Author Margaret Kell Virany finds a romantic love story from the twenties buried in letters, journals, diaries and photos left by her parents. A spark ignited in World War I develops into a lasting love in the snowy expanses and frozen lakes of the northern Manitoba bush inhabited by the Swampy Cree. They were an unlikely pair. She was a city councilor's daughter from Portsmouth, England (pop. 190,000) and he was a farmer's son from Cookstown, Ontario, Canada (pop. 550 not counting the pigs, sheep, horses and cows). They met in 1917 when her father, a Sunday school teacher, invited some colonial servicemen home for tea. The courtship is conducted on onion skin stationery over 5,000 miles between fog and bog. The writing recounts serving with the Canadian Navy in the North Sea, flying from London to Paris in 1927, crossing the Atlantic, canoeing up the fur trade route, and trekking in winter on a cariole toboggan to get to the hospital for a baby to be born. Day-to-day life of aboriginals is observed, and the positive role of missionaries in that era. More than just a northern adventure story, it is the hard journey of two souls seeking to create a better world after the trauma of the war. The love story is presented by the author but written in Kathleen and Jack's own words.
About the Author: Margaret Kell Virany has a BA in English Language & Literature from the University of Toronto where she learned journalism on The Varsity. Blazing a trail, she was first full-time female YMCA public relations officer in Montreal and Toronto; then assistant organizer of the first live CBC-TV national conference The Real World of Woman. As a freelancer her byline was in the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal and Toronto dailies, plus trade magazines. She edited government documents and wrote a consumer column. To fill a blank in her home community in the '80's, she became co-founder and editor of the Aylmer Bulletin, a newspaper laid out weekly with her husband Thomas' help on a ping pong table in their basement. Then she published a family history, A Book of Kells: Growing Up in an Ego Void. Virany's books hold a wealth of Canadian 20th century history broader than individuals and community. She was delighted to be introduced at the Centennial Conference honoring Northrop Frye in 2012 because of her class notes, now posted on the fryeblog by the Robert Denham Library. As a grandmother, she sails, skis, canoes, travels, gardens and likes to brag about additions to her family tree. She and Thomas have three children, five grandchildren and love living in the Aylmer sector of Gatineau, Québec, across the river from Ottawa.