Writer’s Corner
Peter Elkington

I grew up in a family of story tellers. Both my mother and my grandmother would tell the most wonderful stories; true or not, they would entrance me and my cousins. They would lead us into the realm of imagination where anything was possible. One particular story my mother told was when she was a little black girl in Africa. You could feel and hear the jungle. The fact that my mother was neither black nor had she ever been to Africa made no difference.

I didn’t have a way with words and felt quite diffident about putting my thoughts on paper. Nobody would be interested, or perhaps I felt ashamed or guilty. It was only after I had retired that I began to see stories all around me that needed to be told. You just have to start writing what you know or have experienced. My daughters urged me to write down all the songs, poems, and stories that I had heard as a young boy. That sounded easy. Twenty chapters and 100 pages later I had a book. There were many stops and starts, and a great deal of discouragement, but if you feel what you have to say is important, you will continue to write even if it is only a sentence a day. Then other books followed. Some stories took longer to tell than others.
A number of years ago a friend of mine suggested that I write my experiences of WW II and the depression, because he said, that many who had lived through those times were passing away and not recording their experiences. My experiences turned into a book. It has been a wonderful experience for me to delve into, and relive past memories. Some were heart breaking and terribly sad and others were joyous.

So I would urge anyone who has anything to say or to relate, to write.

Peter Elkington is a published historical writer and novelist living in Revelstoke.

[Winter 2005/06 Article]
[Summer 2005 Article]