BERNIECE GOWAN
When Berniece Gowan first visited the house she now owns, it contained thousands of books. The home belonged to Bertha Hanson, a sales rep for McClelland & Stewart and later the owner of Sandpiper Books. “There was every book she’d ever represented, authors’ proofs…and all six kids were tasked with reading the newest Canadian fiction,” Gowan says. The house has literary cachet as well. When McClelland & Stewart had no budget for hotels, Hanson put up Farley Mowat and Dennis Lee. She also owned an Airedale named Farley, but, as Gowan recalls, “He didn’t last long after he tried to bite Jack McClelland.”
Gowan, a friend of the family, bought the house in 2000. It still holds lots of books, though maybe not quite thousands. “I’ve always been a strong reader,” Gowan says. “It’s how my brain was wired, and it’s always been a great way for me to escape.” HER LOVE OF READING IS BOTH A PASSION AND A PROFESSION: Gowan is project manager of the Adult Literacy Research Institute at Bow Valley College. “The need for strong reading and writing skills is the highest it’s ever been, and if you don’t have those skills you are falling further and further behind in terms of making your way in the community.”
SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME: Gowan follows Doris Lessing’s advice, which, paraphrased, holds that “If you start a book and don’t like it, don’t finish it. It’s either the wrong book for you or the wrong time for you to read it.” On vacation she often reads a book a day. “I prefer a hard copy, but in the summer when I go camping in the Cyprus Hills I take a box of paperbacks and read like an addict. Then I throw them in the fire and don’t ever have to read them again.”
THE BOOK THAT SAVED HER LIFE: A Chorus of Stones, by Susan Griffins. “I was in my 30s when my sister committed suicide. I had exploded and needed a way to knit myself back together, and that was the book. It’s incredibly poetic but also made me go deep in my understanding of my relationship to the world, and how we find our identity as humans. I gave it to every woman I knew.” AMONG THE AUTHORS SHE MOST WANTS TO SEE AT WORDFEST: André Alexis, Ivan E. Coyote, Lee Maracle and Karen Hines.
LATEST BOOK PURCHASE: The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny. “I read mysteries but I’m not a fan of creep. What I love about Penny, as well as Fred Vargas, is they explore human nature. The emphasis isn’t on fear but on human choices that go terribly wrong. I don’t think of them as murder mysteries but explorations of how we make choices.”