Consider Attending Story North

Just got the latest advert from StoryNorth, The annual SC-CC AGM and Conference. This year it will be in Yellowknife, NWT 26-29 May.  More info from Peg Hasted, Patricia Houston or Al Fowler.

Award Winning Guild Member

Congratulations to Victoria Storytellers Guild Member, Sylvia Olsen, who won the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Historical Writing for her book, "Working With Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater."

The B.C. Historical Federation's annual award recognizes the best non-fiction book representing an aspect of British Columbia history. "Working with Wool" has also been nominated for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. (This notice appeared recently in Victoria's Time-Colonist Newspaper.)

Listeners of the World, Unite!

Photo by Katherine McGinnis

"Listening to a story is not a passive experience. It is an action-filled colorful event in the theatre of the mind. Storytelling, by its nature, is an audience-involving art form. As the storyteller's narrative, shared in words and gestures, is perceived by the listener, vivid images are created in the listener's imagination. Costumes, scenery, characters, come to life with as much complexity and detail as the creative listener devises. Even when the teller shares stories with a large group, there is an intimacy and an immediacy to the art form that bonds the teller and the listener as the journey of the tale unfolds...Since the imaging on the part of the listener is rooted in their own personal imagination, the transfer of the tale is both a group event and a highly intimate exchange between the teller and each listener. There are as many stories being heard as there are ears to hear the teller."

- From "Joining In. Some Thoughts on Audience Participation" by Heather Forest

For details of what's happening at this year's annual conference of the Storytellers of Canada- Conteurs du Canada, check out Al Fowler's storytelling blog #yyjstoryteller.

Kim Weitkamp in Penny Candy Love

SATURDAY JUNE 4th 2011 at 7:30 p.m.
A humorous look at life, love and other quandries with:
KIM WEITKAMP - HUMORIST, SINGER/SONG WRITER, STORYTELLER

Grace Lutheran Church, 1273 Fort St. (Northeast of Moss St.)
Tickets: Advance $15.00 and $20.00 at the door
Tickets Available from: Chronicles of Crime, 1057 Fort St.
Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street
Ivy's Bookshop, 2188 Oak Bay Ave.

Kim Weikamp is an award winning performer who shares original stories and songs at theaters and festivals across the continent. She is a master at building bridges from story to song to story. Her album, Penny Candy Love, recently won two World Storytelling awards. Victoria storytellers who have experienced Kim's warmth and extraordinary ability can't wait to share her awesome talent with you.

For more information, contact publicity@victoriastorytellers.org or call 778-433-0979

World Storytelling Day 2011 Summary

Photo by Katherine McGinnis of VSG VP, Lee Porteous, and Treasurer, Andrea Samuels, selling tickets to this sold out event.

World Storytelling Day Concert at Intrepid Theatre Club
Water, Water, Water
March 20, 2011
Summary of Stories
1. Pat Carfra – “The Selkie of Skule Skerry” – a Scottish folktale.

A selkie emerges from the ocean and transforms into a man, who joins the village and lives with a young woman, who has his son, not knowing his identity. He reveals himself and tells her she must give up her son when he is 7 and he and the boy return to the ocean. She later marries and her new husband fulfils a prophecy by killing the selkie and his son, brining their pelts back to her.

2. Margo McLoughlin – “The Chief of the Well” – adapted from Harold Courlander’s book, The Piece of fire and other Haitian Tales

God answers the petitions of the thirsty animals and provides a well for all to use. The guardian of the well becomes a tyrant who refuses water to all, even God when he comes to investigate. The guardian is banished and can only drink from puddles. The new guardian, the frog, sings welcome to all to use the water, for although someone may “own” the land around the well, God has provided the water, which belongs to all.

3. Faye Mogensen – “A Pitcher of Water” – adapted from a story by Diane Halpin

During a drought in Saskatchewan, one family’s well continues to give water but runs dry when everyone has to use it. The neighbours, men, women and children decide to wait together behind the barn, until the next day to see if water will come back into the well. The family’s children share their ration of water (each has a glass) but the waiting people despair and some talk of suicide. The father brings his fiddle to the barn and the children encourage everyone to join him. He plays until even the men come in and all are cheered and calmed by the music. He plays until dawn, his fingers raw and bleeding, and the well produces more water (and hope), so everyone does get at least a drink.

4. Jennifer Ferris – “Lake Elm” – an Estonian legend adapted from the Kalevala and a version by Geraldine McCaughrean

A lake that is abused by the actions of robbers who begin living on its shores, takes its treasure of water, fish and other gifts, to transform a parched land whose people respect and care for it.

5. Jacquie Hunt – “The Aqueduct of Segovia” – adapted from Leyendas espanoles de todos los tiempos by Jose Maria Merino

Although we now know that the Romans built this aqueduct, for hundreds of years this magnificent structure amazed the local people, who could not imagine human beings being able to create such a structure. A legend grew about how a young woman servant, exasperated with the repetitive and tiring task of hauling water, bartered her soul to the devil if he would deliver water to the house every day BUT at the last minute specified the first delivery had to be before dawn the next day. The devil constructed the aqueduct but the girl, immediately repenting of her foolish bargain, implored Heaven so passionately and purely that God was moved to intervene. The wheels of Heaven were speeded up so that the devil was placing the last stone when dawn broke. The girl’s soul was saved and the people of Segovia received the majestic, and useful, aqueduct.

6. Diane Gilliland - “Skeleton Woman” – an Inuit story told by Mary Uukalat, published in Women Who Run with Wolves

An unfortunate young woman, murdered by her father who threw her into the sea, was reduced to a skeleton which a young man accidentally hooked with his fishing gear. He brought the whole skeleton to the surface, tangled in his line, and it “chased” him to his hut. Through the night, due to his compassion and her magic, she regained her form and the two lived a long and prosperous life together.

7. Shoshana Litman – “Soap, Soap, Soap” – an Appalachian folktale based on a version by Mike Lockett, the Normal Storyteller

Jack is sent to the store for soap, and to make up for his bad memory chants the subject of his mission. He has various encounters and the people whom he first offends by his chant and then helps, give him different things to chant until, at last, he is reminded of his original “soap” chant and to his mother’s amazement, actually brings her the soap she asked for.

8. Peg Hasted – “Place of Many Winds” – a family story from the west coast of Vancouver Island

The hey-days of the fishing fleet and the excitement of its presence in Kyuquot, when Peg was a child and her father was a fisherman are recalled, along with a dangerous run for home, in a severe storm that threatened the whole family aboard – an example of why the First Nations name for Kyuquot was “Place of Many Winds”

Music provided by Margo McLaughlin (Hang drum) and Nadia Engelstoft (fiddle)

March 2011 Stories at Fern

Jennifer as host welcomed a full house of tellers and listeners, old and new. At the Membership table a box for donations to the Red Cross to bring aid to Japan following the recent series of natural disasters there, earthquake, volcanic eruption and tsunami. Jennifer's story "The Burning of the Rice Fields" told of the sacrifice of a rice farmer's harvest to save his fellow villagers from extinction by a long-ago tsunami. The old farmer, who stayed on high ground for his afternoon rest while the younger ones celebrated harvest time at sea level, watched in horror as the sea was sucked away from the land, anticipated the overwhelming onrush of water, and torched his rice harvest to bring the villagers up the hill to extinguish the flames before the full force of the water swallowed them. So powerfully told we felt the terror of the happening as it must have been, only two weeks ago, for the people on the North East coast of Japan.


In this World Water month, another watery tale by Peg was the tale of the student requested by his teacher to bring him water. The student searched for his finest bowl to bring the water in only to be asked by the teacher why he brought a bowl when he had only asked for water.

Sandra, as a tribute to her own mother, told us with such grace of motion and voice, the story of Claire "The Girl Who Wanted to Dance". A young girl being raised by her father and grandmother, haunted by her grandmother's tale of her own daughter, Claire's mother, passion for dancing. A story that left some of us teary-eyed.

A change of pace with the telling of a Tanzanian folktale that took no notice of man-made borders and made its way to Ethiopia. Her first visit to Fern but no stranger to storytelling, Pauline Grainger of Puente Theatre, delighted us all with the antics of Jackal's and Leopard's endeavours to outwit one another. Pauline, please pay us another visit soon!

Catherine Sheehan - would you be wondering if she was Irish with a name like that? took us on a voyage to the undersea home of a Merrow named Coumara who captured the souls of drowned sailors and kept them in cages. A story from a collection by Malachy Doyle that included such characters as Jack and Biddy Doherty and plenty of that powerful potato drink poteen of which those of us without the Irish in our blood should beware !

Sujeong Kim, Serra while in Canada, a Korean student of English in Victoria and first-time storyteller, bravely told us a Korean folk tale that not only accounts for the origin of the moon and the sun, but illustrates to what length a mother will go to protect her children. This writer was entranced with the idea of the fierce tiger, which had already gobbled up the mother, doing voice exercises to make him sound like the mother who had forbidden her children to open the door to strangers.

Thanks to the Island e-vine maintained so ably by Deidre, Sandy Cole, a Nanaimo storyteller who visited Victoria to both inherit Janna's Little Blue Hippo (see February Fern blog) and tell us a story, chose "What a Squirrel Saw", a precautionary tale from "Tales out of Africa". She enjoyed the evening so much she vows to come back.

Shirley took us back in time to the Vienna of with the story of Grimaldi, the famous circus clown of the early 1800's, whose persona was to bring laughter and joy but who suffered from deep melancholy. Advised by the doctor treating him for "sickness of the soul" to do away with himself he endeavoured to do so in circus/theatrical fashion of various means. In his last effort to fall to his death from a height he was saved by his wonderful suspenders and that made him laugh so much his melancholy was cured!

A brief opportunity to tell a tiny story to a neighbour sitting beside or in front or behind us resulted in story noise filling the room, followed by Jennifer's invitation to come forward to tell us all a story just told and THAT resulted in a hilarious telling by newcomer Phyllis Graham of a singer father's desperate efforts to get his baby to sing.

WHAT A GRAND EVENING!!

Submitted by Janna