With award-winning veteran broadcaster and author Carol Off, before we took the stage on Saturday night. [Photo: Bernard Clark Photography]
Signing after our panel, with political scientist Rob Goodman, author of Not Here: Why American Democracy Is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself at the Kingston Writer's Festival on the evening of September 28th. [Photo: Bernard Clark Photography]
Watching the countryside scroll past the train window as I reflect on this wonderful, whirlwind weekend. After years of not by any necessity traveling to the city of Kingston, Ontario, this has been my third trip, all related to my work. The first was in February when I spoke to jack.org at Queen's University. The second trip was my first encounter with the Kingston Writer's Festival when they invited me out upon the publication of PRIDE in June. The third trip, this one felt a bit like coming home.
I was so privileged to share a stage with Ken McGoogan, Rob Goodman, and Carol Off, and to participate in such a vibrant, occasionally passionate discussion on the future of democracy in North America, and to find similar and sympathetic perspective among intellectuals whose work I respect.
I was also very grateful to the audience, who clearly took in what we had to say, and had insights of their own.
He will likely never read this, but thanks in particular to the Indigenous Canadian gentleman on Zoom who asked about the place of Indigenous representation in the mythology of Canada.
He gave us a great deal to think about, chiefly how essential that representation is, and how if any of us believe the stories we tell ourselves about Canada, there is no way forward for us as a people without that reconciliations. Our "classic" vision of Canada needs to be able to survive that reconciliation, and it will, because it's an essential component of everything we believe about Canada at its best.
And the folks running the Kingston Writer's Festival itself have never failed to make me feel anything but entirely welcome, and their grace under pressure is one of the wonders of the world, especially the literary world.
And on a personal note, it meant to world to me to have my beloved Mary Davis Little, the matriarch of my Kingston family, following along on Zoom, and to have my godson Michael—who's been very kind about his godfather writing about him all these years, and photographing him his entire life, likely ad nauseam—in the audience, not far from my Thursday Wife™ Jenny, who made the trip up from Toronto
2024 has been an exceptional year, and a striking contrast to the years it followed. I think I'm going to keep doing exactly what I'm doing, because it all seems to be working somehow.
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