Book profiles 10 long-time Creemore area residents
Trina Berlo photo: Sara Sniderhan and Donna Lowe look through an album of photos, some of which will be included in a new book about long time area residents.
The stories and portraits of 10 lifelong area residents are being compiled in a book to be published in the fall, entitled The Village and I: Ten Life Stories.
The collection portrays an earlier time in the village, when family and community were paramount, trips into the village from outlying hamlets were a big deal and winters were brutal.
The book is a result of a $5,000 Robert F. Kemp Award given to portrait artist Sara Sniderhan last year through the Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts, with additional support from the Purple Hills Arts and Heritage Society and The Creemore Echo.
The book is being published by Curiosity House Books; owner Rina Barone is the editor.
Sniderhan said the project is about documenting the stories of a certain generation who she thinks of as having seen more change in their lifetime than any other generation before them and possibly after them.
“It’s a way of collecting community history and life experiences that are no longer very relatable,” she said.
The book includes the life stories of Maurice Weatherall, Donna (Millsap) Lowe, Gerry Blackburn, Noel Van Walleghan, Helen Blackburn, Gertie Gowan, Dorothy (Timmons) Shropshire, Jerry Jordan and the Rowbotham sisters; Barb Cudmore and Norma Johnston.
“It was hard to chose just 10,” said Sniderhan. “There are lots more people who should have been in the book but we had more potential subjects than we could have put in the book and a limited budget.”
She said she feels at some point there will have to be a second volume produced.
Those included represent different life experiences – teachers, farmers, a firefighter, an insurance salesman, a creamery owner, butcher and carpenter.
The 10 portraits have been created by Sniderhan, Peter Adams, Martha Bull, Christopher Roberts, Peter Mitchell, Juliet Jancso, Jim Paget, Andrej Kovacs and David Bruce Johnson.
The stories have been penned by former CBC Metro Morning host Andy Barrie, best selling novelist Cathy Gildiner, former Globe and Mail writer and editor Cecily Ross, author Stephen Smith and published writers Barone, Kristi Green, Emily Worts, Trina Berlo and Julie Pollock, with a forward by playwright Dan Needles.
Book orders will open June 27. Place orders at Curiosity House Books, located at 178 Mill St. in Creemore, or online at www.curiosityhousebooks.com. The price is $35 for a softcover copy or $75 for a limited hardcover copy. The latter includes two tickets to a pre-launch cocktail party, with complimentary drinks and appetizers, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Avening Hall on Saturday, Sept. 19. That same evening, the launch is open to the public from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will include a panel discussion, appetizers and a cash bar.
