Lisa Hrabluk

Damn, I fell down the well of online information and it took me a while to climb out.

I’ve got a vase of lilies blooming beside me, the sun is shining on my keyboard and I came across this neat little web project yesterday, courtesy of bookninja, that go me thinking.

Project Bookmark Canada is going to mark the spots across the country that are imagined by writers and then described in their books and poems.

Michael Ondaatje & Toronto mayor David Miller will launch the initiative Thursday, April 23 by installing one of the bookmarks – a permanent marker that describes the book and the passage that references the area. The first bookmark is going in at the Bloor viaduct, which is referenced in Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion.

Its a cool idea. I just finished reading Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg, which is set in Toronto and makes a point of mentioning Toronto landmarks, and – don’t laugh – I just read the Twilight series, and while it is a bit overwrought, author Stephenie Meyer, does make the Pacific Northwest region one of the central characters in her vampire love story.

Some other books that stand out for me are:

• Wayne Johnson helped me understand Newfoundland in a far deeper way than any history book with his novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams;
• Robertson Davies was inspired by Kingston for his Salterton Trilogy, Toronto for the Deptford Trilogy and U of T for his Cornish Trilogy – and I wanted to experience all of them;
• Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a book I reread and which has sat on my desk, next to my computer since my early days in journalism;
• Elizabeth Hay took me way up north in Late Nights on Air and of, course,
• David Adam Richards has captured the poverty of rural New Brunswick in his ongoing study of Miramichi in his novels.

If I were to put up a bookmark in Saint John, I would put it in the deep South End, to mark poet Alden Nowlan’s place in Canadian literature with his piece “Britain Street”.

This is a street at war.
The smallest children
battle with clubs
till the blood comes,
shout ‘fuck you!’
like a rallying cry ––

while mothers shriek
from doorsteps and windows
as though the very names
of their young were curses:

‘Brian! Marlene!
Damn you! God damn you!’

or waddle into the street
to beat their own with switches:
‘I’ll teach you, Brian!
I’ll teach you, God damn you!’

On this street
even the dogs
would rather fight
than eat.

I have lived here nine months
and in all that time
have never once heard
a gentle word spoken.

I like to tell myself
that is only because
gentle words are whispered
and harsh words shouted.

Where would you put a bookmark?