(Long read) It was the summer of 1965. I just turned 15. That August, I first encountered Frank Herbert’s Dune as I browsed the paperback racks in a small independent pharmacy on Toronto’s Yonge Street, north of Lawrence Ave, close to the old Glen Echo trolley bus loop (I can’t remember the exact spot).I still […]
This is an edited excerpt from my current nonfiction book project about the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron enforcing the ban on the slave trade between 1819 and 1822, the story of two Black seamen who served on the Squadron’s HMS Pheasant and the role of my fourth great grandfather, William Pennell, British consul in […]
It’s not unusual to discover, while writing a non fiction project, that the most minor of characters deserve their own book and more . This week as part of my own book research I have discovered a forgotten age of fighting sail officer who is likely worth a biography or a novel or even a […]
Captain’s log 18191029 It was October, 1819. The Royal Navy sloop HMS Pheasant part of the new anti-slavery West Africa Squadron, was on patrol off Accra in what is today Ghana. For the research and writing on my latests book project, I was reading the log and came across a reference that I had not […]
(long read) When US President Donald Trump is not demanding that Canada become “the 51st state” he muses about redrawing a border, a border that is defined by treaties dating back to 1783. In mid-March Trump, in a media scrum outside the White House, talked about redrawing the border. In Trump’s derailed train of […]
(long read) There was at time, not long ago, at least in the six thousand years of human settlement on the Greek island of Santorini, that I and my roommate were the only two people sitting on a stone bench in the town of Fira watching the sun set over the Aegean Sea. I can’t […]
A dark and stormy night 1813 edition (I don’t usually full post excerpts from my work in progress, I often put far too much into first drafts and then have to drastically cut. This episode of “a dark and stormy night” I discovered is too good to pass up. I am working on stories about […]
Topsham on the River Exe, in Devon, is the seaport for the larger city of Exeter. In the past week, I have had the chance to explore one of the towns where my roots are, the Pennells, on one main branch of my father’s side of the family. There were villages in the area of […]
Masthead for Field in March 1908 In May, 1908, 114 years ago, two presumably rich, presumably British, hunters came to Kitamaat Village, hired two Haisla guides named “Frank” and “David” and went bear hunting in the Kitlope, Giltoyees and up the Kemano River. One of the two hunters, named John H. Wrigley, would later write […]
Version 2.0 Updated October 2023 Long read (Contains spoilers for It’s a Sin and may trigger some AIDS survivor readers. Names in quotation marks are pseudonyms. Many of the names from the 80s aren’t mentioned because I don’t remember. Other names are real, taken from my occasional diary or letters I wrote) This is an […]