Writers

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Writers

Corinne Rocheleau Rouleau

When we first heard CBC's Alan Maitland reading this author's glorious account of Christmas in the Laurentians entitled, When Heaven Smiled On Our World, we had no idea she was hearing impaired or that she had travelled as a child from Worcester, Mass. to study with expert teachers of the deaf at a convent in Montreal, Que. Read more about this author at http://www.catholicauthors.com/roleau.html, or listen to Fireside Al's special Christmas audio cassette. Here's the Vancouver Public Library's listing for it: [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=106755Y52285M.6511&profile=pac&uri=full=3100001@!889266@!0&ri=3&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&source=207.194.177.184@!horizon&ipp=20&staffonly=&term=Maitland,+Alan&index=AUTHOR&uindex=&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=3&limit=VF01+=+cassabk#focus[/url].

The story is also available in a collection called Christmas in Canada by Mary Barber and Flora McPherson, published by Dent in 1959. Click on [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=106755Y52285M.6511&profile=pac&uri=link=3100023@!3502074@!3100023@!3100002&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=6&source=207.194.177.184@!horizon&term=Christmas+in+Canada&index=ALLTITL#focus[/url] for the library listing.

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John Mortimer

We think of our jolly pal, John Mortimer, celebrated creator of Rumpole and She Who Must Be Obeyed, every time we struggle with our socks of a morning or cruise a cocktail party in a wheelchair, gazing at mute middles or their owners' less recalcitrant nether regions.

Mortimer's wonderful writing first eclipsed his successful career as a civil litigator in A Voyage Round My Father at [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=KA685909271F8.10039&profile=pac&uri=link=3100023@!3141066@!3100023@!3100002&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=3&source=207.194.177.184@!horizon&term=A+voyage+round+my+father&index=ALLTITL#focus[/url], in which he described the impact of his father's blindness on the family and their silence about the disability much to the horror of his mother.

While we continue to delight in the misadventures of our favorite barrister at Pommeroy's Wine Bar and its infamous cellar of Chateau Thames Embankment, we have a special feeling for the memoirs recalled in The Summer of a Dormouse, A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully, at [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=10G8591292A7Y.10050&profile=pac&uri=link=3100023@!3802811@!3100023@!3100002&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=2&source=207.194.177.184@!horizon&term=The+summer+of+a+dormouse+%2F&index=ALLTITL#focus[/url], a rousing romp through Italy and advancing age that left us breathless with laughter, especially the bit about the airport in Milan, where he was forcibly strapped into a terrifying sort of crane and lifted to dizzying heights like a martini, shaken, not stirred. Here's an excerpt from page 15:

It was at Milan airport and I was waiting at the check-in desk for the athletic beauty who had zipped me past queues on my arrival to take me to the aeroplane for home. It was clearly her day off and her place was taken by a malign dwarf, a small sinister chair-pusher who offered me, with a shrug of contempt, a chair clearly designed for a child. Wedged into it, with my knees pressing against my ears, I was hurtled through the crowds towards a distant room, bleak, airless and windowless, in which a line of wheelchairs, parked against a blank wall, contained the partially paralysed and the terminally ill being taken away, perhaps, to die in Palermo. Finding a parking spot at the end of this line, my wheelchair Quasimodo put on the brakes and dumped me.

Gasping for air, I struggled to my feet and limped to a bar for a reviving Prosecco. As I drank I heard a final call for the flight to Heathrow. I rejoined the parade of lost souls and at last Quasimodo reappeared and sped me at a kind of uneven gallop to the gate at which the glass doors were now closed. I could see, however, the BA plane on the tarmac, so I struggled to my feet again, only to be pulled back by my driver, who said, "You can't move. You're blind! Wait for the lorry!"

Then I saw, far away on the other side of the airport, a lorry with a huge crane on its back. It was advancing slowly, remorselessly towards the glass doors. I'm still trying to forget being pushed on to a platform, being hoisted into the air by the giant crane and delivered like a piece of excess baggage at the doorway of the aircraft, to the fasinated amusement of the returning tourists. I'd rather have been at knee level, bored to tears at a drinks party.

Despite partial blindness and legs that just sort of gave up from lack of use, Mortimer continues to illuminate stage and screen, somehow finding time inbetween for brief and charming forays into autobiography. There were 118 listings at our library when we last looked: [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?npp=10&ipp=20&profile=pac&aspect=basic_search&term=Mortimer%2C+John+Clifford%2C+1923-&index=AUTHOR&uindex=&oper=&ri=2&session=10685926090I8.10120&menu=search&aspect=basic_search&npp=10&ipp=20&profile=pac&ri=2&source=207.194.177.184@%21horizon&sort=3100013&limit=&go_sort_limit.x=17&go_sort_limit.y=11#focus[/url]. More like this!

Read Emma Brockes' Oc. 6, 2003 interview with Mortimer, The old babe magnet, at Guardian Unlimited, [url]http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,1057051,00.html[/url]. Here's the listing for his new book of memoirs, Where There's A Will: [url]http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=10701DA509769.7707&profile=pac&uri=link=3100023@!4115783@!3100023@!3100002&aspect=basic_search&menu=search&ri=1&source=207.194.177.184@!horizon&term=WHERE+THERE%27S+A+WILL+%3A+A+SEPTUAGENARIAN%27S+GUIDE+TO+LIFE&index=ALLTITL#focus[/url].

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