Thankful today and every day

There are many people in my life for whom I am grateful – old friends and new, family and those I call family, authors, book buyers, coworkers and colleagues, and so much more.

My work life as an author, editor, and book publisher has been greatly enriched this past year, so I have a few new blessings to add to my already blessed life.

I am grateful to have met and become friends with 101-year-old Reginald “Crash” Harrison of Saskatoon, who survived four plane crashes while serving as a bomber pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. Reg grew up on a Saskatchewan farm and went off to war in search of adventure and to serve his country, like his father and uncles did before him. He flew 19 missions and survived four crashes – none of which were his fault.

Upon his return to Canada, Reg stopped in Ottawa to visit the fiancée of a fallen airman friend. Reg’s dramatic war story turned into a beautiful love story – all of which I’ve documented in my new book Crash Harrison – Tales of a Bomber Pilot Who Defied Death (available on my website). To Reg, for painstakingly recalling all the details and trusting me to share his fascinating life story, I am grateful. I also appreciate the assistance of many people who helped me see this book through to fruition, including Lisa Driver, Mary Harelkin Bishop, Dani Driver, Don Acton, Laurie Harrison, Sylvia Acton, Susan Harrison, Pete Colbeck, Thomega Entertainment, and Creative Saskatchewan.

Reg "Crash" Harrison and author Deana J. Driver, August 2023

I’ve had the privilege of talking about the Crash Harrison book alongside Reg Harrison at numerous events in Saskatoon and to Saskatchewan media – including CTV News Saskatoon, CBC Radio Saskatchewan Weekend, and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. Plus, he’s been interviewed twice on the John Gormley Talk Radio show! (See the links on our News & Events page.)

My Crash Harrison book has been #1 on the Bestsellers list at McNally Robinson Booksellers Saskatoon, and I recently found out from a friend that the book has been nominated for Best Book in the Prairie Dog Magazine’s Best of Regina 2023 contest! For these honours, I am grateful.

Those who know me personally will tell you that the last seven years have been a time in which I’ve been rebuilding myself after the unexpected death of my husband Al from cancer. Grief will always be with me and my family. We are learning to grow and find happy moments alongside it. And we are eternally grateful for the life and love of Al Driver.

As a retired journalist, I admire those who are gifted wordsmiths. On the topic of gratitude, one of my favourite pieces was written by the late Ron Petrie, whom I was privileged to work with while publishing a collection of his Regina Leader-Post newspaper columns. His Running of the Buffalo book was one of the first of about 100 books I have created since I started on this publishing journey.

So Ron gets the last words here about being grateful.

(His "Giving Thanks for a Great Life" column was published in 2007 in the Leader-Post and again in 2010 as the final chapter, "Thankful," of our book. The newspaper column was also buried in the 100th anniversary time capsule at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in December 2012.)

Enjoy!

 

Thankful 

Whether one day of humility makes up for 364 of selfish bellyaching is a question best left to theologians and ethicists. The point of this weekend is to take stock.

So let it be known that I am grateful.

Grateful to be where I am, for starters.

As a younger man, brash and full of swagger, I considered my calling to be Vancouver, Montreal, even New York. Only now do I appreciate that what I actually fancied was merely the idea of my farmboy self destined for the big city that, in reality, traffic jams, restaurant queues, cut-throat office politics, six-dollar cups of coffee, shoebox apartments and crammed elevators are not for me and never were.

Where I am is Saskatchewan. Thank goodness. With the possible exception of the Maritimes, nowhere in Canada can one find folks with a keener feel for the absurd, with a  more grounded sense of purpose and place, the confidence to enjoy the gift that is a good laugh at one’s own expense. The job description calls me a Saskatchewan humour writer. Hardly. I am a stenographer. I simply take notes.

That my Saskatchewan grows the food that feeds the world makes me guilty of a deadly sin. Pride.

Chances are that in the coming weeks and months, Saskatchewan will be called upon to install both a provincial and federal government. Unlike in too many other parts of the world, this will be accomplished through words, not blood. I am thankful for our British system of parliamentary democracy, for its longstanding tradition that holds my role, political satire, as an indispensable safeguard against the threat of pompous and overbearing authority.

I give thanks for my home. Droopy eavestroughs, cracked driveway and ill-fitted door jambs notwithstanding, I live in comforts unknown to three-quarters of the people of the planet and with conveniences unimagined before the 20^th century, not even by kings, emperors and czars. A hot shower, on tap every morning remains, for my money, one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind.

I am grateful for a wife who, after early shopping for a Halloween supply of miniature Kit Kat bars, hides the bags where only she and I can find them. Also for pretending that she doesn’t know that I know where.

To the men and women of the Canadian Armed Force, I say thank you. The mission our soldiers accepted halfway around the world is reminiscent of the dangers of two world wars that my parents’ generation and my grandparents’ generation had no choice but to face down. Canadians of my own pampered vintage, conversely, have known nothing but peace.

I am indebted to the 2007 Saskatchewan Roughriders, for posting an 8-5 win-loss record and relieving me of the usual journalistic obligation every fall to write snarky wisecracks about my lifelong favourite football team.

For those moments I spend with my kids at our favourite fishing hole, at dance and music recitals, in hockey rinks or on the golf course, I am beholden. It is fashionable among experts in child-rearing to lecture that parents ought not to live vicariously through their children and shouldn’t derive their own happiness from the activities of their sons and daughters.

I am thankful my kids do not read books written by child-rearing experts.

I am grateful for the wherewithal that allows me to provide my children with everything I know they need, if not always for everything they think they want. Putting a child to bed with an empty stomach and with nothing humanly possible to dry the tears must be a parental nightmare beyond all scope of the Canadian imagination.

Likewise, I am thankful for a rising group of young work colleagues who challenge each other through excellence, not gossip or backstabbing; for refrigerated transport, putting fresh asparagus on my plate where, as a boy, there would have been, blech, canned peas; for good friends who laugh too much; for a westside address with its view of the Prairie sunset; for the memory of my mom and dad; for our land of variety, of four seasons, even if the white one is a tad on the long side; for pain-free dentistry; for disposable contact lenses, for, for…

As a professional bellyacher, perhaps I should be most thankful that, on this rare occasion of listing what’s right in life, not wrong, I’ve run out of space.

There’s too much. Here and now, there’s just too much.

 

October 6, 2007

Crash Harrison Bomber Pilot Book Coming Soon

My newest book is almost here! Crash Harrison: Tales of a Bomber Pilot Who Defied Death will be released at the end of July, and I am SO EXCITED!

It's been 12 years since I wrote a full-size book.

Since my last full-size book (Never Leave Your Wingman: Dionne and Graham Warner's Story of Hope) was launched in June 2011, I have written and published The Sailor and the Christmas Trees (which is an inspiring 48-page Christmas story) and pieces in seven other books about farming and aviation. Writing and putting together this 176-page Crash Harrison book, however, has been its own unique and interesting journey.

The story is about Reginald "Crash" Harrison, a 100-year-old gentleman in Saskatoon who was a bomber pilot during the Second World War. He's had many fascinating adventures, including surviving several crashes and close calls, and has made some lifelong connections because of his time as a Second World War bomber pilot.

The printed proof of Crash Harrison arrived last week, and I am still a little overwhelmed by the reality of it all. The book is being printed! It will be here in late July!

Meeting Reg in May of 2019 when I interviewed him for the first volume of the Flight: Stories of Canadian Aviation series was an experience I’ll never forget. I’d talked to him by phone to find out some details of his story, but sitting across from him and watching as he thumbed through his Pilot’s Flying Log Book from the 1940s to fill in details of his missions was really special. I’d also never interviewed someone of that advanced age (he was 96 at the time).

Reg is a gentle, kind man. He doesn’t consider himself to be a hero. That alone makes him more worthy of the honour than most. For the first Flight book, I wrote about Reg’s wartime adventures and a little about his life after the war. Over the last couple of years, as I was contemplating which book I would write next and who it would be about, I couldn’t get Reg and his life story out of my mind. I knew I had to write his story and share it with a wider audience.

We spent many hours talking in person and on the phone, adding more details to my first interviews about his wartime and after-the-war activities. We also talked in depth about his growing-up years on the Prairies and what it was like to walk three miles to school, herd cattle in the dust storms of the Dirty Thirties in Saskatchewan, and do homework by the dim light of a coal oil lamp. He told me about the first airplane ride he ever took – as a teenager – and how he paid for that flight with weasel skins, how his parents kept their family fed during the Great Depression, and how he was never scared while doing his job as a bomber pilot.

Reg became one of the few Canadians in the famed “Guinea Pig Club” after receiving reconstructive skin graft surgery during the war. And he was named an “Honorary Snowbird” by the renowned Canadian Forces’ Snowbirds aerobatics display team, which flies under the same squadron number as Reg served during the war.

I wrote the book in Reg’s voice, as thought he is telling his own story.

The book is educational, with captivating tales of Reg’s adventures and his life. I am certain that Crash Harrison: Tales of a Bomber Pilot Who Defied Death will be enjoyed by readers from teens to seniors and I’m looking forward to launching it this summer and sharing it with all of you in the days and months ahead.

DriverWorks Ink is grateful to Creative Saskatchewan for Book Publishing Production grant support of this title.

Creative Saskatchewan changes to book publishing production grant leave 40 Sask publishers out in cold

DriverWorks Ink is extremely disappointed that Creative Saskatchewan (CS) has chosen to stop accepting book publishing production grant applications for any book that is published with use of author funds. Due to this change in criteria and because of our business model, DriverWorks Ink will no longer be eligible to apply for book publishing production grants from Creative Saskatchewan. As a writer, author, editor, book publisher, entrepreneur, and former journalist, I am frustrated enough to write about this appalling, unexplained turn of events.

DriverWorks Ink is a hybrid book publisher that, since 2008, has worked in partnership with authors to publish books about Prairie people written by Saskatchewan and other Prairie writers. We have been successful in obtaining funding for more than a dozen books in the last five years. This makes it especially disheartening to be told that our product is no longer good enough to even apply.

Most of our books which received grant money returned a profit (income over production costs), and many of them were profitable within the first six months to a year. Our profits come from book sales, with authors receiving royalties from those sales. Our goal is profitability. Commercial viability is the original main goal of the production grant.

Six of these nine of our CS-grant-receiving books that were published with author investment have also won awards.

With Creative Saskatchewan’s announcement on April 16, 2018, the grant’s name also changed from Creative Industries Production Grant to Book Publishing Grant. In my jaded view, this more clearly singles out book publishing and, it feels to me, takes aim at significantly reducing the number of wonderful, important books published in this province. I will not say that it will sound a death knell to our book publishing industry – we are stronger than that – but it will change the landscape significantly. Not in a good way.

The new eligibility criteria for the CS Book Publishing Grant means that only five or six of the 45 book publishers in Saskatchewan will have eligible book projects. It means that 40 of the publisher members of SaskBooks/Saskatchewan Publishers Group, including DriverWorks Ink, will no longer be eligible to apply for book publishing production grant support from Creative Saskatchewan as most, if not all, of their published books include income investment from authors. Although we may still apply for funding to assist with marketing and business capacity development, many amazing Saskatchewan-based books will not be published because of lack of funds, and there will be little point in marketing or growing a business that has no new product.

The new criteria states that books with support from the Canada Book Fund (federal funding) may be eligible for “fast-track” approval without jury adjudication. Creative Saskatchewan’s website states: “Our investments propel creative entrepreneurs as they create, innovate, expand, and perform, in their pursuit of commercial success.” While I support funding from provincial granting agencies for any worthwhile book projects, I am extremely concerned that this change to Creative Saskatchewan’s book publishing fund provides potentially guaranteed funding for book projects subsidized by other agencies and not even a consideration of funding for entrepreneur models that have a good book to publish which will sell commercially and add to the province’s GDP – which are three of Creative Saskatchewan’s mandated goals.

The Book Publishing Grant’s new criteria requires that eligible applicants must have been in operation for two years and have four eligible (read “with no author funds”) titles in print essentially blocks our industry’s growth because actual entrepreneurs and those starting in the industry have no access to funding support. It goes against why Creative Saskatchewan was set up in the first place.

This province, unlike the other jurisdictions in Canada, has never made a practice of supporting trade publishing (which is the general-audience scope for most of the DriverWorks Ink books), so trade publishing had to come up with an alternative model which includes hybrid and self-publishing.* (*See Addendum below.) That model in Saskatchewan has become an accepted practice in the industry across North America, but Creative Saskatchewan’s guidelines seem to be ill-advisedly supporting only publishing projects which may already receive product investment from the public sector. Why is that? 

I am concerned for the future of our vibrant book publishing industry in Saskatchewan, in which I have worked for the past 17 years. I have watched it grow in strength and quality and I am grateful to Creative Saskatchewan for assisting with some of that growth. More than 100 books are published annually in Saskatchewan – most of them by the smaller publishing houses. I fear that the numbers will decrease significantly because of this change in the grant program, important cultural books will go unpublished and businesses will close their doors.

When I was a board member of SaskBooks, the creative industry member organization for publishers in the province, I spent dozens of hours at the board table with various representatives of Creative Saskatchewan, many of whom had come to CS from other creative industries and knew very little about book publishing. I thought we had provided education on the diverse and commercially viable business models in the publishing sector and how our member publishers collectively believe that funds coming in from one source versus another is irrelevant to the stated goals of the grant – commercial viability and growing the province’s GDP. I thought we had proven time and again the value of our member organization’s programs and processes.

I love Saskatchewan, which is built on the entrepreneurial spirit, and I am deeply concerned by this withdrawal of support for valuable books produced by entrepreneurs. I ask Creative Saskatchewan to reconsider this decision.

Creative entrepreneurs focussed on the commercial success of their published books and businesses are being excluded from the publishing grant application process. It’s time to correct this error and do it quickly. We have stories to tell and we want your help to do so, Creative Saskatchewan. 


* Added April 18, 2018: Every other provinces in Canada supports the publishing of trade books through various forms of provincial funding. For example, a publisher of tourism books in Alberta and British Columbia is eligible for provincial funding. In Saskatchewan, Parkland Publishing has published numerous award-winning, best-selling tourism books about Saskatchewan but is no longer eligible to apply for a book production grant. In Manitoba, a publisher who produces non-fiction trade books similar to those of DriverWorks Ink is eligible for provincial funding to help with infrastructure and business expenses. There is no such support from the Saskatchewan government for DriverWorks Ink or other small publishers. Business models such as hybrid publishing or self-published-author publishing grew here to keep the industry active and to publish more Saskatchewan-based books for our readers.

About 30 authors per year plus numerous artists, graphic designers and printers are affected by this withdrawal of Saskatchewan funding availability. Recently, the Writers Guild of Canada opened up membership eligibility to self-published authors. The library system in Greater Vancouver launched a campaign of awareness of self-published authors because they noticed so many self-published books of quality coming into their libraries. The change is happening across Canada to recognize books based on content and quality, not on input funding methods. Self-published authors and hybrid publishers have submitted production grant applications to Creative Saskatchewan in the past only for books of quality that are marketable and will turn a profit, as required by the former criteria. It is irrelevant whether the publisher's funding comes from a federal grant, the business itself, a gift of funds, a GoFundMe page, or somewhere else.

Please share this information. Please comment on it.

Please support all Saskatchewan publishers (and our authors), including hybrid publishers and self-published authors.

Please contact Creative Saskatchewan, your local media, the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sports, and/or your local and provincial politicians to tell them you want funding continued for all Saskatchewan publishers, without discrimination against their business models or input funding methods.

A Regina Leader-Post newspaper article about the cuts is here.

Exploring Book Expo America 2016 in Chicago

In May, I was pleased to be invited by SaskBooks (Saskatchewan Publishers Group) to be one of three Saskatchewan publishers to attend BookExpo America in Chicago, IL. BEA is "the leading book and author event for the North American publishing industry and is the best place to discover new titles and authors, conduct business and network, and learn the latest trends."

I had never attended BEA before and was delighted to participate, with the help of Creative Saskatchewan funding. I learned more about the book publishing industry in North America and made some great business connections towards the goal of eventually selling foreign and international rights to some of our books written by Saskatchewan and Prairie authors.

I quickly found out that BEA is definitely "the largest gathering of booksellers, librarians, retailers, publishers, rights, licensing, and book industry professionals in North America." We were told that this year's conference was smaller than those of most years because it was in Chicago rather than its usual location of New York City.

This was not only my first trip to BEA but my first trip to Chicago as well, so there was a lot for me to learn and explore. Here's a photographic snapshot of some of my experiences at BEA:

Here's Millenium Park and Lake Michigan, on a clear day's view from my hotel room.

Sask publishing friends Heather Nickel of Your Nickel's Worth Publishing and Jillian Bell of SaskBooks stand in one of the halls of McCormick Place, the huge conference centre where BEA was held.

A blogger's conference was a great start to the event, where I learned more about the importance of book bloggers in getting the word out about new titles.

Book marketing and promotion ideas were shared by these panelists.

The time that people spend on social media is constantly increasing, so publishers need to adapt to that change, says branding authority Cindy Ratzlaff. (This was my favourite presentation of the conference.)

Cindy shared a list of some great graphics tools. 

These bags were waiting for their participants' new haul of free books, informational brochures, business cards, and more.

The exhibit hall had many rows of booths.

More booths, from some of the biggest publishers.

These folks were all waiting for a book launch...

...by Kenny Loggins, who reworked his Footloose lyrics into a children's book about animals at the zoo.

Yes, there's Kenny Loggins in the background, signing his book at the booth a few steps away from me.

Kenny Loggins and his new Footloose children's book.

NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was signing his new book as well.

We met many authors, including Kwame Alexander (above centre) and illustrators, including Daniel Myares (above right). We enjoyed a little singalong with Kwame and Daniel before we could happily take home a copy of their beautiful new children's book. 

Oh yeah, I. .. did not meet the Beatles, of course, but I enjoyed these life-sized cutouts at one of the booths. Too cool to ignore, right?

I was most intrigued by this display at the booth of Foreword Reviews. We just might include a couple of our DriverWorks Ink books in their display for the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. 

These U.S. teachers were the lucky, very happy  recipients of some DriverWorks Ink books that I had taken to hand out and spread the word about our great books.

Book Expo America was a fabulous opportunity to learn, make some connections for marketing and increased sales, and share information about our popular and award-winning books. Thank you, SaskBooks, for the invitation and thank you, Creative Saskatchewan, for the funding assistance.

And now with the conference over, there was a tiny bit of time to do a little sightseeing in Chicago.