Novel Part of Chautauqua Revival!

I’m thrilled and honoured that my novel, The Summer Before The Storm, has been selected as one of the six “must-read” books of the Muskoka Chautauqua Reading Circle for 2010.

The Muskoka Chautauqua is a revival of a movement prominent in the 1920s and early 30s that earned Muskoka the reputation of being the “Literary Summer Capital of Canada”. The website states:

"Muskoka Chautauqua is a vibrant arts-based community where visitors come for personal growth, enrichment and renewal. It is an uplifting cultural hub that encompasses the arts, education and recreation; a place removed from the day-to-day world, where practitioners and leading thinkers of our time share innovative and creative ideas; a place where the arts blend with the natural beauty of Muskoka and where the human spirit – and all its hidden talents – may be liberated … and soar."

From an impressive list of books nominated by the public, six were chosen and announced at a ceremony on Saturday June 12^th  at The Rosseau, located quite close to the original Muskoka Assembly Chautauqua on Tobin Island. For a glimpse of that, see my blog “Naked Poets, Free-Thinking Clergymen, and An Enchanted Island”.

The Summer Before The Storm, the first of  “The Muskoka Novels”, evokes the Age of Elegance in the summer playground of the affluent and powerful. But their charmed lives begin to unravel with the onset of the Great War, in which many are destined to become part of the “lost generation”.  The novel and its sequel, Elusive Dawn, have touched the hearts and minds of thousands of readers worldwide. Focus on Books called them “Historical fiction at its best”. Find out more at TheMuskokaNovels.com.

Naked Poets, Freethinking Clergymen, and an “Enchanted Island”

In 1928 when poet Dorothy Livesay was 19 and a student at the University of Toronto, she spent a month in Muskoka helping her cousin, who was the director of a theatre on Tobin Island. It was part of the “Muskoka Assembly” of the Canadian Chautauqua Institute. Founded by Methodist minister Charles Applegath in 1921, the Assembly sought to combine spiritual, educational, and cultural enrichment in a magnificent setting that also encouraged healthy outdoor activities like swimming, golf, tennis, and canoeing. Dorothy, wanting to feel more at one with nature, would go off blueberry picking in the nude with her friends. For her this was just an extension of the then-popular Theosophy, a philosophy that combined Eastern and Western spirituality and mysticism, in which God was nature and beauty, and man, a part of this natural world.

Visitors stayed at the Epworth Inn (later Wigwassan Lodge), while some - clergy mostly - also built cottages on the 200 acre property that stretched along 2 miles of shoreline. In addition to classes and lectures, there were entertainments, which included plays, masquerades, and sunset cruises. 

Applegath also sought to promote Canadian literature and music, so recitals and concerts were performed, and famous literary figures like Bliss Carman and E. J. Pratt spent weeks there not only sharing their works, but also being inspired by the picturesque, rugged beauty surrounding them. By 1928, the Muskoka Assembly had become known as Canada’s Literary Summer Capital. Unfortunately, the Depression took its toll on this innovative endeavour.

So it’s exciting to hear that the Muskoka Lakes Music Festival is reviving the Chautauqua, including the Reading Circle. The public is being asked to submit suggestions for this summer’s 5 “Must Read” books by April 31st. Find out more here about the 2010 Muskoka Chautauqua, which will be held at Red Leaves (J.W. Marriot), not far from the “enchanted island” that once offered sustenance for the mind, body, and soul.

In my Muskoka Novels, The Summer Before The Storm and Elusive Dawn, I’ve very loosely based “The Colony” on the Canadian Chautauqua, albeit pre-WW1.