Wendy Morton's fifth book of poetry, What Were Their Dreams? Valleys of Hope and Pain: Canada's History began its life when she discovered, by chance, a Wrigley's 1922 B.C. Directory at Value Village. In it were listed all the towns and cities, the residents' names, and their occupations. Using the directory, she wrote a poem about Port Alberni and read it at a spoken word festival in Port Alberni. The director of the Alberni Valley Museum heard it and suggested she write poems for an upcoming exhibit celebrating the 150 year history of the valley.

Wendy looked at archival photos, read journals and created poems to be incorporated into photographs at the exhibit. She then interviewed 15 residents of the valley, including survivors of residential school. They told her their stories, brought their own photographs, and Wendy turned their stories into poems. These poems became a way for their voices to be heard. And their voices were sometimes filled with the pain of their memories. What they told her changed her: changed her understanding of the hard lives of the first European settlers who arrived in the middle of the 19th century; changed her understanding of the lives of the First Nations peoples, whose history on the west coast of Vancouver Island goes back 4000 years.