Ross Klatte, Author

Prior to my recent trip to Toronto, compliments of The Writers’ Trust of Canada, to appear at the 11th annual Writers’ Trust Awards event on November 1, 2011, as one of three finalists for this year’s $10,000 Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, I’d only visited that city once before.

Forty-eight years later, Toronto was a far different place. I arrived there, by air from Castlegar, via Vancouver, late on October 30, and after a ride on the shuttle bus from the airport to downtown, and a chilly walk of a couple of blocks, found myself nicely put up on the 17th floor of the Sutton Place Hotel on Bay Street.

While checking in, I was handed an envelope containing a schedule of Writers’ Trust events, a downtown map off Google with directions to the venues involved, and a cheque for $200 – “to help cover your ground transportation cost and other expenses incurred while in Toronto.” (I would come home with a few dollars left over.)

The awards event that night was at the Isabel Bader Theatre, a walk of only three blocks from my hotel. (Dress code was business casual. I wore my blazer again, with a tie this time, no vest, and a second pair of pants from Spokane’s Valu Village.)

Following a crowded reception in the lobby (wine and hors d’oeuvres, a deafening cacophony of conversation), during which a picture was taken of the three of us Journey Prize finalists. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I was in the midst of a good chunk of Canada’s literati. We all filed into the theatre for something like the Academy Awards in Hollywood – without the glitz. Shelagh Rogers was the master of ceremonies. The front row held a distinguished line of awards presenters. On a big screen above the stage was a repeating slide show of the finalists’ faces (mine included).

I found myself sitting next to Clark Blaise, who in 1983 taught a writing course at the then-thriving David Thompson University Centre (now the Tenth Street Campus of Selkirk College) when my wife and I worked in the DTUC library. He was a finalist here for the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize – for The Meagre Tarmac, a book of short stories. (He didn’t win; Patrick deWitt did, for The Sisters Brothers, a novel.) When I reminded him of his teaching gig at DTUC, he spoke enthusiastically of Nelson and the beauty of the Kootenays, and reminisced about a man we both knew, Ernst Havemann, a white South African and retired Shell Oil executive (he and his wife had settled outside Nelson, near Balfour; we were neighbors) who became a student of Blaise’s at DTUC. Blaise was so impressed with Havemann’s writing he sent one of his stories to The Atlantic, which accepted it – and then others – which led to the publication, in 1987, of Bloodsong and Other Stories of South Africa, “tales,” as Ernst called them, based on his growing up among the Zulus in that country.

I was happy to see Canadian novelist David Adams Richards win the $20,000 Matt Cohen Award for his dedication to the writing life – but was sorry to miss talking to him. He would have remembered me, I’m sure, from when he came to this area in 1990 for readings in Nelson, Castlegar, and Kaslo, and to conduct a couple of workshops. I introduced his reading in the old NDU Student Union, attended his Nelson workshop, and afterward wrote a profile of him for the Calgary Herald. What’s more, he’d stayed overnight with my wife and me, and our two children, in our small house on Laird Creek above the West Arm of Kootenay Lake, and the next day I took him to the Castlegar airport to fly back to the Maritimes. Yet somehow we failed to connect that busy night in the Isabel Bader Theatre.

During the awards giving, suddenly it was time to announce the winner of the Journey Prize. I was pretty sure my name wouldn’t be called. Nevertheless, my heart started to pound and I felt in my pocket for the one-page acceptance speech I’d prepared.

My name wasn’t called. Miranda Hill’s was, and she strode happily across the stage in her red gown. I was relieved – and, yes, not a little disappointed.
Then the proceedings were over. Clark Blaise stood up, glanced at me, his fellow also ran, and shrugged. “Anyway, the pressure’s off,” I said, and he laughed.

The affair broke up, and I walked with the McGoogans to a bar in Yorkville called Hemingway’s. There we ate a light meal and drank some beer. Then they headed for the subway that would take them home, and I walked to my hotel.

The next morning I spent $60 for a cab ride to the airport, and flew back to my rustic home in the Kootenays.