People get excited about visiting Stonehenge, that remarkable series of standing stones just off a major thoroughfare in the south of England. But the real magic happens here in Orkney at the Ring of Brodgar. These standing stones are between 500 and 1000 years older than Stonehenge. And as you can see from Sheena's photo, highways are hard to find in this part of the world. These stones were once giants, according to story-teller Tom Muir. One night, with a mad fiddler sawing away, they fell to dancing in a circle. They got so caught up in the music that they failed to notice the time, and the sun rose unexpectedly, and turned them all to stone. They are 36 in number, though Time has reduced some of them to stumps. Researchers estimate that once, there were 60. The fiddler himself remains in his place, standing alone, just down the hill.
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.
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