Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

excerpt

Challenge Met
“Rule your mind or it will rule you.”
(Horace, Roman Poet)
~~
The damp, dull days of winter on Vancouver Island passed. With each
calendar page turned, Ken was feeling stronger and more anchored in
reality. He’d spent some six months thinking and rethinking each automatic
reaction until he felt he had regained a measure of control. Much of this
private time was spent exploring the creeks and rivers from their estuaries to
their canyons and cold springs above and between the old Island Highway
following the shoreline and the newer Inland Island Highway. He revelled in
the changeable beauty of the seashore; so different in this Pacific Northwest
than the Mediterranean climate he’d grown up with.
Winter storms drove pounding waves, which surged northward up the
Strait of Georgia. They virtually reshaped the beaches, shifting not only
sand and gravel, but also moving the weighty cobble. The grind of the
rolling stone was loud over the crash of the waves.
The power of nature is marvellous. I began to wonder what the rate of
travel of the cobble actually was. So, I went out and collected a bunch
of beach boulders of comparable size and weighing roughly within half
a pound of each other. All were the same type of stone, therefore the
same specific gravity. I got a few cans of spray paint and painted one
side of all these rocks bright red and the opposite side daffodil yellow,
and took buckets of them over to the mouth of the Nile, approximately
one kilometre south of my cottage.
I dumped them all in one spot and waited to see how long it would
take them to migrate down the shore to my cottage. They were clearly
visible from a distance.
The first painted stones appeared in front of the cottage within
three and a half days—the last in five days. I’d never have thought it
possible.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562902

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CB8W4CG

Prairie Roots

excerpt

Looking Back
LOOKING BACK The small village of Glenavon Saskatchewan suddenly appeared
ahead, nestled among the golden rectangular grain
fields 15,000 feet below, bathed in the brilliant mid-September
sunshine. I rolled the T-33 Silver Star into a steep dive, maneuvering
into position as I focused on the familiar landmarks. I began
easing out of the dive at 1000 feet, having spotted the school and
the figures of the pupils spilling out on the steps and the school
ground. The time was exactly 3:35 in the afternoon and classes
had just been dismissed. Perfect!
I pulled the screaming jet up tightly into a vertical climb directly
over the school, at the same time applying maximum power
and beginning a vertical roll. As the T-33 hurtled up at 450 miles
per hour I looked back over my shoulder at the rapidly receding
school and the homes and buildings surrounding it. Leveling out
at 8000 feet I rolled over and began another dive, coming at the
small village from the west with the sun on my back.
At 300 feet I began a tight, high speed, high power turn during
which I flew over my parent’s farmstead on the edge of town and
saw them and many of their neighbours standing in their front yards.
I completed the turn roaring back toward the school, this time at no
more than a 100 feet. Pulling up sharply over the school I rolled the
T-33 as I climbed eastward to intercept the final leg of my navigation
training flight, about 100 miles east of the planned turning point over
Weyburn, and from there to RCAF Station Portage La Prairie.
As I flew what remained of the exercise, the excitement of my
private performance over my old school, with my old friends
watching, gave way to the nostalgic realization that this was a personal
farewell to my youth. I was only slightly concerned about the
RCMP being in the vicinity of Glenavon and reporting the unauthorized
low flying since this usually resulted in immediate cessation
of pilot training. However, it was important to take the
chance. I knew that once I received pilot wings and began my career
as an RCAF officer, my life would forever diverge from that
which I shared with family and friends for the first 20 years of my
life.
In the years that followed, as the winds of fate carried me along,
my feelings for this province that my parents adopted and where I
was born, have remained intense. In writing this personal account
I have been able to journey back to my youth and to uncover many
of the reasons for this emotional relationship.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562900

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

excerpt

Sancti Spiritus landed with an extra splash on the bowed head of the mumbling
boy-monk, Brother Rordan.
The Brothers intoned the “Amen” and Father Abbán, after waiting for Finten to
be safely seated and secured, pushed the currach out into the oncoming swell, and
raised his hands in a final blessing.
A fresh breeze billowed out the sail. After several silent minutes, the craft picked
up speed. Finten turned to Rordan and whispered, loud and intense enough to be
heard by all the Brothers above the slapping of sail and waves, “My dear boy, you
have been with me a full summer. Have we suffered more than our share of discomforts?
This good hermit priest has lived the year in solitary prayer and fasting here
on this tiny island. Surely you, with your supposed gift of healing, can look after him
with the same love he has given all of us. Was he not your Director of Novices just
last year? I am ashamed that a Brother in my care could be so thoughtless. Perhaps
you would do well, my dear Brother, to spend more time in prayer and less in writing
your infernal poems.” Finten’s anger mounted to the point that he shouted the
last eight words.
Rordan squirmed in his embarrassment. He looked grudgingly toward the old
hermit.
Father Finten managed a slight smile toward the young Brother’s turned head.
Then he looked around at each of his charges. There was Brother Lorcan who
made up for his lack of size with incredible boldness. Although only fifteen, he
once broke the nose of a fellow novice for calling him “midget”. Nobody dared ask
him why he was totally without hair. Brother Keallach, on the other hand, sported
an abundance of curly, red hair and a few scraggly whiskers. At sixteen years and
four-foot eight-inches, Keallach was taller than his peers and ever ready to take
another Brother’s load.
Brother Laoghaire was a powerful lad with a shaved head, which gave him the air
of a wrestler when seen bare chested. Yet it was his nose that had been dislocated by
four-foot-two Brother Lorcan. Now the two of them were the closest of friends even
though personal friendships were frowned on in religious life.
Brother Ailan, almost eighteen, was short, chubby and jovial. Ailan had the ability
to prepare good food even under the most trying circumstances. Then there was
Rordan, youngest of all the Brothers, just turned fourteen. He had been mercilessly
teased in the novitiate for his thinness. When he told his Director of Novices that the
name Rordan came from Rioghbhardán, meaning “Little Poet-King”, Father Gofraidh
forbade him to write any further poetry and ordered the young novice to burn
what he had already written. The gift of writing was to be used solely for copying
sacred texts and Rordan would have been assigned to that task in the monastery, had
it not been for his clumsiness with the ink pots.
Father Finten turned his attention back to the trip ahead and announced “With
God’s good wind, we should be within sight of land all the way south to Rathlin. We
will be home by nightfall.” He ignored the giant storm clouds gathering to the west.
Between storm and Vikings, he preferred to put his trust in God and His Blessed
Mother, Mary. “Dear Lord, guide us safely home, that our dear Brother, Father Gofraidh,
might go to you in peace.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763106

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

Excerpt

While Ken and Jessica planned, a series of blasts at the camp had moved
hundreds of thousands of tons of shale and uncovered what appeared to
be dinosaur prints. Experts were summoned who confirmed the find and
Ken was put in charge of making impressions. But the weather was too
cold for the plaster of Paris to set, so each print had to be covered with
a small tent and heated. It was a slow, mind-numbing job and it caused
all work to slow to a crawl. But the contract stipulated that if artifacts
were found during construction they had to be preserved and must take
priority.
More experts came who slowed the work even more. The men grew
frustrated as the endless winter dragged on. Tempers flared during the
long, long nights and the mood was exacerbated by the endless noise
of diesels running 24/7 – fleets of trucks and other enormous pieces of
equipment, motors idling to stop them from freezing up – each with its
own tempo – creating a cacophony that no one could shut out, not even
in their deepest sleep.
Working conditions worsened. Rocks and boulders either heaved up to
the surface as frost shifted the roadbed, or fell from cliff faces and damaged
vehicles passing below. Injuries and deaths mounted.
Workers paid little attention to danger. One day the operator of a crane
with a long boom swung his machine around, not noticing the man walking
directly in the path below him. The enormous ball and hook dangling
from the end of the boom removed the back of his skull.
Every time someone was killed, work stopped. One cold day a siren
sounded at about noon and the first aid medics tore out of the small field
hospital and rushed into the lab. “Bring your trucks down,” they yelled,
pointing to an area of the camp where a large wooden scaffold was being
erected.
John and Ken raced down in their pickups. A large part of the scaffold
had collapsed and five men had fallen to the rock surface below. The
two men who were still clinging to life were placed in the station wagon
ambulances and driven to the clinic. One died on the way and the other
shortly after arriving. While an investigation took place, Ken and John
were given time off. Ken drove to Jessica’s house and stayed with her for a
week, helping her to plan their wedding.
At the end of the week, he returned to camp, while Jessica, Margaret,
and Patrick prepared for a trip to Fort St. John – to engage a Justice of the
Peace, and to load the truck with supplies for the reception.
Ken was working at the lab the day Patrick and his sisters set off on the
hundred-mile journey to town. He was bent over a specimen when he
heard the familiar wail of the siren. Looking up, he saw one of the ambulances
heading for the camp’s main gate.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573