Memoir

Understanding How Concussion Affects Women’s Lives

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

This week’s post is not about a book—well it is, sort of; and it’s not about a UKing’s grad, although it is about someone who attended the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program. 

Julia Nunes, who has cowritten two books on mental health with Scott Simmie, was in the class of 2016. We hit it off while we were in New York for the publishing residency. My book (which will be released in the spring) is about a concussion I suffered over twenty years ago now. She, too, was writing about concussion, focusing on her son, who was at that time lying in bed with, if memory serves, his second hockey concussion—crushing headaches, severe photophobia, disorienting dizziness, ongoing vomiting, the whole nine yards. 

The first night we were in New York, I was out to dinner with Deirdre Macdonald (a peer in the class of 2015 who’s just released her MFA book project, Her Hat in the Ring: Toronto Milliner El Jamon and Her Circle). As we got up to leave, I slipped on a piece of tomato on the floor and fell backward, striking the back of my head on the corner of a table in almost exactly the same spot I had struck in 2003, when I sustained the concussion I was writing about. 

I went by ambulance to the hospital (with Deirdre, bless her) and yes, I had another concussion. It nearly ruined my time in New York—headaches, dizziness, thankfully not vomiting—so I only attended a few of the lectures (couldn’t focus for long) and none of the social events (way too loud). By the last day, I was feeling a bit better, so Julia and I explored The Highline and walked around Strand Books.

I finished my degree that year; Julia didn’t get to finish the year because a short while later she fell and had a severe concussion. It took her months to recover. I think she’d hoped to return the following year, but then she suffered another concussion, and another (having one concussion increases the risk of having another). 

So, she never finished her degree (or, as far as I know, the book about the inadequate way children’s sports teams were dealing with concussion in players). However,  I recently read an excellent book called Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, edited by ED Morin and Jane Cawthorne (University of Alberta Press, 2021). Toward the end of this wonderful and vindicating anthology of essays is an essay by Julia Nunes called “The Next Hit.”

This excerpt hit home for me:

I attended a speech recently by a woman who lived first with post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and then with breast cancer. She shared a PowerPoint graph called “Sympathy by Casserole.” The comparison was stark: friends and family delivered more than sixty meals as she underwent chemotherapy versus zero meals post-concussion. Yet breast cancer, she said, was a breeze compared to PCS. The pain was less intense and the brain fog of chemotherapy had nothing on the confused, muddy state of the concussed mind.

I had something like this happen to me not long after my concussion. A friend who no longer lives on the Pacific Coast came into town with her husband for three months. In all that time, she found forty-five minutes for me but visited a friend who was dealing with breast cancer numerous times. When I expressed my hurt, she responded with something like, “Lynne, she has cancer. You bumped your head.” 

No one really understands concussion until and unless they live through it; no one understands that while seventy to eighty-five percent of concussions heal within days, weeks, or months, the other fifteen to thirty percent can continue causing symptoms for years, even lifetimes. 

Sadly, I know Julia understands—sadly because as much I’d like people to understand better, I wouldn’t wish a single concussion on anyone, much less multiple concussions. 

If you’ve never had a concussion and would like to understand it better, read Impact, starting with Julia Nunes’ excellent essay, “The Next Hit.”

And if you’ve had a concussion and would like to see your experiences reflected accurately on a page, read Impact, starting with Julia Nunes’ excellent essay, “The Next Hit.”

Here are other books from the prolific graduating class of 2016:

The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest, by Helena Moncrieff

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, by Suzanne Stewart

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton

A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, by MJ Grant. Review coming soon.

Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, by Sue Harper

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, by Renée Pellerin 

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann

Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon, by Joan Francuz

Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence, by Stephanie Griffiths. Review coming soon.

A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, by Jason Murray. Review coming soon.

No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, by Jessica McDiarmid

F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon

Must-Read Books from Recent Canadian Graduates: Part 2 of The List So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

So many new authors on this list! (For comparison, see the first list here.) Congratulations to all the newly published authors (at least since the first list), to all the authors who were published long before I reviewed your books, I’m reading as fast as I can, and to all the authors who’ve been published that I still haven’t got to … I’m reading as fast as I can! And to anyone reading this, if I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know. And the winners are:

(Edited to add: Apparently I missed quite a few books that should go on this list. I’ve added them at the top of the list so you won’t miss them. There have been several more deals but the books aren’t out yet and I’m unable to find complete information about them.)

Barone, Rina (class of 20??) Art Always Wins: The Chaotic World of Avant-garde Pioneer Al Hansen, (press and year?)

Jaffer, Taslim (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home. Book*hug Press, 2024.

Kierans, Kim (class of 2025), Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty. Bighorn Books, 2024.

Kuzmyk, Emma (class of 2025) with Addy Strickland, This Wasn’t On the Syllabus: Stories from the Front Lines. Simon & Schuster, 2024.

McKay, Lori (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets. Nimbus Publishing, 2024.

Moore, Chris (2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Moscovitch, Philip (2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More. Formac Publishing, 2019.

Simpson, Sharon J. (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition. Harbour Publishing, 2025.

John Larsen’s (Class of 2023 I think) book is not out yet–due in 2026 I think. 

Book cover of 'Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas' by Gloria Blizzard, featuring a colorful abstract background with wavy lines.
Book cover for 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.
Book cover for 'The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed' by Gwen Lamont featuring a black and white photograph of a corridor with scattered leaves.

Book cover design for 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful illustrations of leaves and flowers, with the subtitle 'The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest'.
Book cover for 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring various species of fish against a light blue background.
Book cover of 'Peace by Chocolate' by Jon Tattrie, depicting the Hadhad family by the sea, highlighting their journey from Syria to Canada.

Press Enter to Continue: A Journey Through 6000 Years of Writing

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I opened Joan Francuz’s (class of 2016) book, Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon (1920 House Press, 2018). It seemed like it might be a good choice to review for International Literacy Day, which is today, with this year’s theme being “promoting literacy in the digital era.” When I ordered it, I wondered if it might be a history of writers or maybe a history of writing tools. 

Book cover of 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.

I was right and wrong on both counts. As the blurb on the back of the book says, “Trace the history of our digital age through the words of the people who described things—the scribes and technical writers of their time,” an appropriate description for what turns out to be “a work memoir of someone who survived the gig economy by working as a scribe.” 

Neither the title nor the blurb really do the book justice. It’s actually a short history of the world, at least since the first writing on stone tablets, through the lens of a person who spent most of her career as a technical writer—a career I considered 30 years ago when I was casting about for a writing gig that would be steadier and pay better than freelance journalism. (Because I’m technologically challenged, I turned to editing as a better option for me—still not great pay, but better.)

During the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction Writing, one thing we learned is that what you exclude from a book is just as important as what you include. This is important for me because I love research, and I try to include every bit of information I find. It doesn’t make for a great narrative arc. 

If I found it challenging to limit the amount of information I included in my book about concussion, a field in which research has exploded over the last two to three decades, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Francuz to pick the pertinent bits out of 6,000 years of history to shape an arc in 155 pages. It’s mind boggling.

Not only has she succeeded, but she’s done so with dry wit:

In the hierarchy that runs up from data to information to knowledge and wisdom, data is something simple like “8”; information is the number of people invited to dinner; knowledge is making the dessert the day before the party; and wisdom is not discussing a spouse’s online shopping habits just before the guests arrive. 

While the ancients seemed to spend their time on the higher order questions of wisdom and knowledge, and sought answers to questions like what made for a good life, the scientists of the Enlightenment discovered knowledge and information about our physical world. In our modern age, we seem to have moved further down to the data and information end of the hierarchy. 

Think of a selfie that arrives on your device. Why is your friend standing in front of that building? Is this a reminder that you had plans for dinner—and you’re late? Is it a holiday photo? Are you meant to comment on their new hair or clothing? Was the photo sent to you by mistake? Is that really your friend in the photo? 

This is a modern example of data without information. 

This is an unexpected little gem of a book, full of fascinating facts gleaned from the books in a seven-page bibliography—enough to spawn a whole new version of Trivial Pursuit—with a 16-page chapter of Notes on Sources that reads like a mini-book of its own. Francuz’s story told with intelligence and humour by a woman of roughly my own age—born in the fifties, molded in the seventies, and seasoned by 40 years of working in the “gig economy” long before that term was coined.  

Even more importantly, the back-of-the-book blurb closes on a note I can truly relate to: “if you have a garden and a library, you have everything that you need.

Read my reviews of other books from the prolific class of 2016:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—a Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann.

A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, by Mary Jane Grant. Review coming soon.

Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence by Stephanie Griffiths. Review coming soon.

Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, by Sue Harper.

Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, by Helena Moncrieff.

A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, by Jason Murray. Review coming soon.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth about Breast Cancer Screening, by Renee Pellerin.

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, by Suzanne Stewart.

The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Cod Fishery

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t intrigued by Canada’s easternmost province, Newfoundland and Labrador. I’ve never been there, but it calls to me in much the same way many distant parts of Canada, like Haida Gwaii and the far north, call to me. I hope someday I’ll be fortunate enough to visit more of our country’s far corners. 

Book cover of 'Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys' by Jenn Thornhill Verma, featuring an illustration of colorful fishing buildings and boats in a vibrant marine setting with a Canadian flag emblem.

In Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019), Jenn Thornhill Verma (class of 2019) paints an intimate portrait of the island portion of her home province—not only how physically beautiful it is, but where it’s come from, what its people have endured, and where it’s going. 

In the early chapters of this moving memoir, Verma depicts in vivid detail what life was like for her grandparents, Pop and Nan, and great grandparents. They raised their family in a one-room wooden house. Wood was the only fuel used for cooking and heating, in a home that lacked indoor plumbing and was lit by a kerosene lamp. Wood was also used to build the boats that kept the island’s bountiful cod fishery alive.

Fishing was a hard life, one most parents didn’t wish for their children. And indeed, Verma’s parents did not grow up to be fishers but became skilled professionals in a hospital in Corner Brook. Yet the fishing way of life is also one that many remember fondly, in spite of both hardships and risks that most of us can barely imagine. Verma writes:

When it comes to a career at sea, practice brings some degree of perfection, but luck comes into play a lot of the time too. That’s what comes to mind as I recall what Gene told me about navigating tricky weather in his fishing days. “People used to say to me, ‘It’s thick with fog. You’re not going out today.’ I said, ‘Honey, I got a compass, I knows where I’m to.’ But I said, ‘The other fellers can’t find me.’ On a fine day, yes no trouble. Anyone could go to fish on a fine day, but I often went forty days out here and never saw land. Forty days in the fog day after day after day, nothing, only fog. I could only see to the end of the boat. But I was happy. I would sooner be out there than in here.” And yet, Gene is well aware of the risks of being “out there.” He told me of one dicey situation when he went overboard.

“I went in with an anchor. One Saturday evening, it was thick with fog and mad rough. We were setting a net from here to there somewhere. I was … hauling up the anchor and I don’t know what happened. It happened so fast. Rope come off … and I went down. It got dark. I could see a rope, so I grabbed the rope. The anchor was hauling me down. When the anchor got on the bottom, I got the rope off me and I started to come up. And next thing, I could see the propeller on the boat spin because I had only just slowed the gear. Anyway, I come up and I grabbed the rail of the boat and I got a bit of air.”

The cod fishery supported Newfoundland fishers for hundreds of years. But after World War II, as fishing methods improved, drawing fleets from as far away as Portugal to the Grand Banks and taking far more fish than could be sustained, the government of Canada finally admitted that without dramatic changes, the once-teaming cod population was in danger of extinction. 

The cod moratorium, announced July 2, 1992, immediately put 30,000 fishers out of work—the largest layoff in Canada’s history. It was supposed to last two years; it lasted three decades. Within ten years, Newfoundland’s population dropped by a record ten percent. The moratorium was finally lifted in 2024, but whereas total allowable catch (TAC) at the fishery’s peak was around 240,000 tonnes, it’s now 18,000 tonnes.

Cod Collapse is a story of hardship and loss, but it’s also a story of survival and recovery. It’s a story about a young woman moving away and distancing herself from the place she grew up, not least because “Newfies,” as I remember myself (with shame, now) referring to Newfoundlanders as a kid, who were for many years the butt of Canadian jokes. It’s a story about reconnecting with a past and feeling deep pride in it. And it’s a story about finding other ways to make a sea-faring life work—other fisheries, such as lobster; other ways to use the ocean, such as the offshore oil industry; and other ways to make a living off the land, such as tourism in one of the most ruggedly beautiful corners of our country. 

I’m immensely proud to be a Canadian, proud of every corner of this country, the many I haven’t seen as much as the relatively few I have. Books like this only make me prouder. It’s an amazing land we live in, from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic. And in an era when our sovereignty is threatened by outside forces, writers like Verma help us all to build that pride by telling the stories of those who make this country what it is. 

Here’s another book about fish, with a very different perspective:

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

And here are some books about Canada that inspire pride:

Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, by Jon Tattrie.

Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness, by Virginia Heffernan.

Understanding Disability: A Journey Through Parenthood (and other essays)

/ Lynne Melcombe / 3 Comments

The closest I can come to understanding what it’s like to have a child with a disability is that all three of my kids, when they were very young, were in and out of hospital with asthma, and felt like they stuck out at school because they were the only ones with food allergies, some of them life-threatening. 

Cover of the book 'I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself' by Adelle Purdham featuring a blue background with artistic illustrations of leaves, a bird, and a horse.

It doesn’t begin to compare to learning the child you’re carrying has Down Syndrome, or to waiting many extra months for your child to figure out a pincer grip. Where it does compare is the understanding that your child is your child and they are absolutely perfect the way they are (even though it doesn’t always feel like it when they’re in the middle of a raging tantrum).

In the series of essays that comprise I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself (Dundurn Press, 2024), author Adelle Purdham (class of 2022) walks us through the emotional wreckage of finding out that your unborn child has a disability, the prejudices we are likely to uncover within ourselves when that happens, and the fierce protective instincts that then compel that parent to become a disability activist, advocate, ally. 

But that’s not all she walks us through because these essays also cover the terrain of love and marriage, of being a mother/writer who feels guilty when she’s mothering about not writing and when she’s writing instead of mothering (boy, do I know that one well), and who tries in every moment of her life—okay, as many moments as possible—to be a good person. In a deeply touching and achingly honest essay called “A Thin Line,” she writes about an encounter with a homeless woman. 

I see her as I drive past, stumbling down the street, decrepit. Please, I think, I don’t want us to run into her. She is a mess. I’m Ronald from The Paper Bag Princess …

We are on our way to the cottage. The SUV is packed full. The girls have their cupholders folded down in anticipation the bottles of iced tea I will be buying them to go with their dinner. …

I park the car and notice the Freshii on the corner. “What about Freshii? You girls can get bowls.’

While these girls have not yet been exposed to the ways of the world, the underworld, they are well versed in the vernacular of a privileged life. They speak the dialect of healthy takeout well. As do I. … the girls and I can afford to cruise around until we find an open takeout place that suits our tastes. This idea of accessibility to food as an immense privilege will sit with me and my uneaten burrito, afterward, when I find I no longer have an appetite.

As we cross Hunter Street, directly in front of us is the woman, doubled over …

“Please, can you help me?”

She asks for money, and I immediately reach for my wallet and pull out a loonie, the only coin I have. Why have I not pulled out a bill? Is it because I believe she will use it on drugs or alcohol instead of food? Yes….

“I need help,” she repeats. “I’m scared.”

With the enunciation of her fear, that is it. The thin sheath between us slips away and the world stops for her and me. Our lines cross, her path and mine, like asteroids colliding, and intergalactic even. I feel the presence of the girls over my left shoulder, standing stone still, watching. If I turn my back on this woman and hurry the girls away, it will be like turning a shoulder on myself, on my daughter, on my daughter’s friend, on the very stardust I am made of.

“Do you need to go to a shelter?” I ask her. Clearly, I think she needs to go to a shelter. She can’t stay here … 

On my iPhone, I quickly google the number for the shelter. …

“It’s so good to see kids,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut, then opening them. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen any kids.” …

Springing into action is what privileged women like me know how to do. We ascertain the problem and create a plan. My plan is to call the shelter. Make sure this woman is safe. Show my kids that I care, that we should all care, that a person in need is a person in need. That we don’t turn our backs on a person in need, no matter how destitute, forgotten, and discarded they seem. Especially when that is the case. Why is that the case? And why do I need to remind myself of this?

I won’t spoil the outcome for you. I will just say that this is some of the best literary writing I’ve read in a while—clear, compelling, compassionate. Purdham’s voice pulls me in; I could be standing next to her, watching the scene in each essay unfold, whether it’s at the lake listening to the loons, in a rocking chair nursing an infant, or on a street trying to help an unhoused woman through a state of extreme distress.

July is Disability Pride Month. Add to your pride in knowing a bit more about disability tomorrow than you did yesterday by reading this book.

Here are some other books about disability:

Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, by Jen Powley.

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health, by Jason Schreurs.

Surfing in Nova Scotia: ‘Louisbourg or Bust’

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

When I was a little girl in the 1960s, and it would come to bedtime, I would have my radio playing quietly in my bedroom—lights off, door open. I was supposed to be going to sleep, but most evenings I’d stay up for at least an hour past my bedtime listening to the Beach Boys and dancing in the dark in my baby doll pyjamas, mastering the Jerk and the Monkey and the Twist and the Swim and the Pony. 

Book cover of 'Louisbourg or Bust' by RC Shaw featuring a bicycle with a trailer that includes a surfboard and camping gear, set against a backdrop of green trees.

I was pretty wild when I was eight years old. And of course, I wanted to be a surfer girl, just like Gidget. 

I still wish I’d learned to surf at some point, but I doubt I will now. I tried windsurfing a couple years ago and I couldn’t get my balance. So much for Gidget. 

But it sure was fun reading RC Shaw’s (class of 2017) Louisburg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast (Pottersfield Press, 2018) and imagining myself out there on the waves. I didn’t even know you could surf in Nova Scotia. My mental images of surfing are in places like California and Hawaii and Australia, where the waves get big, man. 

But apparently there’s some great surfing in Canada’s Atlantic provinces. Shaw tells us all about it in his memoir/travelogue of a trip he took for no explicable reason from his comfortable home in Cow Bay (where he lives with his wife and two little girls) up the Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore to Fort Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. He does the trip on a rickety bike towing a trailer—he calls it The Rig—carrying his camping supplies, many cans of Hungry Man Stew, a copy of Don Quixote, and his surfboard, Old Yeller. 

And it is an adventure. An adventure during which he rides up way too many hills, meets an awful lot of the type of people who make Nova Scotia what it is, camps in some out-of-the-way and perpetually damp places, has many encounters with the Fog Monster, and does it with the kind of humour that leaves me imagining him standing by a campfire on a beach, in his trunks and hoodie (the uniform of the Nova Scotia surfer), sucking back a beer while telling stories and laughing. 

Back at Camp Sog, I perked up with a fresh coffee and another can of beans. The sandpiper who attacked me earlier had gathered his crew and they were going ballistic in a stand of sea grass across from the tent. They paced on stilted legs, hitting me with sharp and insistent peeps. I must have camped near their nest. The Nova Scotia Bird Society would hate me. 

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “Really, I am. I’m not here to bother you. I’ll be gone in a bit.”

More aggressive peeps — they sensed my submissiveness.

Or how about this for a picturesque description:

By the time I reached St. Peter’s, a bustling town on a bay with the same name, I was in code red bathroom mode. I scanned the storefronts for eating establishments and nearly crashed when I spotted the word CAFÉ painted on glass. Through gritted teeth and clenched muscles, I unceremoniously tipped The Rig against a brick wall and dashed for the door. It took every last ounce of strength to politely request a table — it was a sit-down, lacy tablecloth kind of café — and not sprint for the bathroom. I just made it. When I emerged into the rosy light of the warm dining room, the world had taken back its beauty.

This is a really fun book—yet another one I probably wouldn’t have picked up but for this project I’ve taken on, but I’m so glad I did. It’s quite likely I never will learn to surf—or maybe I will. Who knows? I might make it out to the West Coast of Vancouver Island for a women-only surfing school. But even if I don’t, it was fun remembering my days of dancing to the Beach Boys in my room—lights off, door open—and pretending I was Gidget. 

Here’s another travelogue:

How to Clean a Fish: And Other Adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral.

Here’s a book about making the world come to you:

The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, by Jennifer Robin Wilson.

And here’s a completely different way to look at the world:

The Worst Songs in the World: The Terrible Truth about National Anthems, by David Pate.

Resilience and Chocolate: A Refugee Family’s Remarkable Journey

/ Lynne Melcombe / 4 Comments

I’m finding it hard to live in the world at this moment in history. Over and above the daily headlines about Gaza and Ukraine, there is a major violent humanitarian crisis in Sudan, which has been largely overshadowed by the focus on the former two. In fact, the website for the Geneva Academy tells us that there are currently over 100 armed conflicts raging across the globe. None of these affect me personally, and yet in a way all of them do. Edited to add: And now, Israel has started a war with Iran.

Cover of 'Peace by Chocolate' book featuring the Hadhad family on a beach, with text highlighting their journey from Syria to Canada.

So, you can imagine how I felt reading Jon Tattrie’s Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada (Goose Lane Editions, 2020), perhaps the most uplifting book I’ve read in—well, maybe ever.

Okay, Anne of Green Gables, but that’s fiction. 

Peace by Chocolate is the story of a large family that had a successful, internationally renowned chocolate business in Damascus, a business the father had created from scratch as a young man. This business was the reason he met his beloved wife, which led to the births of seven children. It was the reason his family home, a single-story building when his own father was young, grew into a 10-storey home for much of his extended family. It’s a story of success and love and plenty …

… until the Assad regime responded to the arrival of the Arab Spring in Syria by turning on its own people, killing hundreds of thousands and turning hundreds of thousands more into refugees. The Hadhad family survived, but their beloved family home and their chocolate business did not. 

After three years of languishing as refugees in Lebanon, the Canadian government finally chooses the eldest son, Tareq, to come to Canada. Meanwhile, a group of people in Nova Scotia have come together to welcome at least one family, to save at least one person, from this horrible conflict by bringing them to Canada and helping them settle in the small town of Antigonish. 

When Tareq arrives at Halifax airport on a snowy night just before Christmas, to his surprise, he is greeted by dozens of people who have been making calls and filling out paperwork and fundraising for a couple of years. Tareq’s arrival is the first of the fruits of their labour. 

What follows—the way things come together, the barriers that fall away, the pieces that fall into place—is nothing short of remarkable. Within months, he is joined by most of his family. His father begins making chocolate in the kitchen of their new home and selling it at a winter fair. The chocolate business outgrows the kitchen, and then the basement, and then a shed. Within less than a year, the Hadhads open a factory in the small town that’s welcomed them—and several other Syrian families—and Peace by Chocolate, the company, becomes a major local employer. 

The farther their remarkable story spreads, the more remarkable it becomes, leading to international speaking engagements, meetings with heads of state—and a request by CBC journalist and author Jon Tattrie to write a book about them. As Tattrie writes of his first meeting with Tareq in the Author’s Note:

I’d been watching Tareq Hadhad for almost two years. I knew the names of his mother, father, sisters, and brother. I knew of his dreams to be a doctor. I knew of his family’s passion for chocolate. I knew they’d lost everything in the Syrian war and rebuilt it in Canada. But I didn’t know how. How had they turned from refugees into pillars of the community so quickly?

And I didn’t know how small-town Canada had truly reacted to a Middle Eastern Muslim family dropping out of the clear sky to take up residence. My previous books had documented the intense and often violent racism minorities face in Nova Scotia. Eddie Carvery was a young black man in the 1960s when Halifax bulldozed Africville, his family home for generations. He moved into the ruins in 1970 to plant his body as a living protest for justice. He was still there forty years later when I asked him if I could tell his story. And I’d written about the notorious Edward Cornwallis, the British soldier who founded Halifax and tried to exterminate the Mi’kmaq First Nation. I’d written about Daniel Paul, the Mi’kmaw elder who campaigned for decades to get the city to take down its Cornwallis statue.

Would I find the same grime under the shiny story I’d been reading about the Hadhad family and Peace by Chocolate?

The answer is no. But to find out more you’ll have to read Peace by Chocolate, which quickly became a national bestseller and was later made into a multi-award winning motion picture. Whichever way you choose to find out more about this story, I caution you to do so with a box of tissues at hand. I’m getting misty again just writing this.

Other books about food:

How to Clean a Fish: And Other Adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral.

The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Forest, by Helena Moncrieff.

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty, by Bonny Reichert.

Chasing Smoke: A Memoir of Firefighting in British Columbia’s Interior

/ Lynne Melcombe / 5 Comments

Long ago, in a previous life, I worked in archaeology. One summer in Hat Creek Valley, 26 kilometres beyond Cache Creek, BC, our 26-person crew was dawdling over breakfast when local ranchers drove by to notify us that a few small fires had broken out at the north end of the valley. Would we help put them out?

Book cover of 'Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir' by Aaron Williams, featuring a forest scene with smoke and an orange sky.

We put down our breakfast dishes, piled into our trucks, and sped off (like the heroes we thought we were) to spend the morning digging small fireguards and throwing dirt on flames that kept cropping up here and there. It was hot, hard work for a bunch of university students who spent most of our time sitting on stools in one-metre-square holes in the ground excavating millimetres at a time with trowels and paint brushes. 

I was thinking about that as I was reading Aaron Williams’s Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour Publishing, 2017), which tells of his firefighting experience during the summer of 2014 (he’d been firefighting since 2006). Of course, there’s no comparing my miniscule experience with his, yet I can’t help thinking that the memory of how easily a single spark can jump 20 metres, or a small flame can travel underground along a tree root and pop up 10 metres away gives me a tiny bit of perspective on what real forest-firefighters are up against. 

Chasing Smoke provides insight into how firefighting works, why forest fires have been getting worse with climate change, and what the whole experience of firefighting is like, from a brutal training camp in May to sheer exhaustion in August. The author’s descriptions of fire are intensely visual:

A thunderstorm approaches. Little pockets of fire, previously resting in the moss, are brought to life by the strong winds preceding the downpour. The flames look tenacious under the dark clouds. I stand and watch a pocket of heat thrash around as it starts spitting rain. The flames, billowing and wide on the forest floor, find a spruce tree. One more kill before they lose the battle to the rain. 

The fire grabs on to the spruce and its lower limbs being to sizzle. Flames climb the tree and when they reach the top they balloon out, feasting on the fat clump of recent growth crowding the tree’s peak. The fire burns slow up there and the rest of the tree cools down and fades to a less intense orange. But the top still burns bright, the colour of a street light against the storm.

Many moments in this memoir are reminders that this work is decidedly dangerous:

Trees start coming down like I’ve never seen before. They’re limbless save for their very tops, where wind catches the foliage and pushes the tree over. … 

At first I’m calm as the trees fall. But suddenly a mess of wood, bent horizontal and cribbed into the trees above us, comes down in a rush of a hundred machine-gun snaps. Trees caught in the nest flail around before hitting the ground. Our eyes dart everywhere, trying to keep track of every moment. Trees break free and swing themselves like catapults. Splintered chunks of wood slash through the air like propellers. Tabes and I look in opposite directions, standing guard for each other. We don’t dare move, as that would take our complete focus from the storm of debris. 

As soon as it’s over I turn to Tabes. “Fuck this, let’s get out of here.” 

For all its intensity, though, Chasing Smoke is also an entertaining read. Williams has a sardonic sense of humour and laughs at himself and his crew at least once every few pages:

Dan holds the after-work meeting while we grill the steaks. The crew is paying more attention to us than to Dan’s end-of-day spiel. The pressure of getting the meat right is immense. Is it too rare? Or the ultimate shame—is it too cooked? It turns out fine, and Tabe and I share a moment when it’s all done. A stern nod to each other acknowledges that our integrity as men has never been stronger.

This was one of the first books I read when I decided to pursue this project of working my way through and reviewing all the books published by alumni of University of King’s College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction Writing. And it’s a great example of why I keep coming back for more. 

Books on different types of disasters:

On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake, by Gregor Craigie.

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey Through Disaster, by Gina Leola Woolsey.

University of King’s College MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction: Books Published So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 3 Comments

If you’re already on this list, congratulations! You’re in terrific company. If you’re not on this list, keep putting yourself (and more importantly your book) out there. Meanwhile, in case you’re curious, here’s what (I think) the list is so far. If I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know.

Book cover of 'The Heart of a Superfan' by Nav Bhatia, featuring a smiling man in a Raptors jersey and a black and red jacket, with a white turban, against a purple background.
Book cover for 'Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood' by Pauline Dakin featuring a vintage roadside scene.

Cover of the book 'Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary' by Catherine Fogarty, featuring an image of the penitentiary.

the Eiffel Tower with the book title overlaying it

cover of book No Place to Go with image of empty toilet paper roll.

Book cover of 'Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition' by Laura Pratt, featuring a stylized image of a rose with a smoky effect and the word 'Canadian' in the top right corner.

Book cover for 'How to Share an Egg' by Bonny Reichert, featuring an illustration of an egg on a blue background with the title and author's name displayed.

Book cover of 'Still, I Cannot Save You' by Kelly S. Thompson, featuring a person in red walking on a sandy shore with a vast landscape in the background.

Coming of Age as a Millennial: Completely Different and Not Different At All

/ Lynne Melcombe / 5 Comments

I lost my virginity when I was 14. It was the early seventies, a decade one must have lived through to understand, and it was practically a competition between my friends and I. I was one of the first and all of it just happened, the way things do when you’re 14 and in a very big hurry to become cool after a childhood of being thought just the opposite.

But then when I was 15, my best friend had a baby. When I was 16, my dad died suddenly. When I was 17, I got very sick and almost died, just as my mother and I were moving to the other side of the country to be closer to extended family but far, far away from any of my friends or anything familiar. My adolescence started out as the typical baby-boomer experience you’d see on That Seventies Show, but it didn’t end up that way. After the wild summer when I was 14, I grew up very fast. 

My experience was the polar opposite of what Nellwyn Lampert (class of 2017) describes in her memoir, Every Boy I Ever Kissed (Dundurn, 2019). A member of the millennial generation, Lampert talks about her coming-of-age experiences, including what can only be described as a long and frustrating battle to lose her virginity to someone—anyone, really—with wit, humour, and really good writing. Here’s a sample: 

The first time I got really drunk was at my mother’s fiftieth birthday party the summer before I started university.

It was the perfect, small-town summer day. The trees were dappled by the sun, the grass was freshly cut, and the lake was a calm, deep blue. Those are the country days I dream about and novelists spend hours trying to describe. The soft smoke from the barbecue; the deep Muskoka chairs; the condensation from a cold bottle of beer dripping from the corners of your mouth; the tall, blue-eyed country boy lounging in your back yard. 

Tyler was an old childhood friend. He was always hanging around our house, sleeping over, and showing up for dinner unannounced. My family always greeted him with loud hellos, hugs, and a big plate of whatever was on the stove. 

I thought he was lovely.

He was the kind of guy who could make you feel at home simply by smiling at you. Loved. Included. Special. None of it was forced. His smiles, his laughter, they were always the realest thing in the room.

The sun was setting and casting its soft glow over the day when my older brother brought out a bottle of vodka. He and his friends stood around the kitchen counter lining up shot glasses in a row. The real adults were all outside not paying attention, but they wouldn’t have cared even if they knew. 

My brother counted the shot glasses on the counter. “Nell, you want one?”

“Sure.”

The word came out of my mouth even before I’d had a chance to think. I’d drunk a little bit of vodka before, mixed with juice, so I honestly didn’t think anything would happen after just one shot.

Turns out I was wrong. And turns out he’d poured me a double. 

My brother handed me a glass of orange juice. 

“You’ll want this after,” he said. 

I raised my shot glass to the ceiling and clutched the juice in my left hand.

I slammed the vodka down like a pro and downed the juice like a good girl. Almost instantly I stumbled back into the fridge. 

“You okay?” my brother asked with a smile. 

I stood up a little straighter.

“Never better.”

I felt taller. My breasts felt bigger. Without looking in the mirror, I could just feel that my hair and makeup were flawless. I licked my lips and looked up at Tyler through heavy eyelids. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and press my lips against his.

But he was on the phone. Talking to his new girlfriend, my brother told me.

Ouch! 

And if you want to find out if she ever gets the boy, you’re going to have to read the book. 

I enjoyed this memoir thoroughly. There are just enough scenes in here that seem familiar, despite the fact that I grew up two generations earlier than Lampert, but also enough scenes that are thoroughly new to me to provide insight into my adult children’s generation. 

An excellent read, flowing enough to devour in a weekend. I highly recommend it. 

Diverse topics, discussed from a woman’s perspective:

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America, by Sheima Benembarek.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, by Reneé Pellerin.

Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, by Laura Pratt.

I Don’t Do Disability: And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, by Adelle Purdham.

The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More … , by Karen Stiller.