He’s walked to New York.
Charlie Wilkins has also rowed across the Atlantic, run away with the circus and dug a grave or two in his 40-year career as a writer. More than 20 of those years, the main years as he calls them, were spent in Thunder Bay. Wilkins first came to the city in 1991 to be a writer in residence for the library. What was supposed to be a six-month stint turned out a family, 21 years and more than three million published words.
Speaking at a brunch during his weekend Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop at the Valhalla Inn, Wilkins said when he got to Thunder Bay it opened his imagination.
“A kind of frontier sense up here that I didn’t have in Southern Ontario where there were certain expectations,” he said. “I got up here and there were no expectations, I could do anything I wanted and it just freed me mentally and imaginatively to tell the stories I felt I had in me to tell.”
His career has brought many great things for him, including praise by the Globe and Mail to the New York Times. Still, Wilkins workshop was called Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Writers. Along with being a great title, borrowed from the Ed Bruce song about cowboys, Wilkins said there are hard times being a writer.
“The challenges of book-writing are one thing but behind them all the domestic challenges of raising a family and so forth in this very uncertain life,” he said. “It’s gotten better and easier.”
Wilkins said he was grateful so many people turned out to the sold-out event to hear his stories.
“It’s a huge honour that people would be interested to come and here me speak about my years in Thunder Bay.”
