Across Canada by Story

by Douglas Gibson

  “And what did you say your name was?”

  “Doug Gibson, with McClelland and Stewart.”

  “And what do you do there?”

  “I’m the publisher.”

  And Neetha said, and I believe these were her exact words: “You twit.”

  So maybe I don’t know the names of Canada’s top publishers the way I should, but I hope that doesn’t mean you won’t take a look at the enclosed proposal, about my teen years, which I spent living at and running a cottage resort in Ontario.

  The letter was signed “Linwood Barclay.”

  The new book idea turned into Last Resort (2000), a fine memoir of the summer when young Linwood helped his mother run the family business, keeping it going after his father’s untimely death. One of the most affecting themes in this gentle reminiscence is how much help the struggling Linwood got from many of the regular dads on holiday. Instead of demanding the perfect vacation, when things like the plumbing went wrong, they were there to fix them, with plungers, wrenches, and rolled-up sleeves. It was a lovely book, and we published it in 2000 with great pride. And that, in turn, gave me not only a friendship with Linwood, but also a front-row seat as Linwood Barclay became one of Canada’s most successful authors.

  Most Canadians don’t know what a world figure we have in Oakville’s own Linwood Barclay. He’s a middle-aged, middle-height, middle-weight dad, with lots of wavy grey hair. After Trent University he had a fine career in newspapers, rising to become the man in the hot seat who laid out the front pages of the Toronto Star. Then he astonished the Star’s John Honderich with the jaw-dropping news (and John has the jaw for it) that he’d like to become the new Gary Lautens, the beloved veteran who wrote funny columns about family life (including the details of the visit to a fancy bathroom store where a four-year-old Lautens boy happily used one of the sleek, dry toilets in the floor display).

  Linwood made the change with ease. It’s always tricky to write for the public about your family, yet Neetha (a teacher) and their son, Spencer, and their daughter, Paige, seemed to have survived just fine. His first book of collected columns had the title Father Knows Zilch (1996), which catches the general tone very well. Equally significant, when the new premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, first met him — long after the columns had ended — what she urgently wanted to know was, “How is Paige?”

  Yet in the wider world, his crime novels now sell in the millions. They rack up hundreds of thousands of sales in North America, and they routinely shoot to the very top of the bestseller lists in Britain. In 2007 the Guardian newspaper listed No Time for Goodbye as the bestselling book of the year in that country. What’s surprising about that last point is that his novels are always set in the USA — more specifically in the suburbs of some anonymous town in New England or near New York.

  The anonymity, I think, is a key point (“Well, it sounds just like our town! This could be happening right here!”). But I’d suggest that the suburban setting is equally important, because Linwood has come up with the obvious truth that (pause to allow head-slap) most readers live in the suburbs. If you want to engage your readers with a story about dramatic things happening to someone just like them, it’s a great start if that someone lives in a place very like their own.

  So Linwood’s stories involve ordinary guys who spend a lot of time in the car (and the make of car is pretty important, too), and who know their way around the local malls, and the streets and the sports fields where their kids play. But that really doesn’t help them much when dirty Fate steps in, to turn their ordinary, suburban lives upside down.

  Even the titles are compressed works of genius: Bad Move (2004, and the first of the wildly successful string of books that, by the way, I did not publish), Bad Guys (2005), Lone Wolf (2006), Stone Rain (2007), No Time for Goodbye (2007 — and you can see how his training as a Star newspaper columnist affected his amazing output), Too Close to Home (2008 — no comment), Fear the Worst (2009), Never Look Away (2010), The Accident (2011), Never Saw It Coming (2012), Trust Your Eyes (2012), A Tap on the Window (2013), and No Safe House (2014).

  Linwood Barclay (1955– )

  If you think the word genius is too generous when it comes to his undoubtedly clever titles, take a look at his opening paragraphs. Any writers who are reading this book in search of tips should get a pen at once and make a note to study how Linwood grabs his reader in the opening sentence. For example, here’s the start of Fear the Worst: “The morning of the day I lost her, my daughter asked me to scramble her some eggs.”

  There you go, hooked by the first eight words in the book. No wonder the National Post praised the book’s “throat-grabbing premise.” Note, too, the domestic simplicity of good old Dad scrambling eggs.

  As for Trust Your Eyes, Stephen King, who knows something about storytelling, wrote about it in these words: “Riveting, frequently scary, occasionally funny, and surprisingly, wonderfully tender. I could believe this might happen to people living two streets over from me. Great entertainment from a suspense master.”

  Aha! “Living two streets over.”

  Let me give one more example of a perfect start, even if it takes more than eight words to set the hook. Here’s how Linwood begins A Tap on the Window: “A middle-aged guy would have to be a total fool to pick up a teenage girl standing outside a bar with her thumb sticking out. Not that bright on her part, either, when you think about it. But we’re talking about my stupidity, not hers.”

  And soon there comes the titular tap on the window, and before he can get rid of her she recognizes him as “Scott Weaver’s dad.”

  “‘Yeah,’ I said. I had been.”

  And we’re off, in Scott’s dad’s trusty Accord, on a scary ride you’ll enjoy as much as Stephen King did.

  When I roam around the country, I’m often cornered by apprentice writers asking, “What is your advice on the best way to get published?” People of all ages are visibly disappointed when I tell them that the trick is to write a first sentence that draws the reader on to the second sentence, and so on, and so on. That’s why reading — and studying — the hard-working Linwood Barclay can be so useful. You don’t have to mimic all of his habits; constructing a huge model train layout in the basement (complete with a sleazy bar on the wrong side of the tracks) is one of his habits that may not be necessary for every fiction writer keen to create a new world. But you never know.

  Certainly, if you follow his writing lessons, it will help. And if it leads to fame and fortune, you can always modestly say that you never saw it coming.

  Linwood lived for many years in Burlington, home to A Different Drummer bookstore, which hosted my last show of 2011, which was in several ways the biggest. Ian Elliot at the store had bravely booked the new Burlington Performing Arts Centre (recently opened by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and then christened by a performance from the more generally popular Sarah McLachlan). Even more bravely, he had asked me to — damn the torpedoes — do the full ninety-minute version of the show.

  The hall (the smaller of the two) was so new that the sound guys were still finding out which switch did what. This delayed the start, meaning that the crowd was kept in the lobby, milling outside the closed theatre doors. I took the chance to go out (no tortured artist squirming in the Green Room here!) and walk around, explaining that this was just a brief technical hitch, and we’d be starting soon. The best part was that I was able to meet lots of old friends, and to make some new ones, so that when the show started, I felt at home.

  In the end, 125 people showed up to fill the place, paying ten dollars for the privilege and stretching their legs in appreciation at the end. Best of all, Ian reported that an usher on duty, who had been disgruntled at not being assigned to work the (very expensive) Sarah McLachlan show, felt compensated — at least partly.

  In the bookselling world (and, boy, we really need these people) everyone admires Ian and h
is predecessor, the rabbinically bearded Richard Bachmann. He was such a notable book-lover that he kept the store afloat, despite the fact that successive chain bookstores set up shop in the neighbourhood, with the apparent aim of driving him out of business. They came, and they went. A Different Drummer marches on.

  I should mention that my old friend Richard was an insistent voice in the friendly campaign to persuade me to write my first book. When I, aware of his frequent very witty letters to newspapers, in turn suggested that he might try his hand at writing, perhaps a novel, he was quick to reject the idea. He said, decisively, “I don’t know other people well enough to be a good novelist.” So then we talked about Alice Munro, and about my reaction after reading each of her stories for the first time: “How does she know so much?”

  On a fine Saturday in May I travelled east to Whitby to speak at a well-attended local Ontario Writers’ Conference. The sun-dappled setting was the Deer Creek Golf Course. I was there to give a lunch-time talk to the 175 people at the conference, and was wearing my “publisher’s uniform.” As a publisher I always instructed my authors that on the promotion trail they should plan to look like their book cover photo, wearing the same clothes, hairstyle/beard, and so on. Obedient to my own advice, when I’m appearing as “author,” I routinely wear the blue blazer, grey flannels, white or blue button-down shirt, and the striped orange-and-blue Brooks Brothers tie that the unflattering Tony Jenkins caught so well on the book cover.

  As you’d expect, this was a much more formal outfit than the ones being worn by the dozens of golfers who were enjoying the Deer Creek sunshine, warming up by dreamily swinging the clubs that were soon going to break their hearts. When I left the conference to stroll around the tees before lunch, my outfit led to a misunderstanding. I was silently standing there, watching people teeing off (always an interesting experience for an old golfer — a slice of life, you might say), when — on two occasions — golfers keen to start their round mistook me for the Official Starter. They were polite Asian Canadians, and they came up to me, bowed low, and presented me with their official Starter’s card.

  I explained that I was just a spectator, and withdrew before there were any more Authority Figure misunderstandings. (The best of which was when a French tour guide in Cambodia assumed that I was running a Cambodian circus, which is another story for another day — although after running a Canadian publishing company, a Cambodian circus sounds pretty easy.) But the possibilities for golf course mischief (“Sure, go ahead and drive, I’m sure you won’t hit the players just in front … they’re farther off than they look”) have stayed with me. There may even be a murder mystery plot there. And a title, Drive, He Said. I must pass it on to Linwood Barclay.

  Uxbridge (or as Terry Fallis called it, since the event was a formal dinner, “Tuxbridge”) staged a fine Book Lover’s Ball in April 2012, in aid of the local library. The setting was the local Wooden Sticks Golf Club, a name that spoke to the ancient tradition of golf clubs with handles of hickory or some other strong, whippy wood. In my talk I was able to boast that in my ancient Scottish village I actually grew up playing golf with wooden stick clubs, which at the time seemed normal to me. But then, true to my “make things last” Scottish roots, I confessed that I was wearing the tux that my parents had given me in 1964 as a twenty-first birthday present. Dinner jacket styles hadn’t really changed much over forty-eight years, and nor had my lean shape — nor had my respect for my mother’s sage advice that if I looked after my tux properly I “should get many years of wear out of it.”

  After our salad course, the excellent Terry spoke wittily about his three books (and he really is an example of the Nice Guy Who Finished First in the Author Stakes). I did my stuff after the chicken course, talking about some of the authors featured in my book, and telling stories about them.

  But the best speaker of the evening — and by far the best storyteller — was Michael, a local dentist. He told us about his family’s experience escaping from Vietnam as “boat people” who were sponsored by kind people in Uxbridge. The local librarian, he said, always made a point of asking him what he was reading. Like dental patients flossing before an appointment (an interesting professional analogy that sprang to his mind) he read constantly to be able, always, to answer her question.

  When the family moved away from Uxbridge to downtown Toronto, things were hard for them. Although his parents worked at two jobs, the young family could afford only to live in a tough area. Then their old Uxbridge friends contacted them, offering to bring them back, with a down payment on a house provided by an anonymous benefactor. The family accepted eagerly, with one condition: that they learn the name of the benefactor, in order to pay him back.

  It was the librarian.

  Now here was Michael (like his brothers and sisters, a successful professional) giving back to the Uxbridge community northeast of Toronto by providing major sponsorship for this fundraiser for the Uxbridge Library.

  Stories really matter, don’t they?

  Loyal followers know that Orillia (or Mariposa, if you like butterfly kisses) has been hugely important in my life. Not only did it lure me to Canada, thanks to Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches, it then provided me with the classic 1977 war book The Corvette Navy by James Lamb (editor of the Packet and Times). In the summer of 2012 I went to Orillia for the thrilling announcement about the winners of the Canadian Authors Association prizes. I and Jonathan Vance and Richard Gwyn had been nominated (from among, they told us, countless authors of Canadian non-fiction books) for the Lela Common Award for Canadian History.

  I was, of course, very pleased to have my book nominated for an award, and in such good company. But the “history” designation worried me. So when the local TV station asked me what I planned to do if I won, I said, “Demand a recount!” My objection was that while Richard and Jonathan are real historians (who wear white gloves in archives, and get ancient dust up their noses as they research Sir John A., or Canadians in Britain during the First World War) my book was a cheerful personal memoir of working with twenty famous Canadian authors, some of whom are still with us. I argued in fact that while I am certainly a “mature” individual, I am not yet “history,” and I want no part of it. Yet.

  As the day wore on, however, and I and Jonathan (a very tall, very friendly historian from Western) read aloud from our books, smiled continuously, and were relentlessly charming, my objections to receiving the award weakened. At the evening dinner I was the keynote speaker, and the stars seemed to be aligned for a triumph for Stories About Storytellers. It was not to be. The absent Richard Gwyn received the award, and Jonathan and I consoled ourselves by confiding that this was the result that we’d expected.

  And as the announcement was made, sitting with my game face on I had just enough of a whiff of the smell of success to realize that while it’s very pleasing to be nominated for a book prize, it must be much more pleasing to win one. Is anyone listening?

  July 2013 brought me to the Lakefield Festival, where the organizers remembered me affectionately from a few years earlier, as host/interviewer at an evening celebrating Michael Crummey’s Galore (now there’s a title!) and Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. This time they presented me with an offer I could not refuse. I would give my solo Stories About Storytellers show at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, then act as host/interviewer for the evening session at 8:00 with three authors — count them, three. Then, presumably, I would collapse offstage, but the show would be over by then. No problem.

  Ruthless people, these folks who live in idyllic Lakefield.

  On the Friday evening we had dinner with Orm and Barb Mitchell (W.O.’s son and daughter-in-law) and Norman Jewison and his wife, Lynne. Norman, the distinguished Hollywood film director from Ontario, enlivened our dinner with tales of his Caledon neighbour, Robertson Davies, and also about his friend Sean Connery, whom I can imitate shupremely well. (Once, Norman was worried about casting an age
d Italian actor, and called his friend Sean, who had acted with him recently, for an honest report. “He can’t shee,” said Sean indignantly, “and he can’t hear … and he’ll shteal every fuckin’ sheen!” Norman hired him.)

  Saturday was spent roaming around downtown Lakefield, with more ice creams per square foot than any other community in cottage country. We found Margaret Laurence’s old house, before we went on to the superb encircling theatre at Lakefield School. There, I was introduced by Alistair’s son Lewis, an English professor at nearby Trent University. At a previous show at Trent’s Catharine Parr Traill College he had also introduced me, speaking of growing up aware of the name “Doug Gibson.” Its owner was a mysterious someone who distributed good things “like a sort of Tooth Fairy,” but who over time developed a more threatening side, “like a Mafioso.”

  At the end of my show so many books were sold, and signed, that the local bookseller ran out, and we were able to replenish her supplies with extra copies brought in from the hot car. Ah, the glamorous life of a touring author.

  The evening session featured three very fine novelists, reading from their recent books, then chatting about them with me. The final part of the evening allowed the audience to throw questions at any of the authors.

  The books in question were very different: Annabel by Kathleen Winter tells the story of an intersex baby raised as a boy in Labrador in the 1970s; The Empty Room by Lauren B. Davis tells the modern story of a day in the life of a middle-aged Toronto woman when her alcoholism catches up with her; The Purchase by Linda Spalding is set on the violent Virginia frontier around 1800 when an abolitionist Quaker finds himself the owner of a slave.