The Effect of Location by Carol Harrison

As I thought about this blog post prompt, my mind went blank. The empty page mocked me. I reread the verse and prompt multiple times trying to garner a glimmer of an idea. I chatted with my daughter, waiting for inspiration to strike.

In the end I kept thinking about the various places I have lived, experiences I’ve had, and family stories I listened to over the years. I realized that each of these have influenced my life and therefore, also my writing. God led me from growing up mostly in Saskatoon during the 50s and 60s to life in the north of Saskatchewan and back south again in different communities before bouncing back to the north and down south once again. God delighted to give me experiences I never dreamed of having and finally got through to me to start writing some of the stories down.

Growing up in Saskatoon in the 50s and 60s was a time where neighbours knew one another and as kids we gathered to play for most of the day. I learned the bus system and rode it across the city to my grandmother’s house by myself starting at the age of five. This location, along with the people that populated it, helped me become who I am.

Two of my granddaughters grew up in Saskatoon and attended the same elementary and high school I did. But their experience would affect their writing in different ways due to it being a different time in history. Life wasn’t as sheltered and safe as we’d felt in the 50s or so it felt to me.

But this city girl also experienced life in Northern Saskatchewan in the early 70s. My first glimpse of life in small isolated communities offered culture shock. My location and landscape changed and even though time had advanced in the south, these communities had no phone, television, or even a road to access them. They only houses with running water were the teacherages and the school along with the store and manager’s home. These experiences, living in a different culture within Saskatchewan, added to my writing and yet people seem to have a hard time believing my stories from the north could be true.

I saw no trees in the community of Wollaston Lake with my first glimpse of it from the air. As we glided into the bay on our float plane, people lined up to check who might be coming into their community. Tourists to go to fly in fish camps for a week? The new teachers? A shipment of goods for the store?

Power poles were taller than the few trees close to the community set on the point beside the bay of the big lake. Every home seemed to have multiple dogs tied up out back, all yipping to be heard. They were working dogs as most people didn’t trust the new-fangled machines called snowmobiles. You couldn’t go on as thin of ice or huddle close to it to stay warm in the short bush. It was a different location and would affect me for the rest of my life.

Moving south became another culture shock where the clock ruled most people’s lives in a rigid way unlike our years in the north. Trees and prairie land joined together to form the landscape and getting in and out of the community could be done without thought or great cost.

Even stranger to people was when we moved to the Whitkow Hills and lived in a house with no running water or sewer system for the first six months and no hot running water the entire time we lived there. Party line phones kept us in touch with the rest of our family and friends. For us it felt like a step up in some ways, at least for communication, but others looked at it as going backward in time to another era.

Location has made a big impact in these various times in my life and helped shape me into the person I am today. Each experience becomes part of our story, our history. Our story comes out in our writing in various ways. I have written and submitted stories of life in the north from a first-hand account. Some are accepted.

When I wrote my Prairie Hope series of books, the seed of the idea began way back in my childhood. I spent lots of time with my Mennonite grandparents and heard family stories through the years. They intrigued me and I longed to know more. Writing these books, which follow a Mennonite family, began as that seed of an idea planted long ago. It just needed time to grow and bloom. My childhood location and the people in it find their way into stories, poems, and articles I’ve written including a whole series of books.

Location or setting and time become key elements in planting seeds of ideas that come out in the setting and characters of our writing. We draw on our history and stories we’ve heard, people we’ve connected closely with, and experiences we’ve had. It’s just a matter of pulling from that wealth of knowledge, that is such a part of who we are, to grab a reader’s attention to the finer details of the place and time. We all have stories and settings surround us.

 

Carol Harrison has lived in a variety of locations around Saskatchewan before returning to Saskatoon. Each place affected her life and later her writing. One of her favourite places to be is near a lake or body of water. She finds that relaxing and inspiring.