Meet my friend Norma

It seems that most people meet online these days, not just in bars or through family connections or through friends. Norma Hill and I met online, not on a dating site as we are both happily married, though not to each other. One early email exchange is dated November 8, 2023 though our relationship feels much older. If I recall correctly, she stumbled across my blog which somehow piqued her interest in my various projects. Almost instantly a wide ranging email conversation unfolded. At one point she suggested that “maybe we could get a conversational thread going.” Well, this we certainly did, and continue to do so now in person.

We both enjoy writing; her experience is lifelong while mine is more recent. She has written, produced, edited, taught, and promoted a wide range of writers of fiction and non-fiction. From Inuvik to Haida Gwaii, and here in the Okanagan, she has observed and chronicled life as she found it. Having reached the age of 70 she claims it is time to retire. One may ask what she will do in retirement. My guess is that little will change except that she may now write more for herself and less in the support of other authors. Writers need to make room for their own creativity. Working on the sidelines of other lives can be very lonely.

While Norma grew up elsewhere, she was born in Summerland during one of her parents’ summer holidays. Her mom grew up here; her grandparents lived here for many years; a local road is named after them. Summerland feels like home for Norma. Recently, she turned these memories into a book A Summerland Stories Scrapbook which I describe here. The fly leaf reads:

“Years in the making, Norma has assembled, transcribed, edited, and arranged literally hundreds of stories, reflections and photographs from many generations of her own family history into a delightful and fascinating composite community narrative. Her book offers readers a glimpse of a calmer, simpler, less complicated life, through local stories from the 1930s – 1960s.”

Norma will never forget her roots and rightly so. As a small town of 11,000 residents close to larger centres Summerland is a very special place, now and historically. She is both a social historian and an avid story-teller. She is not haughty. Part of her appeal to writers and readers is her soft-spoken humility that easily emerges from her text. No bravado here; just a love of people and place, this place.

In her editorial work she tweaks, corrects, and improves what she is given. She does so carefully and respectfully. She writes, “I can never look at a paragraph without a certain ‘loss of innocence.’ If a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, then I should be considered a dangerous editorial offender.”

Norma is a person of faith. She knows her way through grief and struggle only too well. She is a mother of five, an elementary and secondary school teacher tutoring special needs students on occasion. While I am unsure that she can drive a tractor she has run an orchard. I would say that she’s a country girl at heart. With husband Lionel, a calm, wise, Indigenous partner and friend, she lives as close to the land as possible.

She admits that she is not very good at relaxing; trust her on this. What she does possess in spades are organizational skills; trust me on this. Her many websites and blogs are peppered with ideas, suggestions, and stories. Go here, and here, and here for more.

Her current project is helping me attempt short story writing. My work is typically non-fiction — sermons; blogs; online articles; I have one academic publication to my name and have another work in progress. I now want to attempt short fiction. Her comments on Draft 01 are very helpful.

So what can be said about our friendship and about friendship generally? I often say to people that you can’t choose your family (with all due respect) but you can choose your friends, those with whom you share common cause, a respect for politics, and creativity, all these coupled with a good dose of humour. If following a visit you find yourself inspired, as I do with Norma, well that’s a spark of life and light that should be cherished and celebrated.

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