The white walrus: Life writing unearths its origins
I had no memory of where the white walrus had come from and couldn’t remember why I had it in the first place. It was only in conversation with my mother about the memoir she was drafting that its import came to light. My parents had married in England in 1951, then emigrated to Canada in 1953. One of Dad’s good friends in Montreal had ended up working on the DEW line in the Arctic and had brought the little soapstone carving back with him, having bought it directly from the sculptor up north. When Mum moved out of the family home after Dad died in 2015, I was given the walrus. Mum mentioned the walrus in a recent conversation with me and I laid my hands on it immediately, with enthusiasm. Now the walrus had meaning for me, for I knew its origin story within my family. In my view, that is what life writing or memoir writing is about: Working our way towards knowing and understanding the stories in our family and of our life. The stories I am learning via my mother’s memoir writing are...