An interview with Ruth Edgett
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“I guess if “Hill 145” raises awareness or motivates action, it would be action resulting from the ability of the reader to identify with this veteran soldier, George, who—whether he realizes it or not—has been badly damaged by the things he saw and did on that battlefield. I hope it shows the reader this consequence of war, the damage it does to a generation of fighters who must eventually return home and try to put their lives back together. But, too, I hope it leaves the reader with a renewed awareness of the healing power of love; the love that George and his wife feel for each other, and that George feels for his children—that he would go “to the ends of the earth” for them if need be,” says Ruth Edgett, a former newspaper journalist-turned communications consultant, and author of A Watch in the Night: The story of Pomquet Island’s last lightkeeping family (Nimbus, 2007).
Tell me about yourself.
I’m a former newspaper journalist-turned communications consultant, originally from Canada’s Maritimes and now living in the province of Ontario. Most of my writing is about bygone life in Maritime Canada and includes a creative non-fiction book called A Watch in the Night: The story of Pomquet Island’s last lightkeeping family (Nimbus, 2007). Other fiction and non-fiction appears in publications based in the United States, the UK and Canada, one of which is “Hill 145,” 2017 winner of the CONSEQUENCE Magazine “Women Writing War” Fiction Prize, which is how you and I met. I’m currently shopping a novel to publishers and am finalizing a collection of short stories.
Why do you write?
Intriguing question… How can I not? I’ve been writing, since I was old enough to hold a pencil and construct a sentence. My first career was as a newspaper reporter. From that point onward, writing has been second nature to me. I’ve always found it easier to articulate my thoughts in writing than in speech. A famous writer (likely more than one) has said, “I write to know what I think.” That’s me, too.
What kinds of stories do you write?
I like to tell other people’s stories, be they fictional people, actual ones, or composites of the two. Even my fiction is inspired by events that really happened. Most of my stories have an historical bent, and I try to stay true to the history while giving the reader the feeling of what it must have been like to live through the particular circumstance I’m portraying. I don’t aim to impart a message so much as to have the reader feel in some way uplifted by what they’ve read.
What do you enjoy most about writing?
Finding out where the story is going. I find that writing stories is at least as much fun as reading them—because there’s no telling where your characters are going to take you. I, as author, am usually just as surprised by the sudden in’s and out’s of a story as the reader. Another way of saying this, I suppose, is that the thing I enjoy most about writing is the worlds it takes me into—because in order to tell a story really well, I as the writer need to inhabit it; to see and feel as precisely as possible what the characters see and feel, so that I can translate that onto the page.
Tell me about any stories that you have written about war or based on countries affected by humanitarian crises?
When I think of the term, “humanitarian crisis,” I’m inclined to think of crises happening today: the huge migration through Europe of refugees from so many horrible battles in which even the leaders of their own countries seem not to care whether they live or die—or whether, when the bombing is done, there is anything left to live for; or, the migration through the Americas of people fleeing drug lords, drug wars and corrupt governments; or, the continuing, rolling disasters in the form of floods and droughts that rob people, already living at barely subsistence levels, of basic food and shelter.
But my stories have been about the First World War. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that war—"The Great War”—was, most likely, the greatest humanitarian crisis of its time. And that crisis played out on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, just as today, innocent civilians were displaced by the fighting. In America, families and hopes were decimated when sons failed to come home. In all, 20 million people died as a result of that war and only half that number were soldiers. Canada (a country of barely 8 million at the time) contributed 61,000 dead soldiers to that total. No combatant country emerged without having paid a huge price—and the currency was human beings: a generation of young men who either died in the fighting or returned home irrevocably damaged in body, or spirit, or both. Then there were the civilians who just happened to be in the wrong places at the wrong times. Plus ça change…
Why did you choose to write about war?
Actually, writing about war chose me. That is to say, I began writing about the First World War and my country, Canada’s, role in it purely by happenstance. I started writing a book that was a fictionalized account of actual events in my mother’s family. They were lightkeepers on a tiny island off the northern coast of Nova Scotia. I wanted it to be a living, breathing progress of events in the daily lives of a Depression-era family that allowed the reader, not just to see but to know, what it was like to be a child growing up on a tiny cliff-skirted island with no electricity or running water, with a small dory as the only means of communication with the mainland, where everyone had a role to play in the family’s survival. All of this under the stern and watchful eye of a former soldier who had emerged alive from three of the Great War’s bloodiest battles, and who brooked no dissent from the ranks of his six children.
That man (my grandfather, who died when I was in my early 20’s) was a fascinating character in his own right. During my research for the book, I obtained access to his service records and learned a lot about the battles in which he fought, the wounds he suffered, and his general movements around France and Flanders between 1916 and 1919. I also found on-line the war diaries of his commanding officer. This gave a pretty good picture of his part in the battles he was involved in. So, I wanted to write about his war years in the lighthouse book. But the publisher had a different idea, and the chapter about his service—one of the strongest in the manuscript, I felt—had to be cut and all that backstory condensed into about 900 words.
But the damage had already been done, so to speak. This farmer’s daughter who grew up on the North Shore of Canada’s smallest province, swimming with my brother, sister and friends in the ocean all summer and racing our family dogs on our sleighs and toboggans all winter; this middle-aged woman (by the time of the book’s writing) who still could not tell you the precise years of either of the world wars, became a war history sponge—at least as it pertained to her grandfather.
That eventually translated into a number of essays and non-fiction pieces about various aspects of the First World War, and the short story “Hill 145”, which won the 2017 “Women Writing War” fiction prize in CONSEQUENCE Magazine. The timing of that prize was particularly meaningful to me, because the story is about a war veteran who returns to Vimy Ridge, France, for the unveiling of a massive Canadian monument that commemorates the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which began on April 9, 1917. My grandfather fought in that battle and was among the mere forty percent of his battalion able to walk away from the battlefield.
What are some elements from your stories or novel that could raise awareness or motivate action in response to a humanitarian crisis?
I don’t write to impart any particular message; my motive is to uplift people in some way—even when they are reading about war and crisis. I guess if “Hill 145” raises awareness or motivates action, it would be action resulting from the ability of the reader to identify with this veteran soldier, George, who—whether he realizes it or not—has been badly damaged by the things he saw and did on that battlefield.
If that story does anything, I hope it does that: show the reader this consequence of war, the damage it does to a generation of fighters who must eventually return home and try to put their lives back together. But, too, I hope it leaves the reader with a renewed awareness of the healing power of love; the love that George and his wife feel for each other, and that George feels for his children—that he would go “to the ends of the earth” for them if need be.
Is there a role for narrative fiction/storytelling to motivate readers to take action to address the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises?
Yes, in a broad sense, but I would say it’s an incremental process. Fiction plays a role in raising the consciousness of a society. A rising tide floats all boats, they say, and perhaps this is the ultimate role of fiction: to make us better, more compassionate people, one story at a time.
Can you describe any incidents from your own experience where reading a fiction story or novel has led you to change the way you behave or caused you to act upon a particular crisis?
I believe this is the reason we have fiction: To allow the rest of us to experience a life without actually living it; which, in turn, gives rise to compassion for other people’s experiences—experiences for which we would otherwise have no reference point. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini is one of those books for me. Another is The Illegal by Lawrence Hill. Neither is about a specific humanitarian crisis, but both books are about people who leave the comfort of home to make better lives for themselves and those they love—in Hosseini’s case, even if it means splitting the family up in the process; in Hill’s case, even if he is not welcome in the land of his choosing.
A great eye-opener for me years ago was a book called None is Too Many by two Canadian historians. It gives a less-than flattering historic account of Canada’s treatment of Jews fleeing Europe between 1933 and 1948. They assert that, during that period, Canada did less to help than any other western nation. The title comes from a remark attributed to an immigration official asked how many Jews would be admitted to Canada after the war.
This and revelations about the generations of utter neglect and mistreatment of Canada’s aboriginal people (which one report went so far as to label “cultural genocide”) have contributed to my own gradual realization that even my country has turned its back on—even, perhaps, created—humanitarian crises. Yet, from this have arisen some amazing indigenous Canadian writers, whose frank, warts-and-all writing celebrates their spirit and resilience.
I am one of the fortunate ones who relies on the power of the written word to imagine the hardships and crises we speak of. I look to skilled writers like Eden Robinson (Son of a Trickster, Trickster Drift) and Richard Wagamese (Indian Horse, Medicine Walk) to make me see and feel what that hardship must be like.
Newly aware, I can then do my part to keep pressure on my government to repair past humanitarian mistakes and help keep it from making new ones.
What is the one thing you’d like the readers of your stories to take away?
The feeling of what it would be like to be the people in my stories. If I can achieve this, then I’ve achieved what I believe is fiction’s highest calling.
What one action can people out there listening to you can take to address the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises? What is your call to action?
Put yourself in the shoes of the people who are in crisis and guide your responses accordingly. Not everyone can race to the scenes of devastation and provide physical help; not everyone is in a position to donate money; but, anyone can feel compassion, can pay that compassion forward to the general public discourse and, thereby, ever-so-slowly and incrementally affect our governments’ actions on the world stage. True, that’s not a lot, but every heart turned to compassion is one less heart closed to suffering.
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