Deadly Voyage, my latest novel in the I Am Canada series from Scholastic, tells the story of Jamie Laidlaw, a boy from Montreal who is returning home from England on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.  On the night of April 14-15, 1912, Jamie find himself in the freezing north Atlantic as the giant ship sinks before his eyes.  Jamie is a fictional character but most of the people he meets on board theTitanic are real.  As with my first novel in the IAC series, Prisoner of Dieppe, I’ve made this book as accurate and true-to-life as possible.  When I give school talks, my readers always want to know, “Is this story real?” Having worked on so many Titanic books — from Robert Ballard’s The Discovery of the Titanic to Polar the Titanic Bear-– I have a fair bit of detail in my brain about this famous shipwreck.  And I also asked George Behe, a Titanic historianpar excellence to review it for accuracy.  

A sold-out crowd gave a standing ovation to ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose: A Victorian Entertainment in Words, Images and Music’ at the Elora Festival on Saturday, July 23rd.  The Elora Festival Singers gave beautiful renditions for everything from selections from The Mikado and The Eton Boating Song to Rule Britannia and The Lost Chord. Actors Brigitte Robinson and Christopher Newton from the Shaw Festival narrated the story splendidly  and Sargent paintings and period photos faded in and out on a large screen overhead.  ‘Ye Shepherds Tell Me’, the song that inspired the title of Sargent’s painting provided a perfect conclusion to the performance.