Just Between Us

Novelist Carolyn Chute used to say that she spent eight hours a day talking to little people who weren’t there. Fellow writers in the audience would laugh—a little nervously. Because of course the little people are there. And they don’t go away—until we give them voice and a chance to make a mess of their very own lives and—who knows?—maybe even a chance to redeem themselves.

That’s what keeps us writing. We want to find out what happens next.

The novella I’m working on began with a voice in my head. A character was beginning to tell me her story. I couldn’t figure out where she lived, so I ignored her because I was at work on something else. But she persisted, and when I made my first trip to Quebec City, I realized she lived there. Everywhere I went, I found her story emerging—so fast and so vividly, that I had to drop what I was writing and attend to these places she had lived and worked.

I am not a writer of historical fiction, yet this character lived in a city I didn’t know at the end of World War II and spoke a language I speak poorly and read almost not at all.

When Julia James was working on her Masters Thesis in Physical Geography at UBC, she noticed that most of her best ideas came to her when she got up to use the washroom. A different quality of thought was available when she wasn’t trying to think at all. She was aware of  “the bigger picture, concepts, a shift in perspective.”

Later, when she became a life coach, she noticed that her clients—busy professionals—almost never took breaks.

“They didn’t relax at all—they were so restless,” she says. “They were highly educated, excited and passionate about their careers, constantly going, and they’d lose their sense of direction—where they were headed in all this going.”

Which is often why they hired James as their coach in the first place.

Along with helping her clients to set and reach their goals, James began to suggest ways in which they could renew their energy right on the job.

She developed and produced a series of CDs to help her clients to relax, but, she says, “the step to actually using the tool was too big—so a how to book was needed to coach them through the steps to take that space and time to retreat in their day.”

As supportive as her women’s group has been over the years, Vicki McLeod felt a need to extend her personal work into her professional life—and beyond. She also noticed that many of her colleagues and clients “were doing everything their MBAs taught them and the consultants told them, and it still wasn’t happening—things weren’t changing. Something else was needed.”

So McLeod, a local communications consultant and coach, started an Eldership Circle.

“I realized that if I was going to hold a space for change, I needed a place where I could do my inner work and be fully supported to take it out into the world. So I decided to put out a call.”

The group’s purpose is to create a space where women can help each other in “overcoming personal barriers and prejudices, [creating] conscious awareness of rank and privilege, and resolving inner conflict—all necessary to … heal our communities.” The circle is meant to go beyond personal growth and always points to service. It’s a place where personal development and social consciousness meet.

Face it. When it comes to the arts, we have a terrible reputation. Back East, they assume we mistake Snowboarding for High Culture because of the altitude.

Before I moved here, people said. “Yes, I hear it’s lovely, but … won’t you get bored? I mean there’s no real culture, is there?”

When I pointed to Jane Rule and Emily Carr, I could hear these Easterners think what they dared not say: a lesbian writer and a painter who kept a monkey doth not a culture make.

I will defend both Rule and Carr unto death, but therein lies the trouble. You get defensive, and Easterners grow even smugger.

But then, they’ve never been to the Eastside Culture Crawl! It’s not the number, nor even the diversity of artists represented; it’s an energy and spirit powerful enough to soften even the most cynical eastern heart. In fact it’s enough to make some envious. 

Of what?

Community—essential, wide-ranging, friendly, democratic. The spirit of a community in action, aware of itself, celebrating even as it voices serious concerns for its future …