CANADIAN FEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN
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The Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) Orillia recently welcomed guest speaker Susan Swan, renowned author and journalist, to their January meeting. Living in Midland in the 1940s and 1950s, where her father was a doctor, Swan, as a child, wrote stories to entertain herself and her friends, and as a teenager, worked as a reporter at the Midland Free Press. She also attended Havergal College from 1959 to 1963, which became an inspiration for a later novel. After graduation, Swan attended McGill University where she worked on The McGill Daily and became editor of The McGill Scene, followed by working as a reporter for several Toronto daily newspapers. In a new direction, she began to turn to magazine freelancing and novels and became Associate Professor of Humanities at York University. Currently retired, she continues to write novels and mentor creative writing students at the University of Toronto and Humber College.
Swan's latest novel The Western Light is set in Madoc's Landing, a fictional town on Georgian Bay and revolves around the life of a young girl named "Mouse Bradford" who craves the attention of her father, a busy doctor totally dedicated to his patients, with little time for his family. Mouse seeks out another male figure for affection, who unfortunately is not a wholesome character. Swan affirmed some similarities between herself and "Mouse," and discussed the typical, traditional role of men in Western culture, where the expectation was that fathers would be strong and protect their families and provide for their well-being. However, what they gave was not necessarily "what we were searching for." The theme of searching for our fathers is not without perils as seen in the novels of other Canadian authors.The impact of Swan's novels on the Canadian literary and political scene has been far-reaching.
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