NEWS CLIPPINGS TAKE HEROINE BACK IN TIME
How does a writer get into the minds and imagination of an intended audience?
Well, there are worse ways than simply asking them what they would do.
It was at the 2011 Calgary Young Writers Conference when author and retired teacher Lois Donovan told a group of preteens that she was having trouble with certain aspects of the young adult novel she was writing. Specifically, she was trying to determine the best way for her modern-day protagonist, Kami Anderson, to travel back to 1929 and experience the world of Alberta’s Famous Five and First World War flying ace Wilfrid Reid ( Wop) May.
“These were really keen writers and we were doing time travel,” says Donovan. “I said ‘ What do you think would be good?’ Someone suggested a newspaper article about the event ‘I thought, ‘Hmm, that has merit, let me explore that.’ I think the person who came up with it was a Grade 7 student and unfortunately I didn’t write down his name and I have no idea who it was. So he got no credit. I do tell kids when I go around to schools that it was the idea that worked the best.”
Time-travel plays an integral, albeit largely utilitarian, role in the plot of The Journal (Ronsdale Press, $11.95, 200 pages), just as it did in Donovan’s first novel, 2007’s Winds of L’Acadie.
The Journal focuses on young Kami, a 12-going-on-13-year-old Grade 8 student whose comfy life in Vancouver is derailed when her mother moves them to Edmonton. That’s where Kami discovers the magical Edmonton Journal clippings from 1929, which whisk her back to the Famous Five’s fight around the “Persons Case,” where they fought to have women regarded as “persons” and therefore qualified to sit in the Senate. Along the way, she also becomes involved with the unfortunately nicknamed pilot “Wop” May’s so-called “race-against-death” where he flew medicine into Little Red River, Alta. during an outbreak of diphtheria. Donovan chose these moments in our history carefully, initially because they seemed so straightforward.
Winds of L’Acadie had looked at the 1755 expulsion of Acadians from what are now Canada’s Maritime provinces, which was not exactly a proud moment in our history. So the initial plan for The Journal was simply to herald some of our lesser-known heroes.
“I wanted something we could celebrate and be proud of,” Donovan says. “I was a Nellie McClung fan and it prompted me to look at the women involved in the persons case and the Famous Five. Then, as I began to research that, I realized there was controversy around whether or not they were heroes.”
Specifically, the legacy of the Famous Five is tainted by the women’s views on non-white immigration. While fairly common for the time period, they now seem offensive and hostile toward Chinese workers of the day. So Donovan changed her protagonist to having Japanese heritage, which gave her visits back to 1929 a decidedly different dynamic. Kami becomes a servant in the household of Famous Five member Emily Murphy, who held racist views on the Chinese immigrants. The Journal became a lot more complicated.
“I actually feel like I went on a journey with Kami through this story,” Donovan says. “What do we do with fallen heroes? How do we reconcile that in our minds? I went through this journey with Kami of wrestling with those two versions of Emily Murphy.”
It mirrors Kami’s presentday life, where she has to come to terms with the idea that her career-driven mother may also have her own flaws, adding some family secrets and domestic drama to The Journal’s time-travel adventures and history lessons.
Born in Montreal and raised in New Brunswick, Donovan moved to Calgary after graduating from the University of Alberta and taught elementary school for 30 years. She retired in 2011, but years of working in schools was certainly helpful when it came to capturing the voice of Kami’s first-person narration.
“I’m always listening wherever I go,” Donovan says. “I have nieces and nephews that age as well. In the credits, I do have a ‘teen adviser’ who is my niece. I’m constantly trying to hear what their vernacular is and how they speak. I have a 10-year-old at home, which is helpful, too, now that she is reaching that age that I write for.”
There is a reason that so many coming-of-age novels, even those involving time travel, deal with protagonists who are Kami’s age, Donovan says.
“I think it’s such a critical age for finding yourself and trying to figure out where you fit in,” she says.
“I think a lot of kids don’t really know where they fit in with their family at that age, with their parents, with their friends. I think that age is a passion for me and I think that’s where so much is changing.”