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Where were you born, Roy?
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I was born in Whitney, Ontario,
Canada, on June 4, 1948. Whitney is a tiny village on the east side of Ontario's
Algonquin Park, which is a
magnificent
wilderness area. |
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We lived, at
first, in a smaller village called
Airy, which consisted of five other
houses. We had no running water
or electricity or even a telephone,
but no one else did either, so it
didn't seem like a
big thing.
There were four children, three
boys and a girl. Our father worked
in the park as a lumberman. Our
grandfather was the chief ranger,
and our mother had been born in
the park at Brule Lake, a small
railway depot. She is one of very,
very few people to have been
born there.
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We moved to Huntsville, a town on the west side of Algonquin Park so my
older brother, Jim, could start school. He was late starting, already
seven years old. Huntsville is a beautiful town surrounded by lakes. My
mother still lives there.
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I played all the sports we had in Huntsville. Hockey in the winter,
lacrosse in spring and summer, baseball in summer.
Lacrosse was the big sport in
Huntsville, and while I wasn't particularly good, our team won the
All-Ontario "A" championship in 1960, when I was a peewee the same as
the Screech Owls!). I also played a great deal of hockey and was
lucky enough to play for several years against Bobby Orr, who was then a
young star with the nearby Parry Sound team. Huntsville and Parry Sound
were bitter rivals. They, however, had Bobby Orr, so they usually won.
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Do you still play sports?
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At least twice a week I play oldtimers hockey. I play with a group of
players who might once have been quite good, but who have all slowed
down considerably. But we have great fun. Sometimes we play in
tournaments, and even though we're old and slow, it can get quite
competitive at times. I also play golf and swim and ride my bicycle as
much as possible.
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How many children do you have?
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We have four children, Kerry, Christine, Jocelyn and Gordon. All have
played lots of sports. Christine was provincial diving champion one
year. Gordon played hockey up until bantam and then switched over to
snowboarding, mountain biking, and, in the summer, wakeboarding. Kerry
skis and sailboards. Jocelyn was a good rhythmic
gymnast who now coaches the sport.
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I was, at first, but too lazy. It caught up with me in high school
and I failed Ontario grade 12. It was a good thing to happen to me,
it turned out, because the school told me I would either have to
smarten up or leave. I smartened up and graduated.
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Were you always going to be a writer?
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Not at all. First I was going to play in the NHL. Then I was going
to be a mathematician. Then I was going to be a bus driver.
Then I was going to work in the same lumber mill my dad worked at.
Then I began listening to popular
music a lot (particularly folk music),
and since I couldn't sing like some
of my friends, I tried to write songs.
This got me interested in writing.
I studied political science at university, took a year off to travel in Europe,
and came back and went to another university to study journalism.
It has become my life.
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How did you start writing books?
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I wanted to write novels. I wrote one (Shorelines) on
Tom Thomson,
the famous painter, with a travelling oldtimers team. It was great fun. After that
I didn't write a book for a long time, but then wrote one about the
Cree Indians in James Bay (you'll find a lot of this research in
The Screech Owls' Northern Adventure) and then, in 1989, NHL Hall of Famer
Ken Dryden
asked me to help him with a book about hockey called Home Game.
We had been good friends for many years, and I am glad he talked
me into working with him. The book was a huge success.
After that I wrote several hockey books on my own, including
The Home Team: Fathers, Sons & Hockey, which was also a huge success.
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When did you start writing for young readers?
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Douglas Gibson, the head of the publishing house McClelland & Stewart,
suggested the idea to me. He said that teachers and librarians often told
him there were very few books that kids, especially boys, wanted to read when
they were around ages 9 to 13. Hockey was a great passion among this group,
but there were hardly any books on hockey. The Scott Young books for young
readers were then nearly 40 years old and still selling well.
(in case you want to check, they are excellent reading.
The first one is called "Scrubs on Skates.") Doug thought a
new hockey series might work. I thought about it a long time
and decided it had to be more than just hockey. The game is
interesting and exciting, but the stories would be too much
the same if everything revolved around hockey. So I thought,
why not mysteries as well as hockey? The Screech Owls were born,
and both Doug Gibson and I continue to be astonished by their
success with young readers.
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How did the Toronto Maple Leafs get involved?
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The Leafs wanted to get involved with a good project. They decided
that literacy - encouraging people to read - would be a wonderful thing
to do, and Bob Stellick, the public relations director of the Leafs,
contacted McClelland & Stewart and Frontier College (which runs
literacy projects across Canada) and it was decided that the
Screech Owls and the Leafs were a good mix. Leaf players, such as
Mats Sundin, read from the books and tapes are available to encourage
new readers. The Leafs, however, don't read all the book. They leave out
the endings so that the readers will finish the books on their own.
It gets people reading that way.
One of the players who read on the first book was Larry Murphy,
who then went on to win the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings.
One day I ran into him in
the Detroit dressing room
and he asked me if I could
get him a copy of the book
he had read from, The Night
They Stole the Stanley Cup.
"What for?" I asked.
"Because I want to see
how it ends!" he said.
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