Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• In the Bear’s House (Novel)
• Bruce’s website

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Bruce Hunter– Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm here today with Bruce Hunter. Bruce was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Treaty Seven lands, and he was deafened as an infant and afflicted with low vision for most of his adult life. After high school, he worked as a laborer, equipment operator, Zamboni driver, and completed his technical education as a gardener and arborist.

And in his late 20s, his poetry earned him a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts to study with novelist W.O. Mitchell and the poet Irving Layton. He studied the humanities and taught in the Creative Writing department at York and subsequently at Seneca College. And he's a longtime active writer, editor, speaker, and mentor. And we're here today to talk about his book, In the Bear's House. Welcome, Bruce.

Bruce:
Good afternoon, Rhonda. I'm happy to be here and honored—if I can just show you this beautiful new book.

Rhonda:
I know, it's gorgeous. I love the cover. It’s absolutely fabulous.

Bruce:
I'm going to show you his Italian brother.

Rhonda:
So it was translated into Italian. How did that happen?

Bruce:
Well, that happened first, actually.

Rhonda:
Oh!

Bruce:
I've been translated into Italian for about the last 15 years in, uh, usually in small publications. I have friends who are translators and, uh—no, I'm not fluent—but I've learned aspects, different aspects, of the language and of translation, and I've done a little bit myself.

But what happened is, we knew that In the Bear’s House in English was coming out, and I suggested to my translator in Florence, Andrea Sorati, and to my publisher, and they went for it. And, uh, they moved so quickly that actually that book came out as I was in the middle of editing the English version. So to say that the beginning of the year, the end of last year, was very crazy would be an understatement.

Rhonda:
Wow, not many people come out in Italian first. That's kind of amazing. That's great.

Bruce:
Well, I was really excited about that because, first of all, I'm an older writer. I'm 73 years old, and I know some of your audience are younger writers when they're starting out. But I think when I look back on all the different things I've learned over the years, what stands out? Yes, you want to get out there and meet people and network and do that kind of stuff. But the thing that has sustained me throughout publication—and just about every genre—is craft.

Rhonda:
Yeah.

Bruce:
I worked a long time on the craft. I'm a slow writer. My volume is fairly low as writers go. But when I go back and I look at the different things I've done, either for translation or for the re-release of In the Bear’s House, the craft stands.

There were things that were updated, by all means, but there wasn't a question of changing scenes or changing characters for the most part. There was updating, absolutely, addressing the cultural context of Italy. But universal stories are universal stories.

Rhonda:
Right.

Bruce:
This is about a young mother raising a deaf child in the 1950s and 60s.

Rhonda:
Right. And I... this is a two point-of-view story. How did you end up with two points of view—and these points of view in particular—in the novel?

Bruce:
Well, this is everybody's worst nightmare. I was three years into it and I realized I'm on the wrong track. And if I don't tell this story from the mother's point of view—and at this point it was third-person omniscience from the deaf child's point of view—I'm not gonna have a complete story.

So in order to round it out and give the essence of the ’50s and ’60s, I needed to hear the mother's story. And in my research, I'd read a lot of the mothers’ accounts of raising their children and advocating for them. And a lot of what we have in Canada came as a result of either deaf people themselves advocating or, more likely, their mothers. There wasn't a program in the schools. There wasn't a support network.

Rhonda:
So it was important for the novel, but also important just historically.

Bruce:
Yeah. And I taught sociology for a long time, which teaches us to look at our society and our interactions in all different ways. So I really wanted to be, uh, fastidious in the research—not just historically, but sociologically—to show what was happening in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s.

And even though, uh, my book is set primarily in Alberta, the universality of that time goes across the country for the most part.

Rhonda:
Yeah, I'm sure. Can I ask though, there are two very different characters. Obviously, they’re different ages, different perspectives. We have Claire and then we have her son, Trout. Did you have any challenges? Talk to me about how you approached it. Like, did you write all of Trout's story and his point of view? Did you write all of Claire's next? Or did you like go back and forth? And were there any challenges going back and forth between those two POVs?

Bruce:
Well, I always say before I start a project, I'm not going to do this one the same way I did the last one—or make it as hard.

Rhonda:
This one will be easier. Yes.

Bruce:
Yep, right? It definitely was a challenge. I modeled the mother in the book after my own mother, which had its benefits but also had its complications. The woman in the book is portrayed as depressive. My mother was actually bipolar disorder, which is very complicated in itself. And that was just one aspect of the story. So I didn't want that to take over.

I ended up writing the chapters intermittently. So in other words, I would write Claire when I was in the mood to be Claire, and when I was in the mood to be Trout—that went into a different point of view. My best courses in university, which helped me in the writing of this book—in fact, a lot of what I do—were my film courses.

And the reason I say that is, a lot of it is in film, where with the microphone, the point of view—and when you switch point of view in a film, there’s a segue. And the segue might be sound, ah, or it might be some other device that links the scene. And it isn't always logical—it's narrative. And the narrative can very often be emotional.

And, uh, this is probably high praise—my Italian publisher said, “This is such an emotional book.” And that was one of the challenges, because it was so emotional to go into these characters and then have to come back to everyday reality when there are parts of the book that are quite dramatic. And some of them are dramatic, but it is ultimately a story of strength and redemption.

But the characters had to go through these events, and some of them were fun to write. Some of them were a lot of fun to read. Some of them were disintegrating. And I would have a sore neck for days after.

One interesting story is, I've never been on a dog sled. It's a bit of a plot spoiler here. There came to a point in the book where I needed a sled chase. I really wanted one. I mean, how Canadian can you get? But never been on one.

So I called my accountant up and said, “You know, it's this expensive. Can I write this off? Because I have to do a dog sledding run.” And he said, “Well, it's research—yes, you can.” And I said, “Well, gotta go.” So off I went dog sledding.

Rhonda:
I love that.

Bruce:
And that became, in some people's minds, the most realistic thing in the book. But it's fiction. And that's the beauty of what I was trying to do—I'm using historical facts, and I can't change those facts. There is no redemption. There is no resolution in some historical events. It is what it was. And you're not going to be able to reinvent that, but you can take a different look at the perspective. And so that was one of the other challenges—the enormous amount of research.

Rhonda:
Oh, and how did you approach that? Did you do it all at the front, or…?

Bruce:
Well, I started off in the microfiche files at the Calgary Herald and Calgary Albertan, as it was called—as The Sun was called in those days. And at some point, I found out things about my own family and extended family and the politicians. I was physically ill. I was actually physically ill.

And I had coffee with a journalist friend and he said, “Whatever you do, Bruce, don’t throw it away. Keep it. You’re a writer. You’re going to find a place for it.”

And I think that’s so much of what writing is for a lot of us. It’s not necessarily confessional—and I see nothing wrong with that, by the way—but we have these things happen or we find these things out. What do we do with them now? And how do we weave that—or, as one reviewer said, braid that—into the story?

So this was an enormously complex novel to write. And the other is that I deal with First Nations stories, some of which have not been written down but were related to me by family members—either in journals or things like that. So there was a sense that, um, I want to save these stories before they’re lost, because those stories will not… they’ll never surface.

And to give you an example, there’s a story in the novel which is, uh, based on a real-life interaction of a great-uncle who, uh, eventually—not in the beginning, because they were very far apart—the uncle became friends with one of the great elders and chiefs of the Stoney Nakoda people.

Through that interaction over a number of years, um, he made a friendship pipe for my great-uncle in reality. And no one knew about it. And the first edition went out and one of my cousins read it—and it was his mother who was the daughter of the great-uncle. In other words, he was the grandson of this great-uncle. And he found a box of things in the basement of the family home in Edmonton—and there was the stone pipe.

Rhonda:
Wow.

Bruce:
It could have disappeared. The stone pipe, I think, is an interesting, um, symbol possibly of reconciliation. These are two men that started out as loggerheads and ended up becoming friends. And so far as—I wouldn’t want to say the word “enemy,” but I don’t think “enemy” is too strong a word to use, either.

But I thought, this is an interesting story because it goes against some of what we hear. And the novel revolves around, part of it, the building of the Bighorn Dam and Lake Abraham, which is the biggest man-made lake in Alberta and also the biggest dam.

That was built on First Nations land. It was done without consultation. It was done with an assumption—“Well, this is good for us, therefore it’s good for everybody.” And the irony of the name Lake Abraham is that it was named after a chief who didn’t want the lake.

Rhonda:
Yeah, I read that in the essay at the back of your book. I’d love to talk a little bit about place, because this is, you know, it’s so important to the novel—the Kootenay Plains. Can you talk a little bit about some of the experiences you had, kind of, you know, going deep into that sense of place in order to write the novel?

Bruce:
Well, one of the questions I often get asked is, you know, “How much of it’s you and how much of it is research?” I don’t really know, to be quite honest, when I go back—because it all blends into imagination and you become that character, that place. And the place itself is an important character in the book.

I was nine years old when I went up to Kootenay Plains for the first time. I was a deaf child, I was invisible—but I’d already learned at an early age that, uh, hearing is not just about listening; it’s about observing and feeling and sensing and smelling and all of those things. That all contributes to your perception.

So as a nine-year-old, I was a very perceptive nine-year-old, and I listened—I didn’t talk. So I watched all the adults, including First Nations. And I did meet some of the chiefs and the parents of the children, and I was invited to take part in some of the dances.

And I was very fortunate to watch a Sundance from a distance. We weren’t allowed, of course, into the Sundance, but it showed the level of respect for the people that I was with from the First Nations—and also their hospitality.

Then later on, as I started to write the book—this is like 40 years later—I started making many trips back to Kootenay Plains. And I write about that in the essay at the end of the book.

Although there wasn’t resolution on some things in the book, I wanted a resolution for the reader—and also for myself—to try to make sense of everything that had happened since I started the book.

And also since the first edition was published, because I had a lot of very positive reactions and some critical reactions to questions people asked that I still ask—and some which will probably never be answered in my lifetime.

But it’s very emotional to go back, because I remember the valleys—the 20-mile-long valley before it was flooded. That image is imprinted on my nine-year-old brain. And one of the things W.O. Mitchell used to say was that that time in your life—it’s the one you’re gonna draw on for the rest of your life in writing.

And, you know, when I first heard that, I thought, “Oh, sure. You’re not going to stand by that.” But he was right. I’m not saying everything I do—but certainly a significant part of what I do—because it’s that return to a kind of Eden.

And I go back to this, and there was no highway. There wasn’t even a gravel road—there was a dirt road. Nobody had cell phones. There were no telephones in the backcountry. And if something happened, it could take days to get out or get help in—if they could even get in, and especially in the winter.

So isolation was real. And technology had not developed to the point where we could depend on it. Four-wheel drives broke down. So most people didn’t have a four-wheel drive—you would have a set of chains and you would have a come-along or a hand winch of some type to get you out. Or you had horses, or some people had dogs.

And it was very much a time in which people—if you didn’t have it, you made it. And if you couldn’t make it, you did without it.

So I was around all these very pragmatic, thick-skinned people who appreciated life and certainly celebrated life in every way they could—but also were used to being pragmatic in almost everything. So their relationships were pragmatic. Um, they were trading—transactional is the word we would use.

Rhonda:
Right.

Bruce:
So I was affected by all that, and I think as a young deaf child. And I was in a so-called “normal school” at the time—and residential schools were a term used broadly for training schools, schools for people with disabilities, and things like that. But part of the essence of the ’50s and ’60s was: send people away.

Rhonda:
Yeah.

Bruce:
And I was very nearly one of those people. And that was not always beneficial because I was alone. I was isolated. You didn’t meet anybody like me until I was in my mid-30s.

Rhonda:
Wow. Wow.

Bruce:
Because not many of us made it through the education system.

Rhonda:
Right. Wow. That’s amazing.

Bruce:
Yeah. So it’s interesting that you get older, you go back on your life, and you put together the jigsaw puzzle that, um—it’s not linear.

Rhonda:
Yeah.

Bruce:
It’s not linear at all. And sometimes it’s random—some more random things happen that you make sense of.

Rhonda:
Right. Later.

Bruce:
You’re half-goo.

Rhonda:
Yeah.

Rhonda:
So, Bruce, this is a re-release. Frontenac House has it. They’re re-releasing it right now with this gorgeous cover. What’s it like to re-release something that was already in the world in one version before?

Bruce:
It’s an incredible experience. And I’m pragmatic. I’m an idealist on one hand, but I’m a pragmatist. So I was nervous when this book went over, because this is not only a generation younger, but a generation or two younger. And I thought, it’s just going to fly.

And then, of course, when it went over to Italy—there again, I’m not only dealing with a generation, I’m dealing with younger people. The reaction has been incredible. It really has. I mean, I’m reading reviews that make me weep.

Rhonda:
Oh wow, that’s amazing.

Bruce:
They’re that beautiful. And, um, I had a review from Calgary from a young Chinese Canadian graduate of the University of Calgary, and she talked about the Chinatown and the Chinese influence in Calgary. And she said, “What Bruce Hunter does is include that, and it’s not just the image of oil wells and teepees and cowboys.”

I said, hallelujah. I’m a lefty.

Rhonda:
Right.

Bruce:
And I grew up in Calgary, and my wife—I’m married to a Jewish woman—and we live in Thornhill. So, you know, my life now is very different from my younger life.

But she said, “You know, when you go back to Calgary and you go to the patch, you get hives.”

Well, because I know what it’s like. I socialized with those kinds of people. Some of them are very much like us, others aren’t—as it goes anywhere. But I think I’m actually overwhelmed by the reaction to the book.

And what I noticed especially is women who are grandmothers and mothers really wrapped this book in their arms. I just heard from somebody this morning—a very accomplished writer, Darlene Madott. And Darlene said, “I don’t want to finish this book. I’m… I have a chapter with each cup of tea each morning.”

So I’m really pleased with that. But I also went back for the new edition, and I rewrote some scenes that are more elbows-up.

Rhonda:
Why did you—talk to me about that. Why did you do that?

Bruce:
Well, there were two things that came up—three, actually. One was the perspective of women, uh, in the early days. They called themselves “old-timers,” not pioneers. They would never be that arrogant.

But my great-great-auntie, who is the inspiration for part of the book, and my great-grandmother—they were Gibson girls. And Gibson girls were empowered, passionate, fashionable, smart women.

My great-grandmother was not an Annie Oakley. She was very much a fashionable woman. But she was also a crack shot, and she brought down a bear on the ranch with a single shot—in the armpit, which of course, right where her heart is. And I’m thinking, “You waited a long time to take that shot.”

And the rifle she would have used was a .22, it was a long cartridge. In other words, it wasn’t an elephant gun.

Rhonda:
Yeah, wow.

Bruce:
You didn’t have a second chance. Now, what I know about bears—it’s probably that we’re histrionic in our reaction to bears. That’s one of the differences, I think, between all the different cultures in Canada—our perspectives on bears, wildlife, and the wild.

But the other, um, thing I changed was the reaction of the mother to the school nurse telling her that her son got polio.

And polio, in the 1950s—it’d be 1955—in Calgary and Red Deer, this is what I learned—last-minute, eleventh-hour research—was so epidemic and pervasive that the schools in Calgary and Red Deer were shut down. They were closed completely.

And this is very relevant to now, because we talk about vaccines. I’m here—and you probably are—because of the vaccine for polio.

And when I started to read, I knew some of these stories anyway, because I had classmates who were older, who had brothers and sisters who were in iron lungs and all that kind of stuff.

The other thing that I think changed was that I had this—in the original edition, there is the granddaughter of the chief. And I had her a little subdued in my first writing, although she was a strong woman. And I think a very, eventually very powerful woman within her group.

But her grandfather, as they find out about the Bighorn Dam, is going to come in and says, “When you go away, come back to the people as a lawyer. The white man is only afraid of two things: lawyers and bears.”

Rhonda:
Such a great line. So good. Wow. Well, this has been such a great conversation. I’m really glad you were able to join me today. I’ll put the link to the book in the show notes so that folks can find it. And just—thanks so much for being with me for this conversation today, Bruce.

Bruce:
Well, thank you. I’m honored, first of all. And second of all, if anyone would like to contact me, uh, my email is at the bottom of my website. And thank you very much. I’m honored, and it’s such a thrill to see the response to the book—and yours is part of it. So, thank you.

Rhonda:
Thank you.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

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