A Place To Call Home

“Rowena was dumbfounded by her first glimpse of Launston Mills. Then angry. For this they had travelled more than three thousand arduous miles? For this handful of log cabins and a mill that had the audacity to give themselves a name?”

That arduous journey had involved travelling 8 weeks from Ireland in the filthy, dank hold of what became a “plague ship” when cholera swept through, killing a fifth of the passengers. After quarantine on Grosse Isle, downstream from Quebec City, Rowena O’Shaughnessy and her family spent a further two months making their way by barges and oxcarts and on foot into the primitive backwoods of Upper Canada. A land of opportunity for those who had the stamina of mind, body, and spirit to survive.

Their hardships are detailed in my first novel, A Place to Call Home, which has just come back into print.

Rowena’s complex relationship with the wealthy and powerful Launston family leads to tragedy, and eventually to redemption. Their lives are played out against a rich tapestry of events - devastating plagues, doomed rebellions, mob uprisings, religious conflict, and political unrest - many of which are based upon the history of my hometown of Lindsay.

This is a tale of passionate people and stormy relationships, of unrequited and illicit love, of betrayals and revenge. It is a story of courage, and the undaunted human spirit that manages to survive and surmount appalling conditions and tragedies. It is a celebration of the achievements of the remarkable pioneers who carved thriving communities out of an inhospitable wilderness.

Here’s what Writer's Digest Magazine had to say about it:

"A Place To Call Home is a gripping and fascinating saga about an Irish family's immigration to Canada and the building and founding of the [fictional] Ontario town called Launston Mills. Wills masterfully traces the development of the town, told through the eyes of Irish immigrant, Rowena, and her son, Keir. The historical facts were flawlessly researched, but rather than it reading like a series of facts, Wills peopled the book with vivid and very real characters whose experiences captivate the reader. .... An exceptionally well-told story... A Place To Call Home offers a delightful glimpse into Canada's past, told through characters who come to life and jump off the page."

Find out more about the novel, including reviews and readers' comments, on my website Mindshadows.com, where books can also be purchased online. The novel is also available as and E-book for the Kindle. Check it out here.

Celebrating the Irish

My hometown was to a large extent settled by Irish immigrants in the 1830s - by that I mean that they had to hack a clearing out of the primeval forests, and struggle to survive in the primitive “backwoods” of Upper Canada. The trees that they cut down were squared into logs and used to build their first homes. House-raising “bees” were common, involving all the neighbours, who could literally erect a cabin in one day - fueled by free food and whiskey. But even the best of these dwellings were bitterly cold in winter. One “gentlewoman” wrote in a letter home that the temperature in her bedroom was 3 degrees Fahrenheit (-16 C)! Water froze in jugs set in front of fireplaces - which had to be kept burning for cooking throughout the blistering hot and humid summers as well.

Bears could be troublesome, and there were hordes of vicious blackflies and clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes to fend off, the latter carrying a type of malarial fever called ague (although that fact was not known at the time). An epidemic raged through the area in 1838, killing nearly a third of the population.

But there were also plentiful fish in the lakes and rivers that belonged to no one. Migrating birds were sometimes so thick in the skies that they could be picked off from the settlers’ front steps (and indeed, the passenger pigeon, which once travelled in flocks of up to 2 billion birds, became extinct by 1914). Deer and moose and other wild game were there for the taking, and land was often free for those willing to clear it.

My first novel, A Place To Call Home, celebrates these intrepid pioneers who carved thriving communities out of an inhospitable wilderness. It is currently out of print, but I’m excited to announce that it is now available for the Kindle from Amazon! Click here to find out more.

(Mis)adventures in moving

The first evening in our new house didn’t turn out as we had expected - we spent it in a hotel! After a long, arduous, and chilly day moving, we were all looking forward to hot showers, but discovered that we had neither heat nor hot water. The gas supply had been disconnected! On a Friday night you can only reach the gas company’s emergency line. This was no emergency, they assured us. It was only going down to the freezing point that night. Have to wash in cold water? Think of it as camping. Nothing could be done until the business office opened on Monday morning. So by snuggling under warm duvets and showering at the gym, we did camp out in our house after that first night.

Our lawyer - my oldest friend - had done everything required to arrange for the transfer of services, but the gas company denied receiving the instructions. On Monday they told us we might have gas by Friday! After a heated discussion and a talk with the manager, we were finally told we might be reconnected on Tuesday. And were by late afternoon - a job that took only a matter of minutes.

None of the service providers, except for hydro, delivered on time. The phone company made a mistake - which they at least acknowledged - so, although we were supposed to have been connected on Friday, we finally had phone service on Sunday, but no Internet until Thursday. The cable company was also 2 days late, not that we had time to watch TV in any case.

Ironically, we had a card delivered this week from hydro stating that we would be disconnected if we didn’t call their office to set up an account! When I spoke with them, they said that they could no longer take instructions from lawyers because of the Privacy Act, so clients had to call directly to transfer their services. Someone could have informed us of that new policy.

My lawyer and I had a laugh when she told me that the utility providers in her jurisdiction (my old home town, only 2 hours away) refused to take direction from one of her clients, saying that the lawyer had to do it! Surely there should be some consistency in these services, even across municipalities.

Of course none of this has diminished our delight in our new house. But it did make us realize how easy and comfortable our lives usually are, with light, heat (or air conditioning) available with the flick of a switch, and hot running water with the turn of a tap.

My first novel, A Place To Call Home, was set in pioneer Ontario. I marvelled at how those intrepid people had survived harsh Canadian winters in draughty log cabins, so cold that water froze in pitchers set next to the fireplace. One “gentlewoman” wrote in her letters home to England that the temperature in her bedroom was only 3 degrees Fahrenheit (-16 C), and she had frost on her blankets in the mornings. (Is it any wonder people didn’t bathe often in those days?) Blistering summers, especially for women imprisoned in corsets and those encompassing Victorian gowns, could be just as challenging.

But we don’t need history to tell us how lucky we are. We need only look at other, less “developed” parts of the world to realize that.