The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver, Friday February 27, 2009 - 33 Renowned authors write about love, loss and life Continued from page 31 Children. With a grant from the Toronto Arts Council, Gunraj took time off her job to complete her book that tells the story of Neela, a rebel who is envious of her brother Navi's genius. She takes up with the town bad boy, running away with him to the eco-tourist town of Eden. When she gets pregnant and discovers there is no future with the baby's father, Neela heads back home. But when her infant daughter is kidnapped, she relies on her brother for help. It examines feelings of jealousy and regret, and life lessons learned while matur- ing. "I have a naïve goal to make the world better," said Gunraj. "Regrets are important but what we do to act on them and make change is far more important." Borrowing a quote from Alice Walker that asks: "If art doesn't make us better, than what is it for?" Gunraj wants to make a difference through her writing, but she's not going to quit her day job to do that. The name Dan Hill is most often connected with such well-known songs as Sometimes When We Touch, a song he released in 1977 and could have retired at the age of 23 for all of its success. In fact, when he called his dad, former Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Daniel Grafton Hill, to tell him, the good news was greeted only with cynicism and disbelief. I Am My Father's Son is a memoir chronicling Hill's acrimonious relationship with his "larger than life" dad, as a child of a mixed race couple and living with an activist, idealistic mom whose manic depression resulted in "sudden disappearances" to a psychiatric hospital. When his dad died in 2003, Hill said he died with him. Unable to write lyrics, he turned to prose. After reading archived letters that his dad had written at age 17 to his own father, Hill realized his battle for parental approval was a generational struggle. Incidentally, he discovered the difficulty of venturing into his brother's literary territory -- Hill's brother is Lawrence, the author of the number 1 bestseller The Book of Negroes. "Fiction is a lot harder than memoir writing," said Hill, who got his mom's permission to write I Am My Father's Son. Ironically, a song called My Father's Son that he wrote and performed for his dad before he slipped into a coma, recently came out as a single. European Engineering Combined With Traditional Workmanship "Building on the Brightest Ideas Around Glass" 905.849.0266 * Spring shows Spring exhibition openings will be held on Friday, March 6 from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square. A reception will follow from 8:30 to 10 p.m. at Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens. Novel Ideas runs March 7 to May 31 at Centennial Square. It features works by Adam David Brown, Ian Carr-Harris, Brian Dettmer, Paul de Guzman, Alexandre Itin, Nicholas Jones, Georgia Russell and Robert The. This group exhibition -- including key works from Oakville Galleries' permanent collection -- celebrates a fascination with the bound page and its inclination towards artistic re-interpretation. Michelle Gay's Interfaces and Operating Systems runs March 7 to June 5 at Gairloch Gardens. Gay's artistic practice is a hybrid of drawing and computer technology. Working closely with her brother, Colin, a particle physicist, Gay has been developing complex software- and hardware-based projects since 2000. Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square is located at 120 Navy St. in downtown Oakville. Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens is located at 1306 Lakeshore Rd. E., two kilometres east of downtown Oakville. For information about Oakville Galleries, call 905-844-4402 or visit www.oakvillegalleries.com. FREE DAILY SERVICE Morning and afternoon departures to Fallsview Casino *After $10 Casino Rebate Government Photo ID required Morning & Afternoon from Hopedale Mall EVERY WEDNESDAY From Carpool Lot Guelph Line, North Service Rd EVERY SUN, TUES, THURS, FRI & SAT Minimum 5- hour stay required. Valid government-issued photo identification and Players Advantage Club Card required to redeem offers. Offers subject to change without notice. Offers cannot be combined/substituted. Must be 19 years of age or older to board coaches bound for Fallsview Casino Resort. Void where prohibited. Cancellation Insurance included on all overnight trips. 1-800-838-1789 NO FUEL SURCHARGE 168 CLARENCE ST., PORT COLBORNE, L3K 3G5 Taxes included on all trips. OMCA Member FOR RESERVATIONS CALL T.I.C.O. #50007535 Writing workshop The West Side Writers is holding a nine-week course called Welcome to Creative Writing. The course runs Thursday afternoons from 12:45 to 2:45 p.m. from March 5-April 30 at St Cuthbert's Anglican Church, 1541 Oakhill Dr. For information or to register, contact Diana Revelins at 905-8236637 or e-mail Brian Henry at brianhenry@sympatico.ca.