Welcome to my website
This site is a home for some of my writing. Most of what you will find here relates to history: memoir, essays, biography, and stories, both fiction and non-fiction—the former usually inspired by things that have happened in my life. The writing is classified into four categories:
Etty Hillesum
-
- History, Commentary, Commemoration
- Memoir
- Poetry
- Stories
The site is dedicated to the wondrous Etty Hillesum, the 29-year-old who was murdered at Auschwitz on November 30, 1943. It was my desire to share my study of her life that first sparked the idea to create this site.
When I was fourteen and in Grade 9, a Guidance class project required that I complete three job studies. My first choice was historian. I went on to study history at university and to teach it for short periods at two Vancouver Island community colleges in the mid 1970s. Although my Dad and Mom were history lovers, and although I displayed a similar love starting in elementary school, I still sense a certain prescience in my top job choice of historian for that Guidance class project.
I have a deep interest and respect for occasions when mystery and knowing turn up in roughly equal measure. You will find examples of such occasions in several of the essays and stories available here.
I generally write in longhand at a kitchen or dining room table. It is something I do to feed and express my soul. And even though it is something I do alone, it is also, paradoxically, very much a communal activity in the First Nations’ sense of remembering and honouring “All My Relations.” It is my mealtime with the spirits.
So, welcome to my table. I hope some of what you find here feeds your soul.
I’m indebted to my brother, Michael, who created this site.