Category Archives: Grant Evans

THE LIST

I am a compulsive list writer. It’s in my blood. It all started when we lived on Victoria Avenue in Oak Bay. On Saturday morning breakfast would be on the table, my Peter Rabbit egg cup holding my soft-boiled egg, toast fingers surrounding the egg cup and along side my plate, The List. The list of Saturday morning chores, one for me, one for my stepfather both written in my mother’s flowing and unreadable hand. (For some reason my little sister didn’t get one. Although she may have as she grew older.)

And so, when I grew up and had three children of my own and was working, I would leave them with their Saturday morning list. Unlike my mother, I never had the temerity to leave one for my husband. My writing was even more indecipherable than my mother’s which gave my children an easy excuse for not doing the chores. Although my younger son, who makes his living deciphering archival information, credits me for honing his ability to read poorly written script.

And I still write lists. Lists for myself. I start the morning with a list of what I hope to achieve that day. I have lists for household chores, phone calls to be made, writing to be done, things to buy and I highlight some with pink or yellow highlighters, depending on my current colour choice and I dutifully tick each one off as they are completed. I carry some through to the next day if they’re not done. This keeps me organized and accountable and offers a boost of satisfaction as I tick each one off. It’s like getting clicks of like or love on Facebook posts, feeding ones self worth. It also creates a certain amount of anxiety and self judgement when the tasks are not ticked off. This feeling of failure blossomed recently when other life events were sucking up my energy, and I couldn’t live up to my ideal self.

a rainy day outing

Then this happened.

I stopped making lists and suddenly I was free! I was free to do whatever I wanted with no judgement. If the sun was shining and Grant and I felt like going for drive, or to the ocean or out for lunch, we would go. I had nothing on my agenda holding me back. And if I felt like cozying up on the sofa with the fire going and nestling down with a book, I did that without feeling guilty. I even did a little gardening on the sunny days because I wanted to get my hands in the earth. I did whatever I wanted to do, binge-watched Shetland and other British series and enjoyed every minute. Pure self indulgence. This is how I expected retirement to be.

Ah but La-La land doesn’t last forever. It was a great sabbatical, but reality slithered in. I have a third memoir to finish, the one that’s sometimes called And the Dog Came Too and sometimes Under a Salish Moon. You know the one. I’ve been banging on about it forever. I’m embarrassed about how long I am taking. However, I just finished reading a recently published memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old woman; it took her twelve years to finish it. And she’s working on another. I have hope.

And I am back to writing lists. Wish me luck.

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes

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Bed Time Stories

Bed Time Stories

I am reading to my husband. At night. In bed.

Before he developed wet macular degeneration in both eyes, one of Grant’s greatest pleasures was going to bed with a book, reading until he fell asleep. We both read at night, and as we had no television or electronic devices in the bedroom he was adrift.

childhood reading

Then I remembered how wonderful it was to be read to when I was a child and I offered to read to him. I had forgotten that Grant’s taste in books leaned more to the philosophical, or cerebral than mine. My perfect bedtime reading is something like The Thursday Murder Club, good old British whodunits. Like me Grant has a whole wall of books in his study, including ‘books to be read’, plenty to chose from for bedtime reading, however there was a new Ian McEwan book out, one he didn’t have, so off we went to our local indie bookstore, Volume One Books and bought a hard cover copy of What We Can Know.

Once we got into the book it was gripping, exploring a dystopian future, flipping back and forth between 2015 and 2119 where scholars felt nostalgic for our current times. The plot twists with a couple of love stories and a mystery, and the effects of nuclear war kept me awake at night.

Not good bedtime reading. Although I would read it again. In fact we almost began again from the beginning.

However Grant had more books queued up…

The next book Grant tossed on the bed for me to read was a battered pocketbook, Hermann Hesse’s Gertrude, first published in 1910.

I groaned. I’ll never be able to read that tiny print with my eighty-six-year-old eyes.

(BTW. Did you know I am the same age as Margaret Atwood? Just saying.)

Surprisingly the print in this old pocketbook with the ancient, yellowed paper

was quite readable even with only my drugstore glasses. And the story was strangely compelling. It seems we are on a Hesse immersion course, or a ‘Hessepalooza’, carrying on with Under the Wheel, another coming of age story with Hesse, and now tonight, before we go on to Siddhartha and Steppenwolf we will conquer The Journey to the East. In between Hesse we dipped into David Brooks, The Second Mountain. I found his sentences more convoluted than Hesse’s, and harder to read.

It was being read to as a child that motivated me to learn to read. My best friend Roger and I attended kindergarten together and his mother took care of me after school. Every afternoon we would sit in front of the fire (no central heating), and his mother would read to us. At first it was Beatrix Potter, moving on to A.A. Milne but then his mother began reading the Arthur Ransom books and we were hooked. They are wonderful British stories about a group of children who went on great sea faring adventures without adults, books with titles like Swallows and Amazons and We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea”.

A.A. Milne

The thing was, Roger was beginning to read the Arthur Ransome books on his own and we were the same age. I was competitive and needed to keep up with him. So somehow by age five I also learned how to read. And of course, I read to my children when they were young.

But this hour of reading to Grant every night is different, more meaningful. We enjoy dissecting the story line after, sharing our pleasure with the writing. Or not.

And I am enjoying this reading practice, it’s calming and grounding, a good prelude to sleep.

Grant says he feels nourished.

What could be better than that?

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes

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PAINTING OR WRITING? EARLY MORNING MUSINGS

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes

The Jazz Players

I know an artist who regrets each piece of art he sells. Years ago, when he belonged to a Chemainus Artist Group and was displaying his work, he sold his ‘Jazz Players’ to a woman from Calgary. Letting that painting go, was painful. He painted another, slightly different and it still hangs in our living room.

Yes. The artist is my partner, Grant.

Then there was the painting of the well loved Chemainus hermit, Charlie Abbott, shown walking along the railway tracks with the iconic Chemainus theatre in the background. Sold also to a woman from Alberta. Also greatly missed.

And his Arizona paintings, thirty- five small studies in oil of the churches, shrines and ancient symbols of the desert done over a winter in Arizona. We had an art show at the old Hummingbird Café in Chemainus when we returned, slapped a high price on them to discourage sales, which didn’t work, as he bid a sad farewell to some of his favourites, including his “Hoochie Coochie Girls.” He still talks about that one.

I know how that feels as I once wanted to be an artist. I studied at the local college, painted in oil because I loved the smell and painted trees, because I loved trees. There was one painting, a big one, of my eight-year-old stepdaughter Sue, sitting against the trunk of an old fir on the bank of the river. I captured her perfectly and had thought of giving it to her.

But an acquaintance saw the painting and wanted to buy it. I was flattered. However, she had no money and offered to do a trade, a hand-woven shawl from Guatemala in exchange for my painting. I reluctantly agreed.

A couple of years later, she asked for her shawl back in return for the painting. I said no. I was annoyed that she didn’t value my painting more than her shawl. I was annoyed that I let myself be manipulated and I’ve regretted that decision ever since for shortly after, the woman’s house burned down with my painting inside. (She had already moved out, as the house was condemned.)

I still have the shawl, but I never wear it.

There’s a moral here, but I have no idea what it is.

All I know, is that painting and writing are creative art forms, both arising from somewhere deep within.  I have lost myself in both pursuits, reaching that altered state where time has no meaning and the art is flowing, an artist high if there is such a thing. It’s a wonderful state of being.

However, I find writing to be simpler than painting. I can print copies of my writing on a sheet of paper or as a book and still have my original. And delete is quicker than painting over. (Painters can print giclees but it’s more involved.)

The difference between painting and writing for me as a memoir writer, is that once my writing is finished, it no longer belongs to me, it belongs to the reader who hears my words filtered through their own experiences. Even I, upon reading one of my books years after I write them, am not the same person; I have separated myself from the stories. I hear them differently; they are no longer mine.

Paintings, although infused with the artists emotions, feel more static. They capture a memory that is frozen in time and place. Maybe that is why many artists have difficulty selling their work. They’ll never be that person in that time again.

Writing and painting, both laying bare our innermost feelings, capturing fleeting moments, are we doing it for ourselves or for an audience?

And does it really matter?

In the end are these just idle early morning musings because my cat’s insisting that I wake up and I’m pretending I ‘m still asleep?

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FLYING MADLY OFF IN ALL DIRECTIONS

I am not writing a blog this month because:

*The garden has called:

Twenty years ago, when we bought this bungalow, there was a tidy front garden, a row of shrubs, a small, raised bed with two trees and the rest was grass. I dug up the grass and planted every inch of ground with shrubs and flowers including bamboo.

-High maintenance. Oh, how I wish I had left it alone.

Grant dug out the grass in the back yard and replaced it with terracotta pavers.

-Low maintenance. Sensible.

I planted every other empty patch with Rhododendrons, ground cover, flowering shrubs, and we put in a fishpond.

-High maintenance, not sensible.

I am not writing a blog this month because:

*Swimsuit season is coming up and I am working on getting toned.

Ha, ha, ha!!! As if!

*I am working on fitness, so I can work in the garden. I am doing stretches, promising myself that I will walk daily, meanwhile my hands are stiff with arthritis and it’s hard to type let along work in the garden.

I am not writing a blog this month because:

*I am pushing through with the editing of my up coming book, now tentatively called Coastal Adventures: And the Dog Came Too.

I am not writing a blog this month because:

*The blog I was writing this month just wouldn’t gel.

* It’s tax season!

* AND I AM FLYING MADLY OFF IN ALL DIRECTIONS!

I will come back to earth next month. Maybe read a bit of Stephen Leacock in between. Get the reference?

Meanwhile, lets enjoy this sweet time of year, spring with all her promises.

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell ForbesFacebooktwittermail

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SMALL MOMENTS OF HAPPINESS

Back a few years, when we were still living in Chemainus, Grant bought a new thunder-grey Nissan Tundra hot off the factory shelf. We drove into town and parked in front of the coffee shop on Willow Street. The local good old boys were having their usual ciggies and coffee at the outside tables.

We smiled and said good morning, and as we walked away from the truck, we heard one of them say, “there goes a lucky man. He’s got his truck and a good- looking woman at his side.”

“He’s got his priorities right,” Grant said as I whapped him on the arm.

Willow Street Cafe in Fall

Flash forwards a dozen years. We were enjoying lunch on the deck at the Willow Street Café at the far end of Willow Street. Our cocker spaniel was sitting at my feet, the big patio umbrella shading us from the hot sun. The place was lively, food was good and I was on top of the world. A woman at a nearby table kept glancing over, then she caught my eye and smiled.

“Look at you!” she exclaimed in a big voice, her arms spread wide. “You’ve got your dog and you’ve got your man. You’ve got it all. Go girl.”

“She got the order reversed,” Grant grumbled later.

Ah but, it’s a happy memory for me.

Another one of those everything’s alright-in-my-world moments occurred a few years ago. It was evening, curtains closed to the rain beating against the windows, the flames on the gas fireplace flickering, Grant and I lounging in our easy chairs and our dog and cat curled up on the sofa. I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than relaxing with a loving partner and an adored dog and cat in front of the fire. My heart was full.

But flash forward to present day. Our home is now missing a dog. Our precious cocker spaniel was run over a couple of years ago. And we are not ready for another dog. Grant’s cat allergies are worsening and we should be rehoming our cat. But I can’t bring myself to do it. The heart has gone out of our home.

For the sake of Grant’s health, we are keeping the cat out of our bedroom. Conrad’s favourite place to sleep was on a cushy chair next to my side of the bed.

Now I am doing ‘cat training’ which consists of patiently ignoring his tales of woe as I try to sleep (fat chance) while he serenades me loudly outside our bedroom door. He is an indoor/outdoor cat and we don’t have a cat door. I am the doormat, er doorman. The first night that I left him outside when I went to bed, he scratched on the bedroom window and cried for two hours. I cried too. I let him in and he continued his sad tale at the bedroom door.

Last night he changed his pleas to more conversational tones, sweet meows with up and down notes accompanied by quick bursts of scratching the door jamb. I hope that means my side is winning. He can lure you into complacency with his sweetness. The goal is to have him content to sleep in a different room from Grant and me and to keep Grant’s allergies manageable.

Conrad left his original home when he was young and pushed his way in with us. I packed him up once and moved him and his expensive cat tree back to his first home, a couple of houses away. (Grant’s doctor’s orders re allergies.) He was back with us very quickly, minus the cat tree, his cat siblings had taken it over.

So, this is round two and I will stick it out because I don’t want to send him away even if it means I stagger around half asleep looking like something the cat dragged in. Now isn’t that an appropriate metaphor?

I will keep you posted.

Signed, obedient cat servant and juggler.

Note: The two “Willow Street” anecdotes in this blog are included in my upcoming memoir (working title) And the Dog Came Too.

Tri-colour American Cocker Spaniel, Blaze

My tri-colour American Cocker Spaniel Blaze, curious about my book display.

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes

Growing Up Weird: A memoir of an Oak Bay childhood

River Tales: Stories from My Cowichan YearsFacebooktwittermail

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Cover of View from the Tower, revised edition 2019

View from the Tower – New Revised Edition

It’s here!  View from the Tower, Tin Pushers and Pilots on BC’s West Coast

In response to the demand, Grant has re-written and revised his best-selling book about his experiences as an air traffic controller. It comes with a new title that reflects its broader range:  View from the Tower, Tin Pushers and Pilots on BC’s West Coast. This revised edition has more stories of laughter and disaster and more photographs, in short it is a better book.

Grant Evans with the new edition of View from the Tower

Grant Evans with the new edition of View from the Tower

Maybe ‘best-selling’ is a slight exaggeration, in Canada I believe you have to sell 5000 books to be a best seller, but Grant had sold the original print run, the book stores were calling for more and it was either re-print or revise-and-print and as Grant had more stories he wanted to tell, it became revise.

And what a revise, from top to bottom, cut and paste and re-imagine. As well as more stories surfacing, he had things that needed fixing. Part of the catalyst for change were the letters he received from fans. One person berated him for misspelling Port McNeill, an unforgivable oversight, another for misspelling (the author) Nevil Shute. In the first offence he was lacking an ‘l’ and in the latter he had one too many ‘ls’ plus an ‘e’. Sloppy editing at this end, and quickly corrected.

However, all fan letters are gratefully received; they are a wow-someone-read-my-book moment and the best, was the letter from Sharon McGillawee Smith of Port Hardy. It went like this: “Hi Grant, my Name is Sharon, and I am Jim McGillawee’s daughter.  I purchased your book for him for his 97th birthday, and he has asked me to get in touch with you.”

And get in touch with her we did. We met Sharon and Jim (who was the former airport carpenter at Port Hardy when Grant was there), and the rest of the family over laughter-filled lunches. We heard that Sharon hadn’t told her dad that he was mentioned in View from the Tower when she gave him the first book, and he had a great chuckle when he came across stories of his own adventures and was eager to reminisce with Grant about the ‘good old days.’

Sharon sent Grant old airport photos, including one of her brother Sheldon standing on the wing of a downed C-46 that had gone off the runway the day before Grant arrived in Port Hardy in 1960.

Can you imagine Grant, aged twenty-one, and his equally young wife and baby daughter arriving at this remote area having lived in Vancouver with its cosmopolitan way of life, and their first view of their new home is a downed airplane? This didn’t deter Grant one bit, in fact what makes Grant’s stories so appealing is that they are told by this young pup, a speed junkie with a yen for adventure, who is eager to take on anything that comes his way, always with bravado and a wicked sense of humour. We also see his introspective side which may have been fueled by long hours alone in the tower. And as an air traffic controller we never doubt that we are in good hands: Grant shows an equally competent control over his writing.

That these were different days is blatantly obvious as you read his stories. On his time off he could be asked to look after the inmates of the drunk tank, or pitch in to drive the school bus, or pack whale meat; there weren’t the rules and regulations as there are now and Grant was eager to work. In fact, he worked as hard as he played. Fishing was so good that his dog ate as much seafood as the family. When he worked in Abbotsford tower, he and his buddies frequently drove into the U.S. to the nearest beer parlour for their after-work drinks. The border control just waved them through.

Grant’s lifelong fascination with flight is evident in his writing, from his initial flying years, to his eventual choice of air traffic control as a career. (Early on he realized that flying could be hour and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror and he chose ATC because he would always be in the centre of the action.)  It shows with his love of airplanes and his carefully crafted sketches that illustrate this book and through his admiration of, and friendship with, the many pilots he’s encountered.

View from the Tower is a rollicking good read right up to the finish when Grant takes early retirement from being an ATC instructor in 1984. It leaves you wanting more.Facebooktwittermail

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Grant Evans with View From The Tower

Books for Sale

We have our books. 200 wonderful lovely books printed two days before Christmas. We dashed down island over the Malahat through fog and rain and almost snow to First Choice Books in Victoria and picked up Grant’s copies of View From The Tower. We were able to fill the almost 20 pre-orders before Christmas.

Yesterday, we placed copies of View From The Tower at Amy Jo’s Cafe by the Crofton ferry terminal to Salt Spring Island.

VIEW FROM THE TOWER at cafe

Ashley Harris receiving Grant’s books before she serves our coffee and muffins.

It is a new year and a new look at our local coffee shop. When we took Grant’s books in today we noticed that they had redecorated over the holidays and the wall colour matched the cover of Grant’s new book perfectly! Amy Jo and her daughter Ashley have a section featuring local authors and View From The Tower is well placed among these authors. The cafe is a popular spot for tourists and locals to buy the local art work, hand crafts and books on display.

 

local artist Beckie and Vicki buying VIEW FROM THE TOWER

Local artist Beckie Hutchinson and Vicki Halme buying copies of View From The Tower from Amy Jo’s.

Copies of View From The Tower are also for sale at Volume One Books on Kenneth Street in Duncan as well as directly from our web site.

Next step is to place the books at our local and up island museums and, taking a tip from the late Joe Garner, “Never Fly Over an Eagles Nest”, we are keeping a box of books to sell in the trunk of the car. We sold our first one of 2016 to my sister outside the Cowichan Bay Pub where we had just had lunch. We had given her one already for a Christmas gift and she asked if we had more.

“Oh yes”, we said and whipped up the hatch back of our car and did a quick sales deal. So stop us on the street if you want to buy…we have books.

This has been a great start to our new year. I love writing and selling, so it is a great package all around.

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Prayer flags in November

November – Off to the publisher

November is my least favourite month. Even though I am a west coast girl and don’t mind the rain, this gray, cold, eternal downpour is depressing. The south east winds are gusting and rocking my bird feeders. One lone black capped chickadee protected by the roof of the feeder is diligently pecking at the seeds. A prayer flag hung nearby startles with its splash of bright yellow and red. On my porch, small mauve pansies bloom in pots already plumped with daffodils waiting for spring. There is hope.

And in the warmth of our home we celebrate Grant’s accomplishment in finalizing his west coast aviation memoirs. View From The Tower is at the publishers now and will be available soon on this web page and at Volume One Books in Duncan.

All is well.Facebooktwittermail

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