Susan Swan & Geoff Morrison (b4b s2 e17)

“My best writing always comes from the feeling of fluidity and ease”
—Susan Swan

“[Torngat Mountains National Park is] very hard to get to, and the park isn’t designed for visitor experience. If we could go there with these artists and create a kind of response to the place, and film them doing it, and film beautiful footage of the park, then that would be a tremendous document.”
—Geoff Morrison

“…uh,… it’s MORRISON…?”
—Geoff Nicholson

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Susan Swan & Geoff Morrison (b4b s2 e17)

The Setting
The Eden Mills Writers’ Festvial is on, softly. Next week two events mark the beginning of this year’s season: Susan Swan is touring her new novel, The Western Light, and bringing along girl-noir band The Billie Hollies to perform her theatrical revue piece, “The Heroines of the Sexual Gothic”; and Geoff Morrison is bringing his newest film, the documentary Northwords, to the Bookshelf Cinema for an advance screening. We talked with both of them today.

Mr Morrison
Geoff Morrison is a Producer/Director of the new documentary, Northwords, in which Shelagh Rogers accompanies writers Joseph Boyden, Sarah Leavitt, Rabindranath Maharaj, Noah Richler, and Alissa York to Torngat Mountains National Park in Labrador, where the ensemble undertakes a project to tell the stories of the North. In Geoff Morrison’s interview he talks about the ineffability and largeness of that task, but also about the individual stories that do emerge: the landscape’s flora and fauna, the indigenous people, the mission of the newest National park in Canada.

Ms Swan
Susan Swan is a Grande Dame of CanLit. She’s a journalist, feminist, novelist, teacher and mulit-media writer. Her stories have been told on screen, stage and page. Her newest novel, The Western Light revisits Mary Beatrice “Mouse” Bradford, one of Swan’s amazing characters from her previous book, The Wives of Bath. In this story, Mouse is 12 years old, and vying for the attention of her workaholic G.P. father Morely Bradford, MD. Partially in his place comes sanitorium patient John “Hockey Killer” Pilkie, or Gentleman John as he’s known of the ice. He’s a former NHLer charged with the murder of his wife and child, but Mouse is past the point of face value. It’s a wonderful story, and makes for a good chat this episode.

Northwords

NORTHWORDS trailer from filmCAN on Vimeo.