While Edward Chamberlin said “stories give meaning and value to the places we call home” (Chamberlin), it was hard for me to pinpoint this to any stories that would have impacted my life in a significant way. Of course there were many stories my mom read to me, as well as stories I read by myself when I was a kid, but those stories do not resonate with me in a way that they affect my connection to “home,” except for one – Love You Forever, written by Robert Munsch. When I was older I read quite a few books by Canadian authors, or books referencing Canada, but never really connected this to my sense of what is home, or what it means to be Canadian. Don’t get me wrong though, I feel distinctively Canadian. I love Canada. It never crossed my mind to live anywhere else, at least not permanently.

When people talk about their home countries, they often connect the national anthem with their country and their sense of home.  It starts with referencing to the anthem as “our” national anthem, already installing a sense of community and home by this very notion. And in “our” national anthem Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier says, “Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux” (“O Canada, land of our ancestors”) (O Canada) in the very first two lines. Although this is not really true for myself and many other Canadians whose ancestors were not born here , it somehow captivates and roots you. So one comes to realize that most Canadian’s ancestors are actually not from Canada. Most people’s family may have been born in Canada, but, going back a few generations, most of them will be of European or Asian ancestry (Ethnic Origins). Ironically the First Nations are the only people who can claim they have true Canadian ancestry, but in today’s world those lines tend to blur. Canada is a melting pot of people from different nations and cultures. It is a miracle that people from so many diverse backgrounds find enough common ground to all call this place home. I also call Canada home, although I have Russian, Swedish and English ancestry.

I can’t find the words to describe the feelings I get when I think about what home really means to me. For me home provides security. That, however, is not universal and refugees might have memories about home, that are vastly different and still they are calling this dangerous place home. So does home equal security? It can, but it doesn’t have to.

On a more basic level, the concept of home is something shared by all the people who live in one place and call it home. One thing that people all over the world have in common about home is their feelings of familiarity. This is what differentiates a foreign place from your home. A familiarity gained through memories gathered at that particular place, which might, or might not, include a feeling of safety and security, but always a sensation of belonging – being rooted to a place. For me, this sensation of belonging to a place, the familiarity, is what it really means to call a place home, like I do with Canada.

There is the saying that “Home is, where your heart is,” and it is true that one can only feel truly at home when one is connected with the place. My connection to Canada comes from a lifetime of memories I made here in Canada. I would say one could argue that memories are a story as well. The most basic form of a story, rooted in factual events that you tell yourself repeatedly when you recall a particular memory.

For most people memories make up the largest part of stories, connecting them with a place. Once you have enough memories, you slowly start to call a place home. Over time, the place you call home might even change when you form new memories, new stories, of a new place. More vivid than the old stories, slowly growing in numbers, changing your perception of what is home.

Looking at it like that, my connection to Canada is indeed rooted in stories. Not stories I have heard or read, but stories I was in which I have committed to memory. Stories that, from their point of creation, will always be a part of me, giving meaning to this place I call home. Canada is a beautiful country, but these stories make it more than that, allowing it to come alive and become my home. My perception of home is a romantic one; other people’s might be pragmatic. However, I believe that everybody who lives in one place for a long time, building up memories will have some kind of connection to this place.

I’m sure many people taking this course also call Canada their home. And, even if two of us are neighbours, our feelings about what is home, although physically next to each other, can differ in many ways, depending on the stories we connect with it. In the end, home is a very abstract concept and not just bound to the place you live at in that particular moment of time. I believe that’s a good thing, as it allows you to make a new home, should you ever want to do so. You are not limited to one place. You are free to make new memories. New stories. New homes.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Vintage Canada Ed., Vintage Canada, 2004.

“Ethnic origins, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories – 20% sample data.” Statistics Canada, 6 Oct. 2010, http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-562/pages/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo=PR&Code=01&Table=2&Data=Count&StartRec=1&Sort=3&Display=All. Accessed 25 Sept. 2016.

“O Canada.” Citizenship and Immigration Canada, www.cic.gc.ca/english/celebrate/pdf/National_Anthem_e.pdf. Accessed256 Sept. 2016.

Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, the story King tells about the Witches’ convention in Chapter One of The Truth about Stories, and change it any way you want, except the ending. You can change to place, the people, the time – anything you want. But, your story must have the same moral – it must tell us how evil came into the world and how once a story is told, it cannot be taken back.

First, learn your story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family.

After you have told the story a few times,  post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered about story telling.

Many centuries ago, the forest lay still and quiet – a peaceful time, unknown to most. The sole occupant of the forest was an ancient Goddess named Mephanda.

Mephanda, the Goddess, created this forest. She was born amongst the clouds and travelled down to a river. As Mephanda floated on the cloud right above the river, she realized it was just a river – a river surrounded by nothingness – and that she would not be able to swim in the river, so she created land. Large meadows materialized around the river. Then Mephanda decided that she would need food, so she created plants. And Mephanda created trees so she could sleep in them.

She was very happy with her creation, and she lived very happy and content in this forest she created. There was an abundance of food to eat and many beautiful flowers and trees for her to enjoy.

One day as Mephanda laid in a tree she heard a very loud bang. She wondered where it had come from, as she had never heard a noise like this before. She looked around, but no matter how far she looked she saw nothing.

Then suddenly the sky darkened quickly. The sky was now pitch black with not a hint of colour or light. Mephanda was very frightened. As Mephanda hugged the tree with fear, she noticed the sky was raining down a golden shimmer. Mephanda was mesmerized and couldn’t keep her eyes off it – her fear dissipating. This had never happened before, and she believed it was very beautiful, albeit slightly frightening.

As the golden shimmer rained upon Mephanda, her stomach immediately began to grow. Then she realized that the golden shimmer made her pregnant. After all, she was a Goddess, so she could become pregnant without a man. And now that she thought about it, she was indeed thinking of having a child, as she was lonely. Yes, she had her beautiful forest, full of trees and flowers that she had created, but, as much joy as the forest gave her, she had the feeling that something was missing. This feeling seemed to have materialized in the golden shimmer that got her pregnant.

The sky was blue again – as blue as a sky could be – and the forest looked more beautiful than ever before. But maybe it was just her joy that made everything look more vibrant. Now she was wondering how long it would be until she would give birth. Was it a boy? Was it a girl?

She felt energized and decided to make her world even more beautiful for her child. She created a little lake close to her favourite trees and then a big ocean with a beach of golden sand and countless islands filled with colourful flowers and trees. And then she created green hills which were slowly sloping up into big mountains topped with white hats of snow and ice. Her world became larger and larger.

And after some time the day finally came when she gave birth to a little child she named Typh. Even though he was barely a mere few hours old, Typh was already talking to her.

The day went by and Typh grew faster than she would have ever expected. About two weeks after he was born she saw something strange: parts of her forest were covered in blackness.

As she went to the parts of the forest that were covered in blackness, she found hundreds of dead, burnt trees, most of which were still smoking deep black smoke. Mephanda was sad to see her forest like this and wondered what had happened. She followed the trail of dead trees, moving faster and faster. Then she finally saw what was going on. She was shocked and sad at the same time. Typh was laughing and using his awakening godly powers to set trees on fire.

“What are you doing?” screamed Mephanda.

“Killing them with fire.”

“But why?” She asked with horror in her trembling voice.

“Because I can,” a smiling Typh said. And at that moment Mephanda realized she may have doomed her paradise with her wish for company and more joy than she already had.

It was fun to recreate the essence of Thomas King’s story in my own words and I believe that is a big part of what story-telling is about. It also shows that a story can work in many ways and lots of different forms. Not only did I rewrite the story, but when I told it to relatives and my boyfriend I told the story each time a little bit different. Oral story-telling is a fluid process, each time the story get re-crated a tiny bit different. Stories can change over time, but their essence might still be there told through an entirely new set of words setting the story up in a totally different way.

King, Thomas. “‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened’ is Always a Great Way to Start.” The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003.

At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?

Social media tools and the Internet in general made it easier for the reader to gain access to publications of any kind. It is also easier now, than ever, to publish any kind of publication on your own without the need of a publisher.

This ease of publication allows more works to be made public. For example, works that without the Internet would have been denied by a publisher. Because there is no formal publisher, regardless if your work is controversial or not, your work will still be published because you are your own publisher.  Being your own publisher offers you the freedom and responsibility to decide whether you want to publish controversial work. Hence the formal publisher is not put into the position of being afraid of losing their reputation due to the publication of controversial work. There is also no formal publisher filtering out unprofitable work resulting in more works being made public. Because works don’t have to be commercially successful anymore and no one is filtering the writer’s output by any regulations not only more works will be available to the public but they will also cover a wider range of topics.

If you have something to say, you can do it. Nobody is stopping you. No matter whether it is a novel, fiction, non-fiction, a poem, or any other type of text. This ease of publication and the massive user base of social media platforms allow writers to reach a large amount of people, even without having any kind of name recognition. There are many services now, specialized to support people in self-publishing books. So your story will not only be available digital on your blog or social media account but it will also exist as a real book which can be ordered by people. Lulu (Online Self Publishing Book & eBook Company – Lulu), one of these services, uses the slogan “Create, publish and sell your book for free.”

Hypertext, the use of links in story or literature, opens up new possibilities. eWriters can use links to enrich their stories. If they mention the Egyptian pyramids, for example, they are able to link to a picture of those pyramids. Or an explanation of the cultural significance of the pyramids. The possibilities are endless and can be used to enhance the reading experience. Of course these links can also be a distraction, steering the reader away from a writer’s work and interrupting the reading experience, making it harder to follow what is being said. Links even allow for a form of interactive literature. It is possible to write a story and at times – when there is a point in the story where a protagonist is making a decision – give the reader the possibility of making this decision for the protagonist by providing links for different courses of action that lead to different outcomes. This way the story can split up again and again. The reader has an influence on how the story goes on and the storyline doesn’t have to be linear anymore. There are services that support authors in the creation of those interactive stories. Take a look at this example story, “Neighbourhood Predators” by Jon Ingold (Ingold) using inklewriter (inklewriter), one of the services helping you in creating interactive stories, to see how an interactive story can work.

Online Self Publishing Book & eBook Company – Lulu. Lulu Press, Inc., 2002-2016, https://www.lulu.com/. Accessed 17 Sep. 2016.

Ingold, Jon. “Neighbourhood Predators.”https://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/neighbourhoodpredators Accessed 17 Sep. 2016.

inklewriter. inkle Ltd, http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/. Accessed 17 Sep. 2016.

Welcome to my blog! I am a third year student currently living in a small town in the Kootenays. (That’s 10 hours East of Vancouver, or 4 hours East of Kelowna, for those of you who don’t know your BC Geography!) I am majoring in Cultural Studies and English. After graduating with a Bachelor Of Arts degree, I then plan on going to a teacher education program and would like to become an elementary school teacher.

In my free time, when I’m not busy with school work and my job, I enjoy reading, cooking, yoga, tea, cats, travelling, and spending time with my friends, family, and pets!

I am taking this course, because I believe it will be interesting, as I took a previous Canadian Literature course, which I really enjoyed. Plus it’s nice to learn more on topics about your own country. I believe that this course will be useful to me once I become a teacher. I also really like the blogging aspect. I think it’s a really creative idea, because in most online courses there are just discussion posts and there is something about blogging I find that is really fun and allows you to really open up!

I expect that in this Canadian literature course, we will be focusing particular attention to Indigenous people and the effects colonialism had and, in some instances, still has on their lives. In the early times of colonialism in Canada there have been lots of incidents of violence and racism, and it’s good that now much of current Canadian literature covers these topics. I hope we might also cover topics, such as Canadian identity and who we are as a country.

I’ll end this blog post with a cute photo of my new kitten named Twilah, who I adopted from the SPCA on Saturday! 🙂

My own image

I hope to get a lot out of this course, and I am really excited to get to know all of you!

Works cited:

Marc St-Pierre in collaboration with the Aboriginal Perspectives team. Aboriginal Perspectives. National Film Board of Canada. http://www3.nfb.ca/enclasse/doclens/visau/index.php?mode=theme&language=english&theme=30662&film=&excerpt=&submode=about&expmode=2 Accessed 12 Sep. 2016

Molson Brewery. “I am Canadian.” YouTube, uploaded by Vinko, 12 Sep. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg.