Dog-eared and Determined
Tales from the Tour
The Queen’s campus in Kingston is beautiful in the fall. With the leaves turning and the greystone buildings, there’s a sense that you’ve walked into a different world. In that way, it reminds me of the University of Saskatchewan. Catherine Donnelly, an occupational therapist and researcher who heads up the Health Services and Policy Research Institute at Queen’s, was touring me around the campus.
Just as we sat down on a bench outside a coffee shop in one of the college buildings, I noticed the one thing that really makes a writer’s heart happy. Across from us, a young woman was reading my first book, A Healthy Society. Not only was she reading it, it was covered in different coloured tabs and she was going through it with her highlighter.
Naturally, I walked over and asked what she thought. She was a bit taken aback and just told us that it’s a textbook for a Queen’s intro to health class of 700 students. She asked me to sign her copy and then went back to her reading. After a few minutes, she came over to us and shared her story of growing up in poverty and of the challenges of coming to campus where her fellow students came from privilege and money. She told us how the ideas of the social determinants of health and the health impact of the income gap helped her to understand her experience and that she identified her life with that of one of the patient stories in the book.
I’ve been touring the new book, A Healthy Future, for the last couple of weeks, with events in Saskatoon, Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston and Regina and more to come in BC, Alberta and Manitoba. Each of these events has featured an interviewer, like Dr. Jane Philpott at Queen’s or Yann Martel in Saskatoon, to help me dig into the book. It’s been exciting to see the ideas come alive in their questions and to chat with the folks who have come out to learn more. But nothing is as motivating or rewarding as seeing a well-loved copy in someone’s hands and knowing they see the world a little bit differently because something you wrote touched something in them.
Hello paid subscribers. This is the first post just for you. As A Larger Scale picks up steam, I’ll be trying to put aside some more content to recognize your contributions. As a first instalment, I leave you with videos of the Saskatoon and Toronto launches. Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear from you.