In 2021, during the weird silence of the Covid lockdown, I woke up one morning electrified with the memory of a dream I'd had. I'd dreamt I was walking through an orchard, much like the fruit farm I grew up on in Niagara-on-the-Lake. There may or may not have been blossoms in the trees. You know how ephemeral dreams are. And in this dream, the peace is broken by the sudden intrusion of a large bull moose huffing and grunting angrily, intent on doing harm. It knocks me down with its huge 12 point antlers, stomping on my chest with all the weight on its hooves, breaking bones and skin, puncturing my lungs, stopping my screams short. I woke up with this vivid though horrible image, so affected that I wrote it down immediately. I really needed to make a story out of this. Ideas arrived from all directions.
With the freedom of working from home, I was able to research topics like moose hunting, bow archery, the conditions of wartime Rotterdam and the viability of apple husbandry in Northern Ontario. Put all together, it would make a short story, combining many elements, such as loss, generational trauma, racism, identity and heritage. The story would be 'Berend', and it stands as one of the most comprehensive and emotionally charged stories I'd ever written.
The problem with 'Berend' however, would be its length. At 20 pages, it was a bit long for publication in a literary journal and I knew I would have trouble finding placement for it, as confident as I was. That seems to be a common problem for me, story lengths. I was also haunted by the fringe characters in the story, feeling that their own stories would need fleshing out. I sat with the story for a couple more years, until last summer, when I made the decision to create a full novel out of it.
I knew I wanted to create something with the background of my Dutch heritage. At the same time as the impetus of this story, details of the horrific treatment of indigenous children in Canadian residential schools were coming out, casting a pall over every nationalist sentiment that I'd ever had about being Canadian. What right did I have, as the son of an immigrant, to be in a nation founded on deception, genocide and oppression? My presence on these stolen lands began to feel illegitimate. It made me feel ill to consider it. I began to think more about the soil on which I am indigenous, where I might truly belong; the Rhine Delta with all its tributaries, the lowlands of Western Europe. At the same time, I couldn't deny the fact that I'd been born here in Canada, and that I truly loved the land and the cultures of all the people living on it. I started to consider a wider story that would span the full reach of my identity as a Canadian born in the Dutch diaspora. I wanted to acknowledge it all, the history, the social background, the heritage and the situation as it stands today.
What followed was more intensive research. I wanted to know all about the Dutch resistance during the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War. I wanted to know about those who had immigrated to Canada in the aftermath of the war. I wanted to know about the mining industry in mid-20th century Northern Ontario. I wanted to know the streets of Rotterdam, Cochrane, Montreal and Toronto in the Fifties, Nineties and present time. I delved into my family history, read book after book on the topics I would include in the novel, taking notes the whole time in one of the many notebooks that had been gifted to me. In these notes, I could envision scenes I would want to include in the narrative, considering how different characters would react to them, how and where they could fit in the plot. So much ink, so many pages. As I progressed, I knew how I wanted the plot to go, but I still had no idea how the timelines would weave into each other.
I knew I wanted a non-linear narrative, to tell stories in different time frames, connecting them all with a fine thread. I created character sketches of all my main characters and took the scenes from the notes I had written to give them personalities, with arcs and motivations. Still with all this, everything was sitting in pieces without an instruction manual to guide its assembly.
So, just yesterday morning, at my dining room table, I sat and drew a chart of the events in the different timelines and started zipper-merging potential segues that made sense. This was what I needed.
When I was done, I had a view of the whole story, spanning 85 years and 4 generations. I knew my novel's beginning, middle and end. It was like learning I was going to be a father again, I was so excited. Every so often, I will open the chart on Google Docs, just to look at it and feel that dopamine wash once again.
So now I set out to add structure to the frame, to create this story stemming from the tumult of the German Occupation of the Netherlands, the immigrant experience of the early Fifties, the identity conflicts of growing up in the Dutch diaspora during the Canadian centennial decade, and finally to the current unexpected resurgence of regressive right wing politics and its fearsome impact on the vulnerable members of our society. The scope is wide, but I have a vision and that vision has perspective. I know what I'm doing now.
I have a lot of things going on. I am still working as an educational assistant full time. I have a collection of short stories and a complete novel looking for a publisher. There are submissions to be made. In September, I will be starting an editing course with Concordia University to boost my writing skills and possibly open a channel of income for the future when I retire. But all the while, I will be spending this summer writing this novel. A lot of it hits home for me, drawing from personal experiences and the experiences of my family members. It brings into focus my political convictions and it will give me a voice against the rise of fascism and social regression going on today. This could be life-affirming, if not life-changing. I’m onto something good here. It feels good.
