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www.oakvillebeaver.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, March 31, 2010 · 20 Artscene Dressed for the season Sign up now for guitar, bass, drums, and piano OAKVILLE'S MUSIC STORE PHOTOS BY NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER SPRING IN DOWNTOWN OAKVILLE: Fashion at its finest is back in Downtown Oakville with the 2010 Downtown Oakville BIA & Mercedes Benz Oakville Autohaus Fashion Week, April 14 to 17. A preview of the fare was on stage at the Oakville Fashion Week Launch Party held at Mercedes-Benz Oakville Autohaus. There was casual wear for women and men as well as the scoop on lingerie from Inside Story. Downtown Oakville's fashion boutiques and salons are participating in four days of events beginning Wednesday, April 14 and culminating with the grand finale fashion show featuring spring and summer collections Saturday, April 17 in the downtown under a marquee. VIP tickets cost $75 and general admission tickets cost $50. For more information, visit www.oakvilledowntown.com or call the BIA office at 905-844-4520. Authors thrusting hidden stories into the spotlight By Melanie Cummings SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER Hidden stories get pushed into the spotlight in Don Gillmor's Kanata, Lynden McIntyre's The Bishop's Man and Leon Rooke's The Last Shot. The three authors exposed the sources to their works of fiction to a crowd of book lovers gathered at an author's brunch organized by aptly named book seller, Bookers Bookstore. Through Gillmor's research on the CBC television series Canada, A People's History details of the life of unsung cartographer David Thompson continually captured his interest. With only one good eye, a bum leg and 13 children in tow -- with his wife Charlotte Small, whom he married when she was just 13 and he was 29 years old -- Thompson put the country on the map, creating our world twodimensionally. Travelling in canoes he constructed himself and using rudimentary survey instruments, he covered "incredible territory and kept unbelievable journals," said Gillmor. These accomplishments in the pages of Kanata share space with such historical figures as General Wolfe, Jack Kennedy, Louis Riel and Sir John A. MacDonald. Through Thompson's fictional illegitimate son Michael Mountain Horse the narrative travels the milestones of the 20th century: world wars, the Depression, the 1908 Calgary Stampede, Hollywood in the 1920s, until settling for a time as an Alberta history teacher in 1967. But despite all of Thompson's accomplishments, he died poor and obscure in Montreal at the age of 87. The death of a friend's son set the wheels in motion for broadcast journalist Linden McIntyre's fictional work The Bishop's Man. During a visit to his old stomping grounds of Cape Breton and while sitting with his fishing buddies, McIntyre heard the comment "Angus is never going to get over what happened to his boy last week." It turned out that Angus' son shot himself in the garage of the family home. Inside his pocket was a handwritten note explaining that a local priest sexually abused him in his childhood. While writing the book, McIntrye worried about "scraping at a scab" of controversy that continues to dog the Catholic church -- as well as his 90-year-old, church-going mom's reaction. But McIntyre took a broader angle to what he calls "one of the most disturbing crimes of our time." "It's a universal story about breach of trust, failure of leadership and ethical compromise," said McIntyre. The protagonist in the novel is Duncan MacAskill a trouble-shooter and right-hand man of the bishop sent to clean up the mess created by the sexual predator scandal. In doing so, he turns to alcohol to quell voices of his own past. According to Leon Rooke, the author of 300 short stories, "The wonders of writing have to do with the process of discovery and what the author is not telling that he should be." The Last Shot adds 11 more short stories and a novella to the award-winning author's list of credits, which also include a Governor General's award for Shakespeare's Dog, in 1985. Where the novella casts characters such as Prissy Thibidault watching alligator wrestling, the short stories tell the tales of a boy called Dark in search of his mother, gay friends who escape to Paris; J.D. Salinger and his garbage, and a novice writer who follows a how-to-manual on writing, among other intrigues. The next Booker's brunch is slated for April 18 and features Judy Fong Bates (The Year of Finding Memory), Helen Simonson (Major Pettigrew's Last Stand) and Bridgett Stutchbury (The Bird Detective).