do ya wanna buy it?" It's a wonder I never went into sales...