Three writers, members of the BC chapter of the Canadian Authors Association, who have written and published memoirs, will tell the audience what propelled them to write a memoir, how they went about collecting and organizing the material, what they included and what they left out, what was most rewarding and most frustrating about writing the book, and how they found a publisher.

Location: Room C420

Type: Panel

Sponsored by Word Vancouver · Canadian Authors Association

Rosemary Keevil, The Art of Losing It: A Memoir of Grief and Addiction (She Writes Press) | Patrick McLaren, Magic Travels: The Unlikely Adventures of a Geologist (Friesen Press) | Franke James, Freeing Theresa: A True Story About My Sister and Me (The James Gang, Iconoclasts)

About The Panelists

Rosemary Keevil

Rosemary Keevil is a freelance journalist and the author of The Art of Losing It: A Memoir of Grief and Addiction. She has been a TV news reporter, a current affairs radio show host, and managing editor of a professional women’s magazine. Rosemary lives in Whistler, British Columbia.

Patrick McLaren

Dr. Patrick McLaren is a retired geologist who worked as a Research Scientist before founding a consulting company specializing in marine and coastal processes. He learned to be a magician in his early life (1950's and 60's) in Ottawa, then worked as a young cowboy in Jasper National Park. By the time he was twenty, he had hitchhiked around Europe, taken part in the first helicopter operation to map the geology of the Rocky Mountains, and spent a summer in the High Arctic (Baffin Island) carrying out glaciological research. These first twenty years are recorded in Magic Travels: The Unlikely Adventures of a Geologist of his memoir. Taking a year off from university (1967-8), he travelled around the world. Navigating a small, leaky yawl across the South Pacific, he worked as a magician in Fiji and Australia, and was the first to warn the Australians of the dangers of global warming in a TV interview. After adventures in the Simpson Desert and the Java Sea, he hitchhiked from Singapore to Bangkok followed by a gruelling overland route through Asia, including Afghanistan and Iran, to arrive in Europe just in time for the 1968 Russian invasion of Prague. The events of that year are described in Volume 2 (A Year Around Earth) which is ready for publication. Volume 3 (That was Lucky!) is currently being written. Completing his Ph.D. in geology, he was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada. Returning to the Arctic, he pioneered under ice diving enabling him to develop Sediment Trend Analysis (STA), a technique now used world-wide. With the Survey, Patrick dived throughout the Arctic, the Beaufort Sea and Labrador. He was the first scientist to dive under the ice at the North Pole. He also led two Arctic voyages, one of which only made it to Labrador after his charter vessel nearly sank in a storm. He also survived two helicopter crashes. He founded his consulting company in the UK (1985) while a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge.

Franke James

Franke James is an activist, artist, and author. The spark for her book, Freeing Teresa, was lit in 2013 when her younger sister, Teresa Heartchild, was put into a nursing home. Franke helped Teresa get discharged, regain her decision-making rights, and win a government apology. This dramatic sister story is attracting attention because—twenty years after institutionalization was supposed to be abolished—there are thousands of young people with disabilities, like Teresa, living in nursing homes. Franke and Teresa are appearing on a panel at Inclusion BC to talk about "The Quiet Reinstitutionalization: Young People with Disabilities in Long-term Care." Franke is the author of three other books dealing with environmental activism, free expression, and ethical decision-making. She is the winner of the 2014 BC Civil Liberties Award for Excellence in the Arts. In 2015, she was awarded PEN Canada’s Ken Filkow Prize for her “tenacity in uncovering an abuse of power... in the face of censorship.” Franke welcomes opportunities to speak to groups. Her story about standing up for what she believes in shows how we can each make a difference. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and her sister, Teresa.