In the writing of Up in Ontario I wanted to include aspects and stories from the places where the story was set. I wanted the story to be a part of the place where it occured. One of the stories I wanted to include was the story of the occupation of Anicinabe Park in 1974. What follows are two versions of ways I tried to include the story.
The first, Getting Back to Normal, mimics a newspaper article that would have appeared at the time of the incident in the Kenora Daily Miner & News. The second, Occupation of Anicinabe Park, tries to incorporate the history of a place with the main character of the story, Wade Dubois.
In the end, my editor Wayne Tefs and I decided that too much shoehorning was involved with trying to make either of these sections fit into the story and both were cut. In short, they didn't really work no matter how much massaging they received. But I wanted to include them here to offer a wider view of Up in Ontario and to suggest that alternatives always exist for the stories we hear, even if we think of those stories as fiction.
Posted by James Sherrett at March 29, 2004 10:35 PM