Queen Elizabeth II is 94

All my novels at Books We Love

Fly Away Snow Goose, Canadian Historical Brides Novel

My Mother, a staunch Anglophile, would have been 100 this year.  On April 21, a woman she very much admired, Queen Elizabeth II, became 94.   Queen Elizabeth II has had the longest reign of any English monarch.  A few years ago, she also became the world's oldest living head of state.

I can trace my own love of English history back to the year of 1952, the year Elizabeth came to the throne. My parents subscribed to the Sunday New York Times. That early morning car trip to the drug store to pick up the paper with my Dad, into the picturesque lakeside town of Skaneateles, NY., was part of our weekly routine.  I went along to ogle little china animals that were for sale there and to attempt to wheedle a candy bar out of Daddy before he'd picked up the paper. 

My Uncle Leo, Aunt Judy, myself & my Dad, 1952

As the coronation approached, The NY Times was full of historical pieces about the royal families who had preceded the Windsors. There were images of the many monarchs who were her predecessors, and lots of snippets about the famous and the infamous.  I was a voracious reader and sufficiently interested in the historical background they were printing to not only read, but scissor out and paste into a scrapbook I'd begun, everything I could find pertaining to the royals and the coming coronation.

Anne Boleyn

Of course, the tales of Henry VIII and his doomed Queen Anne Boleyn, made for exciting reading, as did the stories of their daughter,  Elizabeth I. The first Elizabeth, I learned, had almost as many lives as a cat as she survived various plots to dispose of her during the reigns of her half-brother, Edward VI, and her half-sister, Queen Mary. The later was the most dangerous enemy, because Mary's mother had been dispossessed of both husband and crown by Anne Boleyn.  It wasn't long after that I was cutting my historical novel teeth on "Young Bess," "Elizabeth, Captive Princess," and "Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain" by Margaret Irwin, one of my favorite writers. 
   

Three images of the first Queen Elizabeth

The Second World War was only seven years distant in 1952. My Mom was very proud of the way the English royal family had comported themselves during the German bombing campaign. At one point, after Buckingham Palace was bombed, it was suggested that the Queen Mother and her two daughters should leave England for the safer Canada, which was more closely enmeshed with the English government than it is today. The Queen Mother refused to leave the country, saying:

"The children won't go without me. I won't leave without the King. And the King will never leave."

At sixteen, the war ongoing, Elizabeth signed up with the British Labour Registry, even though her parents, King George and Queen Elizabeth, had to be persuaded. In this "all hands on deck" moment, the Princess was soon in military coveralls, working as a truck driver and a mechanic. Today, Elizabeth II is the only living head of State who served in World War II. 

Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor

& the Queen Mother during World War II

Queen Elizabeth has seen enormous changes in the world during her long rule. She's presided over decolonization as the British Empire has been eroded away by popular political movements. This list --(Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) also includes Canada. The Canada Act of 1982 finally severed the country's legal dependence upon the British parliament. 


Despite a 94th birthday being a momentous occasion for the monarch, the traditional gun salute was foregone this year because of our current pandemic. The Queen's official birthday, in June, which is normally marked with a magnificent display of trooping of the colours, has also been cancelled. 


~~Juliet Waldron

All my historical novels

A Housewife’s Tale: Cleaning the refrigerator, and what happened next.

Fly Away Snow Goose

http://amzn.to/2jZPtIR

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/fly-away-snow-goose-nits-it-ah-golika-xah-1

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fly-away-snow-goose-canadian-historical-brides-collection-book-8-juliet-waldron/1127581811?ean=2940158604010

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/752162

Thanksgiving is coming. My husband cooks Indian food incessantly and our fridge is redolent of hot sauce, curry, Garam Masala, cumin etc. I decide, therefore, to clean before next week when I will be attempting to store mashed potatoes and turkey in there. I want my bland and traditional leftovers to stay that way for the brief time they will be in residence. 

Things accumulate inside refrigerators. Along with the withered cucumber and the lone apple, staring at me are four quarter full bottles of wine, cluttering the top shelf. We are not big wine drinkers and so, if we have guests who do like it, we buy a bottle to be sociable but usually end up with a bit left.

I’m always rationalizing that I’ll use the red wine in beef burgundy, and the white wine with baked fish or chicken recipes, but, somehow, as we’ve been conscientiously eating less meat this year, none of these “plan-overs” have come to fruition. Now the bottles face me, accusing me of wastefulness. I am after all, a Yankee, raised with an ethic of “Use it up. Wear it out. Make do or do without.”

Not only cleaning (never a big favorite of mine) but a decision now faces me, a test of my frugality. After some hesitation, an inner voice instructs: “Bite the bullet!” I pick up the first bottle, Beaujolais, and look at it.  Some sediment in the bottom. I uncork it; I smell it, then take a swig. Not worth spitting out, but nah! Down the drain it goes.

Next comes a bottle of champagne.  Lordy! That must have been from my birthday last February, so it’s been around for a while. A hopeful swig, ‘cause I like Champagne a lot, but it’s flat as a pancake, and so it follows the Beaujolais down the drain. Here’s a bottle of Spanish Red, strong and lively, which, after another taste, I decide can stay for around until I do make that beef burgundy. 

Next up, a Malbec. There really isn’t much left but it tastes a lot better than the others. Shortly thereafter, I’ve got the Malbec in a glass and am sitting at the table, with a box of crackers.

It’s just about 5 P.M, going dark outside early as it does since “fall back.” I notice the last, perfectly ripe pear in the center bowl. It would be shame to let it go over. Perhaps I’ll get up again and collect a knife to cut it with. As I pass the fridge once more, I remember the last slice of baby Swiss cheese in the fridge’s upper drawer.  

Soon, light illuminating the table, I’m having a civilized snack of cheese, crackers, wine and pear. My head’s a little head swirly from the wine tasting. 

This will do for supper. The fridge can wait until tomorrow.

~~Juliet Waldron 

All My Historical Novels


http://www.julietwaldron.com
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS
https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel
http://bwlauthors.blogspot.com/

http://yesterrdayrevisitedhere.blogspot.com/

A Great Canadian Idea

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

In Fly Away Snow Goose, the young hero and heroine are on the run from a punitive, frightening residential school. They hope, after surviving a long wilderness journey and rejoining their families at winter hunting camp, that they will be able to continue their lives hunting and gathering, co-existing with Nature in the same manner as their ancestors.

"It's the land that keeps things for us. Being our home, it's important for us to take care of the dwelling--the land--for wherever you go is home." ~Rosalie Tailbone

Of course, the time in which Fly Away Snow Goose is set, the early 1950's, was actually the beginning of enormous changes in the NWT. Roads were built and bush plane travel became more common. There was an influx of outsiders prospecting for diamonds, gold, natural gas and oil, all the commodities so precious to the ever-needy Western world.   The new settlers and the industries they brought with them have been a mixed bag for the original inhabitants. The elders became concerned at the growing water pollution and loss of game. They directed the next generation to find new ways to protect the land, as well as their culture, language, and way of life.

Today, as Canada works toward reconciliation with 1st Nations' people, they also face new challenges resulting from a rapidly changing climate. Instead of doing conservation by fiat and disregarding the input of Indigenous communities, Canada is beginning to create protected areas in ways that empower these original and most engaged inhabitants.

Thaidene Nëné

In a recent Audubon article, "Guardians of the North" by Hannah Hoag, I read (happily!) about the newly established  protected area, Thaidene Nëné, encompassing more than 6.4 million acres of land stretching from the easternmost tip of Great Slave Lake northeast toward the Arctic Territory of  Nunavut. The result of 30 years of careful, on-again-off-again negotiation between a host of parties--the Canadian Government,  the government of the NWT, the Yellowknives Dene, The Northwest Territory Métis Nation, the Deninu K'ue First Nation and the Lutsël K’é Dene First Nation--is that this enormous area will be preserved to not only feed but to spiritually nourish future generations of Canadians of every heritage.

It is hoped that this arrangement, achieved by the traditional method of consensus building, will not only preserve something of the tribal, ancient ways of life but serve to conserve the many species who share the environment. Protection for one of the few remaining great Northern Boreal forests will not be an easy task, but it is the kind of dramatic step that is needed in the 21st Century, where "Mother Nature is on the run." Sacred sites will be respected, water will remain clean and full of the fish--trout, inconnu, pike, burbot--and that the forests, unbroken by transmission lines, will continue to give protection to the caribou who enter them to birth their young.   

This new agreement is a monumental achievement for the 1st Nation's who were involved, as well as for the governments of NWT and Parks Canada.  I hope the establishment of such a "park," this wild Thaidene Nëné with its thousands of species, will prove to be such a success that it will become the accepted pattern of conservation for governments the world over. 


~ Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Caribou & Men

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

The aboriginal people of NWT were hunter/gatherers when the European colonists "discovered" them. The 1st Nations were already on the land, and many said that Creator had shaped men from the mud that was found between the caribou's toes.  In those days, men and animals journeyed through an immense landscape every year, following the caribou that fed and clothed them. Every bit of what they killed was used, every scrap of sinew and hide and meat.

The great herds moved unobstructed across the land like water and wind. The people followed. They original inhabitants didn't kill for "fun;" they killed by necessity. Sometimes, when the game traveled on new path or their numbers declined (for one reason or another) the people starved. In the old days, the human population cycled up and down along with that population of prey animals.

The Woodland Caribou is a kind of specialist, different from the Barren Ground Caribou--the one you see on long harrowing journeys if you watch wildlife shows. The Woodland Caribou live and feed in old growth conifer forests where lichens and mosses grow. Trees of 85 to 150 years of age are the perfect hosts for the aerial and ground plant life on which these caribou depend. This means that undisturbed old growth forests are of prime importance to their survival.

Mining exploration had been going on in the NWT since earliest times, ("Yellowknife" refers to the gold blades some members of that tribe once made) but it wasn't until the 1990's that the digging began in earnest now with heavy loud modern machinery. The data shows it is not coincidental that this is the time when the numbers of the Woodland Caribou began to diminish. Mining didn't begin in earnest until the 1990's. It is not coincidental that this is the time when the numbers of the caribou began to diminish.

Toxic waste is a typical by-product of mining; moreover, that industry does not have a good record of cleaning up after itself anywhere, but logging at first seems to have been the hardest on the caribou. Not only noise, dust and continuous human activity, but the clear-cutting of the ancient forests--both the soil disruption and the removal of the trees -- cut severely into the supply of lichens and mosses, (some aerial, some ground dwelling) upon which the woodland caribou depend.

Roads, pipelines, seismic and now hydro lines create clear highways along which predators such as Lynx, Wolf & Bear can travel deep into what were once once (nearly) impenetrable forests. Now these predators hunt the Boreal Caribou where they have long been accustomed to resting, feeding or giving birth, times when they are particularly vulnerable to attack. This kind of habitat fragmentation affects all migratory animals which now share a planet with humans.


Caribou are named for the places the places where they calve. One herd that is failing spectacularly--much to the dismay of the 1st Nations people whose ancient way of life is threatened--is the Bathhurst herd. Once as many as 500,000, now there are less than 10,000. The numbers continue to fall.

This year there is a proposed permanent road north, again through what was once boreal forests, an extension of Highway 3 north to Whati', the haven in the wilderness for which my characters, Sascho and Yaotl, search after their escape from the Residential School. Families who live in Whati' year round now will be benefited with cheaper goods, but once again, their ancient ally, the caribou, will suffer -- and diminish.

Noise will be another as yet not much studied factor -- which affects the caribou and the other animals who are accustomed to living in the area of the proposed Whati road. Studies done in 2012 by the University of Idaho showed that simply broadcasting a recording of road noise--in this case of a heavily used climb in Glacier National Park--was sufficient to drive animals away. Some bird migrations that were documented as common in the roadless test area used by the "phantom road" study completely ceased. We humans don't have to do much it seems to disrupt Nature's once perfect balance.

Things don't have to be this way. Governments, industry and communities could work together to create local plans and solutions. Federal budget incentives could be used as both carrot and stick to assist caribou recovery. Sustainability must become the mantra for all who live and work in the NWT, if they want the caribou and some part of their ancient way of life to remain. 


~~Juliet Waldron


https://blog.wwf.ca/blog/2018/04/20/governments-argue-risk-woodland-caribou-decline/


Volumetrics, Why noise pollution is more dangerous than we think by David Owen, May 13, 2019, The New Yorker


https://cabinradio.ca/12442/news/environment/how-nwt-proposes-to-protect-wildlife-from-new-whati-road/

Snow Goose Time

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Every year the geese pass over in great numbers because I live in the Atlantic flyway. When I was small, my dad made a big deal out of the Canadas, because at that time, DDT had nearly killed them off. This is hard to believe now, of course, as the Canadas are seen as a golf course/corporate campus pest.  

In those days, though, the sound of their haunting voices would bring Daddy out of the house with his little girl in tow. He’d tell me another extinction story, the one about the Passenger Pigeons, although the last representative of that family had died a decade before he was born. These birds had gone from a population of perhaps 5 Billion to none in fifty years.

“Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”

—Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” 1947, from Audubon online

The goose represented wilderness as they flew and called in the truncated V arrangements typical of the early ‘50’s. Where were they going, I wondered. “To the North, to the shores of the Bering Sea, way up north in Canada.” The magical destination was now named--a world as mythical to a small American child as the Back of the North Wind.

The snow geese were a revelation and a delight to a transplant to central Pennsylvania. I remember the first time I saw them, just a few flying over our home, in the sunlight that follows a February snow squall. Light gleamed on their bodies against a blue sky. In a moment of late winter quiet—no trains, planes, snow blowers--I heard their high voices, sweet and whispery compared to the brash honks of their Canada relatives.

The magic of white geese with their black tipped wings reminded me of other mythologies—like those European stories upon which the Swan Lake ballet is based. The sight of them set off thoughts of enchanted princesses and frozen lakes and -- magic!

The snow geese that come through here have a rest-stop fairly close, in Middlecreek. I'd been there in the summer, on long bicycle rides. Once, though, I'd driven out in February and had been lucky enough to find a great host of migrants already there. 

I was simply blown away by the sight and the sound of so much avian beauty, some rising in clouds while others, dumping air beneath their wings like fighter pilots, landed in open water. There were snow geese flying and snow goose swimming and snow geese resting upon the ice. In one small outlet, like royalty keeping to themselves, were the elegant Swans.

Like a child, I could look up and imagine myself rising from the earth and flying off with them, joining the storm of wings. I'd find my place among relations, get in line and cruise across mountains and forests. I'd forget the past and the future and just be in today--the next patch of green, the next drink of water, delighting in the strength and power of my wings! 

This flight of fancy ended abruptly when an eagle cannoned into the cloud of geese and took one of the beautiful creatures. For an instant, seeing a limp neck dangling in his claws--a creature that just seconds ago had been full of life--I was stunned. That's when I remembered the rest of a goose's--or any wild creature's life--suffering through storms, the fox in the night, the insatiable men hidden in the reeds.

 Coming home from a friend's house last Sunday as the sun went down behind low clouds, I could hear the Canada's calling in the last quarter mile. Overhead sailed great Vs of travelers. Others were landing, in the littered cornfield behind a row of old houses. When drivers in front suddenly turned in. I followed them, and sure enough, from a back alley, I could see snow geese, a great army, taking a break, looking around, talking to one another, here before sundown. 

 I had the pleasure of seeing them up close--just for a few minutes. It didn't take the wise old leaders long to figure out that there were too many people here. Soon, too soon, they lifted up again and moved on north, in the direction of larger and more isolated fields. For the brief time it took for the great cloud to arise, I was a kid again, imagining that if I wished hard enough, I could grow wings and travel with them, looking down upon the wonders of our Mother Earth.

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels at:

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Total Immersion

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

https://www.bookbub.com/books/alexander-hamilton-and-elizabeth-schuyler-hamilton-a-master-passion-by-juliet-waldron

Why write historical fiction? This is a deep question. The 1980’s, when I first started writing, was a low point for the genre. I remember querying ever so many agents and getting replies which said “only a small market for historical fiction.” That was discouraging enough, but not so much that I stopped working on those novels, driven by the writing demons as I was.   

Like everyone else who will reply to this question, I started young reading historical fiction, following the books my mother took out of the library. She was a voracious reader of both history and science fiction, and I became one as well. I began early, and remember writing a short story about the Princes in the Tower back in 8^th grade that got an “A.” (My story successfully creeped-out  the class, too, which was even better.)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/roan-rose/id1023558994?mt=11

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

I could say that my love of history happened because I’ve often lived in old houses—several with disturbances of the kind that are often labelled “ghost.” I could talk about the love of my important elders for history, their familiarity with the past, and the way the past was always present in discussions about politics, or about how trips were taken to view gravestones, battlefields, Indian mounds, and museums. 

I could dwell on the lit professor grandpa that I adored. His study fairly breathed of old books, tweed, leather, pipe smoke and things past. A large oil painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims overlooked his desk, a beautiful obsidian spear point that had emerged during the spring plowing at the family farm in upstate NY sat beside his typewriter. All of these objects had stories, and he shared them with his children and grandchildren. At home, that wonderful quote of William Faulkner’s “The Past is never gone. It’s not even past,” was a statement of fact. 

The truth is more that I’ve never felt truly comfortable with the noisy, gasoline era into which I was born. Cars were something to get around in, but not by me beloved. Every time a tree falls in the creation of a road or a new development, I feel a terrible sense of loss.

I’ve often spoken of what I write as a kind of time travel, because for me that’s what it is—a way to be present in another place and time, to smell and taste that world, to deal with the hardships and the inevitable dirt and sweat, the blood and the loss, that is the genuine past.  The “romance” died quite early for me because I read and read and read, ever deeper into my chosen subjects. 

Living inside another time and place, or inside another culture, is truly an immersive experience; I love the scuba sense of diving in and swimming around inside these deep waters of history. Originally, I wrote from my own European-American perspective, and my books were set in 18th Century Europe or England or the colonial US.  The time shift alone caused me to change my perspective. I sometimes get nasty reviews because the 18th Century characters about whom I write do not behave up to the highest standards of the 21st Century. I always want to reply to these folks that I don't write these stories to make them comfortable. I write to show them as much as I can of what I've learned about what was--the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Maybe I'd be richer if I sugar-coated, but taking the trip into the past and taking my readers along with me is always far more important than whatever is currently P.C. If you want to read about the 18th Century people, expect to meet  men who have "patriarchy" firmly entrenched in their heads and women who have no other recourse than to accept or attempt to circumvent whatever their menfolk, their churches and their society dish

out. Englishwomen, as every reader of Jane Austen ought to know, could not inherit property until quite recently.

By Tom Walker~Available at Allposters.com

http://bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-juliet/

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Genesee+%2B+Juliet+Waldron

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/genesee-juliet-waldron/1103112072?ean=2940011129636

In Genesee, and, later, to a far greater extent, in Fly Away Snow Goose, I had another task. here I found I had to shed the Euro-based colonizer culture into which I was born so that I could inhabit (as far as I am able) a life-way with a totally different outlook. The Tlicho tribe in Fly Away Snow Goose were historically a nomadic, communal people, living in small groups that got even smaller in winter--who shared food with one another. They disapproved the kind of willful ignorance of their environment, the braggadocio and "me-first-ism" that is  rampant in the capital-driven European cultures which almost overwhelmed them. 

Instead of "conquerors of nature," the Tlicho strove to always to be in "right relationship" with the earth and her creatures, to eat and/or to make use of every piece of any animal they killed. They saw the spirits in the sky and in the earth and water all across the enormous terrain they traversed every year, following the caribou. Everyone had to pull together, or the group might not survive the long frigid winters where starvation was a very real threat. This experience, this total immersion has changed my outlook on the world in a fundamental way.  

Now, it's as if I've put on an entirely new pair of spectacles.  

http://amzn.to/2jZPtIR

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/752162

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fly-away-snow-goose-canadian-historical-brides-collection-book-8-juliet-waldron/1127581811?ean=2940158604010

~~Juliet Waldron
www.julietwaldron.com

In the Name of Love

By Kathy Fischer-Brown

I can’t say that I never did anything particularly memorable “in the name of love.” Whether a result of my aging brain or selective recall, I can think of nothing to write here about myself. So, I will relate a little story from family lore.

When my dad served in the navy during WWII, his fiancée (my mom) used to send him care packages of his favorite foods: stuff that would survive weeks—if not months—of travel from The Bronx until reaching the SS Virgo, his ship, somewhere in the South Pacific. She’d send him edibles such as salamis, crackers, and nuts in their shells. My father loved sweets: chocolates, chocolate pudding, Boston cream pie…you name it. Brownies were one of his particular weaknesses. My mother’s brownies especially. They were cakey but not dry, satisfyingly chocolatey, and chock full of walnuts.

So, at one point she decided to bake a batch and send it to him. This was in an age when there was no UPS where you could drop off your perishables, have them boxed in Styrofoam coolers and packed in dry ice. You couldn’t even track the package. And in war time, there was no guarantee that it would even reach its destination. Imagine, if you will, the condition in which they arrived. My dad often spoke of this, and how his taste buds had been so amped at the thought of a bite of a delicious brownie…or two or three accompanied by a luke warm glass of navy regulation reconstituted powdered milk. Until he got a gander at those brown and green mouldy bricks.

 ~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, "The Serpent’s Tooth" trilogy: Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from a host of online and brick and mortar retailers. Look for Where the River Narrows (with Ronald Ady Crouch), the 12^th and final novel in BWL’s Canadian Historical Brides series, coming in July 2018.