Brisco author’s first work, an afterlife novella

By Steve Hubrecht steve@columbiavalleypioneer.com

A Brisco man has penned a religious allegory novella. Jim Spiers and his wife Pam are best known to Columbia Valley residents as the formers owners of the British-themed Piccadilly Motel in Radium, but having retired from that back in 2018, Spiers decided to take a stab at being an author.

“Everybody wants to write a novel and I’m one of those people,” he said.

Aside from no longer running a motel, Spiers’ motivation to finally make a serious effort at putting pen to paper got a considerable boost from being both immobilized (a case of vascular disease led to the amputation of his right leg) and isolated (he wrote the novella in 2021, during some of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic).

He launched into his story three separate times, but each time became dejected enough to throw out all his work and begin again from scratch. The fourth attempt, however, proved fruitful, and over a period of seven months Spiers wrote what has now become ‘Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine’.

The book is what Spiers calls “speculative fiction” and tells the tale of a protagonist named Michael who leaves this world and is transported to a universe of many worlds. Michael passed between these realms finding perfect people all living their own version of perfect lives. But a deep darkness pervades this idyll and threatens Michael.

“It’s a fresh take on the afterlife...You can consider it a Christian allegory,” said Spiers, citing John Bunyan’s ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ as perhaps the most famous Christian allegorical novel. But Spiers, who is a member of the Lake Windermere Alliance Church in Invermere hastened to differentiate his book, saying “I’m sure some churches will have a hard time with it. The concepts that come into the story are somewhat unorthodox. They are not generally what people might associate with the afterlife.”

Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine’ clocks in at 150 pages and about 32,000 words. That’s long enough for Spiers. “I am a very slow writer. I wrote about 800 words a day, three days a week on average, but there were some days I only wrote 200 words,” he said. He chalks his pace up to being a new writer, and said he enjoyed the process, but has no plans or ideas for a second book in the near future.

The book was published only earlier this winter. Spiers used a Manitoba-based self-publishing company to turn Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine from manuscript into hard copy book.

Jim and his wife Pam are originally from Worcestershire country in England, where they were farmers. In 1991 they relocated across the Atlantic to Manitoba, about an hour outside of Brandon, where they also were again farmers, growing fruit, vegetables and grain and raising livestock, including wild boars.

The couple realized that they needed to upscale their operation considerably just to make ends meet, so they opted instead to switch careers. They moved to Radium Hot Springs and bought what was then the Arrow Motel.

They want to re-brand the place, and “so we gave it a few English twists”, explained Spiers, and renamed it the Piccadilly Motel. Some of those twists — a bright red double decker bus and old red telephone booth (known in England as a ‘red kiosk’) stood out enough to become well-know local landmarks. The couple ran the Piccadilly until 2018, which Spiers said made them Radium’s longest serving innkeepers. In 2018 they retired to Brisco.

To find out more about the book visit www.olddogschildrenandwatermelonwine.ca or contact Spiers at piccadillyjim53@gmail.com.

Lake Windermere Alliance Church

Now open for in-person ser vices. Sundays at 10:30 a m 326 10th Avenue, Invermere 250-342-9535 • www.lwac.ca

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M I N I S T R Y A N G L I C A N - U N I T E D

Minister: Brent Woodard

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Father Jojo Augustine • 712 -12th Ave., Invermere 250-342-6167 S

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CHURCH OF CHRIST (Iglesia ni Cristo)

Worship Ser vice: Sunday 9 a.m., Thursday 7:45 p.m. Chamber of Commerce (Lions Hall) over-incarceration, and economic disparity faced by Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people in this country. Canadians are struggling with the cost of living, and it’s clear this is the top priority item in the budget. This struggle is something Indigenous people have been facing for many decades now, and the need for direct investment is dire, says Ms. Groulx. This year’s budget doesn’t surprise us at all. Year after year, the budgets have been consistently disappointing. With words but no actions, this government continues to show Canadians that Indigenous women simply are not a priority. It’s 2023, two years since the National Action Plan was released, four years since the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls issued its final report declaring an ongoing genocide. And the violence continues. When does the government say to Canadians that enough is enough? Certainly not in this budget.

...NWAC cont from page 7.

— Native Women’s Association of Canada