I wrote the first draft of Shelter in 1992, five years after my mother died, and shortly after I’d met my husband, David. David told me stories of his childhood, some of which took place in the Chilcotin where he had lived for a short time on a wilderness ranch about an hour from Williams Lake. The first summer after we met, we travelled Highway 20 and the back roads between Williams Lake and Bella Coola in David’s indestructible Volkswagen Scirocco, and it was on that trip that the two sisters, Maggie and Jenny, and their missing mother, began to haunt my imagination.
I finished the novel a year or so later and sent it to a publisher, where it was rejected. So I put it away and began work on other things. But a few years after I became a mother myself, Maggie and Jenny’s story drew me again and I began rewriting it completely.
I mention this because there are people I would like to thank who supported me in various ways through those first drafts in the early ’90s: Jay Draper and Barbara Johnston; Allan MacDougall of Raincoast Books; and my colleagues at UBC where I was finishing my MFA.
For the current Shelter, I owe thanks to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for initial financial assistance. I am grateful to Okanagan College for supporting the research and writing of the manuscript. My talented colleagues in the Okanagan College English department inspire and sustain me. Anne Cossentine, Deborah Cutt and Surandar Dasanjh in the Penticton campus library went out of their way to chase down microfilm of newspapers from the 1960s and ’70s, as well as any obscure articles I needed. Stan Chung talked to me about growing up in Williams Lake in the 1970s and I consulted his book of essays, Global Citizen. Sage Birchwater’s beautiful book, Chiwid, gave me insight into the people of the region, as well as the inspiration for the fictional Chiwid in Shelter. Mr. Birchwater also met with me and answered my questions about the Chilcotin area during the 1970s.
While researching the novel, I stayed at Bracewell’s Lodge in Tatlayoko Lake twice. My thanks to Connie for making me welcome. The hike from the lodge up Potato Mountain in June is unforgettable. My generous hiking companions on the second trip were Al, Jesse, Jack, Lynn and Maggie, our guide. They named the wildflowers for me as we climbed.
The Cowboy Museum in Williams Lake provided historical details. Gaines McMartin answered my questions about logging. My father-in-law, Dan Joyce, was an invaluable source of information about fishing and boating on the BC coast. He told me stories of fishing in the 1950s, and read parts of the draft and corrected details.
Although I have tried to incorporate all the information that I received, any inaccuracies are mine. People who live in the region will notice that I have fictionalized most of the smaller place names, out of respect for the people whose histories are intertwined with the names.
Thanks to my very good friend Rozanne Haddad for inviting me to stay with her at Nimpo Lake, where she worked one summer as a baker for a fly-in fishing camp. Her effervescent personality helped introduce me to a side of the Chilcotin I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. In the novel I’ve given a tip of the hat to Fred (whose last name I still don’t know), who drove me to Bella Coola on the Freedom Road and showed me “the good place” that I’ve tried to re-create here.
I want to thank the Naramata Centre, where I stayed on several occasions during the writing of the manuscript. The peaceful setting beside Okanagan Lake allowed me quiet, uninterrupted working hours. Melanie Murray and I shared manuscript drafts while staying at Naramata. Anne McDonald encouraged me at various stages along the way. I appreciate their ongoing interest and support.
Denise Bukowski is not only an indefatigable agent, she also offered advice on my initial rewrites, advice that I took, and that strengthened the novel considerably. I thank Louise Dennys for her enthusiastic response to the manuscript. My editor at Random House Canada, Anne Collins, seemed from the start imbued with the spirit of Shelter; her editorial suggestions were both insightful and exacting. Thank you to Angelika Glover for fine and careful copy-editing.
I am so grateful for the unflagging encouragement that comes from my family, siblings Anne, Mary, Pat, Barbie and Neil. My father, Arthur Greenslade, died before Shelter was published, but he never failed to ask me, each time we talked, “How’s the writing going?” As I write this, David is in the kitchen cleaning up the breakfast dishes and my son, Khal, is playing a tune on the harmonica in the living room. Having them in my life gives me the joy and sense of security that make my writing possible. I thank them deeply.