The flight was bumpy, but uneventful, as the little plane struggled up over the storm tipped Purcells, and finally splashed down into Balfour harbour.
      And then I was alone on the silent jetty by an empty boat house, peering down the rutted road already whitened by November's first fall of wet snow.
      Joyce is not on the landing.
      A single car sits idling, facing the bay. The man behind the wheel wears a red hunting cap, with flaps turned up.
      "Excuse me? Somebody was supposed to be meeting me here and she..."
      "Oh? Oh Yea. Well better get in, it's wet out there."
      "Geez, thanks, I really appreciate this. I'd be glad to pay you if you'd just take me as far as..."
      "Ah nah, that's OK," he says.
      He flicks on the headlights, and they dance against the driving snow. The man has a cast in his right eye.
      "Name's Bernard," he says,"Where'd you want to go?"
      "Well Kaslo," I say, "past Kaslo, it's a camp bout three miles up the lake."
      "Oh, Perry's place," says Bernard. "Not a good hill there, you know, past Kaslo, not in this snow."
      "Well look, maybe I should just get a room in town for the night, and then tomorrow I could phone them and he could..."
      Nah it'll be all right," says Bernard, "I got an appointment anyway, past Kaslo ."
      I stare out at the snow.   Nothing.   Bernard drives very slowly.  His cast eye seems to be looking at me.
      "I saw God last week," he says.
      "God?" I know he's joking. I think he's joking.
      "Not like you'd think," he says. "Not old with a beard you know.  Last week, past Kaslo,  bout this time a night,  just a little bit later."
      Christ, I think, this guy's off the wall.  "You know Bernard, it's a real bad night out there, why don't you just drop me off in Kaslo, and then I can..."
      "Oh no," says Bernard, "no trouble at all. Like I told you I got this appointment, past Kaslo, and I'll show you exactly where I saw God."
      Humour him, I think. "How did you know He was God?"
      "She," says Bernard.
      "Well She then. How did you know She was God? Did She say She was God?"  I'm nervous. I shouldn't antagonize him like that.
      "Oh No, it was nothing like that at all," he says, "I was ju...JEASUS!"
      The car swings crazily,  as a little doe out of nowhere hits our left headlight and bounces off into the windshield on my side.  I scream as her huge  fightened eyes stare at me through the shattering glass.   And then she's gone.
      "Gotta watch them deer" pants Bernard, fighting the wheel, "They're all over the place this time of year. I can't stop for her now, not on this grade.  I hope she dies quick."
      And then, real quiet, he says, "God -- God, She's a woman you know.  A fat woman. Nobody told me, I just knew. I knew because she was on the radio.  Just round the bluff there and She...
      I don't hear him anymore.  I'm shaking. I can feel his cast eye looking at me and I don't see him reach for the radio, but it's on, and it's on with music, and over the roar of applause the announcer is saying, "And now folks, from Nova Scotia we bring you..."
      And then, as we picked up speed down the long drop past Kaslo where Bernard saw God, the fat lady began to sing.

Copyright, 1999; John MacNaughton

   "These excerpts are from a novel which is written in the form of a diary.  The heroine, "Clover" is a composite of all the feisty, eccentric, and wonderful elderly women for whom I have cared, throughout my years as a Care Aide for the elderly." 

January 4th 

      This day will go down in infamy.  I'll see that it does.  I've decided to write a diary so the world will know.  This is doomsday, boomsday.  Today, my two daughters and two sons had me incarcerated.  They've put their old Mum away.  Here I am in the prime of my life, in an old folks home.  It was Horace, the eldest, who lowered the boom. 
     "We've been thinking Mum," he said, "you've been doing some funny things lately... you know... forgetting stuff."  He looked at the other three for help.  They were only too happy to oblige.  Muriel stopped rubbing my TV screen with a paper towel and said, "The manager tells us you keep losing your keys."  I told her he was a snitch.  I didn't tell them that yesterday I even lost the building. 
     Then Doris started, "You've done some very dangerous things, Mum;  you've burned the ironing board right through... and how many times have we come in and turned the oven off?"  No wonder every time they come I wind up with cold bed socks.  I told them all to mind their own business and leave my oven alone. 
     "Well, we wondered what on earth you were cooking, Mother," Horace said, "It smelled awful." 
     "Not half as bad as your wife's sauerkraut."  I pointed out.  That kept Horace quiet for a while and gave Fred a chance.  He went on about the Requiem Mass CD that he and his wife Gerry bought me for Christmas.  They caught me using it for a beer coaster. 
     "Well," I told them, "you can't dance to a thing like that, or sing along.  It sounds to me like someone's dying."  They all sat staring around the room for a while.  Then Muriel went back to polishing the TV screen.  She must have used twenty-five pieces of paper towel - it was a nice roll - all covered with little butterflies - I only keep it for show.  I was going to say something to her when Doris suddenly started crying. 
     "Look at that lovely philodendron me and Tom bought you."  She blew her nose and sniffed a bit. 
     "Do you think it's happy holding up all those Christmas ornaments?"  I told her I didn't know.  I never asked it.  Then Muriel, from behind the pile of paper towel, had noticed something else. 
     "I don't seem to recognize this pile of laundry here Mother."  She started sorting through the clothing on the end of the coffee table.  "Look at these jockey shorts... and what are you doing with a T-shirt that says:  'I spent a night with The Living Dead'?"  I explained carefully how I had forgotten which dryer I was in.  "You're young," I told her.  "Wait till it comes to you." 
     "I'm fifty-six," she said and started crying.  Then Horace informed me about the plot they'd hatched for the New Year. 
     "Look Mum, we've found a nice place... Honeystone Mansion.  It's right down town where you always like to be." 
     "Honeystone!"  I shouted, "I've seen the people coming out of there.  They're old." 
     "You're nearly eighty, Mother."  Doris said rolling her eyes.  Only a person of fifty-four could be so malicious and cruel.  Horace told them all to shut up. 
     "It's for your own good, Mother."  Fred piped in. 
     "You're only fifty-two," I snapped, "What do you know?" 
     So they made up their minds.  They've put their old Mother out to pasture.  All four of them have just left.  They've checked me in and chucked me out.  Life as I know it, is over.

Copyright, 1998; Dora Preston

Ruth Kozak

     Ruth is the current chair-person of the West End Writers' Club and teaches courses and workshops about travel and fiction writing in association with the Vancouver School Board's program for continuing education.

     ITALY, Napoli Centrale.  Crafty street boys slouch, watch for stray luggage, unguarded purses;  young tarts, skirt seams bulging, walk waggle-assed past leering men at tables littered with cigarette butts, empty espresso cups.
      Guiseppi's monotonous dialogue drones, clacks like diesel wheels over steel tracks.  He shoves me into a compartment with six men.  Says:  "Watch out, some of them are no good."  Then he leaves.  No handshakes, kiss or "Ciao!"
      The train snakes out on steel rails, clatters past ramshackle buildings where laundry sags on lines across filthy alleys.  I swelter in the heat of the compartment, watch the blur of dusty fields and dingy towns, past lonely station platforms where nameless faces watch.  The sad train passes.  I am alone with strangers.
      BARI.  A blur of yellow lights;  train whizzes past night-lit buildings, clangs into a station.  Weary passengers tumble out into the humid night.  I am left in the empty compartment.  The train groans, shuffles.  Then, I see him, running, swinging up to the coach:  an elfin boy with an angel smile.  He stops.  "Yes?  Can I sit here?"  plunks down a duffle-bag.  When opened, it reveals delicious surprises:  secrets and gifts displayed proudly, with announcements.  Sports clothes, racquet balls, army sweat shirt with red chevron, packets of treats carefully wrapped by a caring mother:  marinated octopus, fish pates, pepperonis red and green, pale yellow cheese in crusty rolls, a single bottle of beer.  Cold.  He insists we share, entertains with impressions of famous comedians, impromptu vocal renditions, pantomimes, sound effects of rock stars.  Hands agile as a musician's produce a wad of silver foil:  exotic tobacco, chocolate and resin-sweet, rolled into a paper cone, passed to me with a smile.  This young Italian soldier learned English in a nursery school in Toronto.  Writes our initials on the compartment wall. "A+R  IT WAS GOOD."  He made me laugh that day.  At Brindisi we kiss good-bye.  He bounces down the neon street, into the night, happy.

Copyright, 1998; Ruth Kozak

Gordon Mumford

       Although Gordon has been writing since the early 1960s, it was only after retirement in 1990 that he was able to write full-time.  The following excerpt is taken from his non-fiction book which was an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference Literary Contest (PNWC, Seattle), a contest attracting some 600 entrants annually from the United States and Canada. It is published by General Store Publishing House, Burnstown, Ontario.

BACKGROUND:
     Too young to enlist, I joined the merchant navy as a junior Radio Officer when I was seventeen.  My second ship was torpedoed in the Battle of the Atlantic (Christmas, 1942), while another ship was sunk by a mine in the Battle of the Scheldt (Christmas, 1944).

THEME:
     This is a coming-of-age story of a young man, set against the background of the merchant navy in World War II.  The book depicts life aboard the merchant ships, from the everyday routines to U-boat attacks, showing the emotional impact, as well as the youth's reactions to conflict and crisis.

     The explosion shatters my cabin, precipitating me from a deep, drugged sleep to a state of bewildered consciousness.  My mind is befuddled; it cannot comprehend the ear- splitting roar and blast.  Debris and dust fill the air, raining down on my body in the bunk.  A heavy weight pins me down.  My hands, trapped beneath the entangling sheets and blankets, fight instinctively to get free.
     I awaken to a nightmare and shake my head in panic, but the ringing in my ears will not stop.  There is a strong pungent odour of explosives.  My body is forced against the side of the bunk as the ship heels over to port.  Realization comes to my sleep-clogged brain:  this is real; it's not a dream.  My heart pounds and my stomach muscles tighten involuntarily.  We've been torpedoed!
     Everything is happening in slow motion.  The ship is shuddering, listing hard over.  I've got to get out. She may go at any moment!  Panic galvanizes my body and my throat tightens with fear as I struggle to free myself.  I can't see!  The cabin is dark because the explosion has killed the lights.  I can hear the screech of tearing, twisting metal and the roar of rushing water; it terrifies me.  The tanks must be ruptured!
     My heart is racing as despair surges through my body.  In desperation, I pull my hands free of the blankets and touch jagged splintered wood and a smooth metal knob.  It's the cabin door, blown on top of me by the force of the explosion.  It falls with a crash as I push it off and tumble out of the bunk.  The roll of the ship has stabilized; she's not going over.  Disoriented and barefoot, my head aching with fever, I scramble in the darkness, heedless of the rubble.  The horror of the sea pouring into the bowels of the ship and the thought of drowning here in my cabin excludes all other thoughts as I concentrate on survival.
     Outlined against the faint red glow of the emergency lighting in the passageway is the rectangular opening where the door used to be.  The passage is deserted.  I run to the heavy outer door and thrust it open.  Clad only in thin linen pyjamas, I step out onto the boat deck and into another world, a world of confusion.


Copyright; J. Gordon Mumford