bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2000-2001) — Winter 2000/2001 // Hiver 2000/2001, p. 37
Linda Berry combined with flair and a great sense of fun two careers, one in journalism and the other in diplomacy. She began her writing career as a reporter and drama critic for the Montreal Gazette. She filed stories for Southam News Services and wrote a regular column about life “Down Under” while serving with her diplomat husband, Michael, in such capitals as London, Paris, Singapore and Canberra. In Singapore, she wrote “Singapore’s River, A living Legacy” which won the gold medal at the Singapore Book Fair in 1982. Linda died at her home in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia on August 25, 2000. The following article, written by Linda, was first published in the Canberra Times.
You can go home again, if only in heart and mind
There is a popular notion that, as the title of Thomas Wolfe’s book says, you can’t go home again. If that were so I would be in a permanent state of pessimism, since as a diplomat’s wife, I have frequently departed and returned to my home town of Ottawa; also lived in places that I have come to think of as home, only to leave, longing to return someday.
The settling-in process doesn’t get any easier as the years roll by, but being a passionate reader and a writer by profession has always eased the transition. Reading and writing make it possible for me to hold my various worlds in my heart and mind, allowing me to revisit the past, enjoy the present and relish the future; that is, have access to all my homes whenever the spirit moves me.
Reading not only enables me to keep my Canadian home with me while I am abroad, but particularly helps me to prepare for a move to a new location. Our first posting was to Berlin in the late 1960’s. Before leaving and on that journey I familiarized myself with Germany by reading German authors like Gunther Grass (The Tin Drum) and Heinrich Boll (Billiards at Half Past Nine).
During our time in that country I found that looking after two small children seemed to shrink my attention span to just about zero, an affliction that lasted for some years. How fortunate for me that this period coincided with the blossoming of Canadian short-story writers and poets who are still dear to my heart. The poems of Margaret Atwood and the stories of Alice Munro saved a very frazzled and homesick young mother on many a grey Berlin day.
Whenever I reread a story from Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades or an Atwood poem from The Circle Game I am transported back to my living room in Berlin; its French doors leading to a garden shaded by pine trees through which, on bleak autumn days, the famous Berliner luft used to blow. Odd that, since, at the time, reading Atwood and Munro was an effort to recapture the sights, sounds and feelings of small town Ontario for which I so yearned. Of course when we returned to Ottawa I was then homesick for Berlin and would dip into something like John Le Carre’s A Small Town in Germany to give me a hit of another home. The short stories of H.E. Bates and the novels of Margaret Drabble, particularly Jerusalem the Golden, were my preparation for our second posting, to London. But it was my writing this time that really helped me to understand the British and to begin to feel a part of the London scene.
Writing about life in London for a Canadian news service, my assignments took me into the dressing rooms of the Palladium (to interview Ronnie Corbett while he was performing in the Cinderella panto). Westminster Abbey, (to cover Princess Ann’s wedding), the local wine bar (the venue for Mark Phillip’s stag party) and to the Albert Hall, where I took part in and wrote about the first all-comers performance of The Messiah. By the time we left that fascinating city I could sing I love London town like a native. I no longer needed Ms Drabble and Mr. Bates to show me the ropes. But I turned to them once again back in Ottawa when the homesick pangs for the British capital started up right on cue.
Four years back in Ottawa were spent trying to catch up with books, and authors who had emerged during our stint in London. I no sooner felt on top of that situation than we were posted to Singapore. Here my guides were Noel Barber, Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham, expatriates like myself. To better understand the locals, I wrote a history of the Singapore River. The hub of Singapore’s entrepot trade, this waterway figures prominently in the story of Singapore itself. The many hours spent in the National Library, and many more hours walking the river quays, talking to people, and photographing the early dawn and late dusk light, brought an understanding of, and a closeness to the people of Singapore that no amount of reading ever could have done.
We were living in Paris when we learned that our next home would be Canberra. And so I started a familiar process once again.
On a cold wet winter day I took the metro to the working-class suburb of St. Denis, : where there was, of all things, an Australian bookshop with the quirky name of Cannibal Pierce. This hole-in-the-wall on a dingy residential street half a world away from Australia, provided a treasure trove of literary road maps of the Land of Oz; short-story collections, novels, political commentaries, as well as the usual travel guides. On the metro ride home, reading Steven Writers’ Canberra Tales. I was already climbing to the top of Mt. Ainslie viewing the valleys and hills of the Australian capital.
Writing a column about life in Australia, this time for the Ottawa Citizen, quickly widened my knowledge of the land and its people. Subjects ranged widely: The glories of Australian wineries, Aboriginal cave paintings in Kakadu, the Canadians transported to the penal colonies in Sydney and Hobart the colourful bird life in Canberra, and the sex industry in the ACT (not as shocking to me as to some others, since in Paris our local tart plied her wares from a smart little black Fiat — the Midnight Special — in front of our Avenue Foch apartment).
I have kept green the memories of Paris and Parisians by writing a novel set in the City of Light. From time to time, too, I pick up my worn copy of Emile Zola’s L’oeuvre, his novel based on the life of the French painter Edouard Manet. Then, like magic, I am once again walking across the passerelle des Arts, that delicate footbridge across the Seine which joins the beaux arts to the Louvre. It might not be quite the same as being there, but it’s pretty close second.
When it comes time to say goodbye to Australia I have bookshelves stuffed with titles by such Aussie writers as Rodney Hall, Peter Carey, Elizabeth Jolley and Marion Halligan. It is comforting to know that on a snowy winter day in Ottawa it will be so easy to return to the sunny climes of Australia. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that novel set in Paris doesn’t end up somewhat seasoned with a little flavour of Oz.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2000-2001) — Winter 2000/2001 // Hiver 2000/2001, p. 37. Read the rest of this issue →
