Dirty Laundry

The World Needs More Ontario!

Before I forget, I’m on Twitter now, so you can follow me and my merry adventures. I promise to have a Twitter button soon but until then I’m just going to remind everyone on my blogs.

And now, onto the good stuff….

I’ve been having such an amazing time visiting schools and bookstores here in Ontario this past week. Regular readers of this blog have already been treated to my Ontario-stravaganza. But that was only part one of the story. Part two began on Thursday with visits to three incredible schools in Brantford.

Yes, THAT Brantford. Childhood home of Wayne Gretzky. To say they’re proud of that fact would be an understatement.

And it’s just the kind of sweet town you’d expect a person like The Great One to come from. Of course, I didn’t have time to stop in and visit Walter (Wayne’s dad for those of you living under a log) so that he could show me all the famed trophies and jerseys. I had more important business to attend to.

Like visiting Brantford Collegiate Institute and Bobbie Henley’s White Pine Club kids. Bobbie, the unbelievably kind Head of Library, was responsible for arranging my visits to Brantford Collegiate as well as organizing my visits to Pauline Johnson Collegiate (in conjunction with the wonderful and wonderfully boisterous Theano Tice) and North Park Collegiate (with the incredibly dedicated teacher-librarian Pam Wilson-McCormick).

I can’t say enough about the students and faculty that I met at these schools. Sometimes you just get a run of inspiring school visits where everything just goes well. With a lot of laughter, and great questions, and real interest from everyone. I seem to be getting a lot of these lately and I count myself incredibly lucky.

There were tons of highlights which included: being presented with a golden “Oscar” bunny at Brantford Collegiate for winning the White Pine “Oscar” at the school, the gifts of mugs and pens and coffee travel cups, the well-thought out student introductions at each of the presentations, the pizza and cheesecake cups, the autograph sessions which included requests to sign books, papers, napkins, shirts, cellphone cases, and a few Nintendo DS game systems.

Here are some pictures of me and the students.

Brantford Collegiate White Pine Club! (This group has great taste in books, I must say).

More students from Brantford Collegiate.

Here are some of the fab students at Pauline Johnson Collegiate.

And finally, my two biggest fans from North Park.

On Friday I was whisked around to a ton of great Indigo/Chapters stores as well as Mabel’s Fables, one of the very coolest children’s bookstores I have ever been to. If you are ever in Toronto be sure to visit Eleanor LeFave, Melissa Bourdon-King and Natalie Kertes (as well as Mabel, the sweetest cat I think I have ever seen). I was asked to sign their Wall of Authors which, I have to say, was a huge honor if a bit intimidating. You’d think, as a writer, I’d have marvelous phrases flowing from my fingertips, but no, I had to really think about what to write on their wall.

Last but not least, don’t forget to come on down to Festival of Trees at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on May 11th. I will be doing an autograph session from 10am to 11am at the Market Tents and then I will be doing a reading and talk with author Alyxandra Harvey at 11:30 at the Studio Theatre. Hope to see you there!

Posted by Don Calame on 5.8.11 at 12:53 pm in Prattlings. (0) Comments