The Bay of Fundy by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan

I started my writing career as a travel writer, researching and writing seven travel books about the attractions, sites, and history along the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. While working on them I realized what a beautiful country I live in. Since then I have switched to writing fiction but I still love to travel. 2017 was Canada’s 150^th birthday and to celebrate it my husband, Mike, and I travelled in a motorhome from our home on Vancouver Island on the Pacific Ocean to Newfoundland on the Atlantic Ocean. The round trip took us nine weeks and we were only able to see about half of the sites and attractions along the roads.

Today I’d like to describe our stop at the Bay of Fundy situated between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Bay has the highest tides in the world and was formally designated one of North America’s seven wonders of nature in February, 2014. (The others are Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Mount McKinley, the Everglades, and Yosemite National Park).

 

 

 

 

 

       From Moncton, NB, we drove south on Route 114 to Hopewell Cape and the Hopewell Rocks arriving in the afternoon. It was low tide so after we paid, Mike accepted the cart ride offered while I decided to walk the trail to the Rocks. I arrived at a viewpoint overlooking the ocean floor and the reddish rock structures.  Mike and I took the stairway down to the floor and wandered out among the tall formations. The ground was surprisingly solid with a few muddy areas.

       The Hopewell Rocks were originally a massive mountain range that was older than the Appalachians and bigger than the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Over millions of years the range wore down and after the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age, water seeping through cracks in the cliffs eroded the sedimentary and sandstone and separated the Rocks from the cliffs. The incoming and outgoing tides have eroded the base of the rocks at a faster rate than the tops and that has caused their unusual shapes. Those shapes and the vegetation growing on top have given the formations their nickname of the Flower Pot Rocks.

 

 

 

       Due to the tides the Rocks are covered in water twice a day. Some visitors are able to see the high and low tides in one day but since the next high tide would be at night, Mike and I found a place to camp and returned to the Rocks the next morning. There is approximately six hours between low and high tide and the entrance fee covers a return visit to enable visitors to see the Rocks during both tides.

       Again, Mike took his ride and I walked. I reached the viewpoint and the change was astonishing. Just the tops of some of the rocks showed, the rest being under water. The tides can reach a height of 16 metres (52ft), which is as high as a four story building, twice a day. I walked down part of the stairs but the rest was blocked off to the public because they were under water. High tide is a good time to take a kayak tour and three kayakers were paddling around the formations.

 

 

       Seeing all the water and the partial formations, it was hard to believe that just the day before I had walked on the floor of the bay. It was an amazing experience.

Keeping Your Reader in Your Historical Novel by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

Keeping Your Reader in Your Historical Story

As a historical writer it is important to make sure that you use the words of the period you have set your book in. For example if your story is set in the 1500s you could use the word hugger-mugger when talking about a sneaky person who is acting in a secretive way and elflocks to describe messy hair. Jargoyles meant that a person was puzzled about something in the 1600s while in the 1700s a person who was out of sorts was grumpish. In the 1800s people would have felt curglaff when they jumped into cold water and a man going for a post dinner walk while smoking his pipe was lunting. In the early 1900s a person who was drunk was referred to as being fuzzled.

Of course, it is important when using those words that the writer somehow explains what they mean such as, if a man said he was going for an after lunch lunt, the person he was talking to could reply. “I don’t have my pipe and tobacco with me today.” I feel that writers who use terminology from a different era or words or phrases from a different language without clarification are trying to impress the reader with their vocabulary and intellect. Speaking as a reader, for me what they are really doing is making me angry and interrupting the flow of the story. I am jolted out of the lives of the characters and into my life as I try to process the meaning of what was written.

As a writer you want the reader to be so caught up in the story that they don’t want to put the book down, you don’t want them to throw the book across the room because they don’t understand what has been said or done.

Another important aspect of writing historical novels or even novels set in past decades is to make sure that you do have the characters using devices that hadn’t been invented yet.

The ball point pen came into use in the 1940’s so you can’t have someone signing papers with it in the 1920s. The Charleston dance was introduced in a movie in 1923 and caught on after that, so a story set before that time could not have party-goers dancing it. While the computer was invented during World War II, it didn’t come into commercial use until the 1950/60s and personal use until the 1970/80s. Don’t have a person make a phone call before March 7, 1876, which is when Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone and don’t have someone send a text on a mobile phone in the 1970s.

It is important to do your research when writing a novel set in the past, no matter what the year.

More historical words:

In the 1590s beef-witted described something as being brainless or stupid.

In the 1640s callipygian described a beautifully shaped butt.

In the 1650s sluberdegullion meant an unkempt, drooling person.

In the 1950s two people making out in the back seat of a car were doing the back seat bingo.

 

 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

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