Everyday Stories of Ordinary People
What inspires me to write are the everyday stories of ordinary people. I’m drawn to the quiet moments when someone chooses, under pressure, to live by their principles—whether or not I share those principles today. I’m moved by courage that defends family, community, or nation; by resilience that stands up after a hard fall; by small decisions that ripple into history. These are the sparks that light my pages.
I don’t write to preach. I write to understand. How did people respond to world events and private heartbreak? What choices felt possible to them in that time and place? What did it cost to act—or to stay silent? I believe the past has something to teach us about the here and now, not because our ancestors were perfect, but because their struggles mirror our own.
After seven decades, I consider myself a rather simple, even conventional person. That simplicity keeps me honest. It nudges me to ask plain questions: Who is missing from this scene? Whose version of events haven’t I heard? What would it take for a reader unlike me to feel seen here? Inclusive storytelling, for me, begins with curiosity and continues with care—listening before writing, holding space for contradiction, and resisting the urge to flatten complex people into tidy heroes or villains.
I try to honour belief without endorsing harm, to show conviction without erasing doubt, and to acknowledge the limits of my own viewpoint. When I write characters whose experiences differ from mine, I research, I consult, and I revise. The goal isn’t to be flawless; it’s to be responsible and generous—to invite many readers in, not gatekeep who belongs on the page.
In the end, I’m inspired by people who keep going: the worker who starts again after a loss, the neighbour who steps forward in a crisis, the parent who chooses hope for their child. Their stories matter because they help us practise courage. They remind us that dignity can be ordinary and extraordinary at once.
If my work offers any meaning, I hope it’s this: we’re all part of the ongoing human story. By listening widely and writing with care, we can recognize ourselves in one another—and carry a little more grace into the world.
CANADIAN STORIES MATTER
Landscape Moulds its People
I first grasped the country’s vastness from the back seat of a white Ford Fairlane, travelling from CFB Kingston to my father’s final posting at Jericho Beach in Vancouver. In July 1963, we embarked on a two‑month odyssey, skirting the north shore of the Great Lakes—Kingston to Sudbury, then along the rock‑rimmed sweep of Lake Superior toward Thunder Bay.
Sudbury’s Giant Nickel and its stark, blackened hills—so bleak then, so green now—left me awestruck. My dad loved an early start, hustling us from motel beds while we were still in our pyjamas so he could steal a few miles before breakfast.
Just after dawn one morning we rolled past a weather‑beaten sign that read Welcome to Manitoba. A lone deer stood beside it, steam rising from its back as mist curled off the land in the soft, mystical light. I had never seen a deer outside a picture book; in that instant, I knew we were truly on an adventure.
From Winnipeg, the Prairies unspooled for an entire day—heat shimmering off asphalt, wheat fields flat as a table, with a blue sky that curved like a dome from horizon to horizon. By nightfall, we reached Calgary, lingered for the Stampede, then drove north to Edmonton for a two-week visit with family.
Turning back toward the mountains, we climbed rolling foothills until Jasper’s granite spires lifted us into another world: mountain‑goat herds balanced on ledges, elk grazing in roadside meadows, moose munching treats from tourists. One youngster even tried to clamber into our back seat for a piece of bread while Dad shouted for us not to feed the wildlife.
Leaving the Rockies, we slid into the desert valleys cradled between them and the Selkirks—sage‑scented, sun-burned hills where vineyards clung to brown slopes and vast green irrigation circles baffled my nine-year-old mind. Soon the highway plunged into the Coastal Range, hugging canyon walls high above rivers that thundered far below. Forests deepened, darkened, and wept rain. We slowed our pace to wander through waist-high ferns and picnic beside broad, pebble-strewn riverbanks.
Descending once more along the Fraser’s winding course, we entered the zone where mountains exhale salt‑tinged air and announce the sea. At last, we threaded the emerald garden valley toward Vancouver, the city where the peaks rest their feet in the Pacific.
I’m an old woman now, yet that cross-country journey is seared into my imagination. Each shift in landscape felt like turning a fresh page in Canada’s story. I’ve long believed that land molds the people who live upon it, and that conviction anchors my writing—especially in The Magpie’s Tales – Origins. Whether it’s the prairie’s fierce light and lingering twilight—where brutal winters give way to summers that blister the earth—or the cedar‑shadowed, rain‑soaked coast where secrets vanish without a trace, every landscape moulds its people, and those people, in turn, forge the legends of their land. I’ve been chasing that truth ever since.
