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

Poodie James

excerpt

“Sonny, there’s something we must pursue. It seems the mayor
is recruiting field commanders for his campaign against Poodie
James.”
The stream’s volume was half what it was in the spring when the
snow melt coursed out of the mountains and the creek churned
brown and expanded into pastures, fields and meadows, ripping
young trees out of the banks. In autumn, with the air warm in sunlight
and chill in shadow, the creek ran low and clear among the
boulders and idled a while in the little lake behind the falls before it
made its leap. The force and weight of the water shook the ground,
stirred the air, settled mist onto Poodie’s face. Vapor fashioned the
sun’s rays into a thousand rainbows that intersected, combined and
danced above the creek’s plunge into itself. No trout broke the surface
of the pool below the falls today, and there were no fishermen
along the creek, just the peace that he found in this place.
Poodie felt at one with water. He needed to be near it, with it.
He felt happiness at the pool, playing in the water with children,
teaching them to swim. He pulled his wagon alongside the canals
that brought water to the apples, slow narrow ditches flowing
through overhangs of weeds, wide ones rushing through concrete
channels, pouring through sluice gates into orchards. He loved to
be by the river, by the creeks and streams that fed it. The Columbia
flowing past his cabin occupied his dreams, called to him, pulled at
him.
The wind blew down from the north, whipping and churning
the Columbia into fields of waves that rose and hung suspended
and foaming before they collapsed back into the river. Poodie
imagined that the waves were creatures popping up from the
depths of the river, dissolving, sinking, reassembling and elevating
again to catch glimpses of the world above the surface. The idea
was no more fantastic, he thought, than life in the ocean; coral
reefs that seemed to be stone but were animals, fish with lanterns
growing from their foreheads, fields of worms waving in currents
like grass blowing in the wind, whales the size of houses …

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

George Seferis – Collected Poems

VII

                          South Wind

Westward, the sea joins the mountain range.

From our left the south wind blows and maddens us

the kind of wind that strips the bones off the flesh.

Our home is among the pines and the carob trees.

Large windows. Large tables

where we’ve been writing the letters destined for you

for so many months, and dropping them

into our separation so that it may get filled up.

Star of dawn, when you lowered your eyes

our hours were sweeter than oil

over the wound, more joyful than cool water

to our palate, more peaceful than the plumes of the swan.

You held our lives in your palm.

After the bitter bread of exile

if we stand before a white wall at night

your voice nears us like a hope of fire

and again this wind sharpens

a razor against our nerves.

Each of us writes to you the same things

and each turns silent before the other

gazing, each of us, the same world separately

the light and darkness on the mountain range

and you.

Who will lift this sorrow from our hearts?

Last night heavy rain and today again

the cloudy sky weighs down on us. Our thoughts

like the pine needles of yesterday’s downpour

gathered up and useless by our front door

as though to build a tower that collapses.

Among these decimated villages

over this cape, open to the south wind

with the mountain range before us hiding you

who would estimate for us the sentence to oblivion?

Who will accept our offering at the end of this autumn?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

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