Welcome to your very first Letters From Windermere, an old-fashioned letter from my house to yours, a collection of news, notes, and nostalgia where I chat about History, Writing, and Books.
From 2013 to 2018, I wrote more than 100 wartime stories, and you can find them all under the category called Lest We Forget.
Lake Windermere is located in the southeastern corner of British Columbia. It forms the headwaters of the mighty Columbia River, which flows through the province and across the border into the United States, emerging into the Pacific Ocean.
Around Lake Windermere are clustered a number of smaller communities, but people from outside tend to refer to this whole area as “Windermere” or “The Windermere.” My home is located on the western side of the lake, and I admire my view of Lake Windermere every day.
Although my proper mailing address is Invermere, I decided to adopt the name Windermere because it is more historic, named after the famous Lake Windermere in England.
The above photo shows me with my daughter and three little granddaughters, seated at one of my favourite views of Lake Windermere, about a twenty-minute walk from our house.
We call it “The Lookout,” and we walk here often throughout the changing seasons. The photo below shows the same view in winter.
I also chose the name because there is a book called Letters From Windermere, written by a true pioneer named Daisy Phillips. She and her husband Jack came from England to this area in the early days, and Daisy faithfully wrote home to her family describing her adventures in Canada.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, they sailed back to England with their baby daughter, and Jack joined the fray. Sadly, he died early in the war and Daisy never returned to Canada. Her letters, however, were preserved and eventually published by the University of British Columbia.
Daisy, shown below with husband Jack at their little homestead in the mountains, was just the sort of pioneer I envisioned when I created my heroine Mary Margaret in my own novel Wildwood — plucky, adventurous, and determined. I hope to follow Daisy’s lead and make my own Letters From Windermere just as interesting.
Update: my new novel Finding Flora set in 1905 is about another courageous homesteader. I love that time period.
Firstly, however, I have a confession. My first Letter From Windermere is arriving to you from Mexico! I say guilty, because it seems so un-Canadian to desert my homeland when the going gets rough, especially when I have written so much about the early homesteaders!
However, this is the fourth winter that my husband and I have rented a condo for eight weeks in the old city of Puerto Vallarta, where we revel in the climate and the local culture. If you’re familiar with the city, our condo is located just south of Zona Romantica, straight up the hill from Los Muertos Pier. And this is my view!
Update: I wrote again in 2023 about Puerto Vallarta here: Loving Mexico.
In Letters From Windermere, I plan to share with you some of the many lovely vintage items dear to my heart — like this electric typewriter inherited from my mother, who died in November 2017.
I’m old enough to have learned to type on a manual typewriter (that’s a mechanical typewriter, without electricity) in high school. When electric typewriters were invented, we thought they were the very latest in technology!
Here I am looking rather disgruntled, at my very first job in 1972 — as a reporter for the Battlefords Advertiser-Post in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Note the fancy new electric typewriter on my desk.
A few years later, I moved on to the Western Producer in Saskatoon as a farm reporter. Many a compelling article about bull sales and grain prices were hammered out on my typewriter there! You can see it on the lower left.
It wasn’t until 1980, when I was working at the Red Deer Advocate, that computers arrived — and the rest is history. (One legacy of my typewriter days is that I STILL bang the keys on my computer keyboard with great energy, since we had to strike the typewriter keys hard!)
On my bookshelf at home, I have a couple of manual typewriters as well as a dial telephone, a vintage fan, a pencil sharpener, two old metal signs, and my “new” electric typewriter on the right.
My eye is always drawn to images of old typewriters! I was thrilled when I found these typewriter greeting cards, which I use as thank you notes.
I even have a wee vintage typewriter Christmas tree ornament.
There’s a typewriter image on my address labels. Now that you have my address, write me a real letter!
Friends, do you remember using a manual typewriter?
Since I became an author, people always ask me what I’m reading. I often feel that they expect some highbrow answer. No, I’m not reading War and Peace. In fact, I devour an eclectic mix of literary fiction, women’s fiction, chicklit, humour, and mysteries. I found this weatherbeaten paperback at my condo and I really enjoyed it, in spite of scaring myself half to death!
Update: See all the books I have recommended in a variety of genres over the years here: Reading Roundup.
One of my favourite things to do in Mexico is to haunt the fabric stores. Most Mexican women are avid seamstresses, unlike Canadians, so the stores are well stocked with inexpensive material and notions.
Last year I brought home enough fabric to sew a Christmas tablecloth that was 20 feet long! Now that we have FIVE grandchildren, we use two eight-foot tables pushed together for family dinners. Of course, I could hardly carry my suitcase on the way home, because fabric is so heavy!
In the photo below, this pre-smocked fabric for little dresses costs $29.99 pesos, or about two dollars per metre. I am sorely tempted.
I know many of you enjoyed reading my wartime stories, and here’s a story that you might have missed. This is Constance Babington Smith, an aerial photographic interpreter who inspired my heroine Rose in Bird’s Eye View. Here she is pictured after the war, wearing a hat of her own creation with a tiny aircraft attached, to an aviation show in England. Read more here: The Woman With the X-Ray Eyes.
I have almost exhausted my supply of Star Weekly covers, but it seemed appropriate for January to show you this image, created by the wonderful wartime illustrator Montague Black, of a Canadian ship locked in the snow and ice. See my cover collection here: Star Weekly at War.
Friends, I will continue to send Letters From Windermere on the same day each month. You can subscribe below, or drop me an email and I can do it for you.
I hope you are having a VERY happy new year so far. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely, Elinor
