“Did you always intend to be a writer?” asked the student.
“No,” I said. “ The idea never crossed my mind. One of the things I learned in school was that to be a writer, you had to be British and dead.” The phrase “Canadian writer” was an oxymoron, as silly as “jumbo shrimp.”
I vividly remember when the idea did occur to me. I felt as if I had been scaling one side of a razorback ridge, climbing hard and seeing only the slope in front of me. As I reached the crest I suddenly saw that it was possible to be not just a reader but a writer – and the whole landscape opened up in front of me, a broad fertile valley that represented the rest of my life.
