Cougars are Curious

Photo by Verena Vomastic
Photo by Verena Vomastic

Like all cats, cou­gars are curi­ous. They’re at­trac­ted to move­ments, noises and ob­jects they haven’t seen be­fore. But a curi­ous cou­gar can quickly be­come a dan­ger­ous one if some­thing trig­gers its chase and kill instinct.

The most com­mon trig­gers are quick, er­rat­ic ac­tions such as jog­ging or chil­dren play­ing, high-pitched, prey-like sounds or an an­im­al or per­son ap­pear­ing vul­ner­able be­cause they are alone, seem in­jured or are small, which in­cludes crouch­ing or squatting.

The young adult cou­gar shown here was pho­to­graphed star­ing in a Manitou Springs, Colorado home. At one point the cat stood up and put its paws on the win­dow and the own­ers wor­ried the glass would break.

Luckily, the cou­gar de­cided it had seen enough and sauntered away. And tracks in the snow re­vealed that it wasn’t trav­el­ling alone. The size of the paw prints in­dic­ated it was ac­com­pan­ied by its moth­er and a sibling.

 

111 West Coast Literary Portraits

If a picture’s worth a thou­sand words, 111 West Coast Literary Portraits is in­valu­able. Fifteen years in the mak­ing, it con­tains more than 100 pho­to­graphs of B.C. au­thors, as well as ex­tracts from their work or per­son­al notes writ­ten spe­cific­ally for the book.

The book is an im­port­ant doc­u­ment­ary of B.C. lit­er­at­ure. It in­cludes emer­ging, fam­ous, as well as in­fam­ous au­thors and speaks to the di­versity of lit­er­at­ure, cul­ture and the unique voice of Canada’s most west­ern province. A work of art in its own right, the 8 x 10 heavy stock, glossy pa­per gives a depth and lu­min­os­ity to each por­trait. And the use of black and white film provides a clas­sic, time­less qual­ity to the images.

When Barry began pho­to­graph­ing writers he didn’t real­ize he was start­ing a book pro­ject. He and his wife at the time, Blaise Enright, were new to the West Coast and wanted a pro­ject they could work on to­geth­er while ex­plor­ing their new en­vir­on­ment. By a quirk of fate, au­thors be­came the fo­cal point. But it wasn’t al­ways easy.

R.W. Gray wanted to be pho­to­graphed par­tially sub­merged in wa­ter. Rick and I wanted to in­clude our dog but Bailey thought pos­ing meant run­ning around in circles. Stephen Reid wanted to wear a cop cos­tume and have a gun and some money on the table in front of him. Little did Barry and Blaise know that Reid’s props would later be used in a real life drama.

But per­haps the most dif­fi­cult photo shoot was of poet Al Purdy. The ini­tial im­ages didn’t turn out well. Soon after Purdy re­ceived the proofs Barry answered the phone to find someone scream­ing at him. Purdy, a char­ac­ter with an oc­ca­sion­al crusty edge, de­man­ded the pho­tos be re­taken the next day or he’d black list the pho­to­graph­ers with every writer in B.C.

It was a scramble for Barry and Blaise to get to Victoria from Vancouver on time but they made it. Along the way, Blaise bought an as­sort­ment of squeaky toys hop­ing to light­en up the situ­ation. After the shoot, Purdy said he hadn’t known wheth­er to smile or be of­fen­ded. The photo on page 158 tells it all.

As the col­lec­tion of pho­to­graphs grew, it was titled Lit Happens and ex­hib­ited in a vari­ety of ven­ues to pro­mote lit­er­acy in B.C. A couple of years ago, Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Publishing ap­proached Barry about turn­ing the pho­to­graphs and ac­com­pa­ny­ing text by au­thors into a book.

This fall, Barry has ex­hib­ited prints from the book, at­ten­ded sign­ings and par­ti­cip­ated on pan­els of pho­to­graph­ers through­out the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands. 

Barry’s al­ways been pas­sion­ate about black and white film. “It helps the view­er fo­cus on the sub­ject,” he ex­plains. “There’s no con­fus­ing palette of col­ours and it seems to really high­light the sub­ject. Also, film pho­to­graphs have a depth to them that di­git­al can’t du­plic­ate.” As well as tak­ing the pho­to­graphs, Barry de­veloped all the film, mat­ted and framed the prints and even made the card­board boxes to trans­port them in.

Through 2009 and 2010, Barry and I col­lab­or­ated on a photo-journ­al­ism pro­ject called On the Edge, Putting a Face on Homelessness. Time and time again, I wit­nessed Barry’s easy-go­ing man­ner help nervous folks re­lax, watched him guide people into nat­ur­al-look­ing poses and ad­mired the me­tic­u­lous de­tail that went into the print­ing of film and fram­ing of photo and text.

He’s brought the same at­ten­tion to de­tail to 111 West Coast Literary Portraits. For more in­form­a­tion vis­it www​.barry​peterson​pho​to​graphy​.com or  www​.mother​tongue​pub​lish​ing​.com.

On the Edge

A couple of years ago I worked on a photo-doc­u­ment­ary pro­ject with pho­to­graph­er Barry Peterson. We in­ter­viewed and pho­to­graphed people who were home­less, had been home­less or were in danger of be­com­ing homeless.

The stor­ies were mov­ing in a way I nev­er ex­pec­ted. I learned that no mat­ter where or how a per­son lived, they still had hopes and dreams, just like I do. They ex­per­i­enced joy, sad­ness, fear. They did whatever was ne­ces­sary to survive.

Every October I post one of the stor­ies and pho­tos from that pro­ject on my blog. I do this to hon­our the people I met, to re­cog­nize their strength in the face of ad­versity and their abil­ity to find hu­mour in the bleak­est of moments.

Below is Jessica’s story. I got an email from her last year. She’d had her op­er­a­tion, was do­ing some vo­lun­teer work and was dat­ing. There were still chal­lenges in her life but she was happy.

Jessica, age 45 

      Jessica had it all: a spouse, a car, a job and a house in Europe. But every time her life seemed per­fect, it fell apart. At 28, di­vorced and un­em­ployed, a friend stuck a needle in her arm to make her feel bet­ter. That was the be­gin­ning of a 12-year cycle of drug ad­dic­tion, re­hab, build­ing a life and then dis­ap­pear­ing into the streets and drugs again.

As a home­less per­son Jessica has been beaten un­con­scious and ur­in­ated on in Victoria, wit­nessed murders in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and got­ten food pois­on­ing from dump­ster diving. She’s been pro­nounced DOA three times and, while liv­ing in a Courtenay tent city, bull­dozers flattened her tent and be­long­ings. “When you’re home­less people look at you like you’re not worthy of breath­ing the same air,” she says. “But I’ve met lots of in­tel­li­gent, ar­tic­u­late people on the street. Heroin and co­caine don’t discriminate.”

Two years ago Jessica real­ized the only way to beat her drug ad­dic­tion was to deal with the fact that she was a fe­male stuck in a man’s body. She’d grown up in Ontario and Victoria and was a jock in high school. But when she was 17 her moth­er dis­covered her hid­den girl clothes. After that trau­mat­ic scene, Jessica did everything she could to hide her sexu­al­ity. But 25 years later she knew she had two choices: live her life as a wo­man or com­mit sui­cide. A street nurse helped her ob­tain hor­mone ther­apy and Jessica moved to Courtenay to make a clean start. She cur­rently lives in a small base­ment room, is drug-free and eagerly await­ing her va­gino­plasty. Once her trans­ition is com­plete she wants to be­come an esthetician.

Jessica’s grate­ful to be off the street but life’s a struggle. After rent, there’s less than $100 for gro­cer­ies and with “38D boobs and a voice like Joe Cocker,” she’s of­ten faced with cruel and even vi­ol­ent be­ha­viour when out in pub­lic. “It’s sad that people fear and ri­dicule trans­gendered people,” she says. “It’s some­thing that hap­pens at birth, not a mat­ter of choice. I’m happy now; I wish people could ac­cept that.”

 

The Dark Sources of Creativity — guest blog by Susan Ketchen

Readers of my nov­els of­ten shake their heads when they fi­nally meet me and say, “Where do you get your crazy ideas?”

 I usu­ally brush them off with jokes about my over-act­ive ima­gin­a­tion, and about how ideas come eas­ily when I’m lost in thought (some­thing that hap­pens more and more these days) in the shower or in the pas­ture with my horses, though of course nev­er while house cleaning.

These re­sponses are di­ver­sions from a dark­er truth.

I am in­spired by mis­takes, mis­deeds and transgressions.

Sometimes the mis­takes are my own. I seem to feel that I can re­deem my­self by dis­guising my own ri­dicu­lous be­ha­viour in the deeds of a char­ac­ter. For ex­ample, in a piece about the per­ils of self-de­lu­sion, I fic­tion­al­ized an in­ter­ac­tion I had with a neigh­bour. His lovely garden was be­ing decim­ated by deer so he in­stalled an ul­tra-son­ic deer repeller.

Unfortunately I could hear it. I was re­luct­ant to com­plain, but found I could not ig­nore the noise and after a few days tromped next-door for a chat. Perhaps he could turn it down? He thought he might try, or he would just re­turn it to the store.

Two nights later I was again at my bed­room win­dow, steam­ingly in­dig­nant be­cause I could still hear that aw­ful high-pitched noise. I really didn’t want to com­plain again, but that night I needed earplugs to sleep, and how fair was that?

The source of cre­ativ­ity — and all the twis­ted turns it takes — will forever re­main a mys­tery. Photo by Susan Ketchen

So the next day I re­turned to my neigh­bour. I wasn’t sure what to say. What if he didn’t be­lieve me? Or thought I was be­ing a pest? I muttered some­thing non­sensic­al to him. And he told me he’d re­turned the unit two days be­fore, gen­er­ously adding that I must have been kept awake by some­thing else.

This dark event has so in­spired my cre­ativ­ity that not only did I de­vote sev­er­al chapters of my nov­el to the puzzle of self-de­lu­sion, but I am still writ­ing about it here. I fear I may nev­er sort it out.

I have also used the trans­gres­sions of oth­ers to in­spire my writ­ing. And it seems that my memory is very long when someone wrongs me. From grade one through three, I was so­cially se­cure at school. In fourth grade two new girls ar­rived. They were exot­ic be­cause they were twins. They had lovely clothes, were smart and so­cially gregari­ous, and one of them pushed me down in fun on the play­field and hurt my back! I also toppled from the so­cial scene. I felt as though I’d be­come in­vis­ible overnight.

Several dec­ades passed be­fore my wounded pride was re­paired by cre­at­ing Amber and Topaz in my nov­el Born That Way. I made the twins into a couple of stuck-up little girls who bul­lied my prot­ag­on­ist, Sylvia, but nev­er really got her down. Through Sylvia I ex­per­i­enced suc­cess man­aging a more dif­fi­cult situ­ation than I had faced ori­gin­ally. Apparently it’s nev­er too late to grow up.

For my next pro­ject I am con­sid­er­ing writ­ing about how we ra­tion­al­ize our treat­ment and train­ing of an­im­als. Controversy is every­where: there are train­ers and whisper­ers and be­ha­vi­or mod­i­fi­ers all over the place, and mostly they dis­agree with each oth­er. Plus they all have loy­al fol­low­ings, and people get quite heated when it comes to de­fend­ing their pets:  ad­vising someone that their dog needs bet­ter train­ing is nev­er met with grat­it­ude. Bad be­ha­vi­or abounds. Indeed, there are mis­takes, mis­deeds and trans­gres­sions every­where. It is a gold­mine of cre­at­ive inspiration.

All I need is a de­cent pseudonym.

Susan Ketchen is the au­thor of the nov­els Born That Way (2009), Made That Way (2010) and Grows That Way (2012), all pub­lished by Oolichan Books. Find out more about Susan on her web­site www​.susanketchen​.ca