Another weekend at Galilee Centre

About a year ago I began to write the children's story I made up in 1962 to tell our two toddlers, Rebecca (5) and David (4), when we were on a ship in the Indian Ocean about halfway between the Red Sea and the West Australian coast.  The story was about 9-year old twins, Jennifer and Christopher, and a talking parrot that had once been in the possession of pirates.  I'd almost forgotten the story until I was reading Wendy's diary for 1962. Her description of that voyage home to Adelaide after our wonderful year in London revived the memory of my story. 

As I began to write, the characters came to life in my head. I could almost see the twins, Jennifer and Christopher, their Mum and Dad, and Gloriana the parrot, and the villains with whom they clashed, and I was able to imagine the beginning and middle stages of their adventures.  Then the threads of the plot got tangled up a bit.  I wasn't suffering from writer's block, or the indolence of old age. It was simpler than that. My problem was a common one: I was perplexed about how best to unravel the tangled threads I'd created. 

A long weekend at Galilee Centre in Arnprior at a workshop convened by Susan Jennings of Ottawa Independent Writers and led by Nerys Parry was all I needed to provide the inspiration and momentum to untangle it all and bring my story to a happy conclusion. 

Susan Jennings and OIW call this annual long weekend event a 'retreat' - a word I find inappropriate. Retreat rhymes with defeat, and evokes images like Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. I know 'retreat' has another meaning, signifying a reflective, contemplative withdrawal from the hurly-burly of everyday life, but I prefer to use another word to describe the experience. 'Workshop' or 'writers group' work for me, especially when the experience is as positive and productive as mine was this year.

Nerys Parry, our facilitator, mentor, provocateur, has a lot to do with it. She is very bright, very effective, very stimulating leader of a diverse group of writers such as we had at this workshop. There were nine of us altogether.

Nerys Parry inspiring us at Galilee Centre

Writers group at Galilee Centre, June 28, 2015,
missing Susan Jennings who took this photo.

The Galilee Centre is a handsome mansion on the right bank of the Ottawa River where it is joined by the Madawaska River. It is exactly 200 years old this year, and was originally the home of a timber baron. It became the property of an order of the Catholic church (I forget whether it was the Grey Sisters or the Oblate Order; both were once strong in the Ottawa Valley). It is now owned and run by a non-profit foundation. It is comfortable, has a splendid setting and grounds, and is ideal for small groups like ours to get away from the world. I think all of us in this small group found our experience as richly rewarding as I did. Nerys Parry deserves almost all the credit for this, but shares a little with the atmosphere of the Galilee Centre and with Susan Jennings who has organized these annual OIW events for the past few years. I am beholden to both, and will remember to mention them by name in the Acknowledgements when Gloriana is published.

With fellow writer Ian Prattis

Writers group, including Susan Jennings

Nerys Parry discoursing on finer points
of creative writing