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Spontaneous dash to Orkney produces lost images and a whirlwind tour


We made a spontaneous dash to Orkney to visit Tom and Rhonda Muir. Then we contrived to banish them to the wrong camera (hence no pix of them!) and ended up with shots of a hotel, a statue and a charming young couple on the steps of a classic edifice in urgent need of refurbishment (see my previous blog posts re: fund-raising campaign). We stopped in to say hello to the owner, Ivan Craigie, and whoosh! back I flashed to 1998, my first visit to Orkney, and Ivan inviting me to ride the back of his tractor to cross the rough field to the water where as a boy, in a "noust," John Rae stored his boat. What a time we had -- not just then, but today, zooming around on a Tom-led tour of cottages, beautifully restored, dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, all in aid of a crash-course on the history of the Clearances in Orkney. Except for Tom, who even knew they happened?


Ken McGoogan
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Before turning mainly to books about arctic exploration and Canadian history, Ken McGoogan worked for two decades as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal. He teaches creative nonfiction writing through the University of Toronto and in the MFA program at King’s College in Halifax. Ken served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, has written recently for Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, and Maclean’s, and sails with Adventure Canada as a resource historian. Based in Toronto, he has given talks and presentations across Canada, from Dawson City to Dartmouth, and in places as different as Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Hobart.