Janet Gallant co-wrote the long poem about her life, The Wig-Maker (New Star $16), with Sharon Thesen, who transcribed and lineated Gallant's narrative, as Gallant's own voice.

Janet Gallant, the wig-maker, is the mother of two grown daughters. After thirty years in Calgary where she worked as an office administrator, most recently in the renewable energy sector, she relocated to Lake Country, BC, where she has a home business making wigs for alopecia and cancer patients. After her relocation to Lake Country, Gallant and Thesen, neighbours at first, became friends after spending an evening together waiting to know if they would be evacuated because of a wildfire in the area. Gallant wanted to tell her story, Thesen wanted to hear it. Gallant insisted she wasn't a writer; Thesen is an established Canadian poet and editor. Thus began what has turned out to be this tale.

The Wig-Maker gathers and weaves together themes and incidents that accumulate toward "the moan" of racism, sexual abuse, maternal abandonment, suicide, mental illness, and addiction. The twists and turns of the narrative gather a range of topics and incidents: the human hair industry, Black immigration to Alberta and Saskatchewan in the early 1900's, maternal abandonment, the stresses of military life, adoption search websites, the suicide of Gallant's teenage brother, the sudden death of her young husband, the stress-disorder of alopecia, and the loneliness of surviving all this but never finding answers. But some important answers have been given and received as a result of Gallant's research being inspired by the mysteriously healing process of the telling itself.

BOOKS:

Co-authored with Sharon Thesen: The Wig-Maker (New Star, 2021) $16 978-1-55420-171-6

[BCBW 2021]