As part of Freedom to Read week, Feb. 21-27, Reid-Thompson Public Library held a book reading on Feb. 22 with Canadian Author Gail Bowen.
Reid-Thompson Public Library Librarian, Rose Ward, says that they got a grant from the Saskatchewan Library Association to bring in Bowen.
Bringing in Bowen was important because, in addition to it being freedom to read week, it is also banned book month to which Bowen is an advocate, says Ward.
Bowen says she is very committed to freedom to read week and says it is important for us to think about our freedom to read.
“It’s important for people to start to think about how much intellectual freedom is guaranteed to us under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, how important that is to our lives.”
Bowen said it is important to think about those rights because Canadians often take those rights for granted.
“We take it for granted and I think that’s one of the things that Freedom to Read Week has been about. We are so blessed in this country and I think we often don’t stop to realize how lucky we are.”
Bowen sighted a video she saw from a group of kids out of Calgary as a good example for how that freedom can be taken from Canadians.
The video started with the kids showing books that were banned and they talked about losing the chance to enter another world to see another perspective and see how the characters deal with problems they face.
Bowen says losing those opportunities also affects how people think in their everyday life as they do not learn as much about empathy, history or life.
The ending of the video was the most powerful part, says Bowen.
“The end of their little video that they made was them opening books with nothing but blank pages and that’s exactly what would happen if we didn’t have freedom to read.”
Bringing in Bowen was about more than just her advocacy for freedom to read week as Bowen is a recognizable face for the people of Humboldt.
“She’s well known in Humboldt and area, people here love her, she has written tons of books in her Joanne Kilbourn mystery novels about Saskatoon and Regina so people here are very familiar with the places that she has written about,” says Ward.
The event focused on Bowen talking about banned books and how banning books affects our lives and included Bowen’s reading of her latest book, the 16th installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series titled, ‘What’s Left Behind,’ which is due for release on Mar. 1, 2016.
Bowen has had a successful career to date but she got a late start. She began writing when she was 43 and says it was kind of lucky when she did start.
While working for First Nations University, a position she held for over 30 years before retiring five years ago, she got a call from a friend of hers who was editing a book.
The book was titled The Easterners’ Guide to Western Canada/ the Westerners’ Guide to Eastern Canada.
Bowen says the book is meant to be humorous and is designed to tell easterners how to “survive in the wild and wacky west.”
Originally the Saskatchewan entry was being written by another author who Bowen says wrote a “beautiful” piece but it lacked the humour that was intended for the piece and she refused to change it. So Bowen’s friend who was the editor of the book called her and asked her if she would write it instead.
The editor’s call to Bowen on Sunday left her only a few days to meet the Wednesday deadline.
Originally Bowen said no, saying with three kids at home, teaching at the university and being heavily involved in politics she was not interested. After hanging up the phone her husband made her rethink her answer.
“My husband said ‘when a friend asks you, you should probably give it another thought’ and so I called my friend back and said ‘yes’ and that changed my whole life,” she said.
After the publisher read that piece he was impressed and asked Bowen to write another piece, this time a novel. That is where the Joanne Kilbourn series started. Bowen wrote her first Kilbourn novel titled Deadly Appearances.
The Kilbourn mystery series contains main character Joanne Kilbourn that Bowen started writing 26 years ago. Bowen describes Kilbourn as your typical Saskatchewan woman.
“She is a very Saskatchewan person, she is not super woman, she has a family, she’s committed to her community, she is a social activist if she sees an injustice or wrong she feels committed to doing what she can, she’s just like many of the people I know here.”
Six of the Kilbourn books have since been turned into made for television movies
In addition to her Kilbourn books, Bowen has also written four books, which she calls high-low books, high interest, low vocabulary.
Bowen says writing those books was a goal for her because while she was teaching at First Nations University she noticed that they were losing “too many” of their young male students which she felt was a result of there not being enough that they wanted to read. So she wrote those books hoping they would appeal to them.
“They’re short, easy to read,” she said.
Looking ahead for Bowen, she says she is working on and almost finished the 17th installment of the Joanne Kilbourn series.
