University of King’s College

Best Canadian Reads for Earth Day 2023

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

April 22 is Earth Day. Here are some great books about the environment by Canadian authors to commit to reading.

Cover of 'Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir' by Aaron Williams featuring a wildfire scene with smoke and flames among tall trees against an orange sky.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, where two things are ever-present on people’s minds: how bad the wildfires will be this summer and when the next big earthquake will hit. Although Aaron Williams (class of 2017) wrote Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour Publishing, 2017) as a memoir of one summer (of many) on a firefighting crew in the dense forests of British Columbia, it wouldn’t be possible to write such a memoir without touching on the impacts of a warming planet on creating the conditions that are making wildfires worse every year (2023 was Canada’s worst season on record). From hectares of dry brush where forests were clearcut to fire seasons that begin earlier and end later each year, Chasing Smoke not only describes a wildfire fighter’s lifestyle but a problem that must be addressed if we don’t wish to see our planet go up in flames.  

Book cover of 'On Borrowed Time' by Gregor Craigie featuring an urban skyline with yellow seismic wave graphics, emphasizing themes of earthquake preparedness.

One might not think climate change influences earthquakes, and that’s not where Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) focuses his attention in On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake (Goose Lane Editions, 2021). But science acknowledges that as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires increase in frequency and severity, so too does global warming contribute to the frequency and severity of earthquakes. “As a result of the man-made global warming, the melting of land ice, mainly in Antarctica and Greenland, occurs in an accelerating process and sea levels are rising worldwide” as are increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. “Both phenomena also have an impact on earthquake risk since they lead to a small but notable increase in pressure on tectonic faults in the subsurface due to hydrostatic load….” And “sea-level fluctuations of just a few decimetres are enough to trigger earthquakes.” (https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/mehr-erdbeben-durch-menschengemachten-klimawandel) Reading Craigie’s deeply researched book provides frightening insight into what can happen when the next Big One hits. 

Cover of the book 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring illustrations of various fish on a light blue background.

In Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis (ECW, 2019) Andrew Reeves (class of 2016), an award-winning environmental journalist, tackles the eponymous environmental crisis head on. When I began reading Overrun, I’d never heard of Asian crap, much less the crisis they’ve caused. But as I read Reeves’ entertaining account of how, with all good intentions, this voracious and prolific fish was introduced to control invasive water weeds in aquaculture farms in the southern US, I became increasingly aware of just how dangerous it can be to import any species of life to any part of the world where it lacks natural predators. From a few fish in the 1950s, several species of Asian carp have taken over river systems from the mouth of the Mississippi River watershed north to where they’re a handful of miles now threatening the ecology of the entire Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system. This is what happens when humans, with all the best intentions, believe they can improve on billions of years of evolution and try to take nature into their own hands. 

Of the books I’ve reviewed to date, these three are the ones I’d recommend most highly as Earth Day reading. But they’re not the only ones to touch on environmental themes, even though the environment is not the main thrust of the book. I also highly recommend Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness (ECW, 2023) by Virginia Heffernan, which advocates for a different approach to resource extraction, one that is more environmentally safe and concerned with the welfare of Indigenous Peoples. The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest (ECW, 2018) by Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) focuses predominantly on community sharing of the harvest of fruit trees within any city, but in so doing it also speaks to feed the human population by stopping our environmentally stupid wasting of nature’s bounty just because it sits on privately owned land.

Cover of the book 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful leaf illustrations and a subtitle about the urban food forest.

While Jenn Thornhill Verma’s (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019) is a memoir of a family’s lost way of life, one that had endured for generations in many families, it’s also a tale of the consequences of overfishing, not only to the environment but to those who depend on the sea for their living. And for those of us currently living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a cautionary tale about the way deal with dwindling salmon populations. And finally, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield Press, 2019) by Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) is more directly about the link between different people’s food-producing labour with a particular month, it’s also a compelling series of essays about how people can and do choose to live in harmony with the seasons. And it’s hard to imagine anything more environmentally advantageous than that. 

Graphic Memoir Insights on Aging, Long-Term Care, and Dying

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

I remember all too well my mother’s dying process. My father predeceased her by almost 20 years. Five years after he died, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She went 15 years later, outlasting her doctor’s predictions by five years. 

Cover of 'Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care' by Susan MacLeod, featuring an illustration of a person in a wheelchair and various humorous sketches around the edges.

By the mid-1980s it had become apparent that she’d no longer be able to live on her own. It was her choice to move into long-term care; she didn’t want to be a burden and nothing my sister or I said could change her mind. And, it would have been difficult. I had two young children with chronic illnesses; my sister was working full-time and working on her bachelor’s degree. So, at our mother’s insistence, we began investigating nursing homes. 

We were going on tours of different facilities for four to six months before she found the one she’d move into. It was a newer facility in a lovely part of Vancouver, and the residents had private rooms. The staff were kind and competent and obviously cared about her. If she ever felt unhappy with the choice she’d made, she didn’t share it with us. 

As I read Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care (Conundrum Press, 2021) by Susan MacLeod (class of 2021) in a single sitting, I was reminded that not every older person receives the loving care our mother did. Not all families are attentive or involved, as we were, and not all facilities take particularly good care of their residents. 

A cartoon illustration depicting a frustrated individual with glasses, expressing anger and confusion about their situation. The text includes phrases like 'Sometimes, when I was alone, I felt like losing it!' and comments on nursing home care labelled as 'enhanced.' There are also smaller figures representing laundry care, highlighting a humorous frustration.
A cartoonish drawing depicting a person pushing a wheelbarrow near a cliff with swirling patterns in the air, accompanied by the text '...the personal and systemic whirlpools of weirdness were just beginning.'
Cartoon illustration discussing healthcare system issues, featuring a distressed hospital worker and an elderly patient. Text highlights problems with hospital bed availability and the term 'bed blockers' for elderly patients who cannot return home.

Perhaps because it’s written as a graphic memoir, MacLeod is able to draw an unapologetically stark picture of the problems not only with long-term care but with the ageism that seems endemic to our culture. (Chapter 1 is called “I’ve Always Disliked Old People” and Chapter 2 is “I’ve Always Disliked Death.) She’s also unflinchingly honest about the flaws in her family of origin, including her own merciless bullying of her younger brother when they were children and her realization that just because she’s ready to be forgiven doesn’t mean he’s ready to forgive her.

Yet Mac Leod periodically lightens the tone of what could be an unrelentingly depressing topic with self-deprecating humour. For example, about once per chapter, we see a motif of a banner framing a cartoon tile that says, “Susan Seeks an Expert” or “Solution Susan Strikes.” My personal favourite: SYSTEMS THAT MAKE HUMANS INHUMANE. This comes up several times in the book and reminds me very much of the problems my sister and I have had with the care home our older brother is now living in. 

With such a visual medium, it’s impossible to insert an excerpt of text and make it make sense, so instead I’ve included some of MacLeod’s full-page drawings to give a sense of her story and her skills as an artist/author. 

Dying for Attention is such an easy read yet at the same time such honest and compelling reading that I think it should be available to anyone who’s considering a nursing home for an older loved one. At the very least, it should be required reading in programs for care aides. 

Reviews of other books on family and loss:

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

Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

Still, I Cannot Save You: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Love, and Letting Go, by Kelly S. Thompson

Exploring Japanese Canadian Identity and History

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

As a little girl, I had a pink and turquoise satin kimono. I can’t remember why I had it or where it came from; it likely had something to do with the dance classes I took for several years, and it was likely a gross misrepresentation of what it was meant to be. But until I was much older, it was all I knew of Japanese culture. 

Cover of the book 'The Nail That Sticks Out' featuring the title in bold letters, authors' names, and an image of a girl in traditional attire.

I was likely not alone in that. Yet the Japanese Canadian community has a rich history in Canada, a history that includes far more than the tragic and shameful chapter in Canadian history of the internment of all Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II and the confiscation of their property, for which they only received redress in 1988. 

In The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community (Dundurn Press, 2024), Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann (class of 2021) combines family history and details of traditional Japanese culture with personal memoir. The result is a compelling account of a community that has endured through racism and hardship but must, Hartmann argues, be defined as far more than that.

There is a touching account of her grandfather, who painted beautiful watercolours but never considered his art good enough for more than scraps of newsprint and saved none of his paintings. There is the story of the cousin who, fearing academic disappointment, gave up all her dance classes—except traditional odori dance because she’d seen it give her grandmother so much joy. 

There are also the notes of persistent and systemic racism: the lack of Asian representation in theatre and film paired with underpayment of Asian actors when they do appear. The thoughtless souls who pop up everywhere with the ridiculous question every biracial person hears far too often: “What are you?” (To which Hartmann flippantly replies, “I’m still human, the last time I checked.”)

But even that history is slowly being erased, Hartmann writes:

From Camille’s [her daughter’s] perspective, most Torontonians “don’t know JCs exist, let alone the historical context” of the relocation after the war and how JCs became resettled … “Our trauma is only amplified. Only internment is ever talked about … “

In many ways this reality is reflected in the larger community. Despite Japanese planting roots in Canada more than a hundred years ago, JC history is slowly being erased. Each generation adds their own perspective on identity and culture. Camille’s generation—the gosei, or fifth generation—are almost entirely biracial. To the untrained eye, kids like Camille or their cousin Samantha easily pass for white. Just as my sister and I loosely resemble our parents, there are glimpses of us within our kids too. Our ethnicity may appear ambiguous, yet we share a rich cultural inheritance. 

Canada’s only Japantown in Vancouver is long gone. But here, in places like Markham’s J-Town and the downtown Toronto strip called Little Tokyo a string of savvy entrepreneurs have stepped in to serve up Japanese-infused shopping experiences Do consumers ever ponder the roots of our community as they stand in line with their matcha lattes and mochi ice cream, hoping to get their pork belly ramen or stamped cheesecake before they sell out? Unlike these stores, which offer the latest trends and tastes of modern-day Japan, other long-established cultural and religious institutions scattered throughout the Greater Toronto Area reflect the perseverance of JCs who were determined to rebuild their lives after the war.

Will anyone remember their struggles or history decades from now? With so few Japanese in Canada, will anyone care? When searching for information, I discovered a dark void, a dearth of evidence, and little mention of our Japanese congregation or the people who dedicated their lives to it. A lost legacy in a disappearing community. 

I sincerely hope not. 

Essential Feminist Reads for International Women’s Month

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and the month of March is International Women’s Month. With a nod to both, with this post I acknowledge several books from the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program that further the cause of justice and equality for women. 

Cover of the book 'Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America' by Sheima Benembarek, featuring ripe figs and a 'Staff Pick' label.

It’s hard to pick just a few books. The program is dominated by women, all of whom I’d describe as feminist, and many of their stories are about women’s lives, whether their own or others. But if I’m going to stick strictly to books with a decidedly feminist theme, I’d choose these five:

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America by Sheima Benembarek. This book was eye-opening for me. It honestly never occurred to me that a blue-haired, niqab-wearing, orthodox Muslim woman might be polyamorous. It doesn’t surprise me that a child from a Muslim family might be just as likely as a child from any other family to be transgender. But I have to admit some surprise—the good kind—in reading about a same-sex couple, both comedians, one a Palestinian-born Muslim the other a Jew from Montreal who perform individually and as a pair who starred in a Crave comedy special called Marriage of Convenience. The title of the book, Halal Sex, comes from a term for sex practiced within a heterosexual Muslim marriage. But Benembarek put a decidedly feminist twist on it by redefining it as “all consensual sex between adults.” 

Book cover featuring the title 'Every Boy I Ever Kissed' by Nellwyn Lampert, with a graphic design showing a woman in a red dress and hands embracing her.

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir by Nellwyn Lampert. I started calling myself a feminist at the age of 13. I was in way too much of a hurry to lose my virginity, which I did at 14. I had no idea of the connection between the two. But there is a connection, a pretty important one. And that connection is a major part of what Lampert wrestles with in this coming-of-age memoir. As the cover blurb says, “for Nellwyn Lampert, losing her virginity would turn out to be anything but simple. Her chosen partners struggled with porn-induced erectile dysfunction and other crises of masculinity. And in the bedroom, nothing went according to plan.” So, in that regard, our experiences were entirely different. But in terms of “the realities of sexual liberation, female empowerment, and masculinity,” the issues are not that different at all than the ones I was too young to realize I was doing with more than 50 years ago that sexual freedom and gender freedom are two very different concepts. 

Cover of the book 'Highway of Tears' by Jessica McDiarmid, featuring an illustrated mask and a striking orange background. The subtitle highlights themes of racism and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

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. It’s a grim fact that Indigenous women make up only about 4% of the female population in Canada but accounted for 16% of all female homicides between 1980 and 2012. And a disturbing number of those women are abducted, raped, and murdered along a strip of highway in northern BC called the Highway of Tears. From the back cover: “Journalist Jessica McDiarmid investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected.” As difficult as this book was to read, it was just as difficult to put down. I can’t imagine a better lens through which to examine the intersection of racism and misogyny than through the horrific impacts of colonization by patriarchal white, European culture on Indigenous women and girls. 

Book cover of 'F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism' by Lauren McKeon featuring bold black text and a pink graffiti-style accent.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism by Lauren McKeon. It’s always surprised me that when I say I’ve been calling myself a feminist since I was 13 but I haven’t always felt that feminism welcomed me, what many people seem to hear is that I don’t think feminism is necessary or relevant. In fact, I’m saying exactly the opposite—that feminism remains as relevant today as ever and that’s why it’s so important to ensure that ALL sorts of women feel a sense of belonging within the movement. That was my read on McKeon’s book. She recognizes that too many women have moved in the wrong direction instead of understanding that feminism is for every woman—that, indeed, until we are all free, none of us are free. Why has this happened? That, as McKeon points out, is a question for feminists to answer. And as women’s rights are being eroded daily, it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we answer it and ensure that all women feel that the arms of feminism welcome them. 

Book cover for 'Conspiracy of Hope' by Renée Pellerin, featuring stylized illustrations of a woman's chest with highlighted areas, and subtitle 'The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening'.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening by Renée Pellerin. No woman in the western world isn’t familiar with the unique joy (she said sarcastically) of having her breasts pulled and twisted and squished between cold metal plates for their regular mammogram. In this book, Pellerin, an award-winning producer with the CBC, does a deep dive into the evidence supporting and opposing regular mammography screening. And her conclusion is that the evidence weighs strongly in favour of less screening. It’s supported by vested interests, false positives can lead to invasive overtreatment, false negatives can give women a false sense of security, its effectiveness differs significantly for different age groups, and regular exposure to radiation can, in a small number of cases, increase risk of cancer. It’s an eye-opening book that every woman should read and consider carefully before assuming that doctor’s orders should never be questioned. 

Happy International Women’s Month and enjoy the reading!

Finding Joy in Simple Pleasures: A Path to Healing

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

On May 29, 2016, I tried to end my life. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried, but it was the closest I came to succeeding. My reasons are not the point here. The point is that, during my long, slow climb back to mental health, I learned that I needed to stop living my life in the past and the future. If I was going to stay alive, I needed to live my life one moment at a time. 

Cover of the book 'A Cure for Heartache' by Mary Jane Grant, featuring an open window view of a cityscape with greenery, an open notebook and a cup of tea on a table, accompanied by cookies.

That is the key message of Mary Jane Grant’s (class of 2016) A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time (hard cover, Hodder, 2019, sold in paperback as Happier Here and Now: The Restorative Power of Life’s Simple Pleasures). Struggling with grief after a sudden divorce, Grant moved to England where she slowly learned to live her life moment by moment, soaking in the joys of each minute, and learning that life can’t be lived in the past or the future. It can only be lived here and now. 

The therapist I found to help me through that period of my life is trained in a well-researched and fully secular practice of meditation called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). One of the techniques she taught me for pulling myself out of depression and anxiety, though not meditation, is a simple practice, of going through the five senses, one at a time, and noticing five things I see, five things I feel, five things I hear, taste, and smell. It’s meant to break the cycle of rumination over past experiences one finds depressing and anxiety over future experiences.

It’s meant to bring the person back to the physical world around them in each moment. 

This is what I thought about as I read Grant’s book, as she explained her process of minding her senses, learning to wander, learning to let go, loving what you do, and learning to appreciate and to connect. Here’s how Grant describes her experience of getting reacquainted with her five senses:

I entered the reading room. Morning light streamed through tall windows. The walls were filled from floor to ceiling with books, and a dozen or more freestanding shelves took up the remaining space. To the left of the entrance door were counters with computer stations. Above, a bulletin board was covered in notices, local advertisements and sign-up sheets for local classes and lectures. A couple of round wooden tables filled the rest of the space. People sat here and there, reading books and newspapers. I went to an empty table, quietly unpacked my things, sat down and closed my eyes.   

Book cover of 'Happier Here & Now' by Mary Jane Grant, featuring a hand holding a colorful bouquet of flowers, with the title and subtitle prominently displayed.

I could hear the occasional rustling of a newspaper and the soft hum of the heating system. 

I took a deep breath through my nose. I detected a faint floral hint from the hand lotion I’d applied before leaving my room. Lately, I’d switched my allegiance from lavender to rose. Maybe it was the influence of England. After all, what was more English than a rose? 

I settled into place, connected my laptop, opened the internet and started my search. My first question was simple: why, when I immersed myself in the present, did I feel so much better? By pulling my attention to the five senses, I gave myself no choice but to focus on what was happening in the moment. I was not stuck in the past or worried about the future. Yesterday, I had learned first-hand that the senses held the key that opened the gate to my present experience. They admitted me to the garden of earthly delights—sights, sounds, smells, tastes and physical feelings—right here, right now. By being in the body, I could calm the mind and soothe the spirit. It felt neither self-indulgent nor hedonistic. It felt beautifully, blissfully ordinary. 

When I was recovering after my suicide attempt, I read Full Catastrophe Living, a 650-page volume by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a world-renowned mindfulness researcher and originator/teacher of MBSR. I took the MBSR course twice, and underwent a one-year program called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. 

If I ever encounter someone going through a rough time, I might tell them, instead, to buy Grant’s 200-page A Cure for Heartache and read it slowly, mindfully, savouring each syllable, and then maybe go back and read it again. Because everything I learned in that difficult time is what I learned all over again from this meaningful little book. 

For more on heartbreak and healing, read:

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

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

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

For more lyric essays, read:

Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and other dilemmas, by Gloria Blizzard

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

Black Cake, Turtle Soup: A Journey Through Racism for Any Month of the Year

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Years ago, I attended a one-day workshop on racism. At one point, the workshop leader asked one person in the group to sit on the hotseat to learn about the experience of racism from a first-person perspective by talking about a time they’d experienced an “ism.” I volunteered.

Book cover for 'Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and other dilemmas' by Gloria Blizzard with a colorful wave pattern background.

I sat in the chair, closed my eyes, and—guided by his questions—recounted my experience with a long-ago boyfriend and his abiding misogyny. As the workshop leader led me slowly through a specific memory, I dove deeper and deeper into an incident that I needed thirty-five years to understand was rape. 

Before I opened my eyes, after I had dissolved into heaving sobs, the leader brought me gently back to the present and translated my pain into a new level of awareness of the parallels—NOT the sameness, but the similarities—between all kinds of “isms” and “phobias,” in this case racism and sexism. 

Not a day has gone by in the thirty-some years since then that I haven’t reflected on what I learned that day. I can’t ever know the pain of the constant “othering” that must constantly wear down the resolve of the strongest of individuals. I can only try to learn more, to understand more about racism when life presents me with an opportunity. 

Gloria Blizzard’s (class of 2021) book of lyric essays, Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas (Dundurn Press, 2024) presents such an opportunity. I’d like to say that once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down, but that’s not true. Rather, after I’d read almost every essay, I needed to put the book down and take some time to process and integrate what I’d just read. Like this passage, from an essay called “The Mathematics of Rage.”

Sitting at Northwood on Bloor Street West over a mocktail and beer, Gillian asks, “Did you notice suddenly becoming invisible to men around age forty?” 

Me: “Nope.”

“Yeah, but you are beautiful.”

“So are you.”

“But I noted it and it was sudden.” Gillian is smart, gorgeous, accomplished, white, a writer, and one of my mentors during my MFA. 

Good for her, I thought, as mostly I found myself far too visible. Still. A constant imposition or a weight lay upon me. Except, that is, when I wanted medical or legal care or psychological or academic care for me or my child—then I became eminently less visible, categorically unseen, a giant perplexity for someone who looked at me blankly, or with sexually laced assumptions or suspicion. 

This is not unlike my trip to a walk-in medical clinic for extreme rib pain that had me hobbled. After an hour wait, I was sent to an examining room. The doctor entered. I sat twisted in pain and pointing at my chest. His face turned to scorn, the absence of concern. “Get out,” he said. “Just, just go,” he said, waving me and my pain away. 

It happens to women of all ages and races, this shifting state of value and visibility. Gillian noted herself as suddenly unseen at a certain age. My Blackness, however, ensures that eyes remain on me. This disappears, however, when I am due for a promotion or in need of care. Then I am fucking invisible.

I did not respond in real time at the clinic. My thoughts were blunted by pain, shock, and confusion. This medical assault surprised and shocked me, and yet it did not surprise me at all. The doctor assumed I was there for opiates. …

The doctor got paid by our state for that visit. For my pain-infused walk to and presence in that clinic, I got nothing. The next day, after another pain-filled night, I took more time off from my job and visited a naturopath who was also a chiropractor. I paid for this visit myself. Upon a physical examination that took approximately two minutes, he determined I had a dislocated rib. “What have you done to yourself?” he asked. “This is a body response. Have you been under extreme stress?” 

“You have no idea,” I responded. 

That was exactly the lesson I learned at that workshop all those years ago: I can try my best to understand every day. And I do try. Every day. It’s literally the least I can do. But no matter what I do or how hard I try, I will never really have any idea. 

That’s the reality that all of us need to integrate into our lives and reflect on every day for the rest of our lives. Adding this excellent book to the library of books and movies I continue to accumulate—not just in the years since that workshop, not just in the months after George Floyd’s murder, not just during Black History Month, but every month of every year I continue to be alive—is one small way to continue trying. 

It’s not enough, of course. I doubt anything will be enough in my lifetime. But to paraphrase a very wise woman I once knew: How do you start fighting racism? You just start.

Other books that deal with racism:

Visiting Africa: A Memoir, by Jesse O’Reilly Conlin

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

Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, by Marsha Faubert

One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Recovered a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, by Amy Fish

No Such Thing: A Memoir of ‘Mild’ TBI and How You Can Help

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Almost every week for more than a year, I’ve been using this space to review and champion books by graduates of the prestigious Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Book cover of 'No Such Thing' by Lynne Melcombe, featuring a blue background and white text.
To read excerpts, click on the image.

I’ve been mostly absent for a couple of months, first because I was on a much-needed vacation, and since then because I’ve been devoting my time to a book project of my own.

I undertook the MFA program so I could learn to write, not just any book, but this book.

This book recounts my experience of and research related to a “mild” TBI (concussion) that I had over 20 years ago and from which I’ve never fully recovered.

My experience taught me that there is “no such thing” as a “mild” traumatic brain injury. That’s why I’ve called my book No Such Thing: A True Story of “mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery.

Most people recover from concussions in a few days—weeks at most.

But up to 30% of people don’t. Some go on having symptoms for months, even years. 

I’ve never fully recovered from my injury. I felt a need to write a book about it for a few reasons.

  • Brain injury is very isolating. The injury itself—pain, brain fog, memory loss—can make it hard to communicate. 
  • Many people—doctors, lawyers, co-workers, friends, family—don’t believe you. That makes the pain and isolation worse. 
  • The stigma against people who pursue legal measures based on ongoing misperceptions about brain injury add stress and emotional trauma that complicate a person’s ability to recover.
  • There wasn’t much to support people going through this experience twenty years ago. Anyone going through it now deserves better.

At the time of my injury, I often felt like I was going crazy.

Doctors kept telling me I should be better. Lawyers put my life under a microscope. Family, friends, and coworkers acted—and sometimes said—I was just looking for attention and I needed to get over it.

But as years went by and social media exploded, I began hearing other people’s stories of not-so-mild traumatic brain injury. I began keeping abreast of current research that supported what they were going through.

Gradually, I stopped questioning my own perceptions.

When I wrote my book, I was writing the book I needed at the time. 

I wrote it for the people who need it now, for those who love them, and for those who want to better understand this underestimated injury.

I finished my book a couple of years ago and, full of hope, I started looking for a publisher.

Every one of them responded the same way: timely topic, great story, well written, but I lacked enough of an audience to justify their investment in publishing it.

One of the things I learned in the MFA program was the necessity of building an audience while writing my book.

But while I was writing, I was coping with a divorce, navigating health issues, and rebuilding a freelance writing and editing business.

I was also managing the symptoms of my injury every day.

I lacked the ability to do it all.

At first, when I realized that no “real” publishers wanted my book, I felt like I’d failed.  

But I also realized that if I gave up and left my book sitting in a virtual drawer, that would feel like failure too.

So, I turned to Iguana Books.

Iguana Books is a hybrid publisher.

A hybrid publisher retains the quality controls conventional publishers rely on but with a requirement that authors cover production costs, as they would in self-publishing. 

Iguana takes hybrid publishing a step further by asking their authors to crowdfund production costs. This ensures costs are covered and allows authors to test the market and build an audience for their book.

Iguana recommended Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for creators.

As I started building my Kickstarter campaign, an interesting thing happened.

I stopped feeling like I’d failed.

I realized that no matter how I publish my book, it will succeed based on same things as any other book—my research, my writing, and my promotional efforts.

That realization has renewed my confidence in my abilities, injected my efforts with energy, and restored my faith in the book I’ve written.

That’s where you come in.

I need your support to raise the $9,000 required to fund the production process—copy editing, layout, distribution. And I’m asking you to pledge whatever you can to help me get there. 

Please go to my Kickstarter campaign page and learn more about why I feel my book is timely, important, and necessary.

Then consider backing my project with a pledge in any amount you can manage.

What’s in it for you?

If you pledge $10 or more, you’ll receive a reward tailored to the size of your contribution—an e-book, a signed paperback with No Such Thing bookmarks, or a book club special for buying in bulk.

If you pledge less than $10—even only $1—I’ll give you a shout-out on social media and add your name to the acknowledgements in my book. 

If I don’t reach my $9,000 goal by March 15, my campaign will end and Kickstarter won’t collect any pledges. 

You have nothing to lose. 

What should you do next?

Well, you can click away to another page, if you want.

Or you can go to my campaign page, read more about my book, and consider making a pledge.

If you think my project is worth backing, click the button for a reminder when my campaign goes live on February 16. Then, if you still feel so inclined, pledge whatever you feel is right. 

If you change your mind before my campaign ends, you can change or withdraw your pledge. No questions, no obligations.

All I ask is that you think about it.

With gratitude,
Lynne

Visiting Africa: A Personal Memoir and Reflection

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t wanted to visit Africa. I love African music, traditional and modern. I love the colourful fabrics. I would love to see the animals I’ve admired on TV and in photos as up close and personal as safely possible. I’d like to witness the power of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and walk the desert sands of Namibia, and I’d be honoured and humbled to visit Robben Island, the brutal prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life. 

A person walking along a sandy beach with a fishing spear, against a backdrop of blue sky and ocean, with the title 'Visiting Africa: A Memoir' prominently displayed.

So, when I saw that an alum of the UKing’s MFA program in creative nonfiction writing had published a book called Visiting Africa: A Memoir (Demeter Press, 2021), I jumped at the chance to read it. And I wasn’t disappointed. As a former PhD student with an interest in the slave trade, historic and modern, Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin (class of 2019) is well acquainted with his subject matter. Told in the first person and with raw honesty about his feelings as a privileged middle-class white man, this memoir is thoroughly engaging, and I’d recommend it to anyone. 

After an introduction that takes the reader from the author’s early life and the start of his interest in Africa through his public-school years, the book is written in two parts. In the first part, he describes his journey as a graduate student studying the forced migration of Africans while wrestling with personal feelings of inauthenticity and inadequacy. In the second part, he has set aside his efforts to learn about Africa from books and has embarked on a two-month journey as much into himself as through several countries in the south of the continent. His goal: to see and hear and feel the place he has worked so hard at learning about without ever really being there or immersing himself in the cultures. 

Part 2 opens with these words:

It’s May 2018, I am thirty-three years old, and I am on my way to Africa. Four years have passed since I left WITS [University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg]. Four years have passed since I left South Africa, and the African continent, without doing so many of the things I had wanted. When people asked me whether I have been to Africa, I would always pause before answering “Yes, I have.” I had walked the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town, of course, and my passport still contained my South African study visa. I had proof of a visit. Yet I wavered in responding in the affirmative because I knew the libraries and classrooms of Johannesburg and Cape Town better than those cities’ actual sites and sounds. Despite my living in Johannesburg, I spent so much time safely ensconced in my dorm room or in a library or in a classroom that Johannesburg, the real and dynamic city, seemed a thousand kilometres away. I had spent so much time reading and studying about migration in Southern Africa that I associated the word “Africa” with only words on the page, with a problem that needed fixing. I had come to experience South Africa, yet I remained as divorced from it as I had been in Toronto, Montreal, and Busan.

This trip would be different though. I have two months to explore Southern Africa—to put faces and sounds and smells to the worlds I had spent years reading and analyzing. Finally, I can step outside the book, the classroom, and the school. I can walk amid the people and their histories. I can visit their worlds. 

Through his eyes, O’Reilly-Conlin invites his readers to visit, too—to see the old slave forts and understand the suicides of captured Africans less as acts of despair than of defiance; to wander down the wrong street of a city and feel one’s own body go limp when the author is mugged; to enter a busy marketplace and hear dozens of languages representing as many proud and rich cultures; to look at sunlight streaming through bullet holes in the roof of a Rwandan church where a genocide deeply rooted in colonialism claimed forty thousand lives in minutes; to viscerally comprehend the persistent consequences of the transatlantic slave trade centuries after it ended. 

If you wish to understand racism better, confront your own privilege more deeply, or simply explore the history and current reality of life on the African continent, add this book to your reading list. 

If you enjoy travel memoirs, read the following books by MFA grads:

How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

Louisburg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, by RC Shaw

For more on race and racism:

Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, by Marsha Faubert

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc

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

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

The Baby by the Roadside: A Remarkable Holocaust Story

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Having had three children of my own, I cannot imagine deciding that that only way to give at least one of them a chance to survive would be to abandon her at the side of a road and hope someone would save her. But that was exactly what Esther Silber did with her eight-month-old daughter, Rivka, right before she, her husband, and her older children were herded into train cars to join the ranks of the six million Jews whose lives and memories the Nazis attempted to erase from history in World War II. 

Cover of the book 'One in Six Million' by Amy Fish, featuring a light blue background with black and yellow text, highlighting themes related to the Holocaust and identity.

Miraculously, Esther’s baby girl survived. A Polish couple happened to be walking along the road where the baby had been abandoned. Following the sound of her cries, they found her, tightly swaddled, a note pinned to her blanket: Maria, November 25, 1941 (Esther had changed her name to something less Jewish-sounding). Approaching their forties, they’d always wanted but never conceived a child. So, despite the deadly risks to themselves for rescuing for what they knew was a Jewish infant, they took her home to raise as their own. 

From there, the story of Rivka’s/Maria’s life and her search, as an adult, to find clues to her origins or biological family only becomes more incredible. Yet it’s not only a true story; it’s also not entirely unique. Even seventy-five years after the war, Holocaust survivors continue to search for family members they believe to have been murdered but hope, on the slimmest of chances, might have lived. It’s amazing how many of them continue to find each other. 

Amy Fish’s (class of 2023) book, One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity (Goose Lane Editions, 2025) boasts a large cast of characters but just one real hero; a multitude of surprising plot twists and reversals of fortune; and tantalizing leads that compel the reader to keep turning pages but end up going nowhere. In her telling of a tale that could easily have been bogged down by extensive details, Fish endows this remarkable true story with all the hallmarks of a great British mystery.

It had been three years and two months since Maria first posted her question on JewishGen. It had been a year and eight months since Sarah told Stanley about the case. And it had been one year, eighteen weeks, and five days since Rabbi Kirchevsky packed Maria’s DNA packed Maria’s DNA in his suitcase and flew with it to New York. And finally, finally, after thousands of names of spreadsheets, hundreds of phone calls to complete strangers, and dozens of potential matches that turned out to be dead ends, they knew where to look.

Well, sort of. Sarah knew she could look at the Freund family in Krosno. But Sarah also logged onto Geni, a worldwide genealogical database, and ran a search for Freunds. She found a gaggle of them in Jaslo, a neighbouring town less than thirty kilometres from Krasno. Sarah promptly emailed Stanley, and Stanley immediately got to work. “With the kindness and cooperation of the Jaslo Urzad Stanu Cywilnego (Civil Registry Offices),” Stanley explained, “in combination with Ora’s input, it was possible to flesh out the entire family.”

Fish gives the bulk of the credit for the incredible research on this story to Stanley Diamond. A successful businessman, Diamond started a genealogical database when he retired twenty-some years earlier. His goal, at the time, was to warn Jewish relatives, close and distant, that the recessive gene for a serious genetic illness called beta thalassemia runs in the families of many Ashkenazi Jews, including theirs; they should have themselves tested before conceiving a child. But over the years, the work that became Stanley’s second career evolved. When Maria’s nearly impossible search came to his attention, he dug into it with fervour. 

But not all the credit goes to Diamond. As amazing as Maria’s story is, the details of a years-long genealogical investigation could become tedious in the wrong hands. (This is a challenge of creative nonfiction writing that the UKing’s MFA program in CNF teaches students to manage.) Fish seamlessly weaves in personal background of the key players in the search, the history of the Jewish people from millennia past to horrific details of the Holocaust, and facts about her own faith and culture as a Jew. 

An oft-related quote from the Talmud tells the faithful that: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” In an act of courage and faith that I cannot fathom, Esther Zilber saved Maria’s life by leaving her on a roadside. Vasili and Antonina Markovitch saved Maria’s life by picking up the abandoned infant and, at no small risk to themselves, raising her as their own. Stanley Diamond and the anonymous “Sarah” may not save lives, per se, but they enrich them by reuniting severed families in ways that make them feel whole again.

Finally, we can never know how many lives Amy Fish might be enriching, or even saving, by showing them that, even in a world apparently gone mad, there is still light. There is still hope. 

Walking the Camino: A Healing Journey

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

Several years ago, I coached a client through a few drafts of a memoir. About twenty years earlier, he and his wife, always up for travel and adventure, had tried long-distance hiking. It had been disastrous: they’d done no training, they were wearing new ill-fitting boots, and their six-year-old son was with them. They abandoned their hike about halfway through. 

Book cover of 'Walking the Camino: On Earth as It Is' by Maryanna Gabriel, featuring a path leading into the horizon with silhouettes of hikers.

A few years later, both approaching milestone birthdays, they were mulling over how to celebrate and decided to give hiking another try, this time doing lots of research and physical training, and leaving their children with family. It went so well and was so fulfilling that they made it an annual tradition. 

At first, they did a few hikes in England, a hiking-friendly country. Then they decided to tackle something bigger: El Camino de Santiago, a trail for religious pilgrims that starts in the French Pyrenees and makes its way across northern Spain and Portugal to its terminus in Galicia, on the Atlantic Coast. Around 800 kilometres long, it takes thirty to forty days to complete; they broke it into three segments, which they completed over three years.

I’ve been intrigued with the idea of hiking the Camino ever since. So, Maryanna Gabriel’s (class of 2022) book, Walking the Camino: On Earth as It Is (Pottersfield Press, 2023) immediately leapt out at me. A bit adrift after the unexpected death of her mother, Gabriel was seeking a way to deal with her grief and reconnect with her inner self. She attended a talk about walking the Camino, where a stranger with whom she exchanged a few brief words leaned in and said, “Walk the Camino. You’ll know why.” 

Her travel memoir, Walking the Camino, is exactly what the title promises: a chronicle of Gabriel’s experience, from that moment at the talk, through months of preparation, and from the beginning of the famed spiritual route in the Pyrenees Mountains to its end at the Atlantic Ocean. Just a few days into the hike, she writes about a moment when she’s resting with some fellow travellers, talking about the ineffable quality of the Camino.

I lifted my head at a pause. Something unusual was happening. I was trying to understand a rushing sensation from a great depth. I examined Bjørn intently.

“May I have your permission to pray,” he asked. His blue eyes twinkled.

It was getting late, customers had departed, and the owner had disappeared. We were alone. Kris and I glanced at each other and nodded.

Intonations of sound emerged. Rumbles that seemed ancient and long forgotten. Vowels tumbled, then halted, and gathered momentum. Bjørn tossed back his head and boomed in a crescendo of resounding benediction, a cascading river that encircled us then rolled upwards into the starlight. The sound was unlike any language I had ever heard, Latin but not Latin, Hebrew but not Hebrew, Spanish but not Spanish, but seemed to contain elements of these languages. The effect was musical and the intent benevolent. It uplifted the heart and I was filled with the wonder of it. Of babies, and cinnamon toast, dragonflies on mountain lakes, of angels blowing their horns, of kisses and custard and roses, a flower dappled in sunlight and pollen and dewdrops, the laughter of children, a first candy cane, of cookies and fire crackle, the crunch of snow, the crinkle of presents, of soft knitted socks, and the snuggle of Sunday mornings. A profound peace coursed through me, as though I had been enormously blessed. Was it from this world or beyond?

The reverberations slowly died away. Had Bjørn been speaking in tongues? I roused myself. I had to ask.

“Does this happen often?”

He mumbled and looked at me shyly from beneath shaggy brows. “Sometimes.”

Beautiful, visual, lyrical writing.

Anyone I’ve spoken to who’s done the Camino comes back with similar stories of wonder and awe and peace. The writer I spoke of earlier was at a complete loss to express his feelings as he and his wife drew close to and finally reached the end point, the finish line they’d been striving toward for three years. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever walk the Camino. It seems huge, daunting. But if the kind of experience Gabriel and my writing client describe awaits along the route or at the end, maybe, just maybe, I should do it. 

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is was the 2022 winner of the Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Other winners of this award from among the graduates of the MFA program include:

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

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

The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate, by Andrew MacDuff and Mirriam Mweemba. Review coming soon.

Other books of inner exploration through travel:

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

Louisburg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, by RC Scott