Venant lundi prochain, le 21 août, Nathalie Geddry va me parler sur “La mouvée,” son émission de Radio-Canada.

Coming on Monday, August 21, Nathalie Geddry will be interviewing me on her Radio-Canada program, La Mouvée.

Le sujet : mon nouveau livre, “Into the Wind”.

We will be talking about “Into the Wind.”

L’entrevue commencera probablement vers 17h40.

The most likely time for the interview is around 5:40 pm.

Sur le 21 août, La Mouvée sera diffusée à travers les quatre provinces de l’Atlantique.

On Aug. 21, La Mouvée will be broadcasting in all four Atlantic provinces.

I had a bit of a George Bailey moment earlier this week.

Tuesday to be exact. Between 3:30 and 4:00 pm.

It was not long after my latest SCANS class in Truro, NS. I was reflecting on how well those two-hour sessions have gone so far. The two dozen attendees seem very interested and engaged. In fact, quite a few of them have told me so.

And that’s where George Bailey comes in. (Played by Jimmy Stewart, he’s the central character in the Frank Capra film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”)

No, I had not been considering jumping into an icy river on Christmas Eve because my world had fallen apart. It was rather the grateful part, that comes at the end.

That’s because I had of course been in the dark before beginning to offer my SCANS talks about “History, Fiction and a little Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Would any of the attendees actually connect with my chosen topics and my way of delivering that content? Or was the world perhaps getting tired of hearing about topics that interest me? And which have been the subject of my writing for half a century.

Happily, it appears that such fatigue has not quite yet arrived. Of course, it’s coming; it comes for all of us. But for the moment, my George Bailey moment, it’s not here yet.

I have one more class to go. To be sure, I’m hoping for another couple of hours of interest and attention.

One more time, I’ll be grateful for that.

That’s what I look like?

Really?

Apparently so. Because that’s a freeze frame from a new video.

The filming was done in October 2021.But I thought (or rather hoped) maybe I was younger than that. Alas, so it goes.

The video is entitled “Woven Stories” and will be released in the weeks ahead. It is 18 minutes long and tells the story of the PEI national historic site known as Skmaqn-Port-Joye-Fort Amherst. I am one of several talking heads.

Some may recall that SPLJFA is the same site Jesse Francis and I wrote a book about recently. I also contributed to the site’s new outdoor exhibit, which will be installed this summer.

Memory can play some odd tricks. Blur and invent, to name two.

And sometimes disappear.

I received an email a few days ago informing me that a film I was in (as a historian talking about the Sieur de Mons and the early days of Acadie and New France) will soon be screened down in Annapolis Royal.

I had no recollection of ever being in such a film. My curiosity was piqued.

Then Christine Igot, author of the initial email, sent me a newspaper story with a photo showing me (and Theresa Bunbury, Wayne Melanson and others) taken during the film shoot in 2001. The documentary film was released in 2002, and seen only in France.

And that seems to explain why I have no recollection of the film. I had never seen it. If I had, I might have remembered my small part, filmed in the fall of 2001.

In any case, the film is to be screened in Annapolis Royal on Feb. 22, 2023, and I’m going to go see it. Details are on the poster.

Hard to believe!

That our regular game of Scrabble would lead to the title of my next book (Into the Wind) and some key words related to the story.

Yes, hard to believe.

I’m guessing the author was looking to do some early publicity for the book. (Coming from Acorn Press in the spring.)

There’s writing, and then there’s writing.

The focus in the 18th-century Diderot and d’Alembert “Encyclopedia” — the world’s first such compendium— was on the technical aspects of putting words on pages with quill pens in the most attractive way possible. It was not about how to generate especially meaningful content in engaging ways.

Nonetheless, are these not beautiful engravings? I dearly wish that my posture at my writing table matched what is shown here. But then, I’m much happier using a computer than a quill pen.