Posted by: Gail Bowen - author of The Brutal Heart

In Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, the hero Dunstan Ramsay reflects on life and chance. “When life pushes you in a certain direction,” he says, “it’s spiritual suicide to resist.” I’ve always felt these were words to live by.

I’d never considered being a Writer in Residence, but last January, my home province, Saskatchewan, was deep in the miseries of the mother of all winters, so when a friend forwarded the Toronto Reference Library’s ad for a mystery writer in residence, I felt a cosmic nudge. The position started on May lst, and I was going to be in Toronto, reading at a function for World Literacy on April 29th—synchronicity. The nudge became a push and I applied. When the email asking if I would accept the position arrived, I answered with the concluding words of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy: ‘yes I said yes I will. Yes.”

I am still fervently enthusiastic about my position. Like all good contracts, the contract between me and the library is clear about our mutual rights and duties: I am to devote 60% of the residency to a work in progress and the remaining 40% to reading and assessing manuscripts submitted by the general public; counselling individuals on their submissions; conducting writing workshops; participating in an online chat and in a Crime Writers of Canada event and attending the opening and closing receptions for the residency. The library is responsible for giving me a place to work, a person with whom to work and a cheque.

Almost halfway through the residency, I have read submissions from 30 writers, arranged for appointments with all of them, met with ten and participated in a reception, a reading, a workshop and an on-line chat. My paycheque will come at the end of the month, but the Reference Library has honoured their first two commitments with whipped cream and cherries on top.

My office, on the fifth floor of the Reference Library, is the Arthur Conan Doyle room, a book-lined space that houses the library’s Conan Doyle collection. The room is large and gently lit; the furniture is period, and the ambiance is bygone London. Peggy Perdue, the special collections librarian with whom I work most closely is, like another famous citizen of bygone London, ‘practically perfect in every way’. Peggy protects my time; is there when I need her and trusts me to do my job. She’s smart, funny and lovely—the ideal companion for a writer in residence.

During the 60% of the residency allotted for my work-in-progress, I have worked on my next Joanne Kilbourn mystery, “The Nesting Dolls”. I’m pleased with my progress, but I think the real value of my time as Writer in Residence is found elsewhere.

Several years ago I was invited to the Banff Playwrights Colony. In his welcome to us, the Director said “we don’t measure the value of this program by what you produce in the next few weeks. If you want to stand on Tunnel Mountain Road and look at the mountains, do that. Somewhere down the line, what you experienced here will find its place in your work.”

In the month we’ve been in Toronto, I’ve been to two operas (one shimmering; one fusty); learned from my neighbour how to keep growing bok choy safe from racoons (first under inverted vegetable crispers; later under an elaborate system of bricks and discarded oven racks); heard A.S. Byatt and Michael Ignatieff read; seen Niagara Falls; mastered the Toronto public transit system (well almost); learned the best place to buy coffee in Kensington market; witnessed a superb production of “Sunday in the Park with George” at the Shaw Festival and become a temporary member of the congregation of St. James Cathedral (where I worship next to a genuine Tiffany stained glass window and listen to homilies delivered by a warm, brilliant and very young female priest of Chinese descent).

Thanks to Robertson Davies and the Writer in Residence Program of the Toronto Reference Library, I have been uprooted and transplanted, and like my neighbour’s bok choy, I am thriving.