Brian Reynolds is a retired school teacher. His work has been published in a number of reputable online and print magazines, including Event, LICHEN, The New Quarterly, and FRiGG. His story “First Goose” was nominated for The Journey Prize, which honors a short story published in Canada. Brian lives in Woodstock, Ontario.

You’re revising a collection of short stories set in a fictional place called Otter Creek. What part of the world do you envision Otter Creek in? Can you describe it for us?

Otter Creek is loosely based on Fort Albany, Ontario, a First Nations community near James Bay (the southern bulge in Hudson’s Bay) more than 250 miles north of the system of paved roads and polite conversations in which I grew up (if you travel far enough south and west.) It’s small—less than a thousand Cree-speaking Natives who feel a kinship to their spruce forests and vast wetlands, a few dozen white teachers, clergy and nurses who complicate their lives with promises of something they assume is better. The fictional town of Muskoshee is larger—an amalgam of Moosonee and Moose Factory, Ontario, two other James Bay communities, further south and connected to “civilization” by rail as well as plane. There, the mix between Native and non-native is more equal, less complex, perhaps less interesting. One problem with “the collection” is that Otter Creek and Muskoshee exist in my mind like a well-fingered photo of the 1970’s. If you think we live in a fast-paced world in Toronto and New York City, well the pace of change in the north would give city dwellers vertigo. What seemed like truth only this morning too often needs revision over lunch. Like most stories.

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The pace of change would give us vertigo?! What exactly changes so quickly there?

Did I say “vertigo”? I’m so prone to exaggeration! It was, according to my grade eight school calendar, January 24, 1919 when people in Moose Factory first heard about the Armistice that ended the First World War—it took 74 days after the fact for the ice to freeze and the first dog-sled trip for mail and grub to be completed. The elders I met in the late ‘70’s had grown up largely cut off from the outside world, but by the time I arrived their children had radio-telephones that worked intermittently; there were DC-3 flights in and out of the village a few times a week if the weather was good; sometimes they could get the news on Radio Canada; snowmobiles were replacing dogs as the main mode of transportation. Their grandchildren would discover television and computers and SUVs. Transportation, communication, economics, fashion, technology. Exactly everything changed and continues to change there. Some things fit, some don’t, but no one asks would you like to add Martha Stewart or tuberculosis, nuclear war or global warming to your culture. It’s suddenly there, and people find a place for it and do the best they can with it. As far as I know, it was only me that suffered from vertigo on a regular basis.

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You worked as a teacher in these northern settlements. What did you teach? What did you learn?

I taught everything from kindergarten to college upgrading courses at different times. I spent the most time teaching grade eight, and had the most fun teaching art, math and history. Several times I tired of it and quit, turning to bookkeeping, clerical work, or freelance art to make ends meet. Perhaps the most productive work I did in the north was helping with a YMCA youth leadership program and refereeing basketball games on a volunteer basis. I wouldn’t be alone in saying I learned much more than I taught at any level or any job there, however. Anytime a person has the privilege of living in a different culture, it’s like going to university for free. The most important thing I learned? To listen. Very carefully. And then think. Finally, if possible, to keep my mouth shut.

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Is it true that you fled to Canada as a draft dodger? Can you give us more insight into your actions and the philosophies that inspired them?

Ha. That sounds like Eliza jumping from ice pan to ice pan with Simon Legree in hot pursuit. I immigrated to Canada in 1968 in a successful effort to avoid being American—a heavy cross to bear, and I do empathize with those who bear it. I had a healthy fear of being in the US Army, a twenty-one-year-old’s belief that my comfort was more important than the suffering I might be inflicting on my family, and most of all, a passion to be in the company of the gentle, sensible people I met in Toronto. Philosophy? Robert Zimmerman and A.A. Milne were the biggest influences on my thinking at the time. Actions? A friend and I hitchhiked to Jasper National Park in the west, then took second-hand bikes around Prince Edward Island in the east, as a test of whether I’d made the right decision. I had, of course, as you’d know if you’ve ever been either place. Eventually I even owned a working television set with which I discovered (in slow motion) the game of hockey has a puck; it’s not just about beating on each other with sticks. That was probably a bigger epiphany than getting my citizenship papers.

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Let’s get back to the writer Brian. Your story “Drawing Fire,” which was published by Melange, is an Otter Creek story about a woman, Nina, who recently moved to the area to pursue her art career. Throughout the story, she tries repeatedly to translate the beauty of this remote country. Take, for example, this excerpt:

The small circle of night sky framed in wolverine is filled with more stars than she could have imagined five months ago. How the hell do you capture that? How do you draw the cold or the night? How do explain it’s not a surface spattered with white dots, but something three dimensional? Something in motion. Something shimmering and alive.

Capturing this essence is something Nina never accomplishes. Likewise, she is never able to adjust to the people or the lifestyle of Otter Creek. Everything there remains inexplicable. What’s interesting to me is that, at the end, Nina herself becomes the enigma. She sees her neighbor’s house on fire and doesn’t act. Can we get the writer’s perspective on why she closed her blinds and went back to work?

First, and maybe foremost, since I firmly believe writers are too close to their own stories to be the best critics of them, thank you very much for reading “Drawing Fire.” Sincerely, I appreciate the read. It’s a good question, one to which I’d really like to know the answer, but here are some ideas I’ve considered.

Her attempts to draw fire or snow fail because fire and snow are in motion. They change faster than an eye can pick them apart and break them down into lines and tones. They are at once subtle and complex phenomena. In trying to execute those lines and tones, she gives up and draws her dog; it’s just too hard for her. Seeing her neighbour’s house on fire might similarly appear to her in that situation both complex and filled with subtleties. For instance, her status or perceived lack of status in the community, the lack of any community service to help solve the problem, the speed with which the fire spreads in the clapboard dwelling, her difficulty in understanding or communicating with the people around her, and fear that her husband who does have some useful function in the community might be in over his head. So the same way people gawk at a mugging in the city but do nothing to help, overwhelms her, freezes her as the seconds tick and the scene quickly changes. Or maybe she’s simply a coward—scared to try a hard drawing or perform a heroic act. It would be nice to know. The man who asks her wants to know, but he’s a doer not a thinker and by then perhaps she’s not the best source of information about her actions either. She’s probably riddled with guilt about something that seemed impossible to her from the start.

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You mentioned that you are currently in a creative lull. Every writer (right? I’m sure…) experiences the ebb and flow of creative output. Have you learned to accept these highs and lows? What do you do while your mind is recharging?

I’ve been taking a break from writing for several months now, maybe longer—time flies when you’re having fun. It’s a conscious break however, one where I feel I could start writing again if I wanted to. I’ve been fortunate to have had more pressing and more interesting things to do. It was a very generous assumption that I was “blocked” in some way, but “bored” or “preoccupied” might be better descriptors. In fact, I’d rather not look at my present occupations in relation to writing at all. I’m enjoying running and gardening and volunteering and parenting a great deal, and looking back from this perspective I’m having much more fun than I was when I was writing. Of course things change. The things I’m doing now may not last through the weekend, and even if they do, I may find time to squeeze in at least some writing. Writing, however, was hard for me. I struggled to remember words and my eyes played tricks on their arrangement on the page. It wasn’t always pleasant to summon up details from the past to fill out a paragraph or supply a character’s motivation. I needed a vacation from those things.

I had a moderately successful seven year career in art back in the 80’s. Things were going well, but circumstances required me to take a break then too. During my holiday, I fell in love with teaching again by mistake, and never went back to painting. No regrets. It was good while it lasted, and the things that replaced it were just as good or better. What I’ve learned to accept is that circumstances change and it’s happier to make a nest in the new environment than mourn the loss of the old one. So– Right now I’m training for my second ever 10 K road race, I’m learning to play squash, I’m trying to reclaim my backyard from the weeds, I’m helping my daughter prepare for her exams and her driving test, I’m leading a weekly spin class at the local Y. I’m pretty high on endorphins most of the time.

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I appreciate your honesty, Brian. It’s interesting you bring up the word “blocked” in your above answer. During my own “creative lulls” I never think in terms of this word. It’s a dirty, evil expression which leaves one feeling panicked. I like to use words like resting, gathering, living, instead. Like you, I have many interests, so this “preoccupation” seems natural. I’m wondering though, why do you turn/return to writing?

Is it okay to guess on these questions? Or obfuscate? I’ve only “returned” to writing once and that was after a 30-some year rest. How long was Mr. Van Winkle asleep? Do I have a shot at the record? That time, I returned by mistake—writing a letter of sorts that got totally out of hand. There I was—caught up in something I didn’t quite fully grasp.

So is the real question: why do I write? I’ve thought about it. This is one possibility. I’ve always been a pretty agreeable person. If someone wants me to do something I try to oblige them. I don’t know why that is, but for the most part people have asked me to do good things, fun things. Someone wanted me to go to university. I did. Then some people thought I should go to Toronto. Then the far north. Become a teacher. Referee basketball games. Write stories. This is a sad revelation, but most of the writing I’ve done in the recent past has been to please others rather than satisfy some inner compulsion or a determination to achieve some literary goal, and if I return to it, it may be out of guilt for letting people down or caving-in to their expectations. That’s sounds reasonable to me.

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Wow, with each answer you fascinate me more and more. Most writers claim to have some sort of overwhelming drive and desire to write. Your approach is quite different, to say the least. And yet there is this: “There I was—caught up in something I didn’t quite fully grasp.” To me, this is compulsion. Maybe quiet compulsion, but compulsion nonetheless. Plus, in my opinion, the urge to storytell is apparent in your work. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can write, and write well, as you do, with nothing but pressure driving you. In that case, how do you approach the process, the blank page?

True. I am prone to prevarication, exaggeration at least. And I often talk (or write) far more than a wise person would. I suspect both are less “urges” and more defence mechanisms. But there I am—risking self-analysis again. You continue to be very generous.

My method of operation, while not totally haphazard, is not very efficient either. I usually write a first sentence. Then I tweak it, add a phrase or clause over time until it’s too large to manageably read. Then I’ll divide it into two sentences and tweak them both until I find I have enough material for three. I write a lot like a blind person might drive in the Indianapolis 500. I venture out a distance, then return to the familiarity of that first sentence and take another run in the direction I went before. Before long I’ve established a rut from which it’s almost impossible for me to escape, but it’s a comfortable rut. In the end, if I’m able to complete a lap without being killed, I put the whole thing aside for a few months or a year in hopes the next time I traverse that journey, I’ll sense the places where I’ve run off the track into the infield or brushed the wall or whatever, and start the process all over. There. And yes, it’s surprising to me that it has sometimes worked. Perhaps any process works if there are enough monkeys and enough keyboards.

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Name something you’d like to do but haven’t.

Duh- Run like a whole marathon without stopping for CPR?

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If you could spend the day as an animal, which animal would it be, and why?

Is man an animal? Well, I’d like to be someone else, anyone else for one day. Nothing could be more amazing than that. If that’s cheating, I guess I could be a cat. I don’t think that would be too mentally challenging, but I might learn something about self-confidence.

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Contact Brian

Read:

“Photographs of Watikwan as a Child”
published by FRiGG

“Raking Summer Leaves”
published by Vestal Review

“Something of Value”
published by SmokeLong Quarterly

“The Hole”
published by Pindeldyboz

“The Dove of Mondezibar”
published by Whistling Shade



Filed Under: The Writer Profile Project |