Author Tags: Education Fiction Literary Landmarks


Articles: 5 Articles for this author

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"I've lived and worked all over B.C.,"; says Caroline Woodward, "from the Peace River and the Kootenays to Lillooet, the Gulf Islands, Vancouver, Haida Gwaii, Powell River, Tofino and all over Vancouver Island. So I can feel at home in lots of places.";

Now a relief assistant lightkeeper based on the Lennard Island Lightstation near Tofino, Caroline Woodward also worked as a sales rep for publishers for Kate Walker & Co. "from Chemainus to Smithers"; for seven years. She's hitting the road again, this time she's promoting two new titles of her own "springing (or glacially proceeding, more like it) from my Peace River roots."; Her novel Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny (Oolichan $18.95) is a contemporary retelling of The Odyssey, an enduring love story between a resolute Peace River ranch wife and her good husband, adrift behind the wheel of his long-haul truck bound for the west coast and southern interior.

Singing Away the Dark (Simply Read $18.95), a children's picture book illustrated by Julie Morstad, is based on Caroline's coping skills learned during midwinter one-mile walks to the Cecil Lake school bus stop in Grade One, through barbwire gates, a scary dark trail, past a cranky bull in a barnyard and finally, enduring a northern blizzard.

Woodward's October book tour included over 25 events in 16 cities, towns and villages. "I love driving,"; she says, "and I welcome the chance to organize my road maps and hit the road again."; Born in Fort St. John and raised on a homestead at Cecil Lake, the former Kootenay bookseller began her writing career with a two-year stint at the Alaska Highway News while she was a high school student.
Penny: 978-088982-267-2; Singing: 978-1-897476-41-3

[BCBW 2010]

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They say "it takes a village"; to raise a child and to care for families in crisis. It takes both a child and a village and a wise hat-maker in Caroline Woodward's first chapter book for 8-to-11-year-olds, The Village of Many Hats (Oolichan $9.95). As the protagonist nine-year-old Gina struggles with her sister's illness, tragedy within their mountain village of Silverado brings the community together.

With her literary roots in the Peace River, Woodward, born in Fort St. John, is also moving onto new ground geographically with The Village of Many Hats, setting her uplifting story in the Kootenay and Slocan valleys of southeastern B.C. where she founded a bookstore.

"Outside the vibrant cultural life and amenities of cities,"; she says, "I have to say that the rural and semi-rural Kootenays possess the people, the wilderness, the do-it-ourselves attitudes and the persistence to keep the arts in all its forms thriving.
"There is a constant flow between all age groups that I have found nowhere else and that I still find truly remarkable,"; she says. "During the eight years that my partner, Jeff George, and I ran the Motherlode Bookstore in New Denver, I was able to appreciate the way that people supported each other in times of crisis and in times of celebration, too.";
Woodward lived for eighteen years in the Kootenays: on the north shore of Kootenay Lake, attending the visionary, late, still-lamented David Thompson University Centre in Nelson. In Winlaw, she also worked in various capacities for Julian Ross and Ruth Porter at Polestar Press.

"I remain inspired by the work of so many talented and generous community organizers and artists I've met, collaborated with and still sing the praises of in The Village of Many Hats.
"I haven't even begun to pay homage to the abandoned railway tracks, the glorious hot springs, the cold, clean lakes and river swimming holes, the plentiful mountain ranges with acres of wild flowers on their slopes for six weeks and fantastic skiing the rest of the year...

"Did I say that I intend to live in the Kootenays again? Well, I do!"; says Woodward, who currently lives near Tofino.

The name of the village in her book combines one of the early names for present-day New Denver - El Dorado - and Silverton, a village on the shores of Slocan Lake, only five kilometres to the south of New Denver. "Silverado is more than just the name brand of a truck!"; says Woodward.

After the province withdrew 100% of its funding for the New Denver Reading Centre, Woodward posted her work-in-progress online and auctioned off roles in the story to five 'real' people who have contributed over $900 to support the centre: Heather Fox, Dr. Jamie Barber, Judi Gardiner, Wendy Harlock, and Francie Oldham.

The muse for her character Madame D'Oiseaux is the multi-talented milliner and fabric artist, Rosalie Bird, who still lives in New Denver. The book was launched at the Bosun Hall in New Denver in May. 978-0-88982-284-9

[BCBW 2012]

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Here's how the world works: Currently doing a stint at the Quatsino Lighthouse on Northern Vancouver Island, BCBW contributor Caroline Woodward first met poet and novelist Paulette Jiles in 1983 at David Thompson University Centre in Nelson. They collaborated on Starving Artist Dinner parties, the Kootenay School of Writing and CBC radio pieces. When Woodward worked as a publicist for Polestar Press in the Kootenays, in the late 80's, Jiles had just published Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma Kola and several books of poetry with them. Over many decades, they stayed in touch. When Woodward sent Jiles one of her partner Jeff George's annual wall calendars, Jiles loved his spooky, fog-bound night image of the Lennard Island Lighthouse near Tofino, which she had visited while researching the book. Jiles emailed the image to her New York editor. Now HarperCollins has bought the image so it can adorn Jiles' new dystopian novel, Lighthouse Island (HC $19.95 ), set in a formidable North American future. Larry McMurty has bought the screen rights for Jiles' previous novel, The Colour of Lightning. Lighthouse

[BCBW 2013]

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In 1993, Caroline Woodward, with her partner Jeff George, renovated a circa-1900 building on the main street of New Denver, B.C., population 700, and opened the Motherlode Bookstore.

Also an author of three books, Woodward later worked as a publishers' sales representative for Kate Walker & Company, based in Comox, starting in 2001.

But the literary life can be a hard slog.

At the outset of her new book, Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper, she describes how a pivotal meeting with a middle-aged man on the Alert Bay ferry changed her life. He was on his way to a new job as a relief lightkeeper, enabling him to escape from a dull civil service career in B.C.'s interior.

Woodward was struck by "how his face lit up when he said how he felt truly, deeply alive upon arriving in Port Hardy... And wasn't that exactly how I missed feeling?

"And wasn't that even more the case for my husband, who had dutifully worked at all kinds of low-paying, part-time jobs with awful hours for years on end?
"Here we were, in our late middle-aged phase of life when most people are at the pinnacle of their chosen careers. We, on the other hand, were feeling trapped and powerless.";

After Jeff George first gave lighthouse keeping a try, and liked it, Caroline Woodward packed in her job as a publishers' sales rep and joined her partner on hard-to-approach Lennard Island, offshore from Tofino, where she subsequently gained her credentials as a keeper of the light.

Here Sheila Peters outlines how Woodward's irrepressible curiosity and enthusiasm turned a chance encounter on a B.C. Ferry into a life line.

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Like any good storyteller, Caroline Woodward runs many threads through her rich storybook quilt of history and memoir.

On the personal side, she takes us back to her childhood on a farm in B.C.'s northeast and her breakthrough writing year at David Thompson University where she met her husband, Jeff George.
On the historical side, we travel back to the early days of lighthouse keeping in B.C. and forward to the heated battle to keep at least some of those lighthouses staffed.

As these storylines are connected, Woodward's determination to reclaim her and her partner's creative life amounts to a powerful story.

"The lightkeeping life was going to be our next Great Adventure,"; she writes. "...It was time for me to climb the rope ladder, get on the ship and head out to the lighthouse.";

Woodward's narrative mentions the dozens of jobs she had previously, from her childhood on her parent's homestead in remote Cecil Lake, B.C. in the North Peace River region to her teenage days writing for Ma Murray's Alaska Highway News to planting rice in Sri Lanka and running a bookstore (to mention only a few). As well as providing fodder for her writing, she says, these varied experiences made her a good fit for the varied tasks of a relief lighthouse keeper.

Although she does admit the lawnmower once backed her into the blackberry thorns, the sixty-something, five-foot-two Woodward stands tall for female equality. "...when anyone has the colossal nerve, as one lightkeeper's prissy wife did, to tell me that lightkeeping is really Man's Work-well, I've been far too polite to such presumptuous, sexist individuals to date. But I will state here that I had likely done more hours of hard labour by the time I reached fourteen years of age than most contemporary adult Canadian males have done in their lives.";

Woodward sticks up for B.C.'s always-endangered lighthouses just as strongly as she sticks up for herself. Light Years is full of stories of lives saved, disasters averted and comfort brought to people caught out by wind and waves. Excerpts from keepers' letters reveal some of the challenges they faced as tsunamis destroyed their homes or supply ships couldn't get to increasingly hungry families.

And if you've ever wondered exactly how visibility, the height of the waves, or the wind speed are determined, Woodward reveals the tricks used to compile the weather reports keepers file daily, beginning at 4:40 a.m. and finishing at 10:30 p.m.

The lighthouse keeper's life can be a hard slog...

Along the way, Woodward rarely misses an opportunity to throw in arcane facts. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's engineering father who invented the Stevenson screen, a slatted box still used to house maximum/minimum thermometers.

"The Stevensons and their crews of skilled tradesmen,"; writes Woodward, "achieved feats of engineering in North Sea conditions that would be utterly forbidding, even today, using no cordless DEWALT power tools whatsoever.";

As exuberant as any wild coastal landscape, Light Years has sections on gardening that include how-to cope with extreme coastal climates or soil contaminated with diesel spills, babying seedlings shared with other keepers and pruning a beloved David Austin tea rose.

In spite of the complications of shipping food to such remote locations, celebrations of good eating are epic (if Woodward ever invites you to dinner, accept!). Best of all, she slips her sense of wonder into every chapter. Photos are by Jeff George. And, yes, some of the romanticism most of us automatically associate with lighthouses is in evidence.

"I slept and slept on Egg Island,"; she writes, describing one of her numerous relief stints at other lighthouses, "with only the sounds of the wind in the evergreens, the cries of the sea birds and the comforting push and pull of the ocean swells.

"One night humpback whales circled the island, singing their eerie whale songs, some basso profundo, others swooping up into the heldentenor range. I had to pinch myself. Imagine falling asleep to whales singing deep sea lullabies.";

Woodward's need for solitude combined with her powerful sense of connection to people and place has stood her well in her work on the lights and as a writer. Light Years is a passionate and generous celebration of both endeavours and the people who do them.

And any writer looking for ways to re-start a stalled career would do well to consider her example: Light Years is Caroline Woodward's fourth book since moving to keeping the lights in 2008.

978-1-55017-727-5

Sheila Peters writes and publishes from Smithers.
Sheila Peters

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Thank you, Northern Lights College, for this great personal and professional honour today where we have primarily gathered to commend and applaud the hard work and sacrifices of the graduates and their families.

Thank you for the generosity and enduring patience of the Treaty 8 First Nations and the Kelly Lake Cree Nation on whose territory the beautiful buildings, the classrooms, labs and workshops of this College are built in the key cities of the North and South Peace region.

When I attended the two-and later three-room Transpine School in Cecil Lake, I did not read about our own rivers, lakes or our own wide sky or about the First Nations who have lived here for at least ten thousand years or the European immigrants, like my parents from Holland and Wales, who toiled as homesteaders on this northern prairie. I devoured the books that came in the Bookmobile two or three times a year with pioneer librarian Howard Overend at the wheel of what was to me, a truly Magic Bus, a bus that Mr. Overend named Parnassus, for the sacred mountain peak in Greece, the mythical home of poetry and literature.

I knew in my child's heart and mind that our rural lives were every bit as interesting, and as important to read about as the stories of children in England and America and, somewhere along the line, as I wrote songs and plays for my school friends and I to perform, I resolved to write books about our forgotten lives in this often-overlooked part of the world, then proudly claimed as Canada's most northerly agricultural breadbasket and now treated as some industrial sacrifice zone for the rest of this province.

When I was a high school student and wrote a weekly news column for the Alaska Highway News for two years, I learned the three golden rules of journalism: spell everyone's name correctly, get the facts straight from the original source, find a second source with expertise in the subject to corroborate if my BS radar is waggling wildly, and always be inclusive and generous because every individual, every club and team and every issue of concern in the community matters deeply to someone and people deserve a fair and even-handed account. I learned to apply more nuance, more depth, and more edges too when faced with wily subjects and when writing in other forms than the "just the facts, ma'am"; reportage bashed out on a typewriter in the Office Practices classroom every Wednesday by this Girl Reporter on the Loose. Later still, at the University of British Columbia far from home where I went for my post-secondary education long before these first-class facilities were built in the Peace, I learned not to be afraid to question Authority or anyone else. And to back up my curiosity with solid research, in other words, do my homework and consult with others because as the brilliant Canadian Joni Mitchell sings, Two Heads Are Better Than One, and I'd add that six are even better than two. The truth is out there, after all, and it lives inside our own hearts and minds too. Add solitude and wilderness to your lives as often as possible, to stay inspired. And never forget where clean water and healthy food comes from and where your waste materials go either, to stay grounded.

Writing as an occupation is as hard or worse than farming as our products are both subject to the vagaries of markets and mere opinions beyond our control, of urban trends and technological change that is inexorable wherein what may have worked once will not work as well ever again, so we must be humble and alert to the signs and change our ways. Adapt. Albert Einstein said, "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."; Just sayin'. Well, Einstein didn't say that. I did but his honest statement excites and drives forward the innovators among us in all fields! What if? Let's try this! Great science and great art spring from experiment, from trying the so-called impossible. His wise words can also be interpreted to mean: Listen, observe, ask questions, be open-minded and tolerant of other points of view en route to creating a better world together.

If we choose to work at what we love, we will love our work for the rest of our lives with no regrets, learning from our mistakes, accepting them, working smarter, moving forward. That's my strategy and I'm sticking to it. This is not to say that I don't wish all of you a steady and substantial income for your talents rather than the minor feast and famine situation I've gotten myself into, don't get me wrong! But if you have to leave your heart at home to earn cold, hard cash in a workplace where you feel unsafe and devalued, where you are paid to do work you find ethically reprehensible, find a way to work with others to organize change for the better, not just for yourself but for everyone else too, especially those more vulnerable than you are. Be open to the possibilities and the choices you have in every situation, always.

Becoming a writer, after trying out a good number of white, pink and blue collar jobs, has allowed me to ask questions and ponder answers, large and small, to research history, psychology, oceanography and countless other subjects, to wonder Why Not? and to imagine What If? Writing for me is an act of synthesis and of empathy, of imaginatively putting myself into another person's shoes and walking their walk, in order to attempt to understand what motivates or torments or heals them. Writing is about reaching in and handing out what I've arrived at in understanding or gained as insight about this human condition thing we all struggle with. It's why I write. It's why I read.

No matter whether we choose, or are born to be, absolutely original artists like Ben Heppner or Brian Jungen or Roy Forbes, to cite three great ones whose company as honourees of Northern Lights College I must now strive to stand alongside, or if we offer the world our talents as administrators of ground-breaking social or medical programs to benefit humanity, as inventors of better technology to clean industrial waste water, as explorers, entertainers or veterinarians, it is really about becoming more evolved human beings, about being as kind and non-judgmental to each other as possible for we are all, despite outward appearances, carrying burdens in our hearts or minds or bodies. This is the inevitable truth of the human condition. We may start out "invincible, infertile and immortal"; but we soon learn, unless we are chronically oblivious to cues from the real world, in which case learning is delayed -but still inevitable- that we are "fallible, frail and often foolish"; in the Life decision-making department. In other words, we are each and everyone of us flawed yet potentially fabulous human beings, fodder for every writer and actor. To quote Marilyn Monroe, "we are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle";. I see a lot of twinkling from the seats here today and so you should. Gleam away all you grads, you proud families and yes, the instructors and professors who pushed and inspired the grads to get here today, too!

Finally, no matter where I've lived and worked in this world since first leaving to attend university, this landscape, this climate, the wild and the domestic realities of survival here in the Peace still resonate the most with me. I think we bond like ducks, to the earth and the water and the voices of the people we were surrounded by when we were very young and all the world was new. So spread your wings, fly high and wide, be of good cheer, it does get better, always do your best, be courageous and be kind. Don't forget to call home, or your mothers will worry, and carry the Peace in your hearts forever. Thank you and congratulations to us all!

Caroline Woodward for Northern Lights College Commencement Address June 3, 2016, Dawson Creek.?