On the day Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered, at the Wilshire Blvd. offices of KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT, white, Catholic high school senior Annie Shea, and volunteer for Robert Kennedy for President, begins her awakening to the powerful racist forces that drive white society in 1968.
In 1961, an enormous family crowds into their VW bus to go to Disneyland. In the midst of the magic and chaos, the sixth child attracts a moment of attention from her mother, a moment that lasts the distance of galaxies. SEASON#5: A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE
When I was 21 years old, preparing to travel to Europe for the first time, my Mother whispered a request: to get her a photo of the grave of her childhood sweetheart in a cemetery in France. This is the true story of how, years after she died, I finally made the journey, 50 years after he was killed. This heart breaking story of love and loss was published in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November, 2003. Download with backstory: www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/blog
January 1946, a mere five months after the end of WW2 in Europe. A young bride arranges her appearance front of a mirror just prior to her wedding. In these private moments, she conjures an image of her childhood sweetheart and husband, killed in the final months of the war. She can’t be sure he’s dead; she hasn’t even seen a photo of his grave. And yet, she’s promised to marry again. Based on a true story, Moments Before a Wedding gives voice to one woman's experience abandoned by the cruelties of War.
These are the words of Pixie Daly, a lovely woman who lived her life here on the Sunshine Cost and had many friends until she died in her nineties in 2011. Her stories touch on the early days: one road, no cars, being a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital, fishermen lost at sea, frozen lakes, the perils of long distances between logging camps, hazards of fog when everyday you travelled by boat. A "marvellous regatta", a nurse lost for 24 hours, and -- an unforgettable character named Gladys -- and her husband, the Pig Man.
How can you know the person you love? No matter how close, there are still mysteries and secrets — hidden things that can reach up and steal someone right out from under you. The following is a true story. A nurse falls in love with a man in uniform. And marries his best friend few months later. She works at Essondale Mental Hospital, during World War II, at a time when people who caught syphillis, died of it. Before the antibiotics came in. Just after the tranquilizers became available. When many of Essondale’s residents were not mentally ill at all – rather simply disabled, recovering from rheumatic fever, post traumatic stress, or retired prostitutes, too sick with sexually transmitted diseases to continue working.
The story of a West Coast woman who survived her times. Louella Duncan was raised on a float house in a logging camp in a family of eleven, in conditions that have vanished with modern life. Louella travelled everywhere by boat, witnessed The Big Earthquake of 1946 and lived through numerous everyday tragedies that still happen in close-knit communities in rural British Columbia.
33 miles by horseback to her first job as a teacher in remote Athabasca, Alberta, Cloe Day becomes a share cropper in the Dirty Thirties when she receives a 30-acre homestead in lieu of her teacher's pay. The day after the birth of her first, she rides 36 miles home with her baby tied around her neck. In 1946 she moves to Gibsons only to be greeted by the taunting of students 'Women couldn't teach us anything!' Tough, fiesty and outspoken, Cloe wallops, throws wastebaskets, and holds her students over the side of a boat as they upchuck in a storm. This and other tales that will surprise you and have you smiling at a memorable woman who toughed it out in the West.
1939. Two young sisters and their tiny white kitten sneak out into their small boat into the Strait of Georgia. All, unable to swim. A gale wind kicks up a violent storm, tossing their boat like a toy in enormous waves. When something magical, terrifying and totally unexpected looms up out of the water, saving them from capsizing in the storm. A true story of The Sunshine Coast in the 1930's.
There are few moments in life when we're privileged to witness the open window to the universe. Birth is one of those moments - when the line between life and eternity is thin and permeable. When, without words, we can feel the bigness of the universe and the connectedness of absolutely everything. When anything can happen. When every detail matters. This podcast "The Window to the Universe" is taken from my theatrical play SINGING THE BONES, which toured internationally and was later made into a feature film that screened around the world. http://www.fatsalmon.ca/themovie/home.htm
A heart breaking but beautiful story about a teenager, estranged from her family at that vulnerable and powerful time of her life - when she begins to step into the world. An almost unbelievable 'one in a million' event happens to her and she holds on for the ride. Only to be stopped by the face of a newborn in a moment she describes as "you know you are where the universe has put you." Unexpected, lively and mostly true. An irresistible character! THIS Episode from SERIES called Mother Love
On a snowy January morning on the Sunshine Coast of Canada, a young pregnant mum, Eva, is awakened by a knock on the door. Living on an 80 acre parcel in rural Pender Harbor, this knock begins the search for her five year old daughter, Rachel, who vanished into thin air. Almost anything could have happened to Rachel. She could have been discovered by her father, a vindictive man from a monied family with influence who had legally taken Rachel from her mother. She could have been abducted by a stranger in a car. She could have been murdered. Based on a true story.
I wrote The Christmas Monster of Ripple Rock about a stretch of Seymour Narrows called Ripple Rock, an underwater mountain that had two peaks below the surface in Discovery Passage in British Columbia. Only 2.7 metres (9 feet) underwater at low tide, it was a marine hazard. Boats not only hit the rock itself but were also sunk by dangerous eddies and tidal currents. Ripple Rock was blasted by a planned explosion in April 1958. This was a National Historic Event in Canada, broadcast live on CBC Television.The story itself takes place in the child’s imagination – when their little skiff comes dangerously close to a huge ship on Christmas Eve.
Something about Christmas always hurts. Do I cry? Do I laugh? Often it can be so painful, we can barely think about it. But Christmas rolls in with the winter. It gets dark, and we want to be comforted. And little by little the red & green lights appear around us, the glitter and shortbread cookies. We hear snippets of songs that go right into our psyche, and squeeze. My first Christmas with Rachel! was inspired by the cold and the relentless quality of winter, the injustice of life and how it is magnified at Christmas time. You see people on the outside with nowhere to go, and the people on the inside gathering around the fire. And the feelings! There are so many conflicting feelings at this time of year. And light in darkness.
Much of my life’s work has been an ode to birth itself. And I think this is because my mother created and gave birth to thirteen siblings and then surviving in an enormous family was my life, surrounded by a clamour of people whose needs were just as important as mine. The birth of a little brother or sister was always a celebration. So this central tenet of my existence has profoundly influenced much of my work as a playwright and performer. Birth contains every big theme of life itself: the hope, the suffering, the struggles, the joy – it’s all magnified in this doorway to life, this transition zone between the universe and consciousness. Rachel is Born! is no exception, and it parallels the struggle of Christmas, the contrast between expectations and reality. As the mother in this story says, “And here was my partner, so available for all my expectations.” You can hear the hope and disappointment in those few words. Enjoy this robust story. It celebrates the beginning of a life.
INTRO to the series SOME KINDA WOMAN: As an international playwright & performer, I tell stories to help make sense of our lives. I look for the shining moment, the transformation from the grief of life to laughter, understanding, acceptance and transformation. In these theatrical podcasts, you will hear the voices of many different characters from my international touring shows. One voice, one story, one woman at a time. Read Island Santa is a true story told to me by Sunshine Coast residents and old timers, Cynthia Culbard Jones and Diana Culbard Peters about their first Christmas on Read Island – so far away that Santa would never find them. It’s a story about the time of being children -- and what is Christmas if it doesn’t have a bit of magic?
"Maybe my story can be a tiny beam of light in a large, dark cave," says Anneke Lucas in the podcast that begins to tell her story, from her book QUEST FOR LOVE. "Elite pedophilia is the world’s best protected secret.
Your eyes cannot help but see what is here: the sight of someone like yourself And then you think: How can this be? Is that really all the time there is left? A chance encounter in the dark winter days of December 2022. A benevolent energy in a hospital room with snaking tubes and mystery signs, the face of a newborn and a lifetime of important people. All gathering for Sebastian. Except for the visitor, who is missing the opportunity to connect.
Naïve but adventurous, twenty-two years young and fresh out of university, Public Health Nurse Marion McKinnon accepts an assignment for a four day, multi stop, two-hundred mile trip from Williams Lake to Anahim Lake into the vast Cariboo-Chilcotin country of British Columbia. It’s December and the first snow has fallen across the land. The year is 1963. The weather forecast: twenty-two degrees below freezing. The view is breathtaking and the roads treacherous. And what if she gets lost? Or skids into a snowbank? In 1963, Marion is on her own in the wild but beautiful country, deep in winter - no cell phone, no two way radio. Just a chocolate bar and a candle . . . and the enthusiasm of her youth.
A flight attendant with 25 years seniority works through the early pandemic. An essential worker with close family ties and lots of friends. Suddenly, her life is upended.