Tag Archives: Adult Program

Fit for a Queen: In Conversation with Jennifer Robson

November 4, 2020Adult Program, Author Visit, Historical Fiction, ProgramAlyssia

On November 19, Vaughan Public Libraries is proud to present In Conversation with Jennifer Robson in partnership with our friends at Hoopla and HarperCollins. Pour yourself a cuppa and join us!

the gown book cover If, like me, you are still missing Downton Abbey, or are not-so-patiently waiting for the next season of The Crown (November 15 on Netflix!), why not sate your appetite with some historical fiction? Jennifer Robson’s The Gown is a fascinating peek into a largely overlooked part of history. I can tell you exactly what Kate Middleton’s and Meghan Markle’s wedding dresses looked like, but I could not tell you who designed them (upon googling: Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, and Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy, respectively). Even less could I tell you who made those gorgeous gowns by hand.

The titular gown here refers to the one worn by then-Princess Elizabeth during her wedding to Prince Phillip. Robson’s novel follows three women: Ann and Miriam in 1947, and Heather in 2016. Ann and Miriam are both embroiders working for the prestigious British designer Norman Hartnell, tasked with creating a wedding gown befitting a future queen. In modern day, Heather is left behind an expensive piece of embroidered silk by her grandmother, and sets out overseas to piece together the life of this mysterious woman. Robson’s tale takes us from war-ravaged England to current-day Toronto and London, tracing the lives of these three very different women.

Fans of historical fiction are in for a treat with The Gown; meticulously researched, the novel’s sense of place and time will envelop you, like the warm and welcoming glow of Hartnell’s workshop. And it’s no wonder Robson recreates this setting beautifully, as she is a scholar of the economic and social history of early 20th century Britain. Particularly apt is her doctoral thesis, which focused partially on the rationing of clothing during WWII. This academic background is seeped into her writing, in small details that bring a sense of tangible reality to this historical tale. Interestingly enough, one of the doubts of my reading experience was just how nice everyone at Hartnell is. I thought, there’s no way everyone gets along this well. Where’s the workplace drama? Where are the rude superiors? Surely, at a prestige fashion house like Hartnell, everyone would be posh and snobby? Not the case, it turns out! In an interview with the Thunder Bay Public Library, Robson recounts a story from her on-the-ground research at the former Hartnell location in London, in which the head seamstress (overseeing the making of Elizabeth’s gown) “invited every woman in the sewing workroom to add a stitch to the princess’s gown; that way they could all rightly say they had helped to make it”.

Princess Elizabeth on her wedding day, 1947

Even in real life, Hartnell’s legacy’s shows up in heartwarming places. The most recent royal wedding took place in July of this year, between Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. Just as her grandmother—the current queen—was married following the devastation of the war, and thus had to ration the cloth for her own dress, Beatrice was married in the midst of a pandemic. Rather than source a new dress, Beatrice chose to rework an old gown of Elizabeth’s—a 1960s Hartnell design. This sense of warmth, of teamwork and just general loveliness saturates every page of The Gown. Even when Ann is freezing in her little council house, in a winter so cold it might as well be Canadian, the coziness of the house, the hearth of the fireplace, and the kettle on the stove are a comfort to read about.

Just in time for gloomy November, we’re happy to bring some much needed comfort into your homes. Robson will be interviewed by local writer, author, and podcaster Louise Johnson. Johnson has written for The Globe and Mail, Flare Magazine, and The Huffington Post. If you are one of the millions of quarantine bread bakers, you might want to check out her article on the science behind the phenomenon. Johnson has also worked as a professional speaker for the University of Toronto and the Harvard Business Association, among others! Her bookish podcast, the Word Weaver Podcast, is available on Apple, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Reserve your spot for In Conversation with Jennifer Robson today! You can check out a copy of The Gown from your local library branch in paper format, or digitally on Hoopla and Overdrive!

Late Night Presents: Friday Night Frights

October 14, 2020Adult Program, After Hours Program, Halloween, Horror, Program, urban legendsAlyssia

On October 23, our Late Nights at the Library team is putting together a special Halloween-themed program. Get ready for Friday Night Frights! We’ll be talking ghosts and hauntings and all that good stuff, with special guest Jaymes White. Along with some oracle reading, we’ll be delving into some local urban legends and haunts—come with your best spooky stories! Ages 18+.

If you’re like me, you love a good urban legend. Unlike older myths and folklore, the origins of urban legends can often be traced back to a source, if you really cared to find it. A lot of mid-20th century legends—campfire classics like “The Hook”, “High Beams”, and “The call is coming from inside the house…”—stemmed from newspaper advice columns, where fears about teenage impurity abounded (you know all those stories about “Lovers Lane”? That’s what happens when you get caught neckin’!). And this goes double for all the newer stories that originated on the Internet; oftentimes, we literally know who created the legend. These modern stories usually don’t concern themselves with morals, like those of the past—we’re just looking for a good spooky scare! In The Vanishing Hitchhiker, well before the dawn of the Internet, urban legend historian Jan Harold Brunvald notes that “It might seem unlikely that legends—urban legends at that—would continue to be created in an age of widespread literacy, rapid mass communications, and restless travel”, and yet here we are. It seems nothing will quell our collective desire to explore the unknown. To borrow a catchphrase from The X-Files, we want to believe.

So in honour of the spooky season, and these time-tested tales, let’s look at some urban legends—some very new and some quite old—and see how exactly they came to be the—wait for it—legends that they are today.

Continue reading →

‘Tis (Almost) the Season!

October 9, 2019adult non-fiction, Adult Program, DeathKaren

For increased mortality rates, that is. According to a mortality overview report by StatsCan for 2014-2016, the deadliest month in 2016 was December, followed by March, then February, then January (Figure 3, Seasonality of Deaths) – see how they’re all the winter months? It actually starts a bit earlier, in October & November, and stretches all the way till April – the months that had a higher average number of daily deaths than the annual average – but you can see that there’s a peak December through March. And seeing both as we’re headed into these deadly winter months as well as towards the start of our upcoming adult program, Crash Course in Death and Dying, I figure ’tis the season, then, to talk about death.

But it’s a bit of a taboo subject to bring up still, right? Or at least that’s the feeling I get whenever I do want to bring up death in conversation. So how do we start the conversation? Because it’s going to happen at some point in your life (well, if we’re talking about your death, it’s going to happen at a pretty predictable point in your life, actually: the end of it), and there are logistical matters to take into consideration even apart from the sentimental or spiritual aspect of it (e.g. what kind of funeral to hold, if holding one? how to deal with the body?), so it’s probably a good idea to think about it and write up your will & deal with your estate (with The Canadian Guide to Will and Estate Planning, 4th edition, for example) even before you start considering how close you may or may not be to your inevitable end or thinking about how to start talking to your loved ones about your choices.

And what better time to start thinking about wills & power of attorney, or advance care planning, than with the start of our program on death & dying that will cover Wills & Power of Attorney (Wed Oct 16, 7-8:30pm at the Bathurst Clark Resource Library with guest speaker Adam Giancola) and Advance Care Planning (Wed Oct 23, 7-8:30pm at the Bathurst Clark Resource Library with a guest speaker from Hospice Vaughan). ~~Register for these talks/workshops now on Eventbrite!~~ This has been changed into a drop-in program, so please come drop into the program!

But beyond that, I’d like to mention a few death-related materials to help you become more comfortable thinking and talking about death and dying, as well as to make it easier to initiate the topic of discussion with someone who might be otherwise disinclined to talk about it (which is not to say to force them to talk about it). This post is going to be focused more on how we can be more open in discussions about death and be more prepared for our own inevitable demise.