So many people helped make this story come to be.
First I owe thanks to my Great-aunt Jen and her sister, my grandmother, Gret. If they had not gone west in 1889 and if Aunt Jen had not kept a diary, Abby would never have existed.
My gratitude goes to my niece, Robin Little, who helped me with research.
My thanks go out to Sandra Bogart Johnston, my editor, for all her work, but most of all for her suggesting I set my new Dear Canada book in Alberta and include the Frank Slide.
As always, my deep gratitude goes to my sister Pat, who not only proofreads what I write, but tells me bits I should change or delete. She also persuades me to keep going every time I threaten to quit.
Pat also came with me on a pilgrimage to Frank, where I met Monica Field, the director of the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre. Monica read the manuscript and answered innumerable questions without complaining. Thanks to Monica and all the others in Frank and at the Centre who were welcoming and generous with information.
The staff at the Guelph Public Library and those at the CNIB Library also found answers to my many questions and supplied me with helpful books.
As usual, I owe deep gratitude, even though it is sometimes grudging, to Barbara Hehner, who spots my many grievous errors and points them out. I long to argue, but she is always right.
I wish to thank Patsy Aldana and everyone else involved in my being given the Matt Cohen Award. The money paid for our trip to Frank and vastly enriched Abby’s sense of place — she was not planning to mention weather until I felt the wind at Frank almost blow me over. Also, even though my vision is very limited, I gazed up at Turtle Mountain and felt its menace and beauty in a way no book had fully conveyed.
I found information on the Internet about Frank, but the two sources I turned to most often were: “The Frank Slide,” by Frank Anderson, in Triumph and Tragedy in the Crowsnest Pass, ed. by Diana Wilson; and Frank Slide by J. William Kerr.