If I Could Travel Back in Time by A.M.Westerling

Gosh, that’s a tough one because to tell you the truth, I would love to visit every time period that I’ve written about. And, to a certain extent, I have.

I’ve visited castles in Luxembourg and The Netherlands. I’ve seen a bit of the Cariboo Road and strolled down Barkerville’s Main Street. (Below is St. Saviour's Anglican Church at the end of Main Street and below that is a picture of the original Cariboo Road just outside of Lytton, British Columbia.)

I’ve visited Ribe, a Viking village in Denmark. 

Ribe and Barkerville are living museums and that’s a kind of time travel without the inconvenience of actually having to deal with the not so nice aspects of historical life ie the smells, questionable personal hygiene, lack of sanitation, no modern medicine, no central heating. etc.

Having said that, I’ve never been to England and would love to visit London during the Regency period, roughly 1800-1820. I’d love to attend a proper ball and drive in a fancy carriage through Hyde Park. I’d love to visit a dressmaker and walk out with a fashionable new wardrobe. I’d love to attend the theatre or spend an afternoon at Almack’s in one of my new dresses. I’d love to spend a weekend at a house party in the country and wear an elegant riding habit. (I would ride astride, not side saddle, just to be scandalous!) I’d love to be the lady of the household with a personal maid to dress me and an army of servants at my beck and call. (Okay, okay, so I’m the lady of my own household but I am the maid and I am the servant army and I dress myself. 😊 )

I’d love to ride along Rotten Row and spend an afternoon watching the horse races at Ascot wearing some sort of stunning hat crafted by the best milliner London has to offer. And all of this, of course, accompanied by a dashing Duke or perhaps a Captain of the Royal Navy resplendent in his blue uniform.

And after experiencing all that, I would be quite happy to return to my own time and my own life. 

Would you like to experience a little time travel of your own? How about reading Barkerville Beginnings, or any of the books in the Canadian Historical Brides Collection? You can find it HERE at your favourite online book store. 

The entire Canadian Historical Brides Collection is available HERE.

Here's what readers are saying about Barkerville Beginnings:

"I really enjoyed “Barkerville Beginnings”, from the very first page I was hooked. I found the story very immersing and appreciated how Ms. Westerling wrote so vividly that I felt like I was right there in the story with each of the characters; seeing and experiencing everything that they did.

A few years ago I worked for Barkerville and have a fairly good knowledge of its history and the townsite as it stands today. With this understanding of the townsite I feel like Ms. Westerling did a very good job of portraying the town, the history, and bringing to life some of the more prominent figures who lived in Barkerville, including judge Begbie and Moses, the town barber. I also found it very refreshing that she didn’t just incorporate the European history that is typically covered, instead there was an incorporation of the Chinese history and their contributions to the town included and given as much merit as any of the businesses that were owned and run by the white town folks." Crystal B.

"As someone who has lived my whole life in British Columbia, and has visited ALL of the cities and towns mentioned (with the exception of those in England) in this work of historical fiction, I was satisfied and delighted with the careful attention to factual detail that was expertly woven into the story." Discerning Reader 

 

I really enjoyed “Barkerville Beginnings”, from the very first page I was hooked. I found the story very immersing and appreciated how Ms. Westerling wrote so vividly that I felt like I was right there in the story with each of the characters; seeing and experiencing everything that they did.

A few years ago I worked for Barkerville and have a fairly good knowledge of its history and the townsite as it stands today. With this understanding of the townsite I feel like Ms. Westerling did a very good job of portraying the town, the history, and bringing to life some of the more prominent figures who lived in Barkerville, including judge Begbie and Moses, the town barber. I also found it very refreshing that she didn’t just incorporate the European history that is typically covered, instead there was an incorporation of the Chinese history and their contributions to the town included and given as much merit as any of the businesses that were owned and run by the white town folks.

Spirits Can See Red

Residential School Escape

Coming of Age in the Wilderness

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

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• 
  
• Christine Cayedeto, Aged 9, disappeared from her front yard in 1986
• Tiffany Maureen Skye, 19, disappeared August 8, 2011; she was Bloodvein First Nation;
• Annie Pootoogook, 46, an renown artist from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, was found dead in the Ottawa River, September 19, 2016 
• Rose-Anne Blackned, 24, mother of two, found frozen in the Val D'Or, Quebec, on November 16, 1991
• Olivia Lone Bear, mother of five, her body discovered nine months later, June 25, 2018
• 
  

Besides the fact that they are women, what else do they have in common? The years of their deaths/disappearances are different, as are their ages.

All these women are indigenous, some from the US, others from Canada. According to the U.S. Justice Department, indigenous women face murder rates--on some reservations--as much as 10X above the national average.

This shameful statistic is caused by a long standing inequity in the law. If a native woman is assaulted by a non-native person on tribal land, they will not be prosecuted, because the tribal police may not arrest or prosecute a non-native person. This has, very simply, created open season on native women. Rates of homicide and disappearance of native women and girls, apparently for the sex trade, appear to be ever-growing. Spikes of violence are now occurring in the oil rush fields of the U.S. and Canada where transient workers come and go.  

If an indigenous person is accused of killing a non-native person on the reservation, he may be prosecuted twice--by the tribal authorities and by whatever state in which the crime was committed. You may say that the fact that this remains law here in the 21st Century, is nothing more or less than institutionalized racism. However, solutions remain difficult, for the problems are many and complicated. 

Tribal police are hesitant to give state police any assistance or make it any easier for non-native law enforcement officers to come onto their land. Add to this that the tribal police are generally underfunded and that the territories which they cover are enormous. Next comes the poverty, substance abuse, family disruption (among these, the residential school system) and lack of work on the reservations, which exacerbates the tragic history of the people who live there. Racial violence is now embedded in indigenous bodies, descendants of brutalized survivors. 

Violence is an often-unacknowledged part of our European American past. Most of our people fled injustice, starvation, and sectarian violence in their lands of origin. This ancestral violence, likewise planted in our bodies (and, it now appears, in our very DNA) has been, in turn, visited upon the original inhabitants of North America.

There's 500 hundred years of bad blood between immigrants and indigenous people.  It's unsurprising that European Americans and 1st Nations' meet and sometimes clash in the border towns where  indigenous people must to come in order to find work or get supplies. Some of these cities/towns appear to have resident gangs waiting to abduct young women for the sex trade.

In an effort to raise awareness of the issue, several art projects have been created. One is The Red Dress Project. This began in Canada and is a public art commemoration of the Aboriginal women known to be missing or murdered. Canadian Jaime Black (Metis) began the project in 2000. 

Jaime Black explains: "Red is the only color spirits can see. So (red) is really a calling back of the spirits of these women, allowing them a chance to be among us and have their voices heard through their family members and community." 

A few of the  organizations trying to raise awareness of these Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women using both civic action and art may be found @

https://www.facebook.com/groups/walkingwithoursisters/about/

Native women’s Association of Canada

https://www.nwac.ca/

This group is designed to raise awareness about the Missing/Murdered Indigenous Women crisis in Canada—violence against women, girls and two-spirit persons.

Sisters in Spirit vigils continue to be held across Canada every year on the 4^th of October.

The home site of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women:

 https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/

https://www.facebook.com/mmiwusa/

Meanwhile:

Tylena Walkalong, 14 years old, last seen in Billings Montana, August, 2018

Talelei Oldcrane, 12, disappeared June 17, 2018, Billings, Montana

Valencia and Valentina Haswood, aged 16 and 14, last seen in Sawmill, AZ 08/18

Khadijah Britton, 24, abducted at gunpoint by an ex-boyfriend, Mendocino, CA, 02/07/18...

European North American women like myself have made limited progress towards equality under the law, but aboriginal women and women of color have been left behind.  We must remember the names of these lost sisters and hope that their spirits, though battered, will find their way home when they see the red dress. 

We must "Pray for the dead, and fight like Hell for the Living."*

~~Juliet Waldron

See All My Historical Novels @

julietwaldron.com

* Mother Jones

Another view of the Red Dress Movement in this powerful article:

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/terese-marie-mailhot/dont-hang-a-red-dress-for-me_a_23019892/

If I could Time Travel

Buy Here

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London, 17th Century

King James VI & I

King William III & Queen Mary

My expertise is the 17^th century, specifically the 1660’s, 1660-1669, I know, a very narrow view of then London. But in order to ‘know’ of my time, I must explore the years around this decade, generally from James VI & I to William of Orange. I delve into books that date from the 17^th century to now, seeking new and interesting information that abounds from that time. 

Center aisle of St Paul's

If I could, I’d leap into time machine and zoom back to that era, see the dirt encrusted cobblestones, the pissing conduit and the great conduit along Cheapside. I’d find the London stone and sit on it. I would ask a gentleman to take me into St Paul’s Church, a broken down place where the exterior walls bulged under the weight of the stone building. Less than savory folk camped along the main aisle. Cromwell’s soldiers had made the church into stables during the civil wars. The stink of people who had traversed within its walls over several centuries pervaded the columns.

St. Paul's in ruin after 1666 fire

London was loud and dirty. Coal smoke fogged the lanes during winter, and settled on all things, crusting surfaces with grit.

But people are people everywhere. They love and hate. They wonder at what the government is doing to them, how they will cope. Like today.

We haven’t changed over the centuries but I’d still love to travel back to London in the 17^th century, watch from afar as St Paul’s Church burned during the 1666 great fire. According to my sources, with its decay and scaffolding, it took about an hour to burn. Only an hour. The lead roof melted, rained down the church’s sides like a fiery rain and streamed downhill toward the Thames.

Ah, London. Back in the day. 

Many thanks to Wikicommons, Public Domain.

Back in Time to the untidy Eighteenth Century

If I had a Time Machine, I'd travel back to the later eighteenth century, the part of history I mostly write about. I'd view the details of daily life for myself. I'd also pack a suitcase of deodorant, shampoo and conditioner. Women washed their hair with shaved soap flakes, but it left a sticky residue, so don't believe those movies that show the women of this time with silky, ravishing locks.

People didn't bathe (in full immersion in a tub) often, fearing it would destroy the natural oils of the body, leaving you open to disease. I'd miss my hot showers.

I'd travel through England and visit quant villages where the average people toil, but of course I wouldn't have the freedoms I enjoy in the modern world. Women in this era were controlled by men, fathers, brothers, then husbands, and it was seen as the norm. They had few rights of their own.

An outspoken woman could be punished, put in the pillory, or even sold in the market place by her husband. She could be beaten, but fortunately by this time, not legally killed  by a disgruntled husband.





A lucky woman found a happy marriage to sustain her, since her husband became her master. A good husband would treat his wife as an equal. A widow had more freedom to start a business, or continue her husband's. Thank goodness for something for the females.

Marriage a la Mode: The Tête à Tête by William Hogarth. The couple are already disinterested in each other.

And though I'd love to view the details of daily life to get my research right, I wouldn't care for the unsanitary conditions. Fleas in the bed, lice on the body. Though those situations do happen now, we have better ways to deal with them. Having to use a chamber pot or close stool is also a turn-off.

Clothing was another restriction of the time, especially for women. Strapped into 'stays' (corsets), encumbered with layers of clothing, they must have suffocated in hotter weather. The women who didn't have a houseful of servants suffered in hard work: hauling water, milking the cow, scrubbing floors, plus caring for a brood of children.

I'd only visit for a short time in my Time Machine, because I know with my big mouth, I'd be in the pillory in no time.

 

 

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Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

If I Could Go Back In Time by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

If I could go back in time, where would I go? I was born and raised in Canada where our non-native history goes back almost 400 years if you look at what is now the province of Quebec or 1000 years if you count the Vikings having a settlement in what is now the province of Newfoundland.

In 2017, I travelled across Canada to the site of the Viking settlement at L’Anse Aux Meadows on the tip of Newfoundland’s Great North Peninsula. There I toured through the encampment which consisted of replicas of the timber and sod buildings constructed by the Vikings who had sailed from Greenland. I talked with the costumed interpreters who were sitting around a fire inside one of the buildings cooking their meal. It felt surreal to be there, to know that my ancestors (I have recently found out that I have Viking heritage) lived there for a few years. This is the first known evidence of European settlement in the Americas. From the camp, I walked along the rugged cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and crossed a large bog on a boardwalk. Then I toured the museum, looking at the fascinating artifacts that were found during the excavation. The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.

 

This year I spent 66 days in Europe and one of the places I visited was the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. In the museum is a permanent exhibition of parts of five original Viking ships excavated nearby in 1962. A thousand years ago these ships were deliberately scuttled (filled with rocks and sunk) in a river to stop the enemy from invading the city by water. Over the decades since they were found, the pieces have been preserved and put together on a metal frame to show how the ships would have looked. Also at the site are replicas of the Viking ships and I became a Viking for an hour. A group of us sat on the seats and rowed the ship out of the harbour using the long oars. Once on the open water we hoisted the mast and set sail. After sailing for a while we headed back to the harbour. As we neared it I had the honour of pulling on the rope that lowered the mast and sail and we glided back to our dock.

 

So if I could go back in time I would like to be a Viking Shield-Maiden. Women of the time were not called Vikings because they normally did not take part in warfare. They were called Norsewomen. However, women fought in a battle in 971AD and Freydis Eiriksdottir, Leif Erikson’s half-sister is said to have grabbed a sword, and, bare-breasted, helped scare away an attacking army. These women were called Shield-Maidens.

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/