ON WRITERS & WRITING
OUR STORIES: A LEGACY OF PAST AND PRESENT By Laura Busheikin
O
f all the many types of writing people do – fiction, poetry, screenplays, children’s literature, etc. – it’s hard to say which is the most difficult. But writing history would certainly be a contender. You face all the usual challenges of finding the right words and putting them in the right order, of keeping at it even when your bottom has fallen asleep from too much sitting, and you’ve also got a huge responsibility – to get the story straight. Yet people love to write about history, and the books and articles they produce are essential parts of our social, cultural and political fabric. I spoke with a couple of history writers to see why they do it, how they do it and what they get out of it. Beacon readers will know Rita Levitz through her monthly articles, each presenting the story of a local person. She is also the co-author, with Leah Willott, of Images and Voices of Lighthouse Country: A Pict/Oral History of Deep Bay, Bowser, Qualicum Bay and Horne Lake, published in 1997. The book took four years to produce. Levitz says she and Willott had no idea of what they were getting into. “It was like jumping into deep water and not knowing where the shore was, how long it would take to paddle there, and what it would look like when we landed,” she says. “We spent many hours interviewing people, we hosted teas, and we spent many hours at the Courtenay Museum looking at old newspaper articles.” “What kept us going was that we’d run into people we’d interviewed and they’d ask, ‘So, when’s it coming out?’” she says. “There were many people who felt part of it and wanted it to happen because it was carrying their history and their memories.” People feel validated when their stories are told, she says. And the accumulation of all the different individual stories becomes something bigger – the story of a community, which is equally meaningful.
Leah Willott & Rita Levitz ■ Linda Tenney photo “If an individual’s roots are important, then a community’s are too. A recorded history gives grounding and roots to a community; you need to know where you came from when you are looking at where you’re going,” says Levitz. Denman Islander Graham Brazier also looks at history to shed light on the present and the future. Currently, he is writing a three-part history of coal mining in Tsable River area for the Denman Island Flagstone. The topic drew him because of the proposed coal mine in Fanny Bay. As a community, a corporation and a government debate the pros and cons of this project, it’s useful to know what has happened in the past. continued next page
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/ October 2010