As part of our IFOA: Ontario series, Open Book is thrilled to be hosting interviews with several IFOA: Ontario partners in addition to our author interviews. Partners include booksellers, libraries, literary organizations and more.
Today we talk with Hazel Lyder, owner of The Downtown Bookstore in Owen Sound.
Open Book:
To what aspect of IFOA Ontario are you most looking forward?
Hazel Lyder:
This may sound obvious but, to hear the authors read. The live performance is such a "value added" when you are reading the book. It gives extra context as well as a deeper sense of voice. I will never forget the extraordinary reading by Andree Levy (The Long Song) at last year’s Owen Sound IFOA event. It was like a one-woman stage show. Then on the other end of the spectrum was Dianne Warren’s subdued reading at Harbourfront Centre for the Governor General’s nominees … it raised goosebumps on my skin. Extremely different reading styles but both fantastic.
OB:
Tell us about a favourite spot or area in Ontario.
HL:
Well, Tobermory is my home town so the village there is still a favourite place even though it’s so much busier than it was in my childhood. When I was very young my family briefly owned a bakery there (The Smith Family Bakery) and it was an idyllic place to be as a child. Less so for my father and mother who regularly got up at four o’clock in the morning to have the baking ready by opening time, at the same time as raising four children. After the bakery my father bought a tour boat that he named “The Captain Ahab” (guess what his favourite book is), and I spent several summers working as his "first mate." With my dad I spent a lot of time exploring the bays and islands just off the peninsula. I lived Swallows and Amazons.
OB:
What were some of your early experiences with public readings?
HL:
When I was studying at Trinity College in Dublin (as a mature student), I went to my first public reading in a package church as part of the celebration of International Women’s Day. It was 1999. I remember the Irish poet Mary Dorcey reading a poem about her mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. I wept. Irish language poet Medbh McGuckian also read. It was so wonderful I soon forgot about the hard church pew!
OB:
Tell us about a favourite book set in Ontario.
HL:
Just one? Really?
Rebakkah Adams recently published Front Porch Mannequins set in Tobermory which is pretty cool and it’s wickedly funny in a very dark way. I also really liked Peter Unwin’s Nine Bells for a Man a story about a man, escorting a coffin to Ontario from the west makes a series of fateful decisions that take him on board a doomed 19th century sailing vessel.
However, my favourite would have to be Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief which I know is fixed in many people’s minds as a maritime novel. But what about those scenes where the narrator goes to his elder brother in the Toronto rooming house? For me, they are among the most memorable moments in the novel. Meeting Callum in the Toronto slum room where he has ended up, does what great literature should do, it transforms the way we see and understand our fellow humans. Thanks to this kind of writing we look at the homeless guy on the street with compassion rather than condemnation. (Yes, Mr Ford we must keep those libraries open!)
Joseph Boyden did this too in his second (wonderful) novel Through Black Spruce when he took us to the homeless encampment in Toronto for the dinner of cotton candy fed Canadian goose. Delicious!
OB:
What is the best thing about your city?
HL:
Owen Sound is a city of contradictions. There is a definite tension between what I call "old Owen Sound," "we’ve always done it this way so why change?" and "new comers" who are pushing for innovation and change. It makes for vibrant discussion. Check out the letters to the editor page in the daily paper!
For a small city (really just a big town), it has an incredibly vibrant arts and culture scene — three book stores on the main street, a symphony orchestra, an incredible folk festival, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, a beautiful Carnegie Library, hundreds of visual artists and crafts people call the city and surrounding country side home. We have a few good writers in town too. I encourage you to check out Rebakkah Adams in particular.
OB:
What are you reading right now?
HL:
I’ve just finished Madeleine Thien's Certainty. It took me a little while to get into it but as I moved into the second half of the book I began to see the wonderful overarching structure of the story and found it very satisfying.
Owen Sound’s former Poet Laureate Liz Zetlin has a new collection of poetry out called The Punctuation Field and it is a ton of fun. No literary geek should be without a copy.
I also usually have a collection of short stories on the go and I have finally got to Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting, which I love. The story "Wonder About Parents" is dynamite! I could not stop laughing. It is an incredible combination of the challenges of parenting and the history of the louse. Do not miss it! I also especially like “Good Kids” as it somehow manages to knock the nostalgia off childhood and yet re-construct it.
Since 2006, Hazel Lyder and her husband have been running The Downtown Bookstore in Owen Sound, Ontario, where they provide literary sanctuary to their customers as well as two writers' groups. Hazel Lyder grew up in Tobermory, Ontario and lived abroad in Dublin, Ireland for many years. She obtained a degree in History from the University of Guelph (1985), where her twin children are today pursuing degrees. She went on to obtain a Masters in Women's Studies from Trinity College Dublin in 2000. She has been writing on and off for all her adult life and began working seriously in fiction about ten years ago.
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