Travelling with Gershom

There is no doubt that Melissa Barbeau’s debut novel The Luminous Sea deserves to be a  Winterset Award nominee and finalist, along with Robert Chafe ’s play Between Breaths and Ebb & Flow by winner Heather Smith . At the public reading of the shortlisted works the evening before the winner was announced, I was intrigued by the story which seemed to mix science fact and science fiction and thought I’d give it a try. I’m glad I did. The story begins with a young marine researcher, Vivienne, out on the bay collecting research samples from the bay for a project trying to determine why the reasons for the recent phosphorescent tides in Damson Bay. She captures a creature, some kind of fish or other marine animal, that appears to be unique. Sounds like the start to any of a number of Alien-type movies. But The Luminous Sea is not about some monstrous beast from the unknown destroying anyone and anything it comes into contact with. Barbeau weaves science and magic to (re)tell a

Last week the Winterset Award  was presented to my sister, Heather Smith , for her book Ebb & Flow . I hadn’t read the other two shortlisted works, so I decided to read them, starting with Between Breaths by  Robert Chafe . Dr. Jon Lien came to Newfoundland in 1968 as an animal behaviourist in Memorial University’s psychology department, and while his initial focus was on birds he eventually became internationally renowned for his work freeing whales who were trapped in fishing nets. Chafe’s play tells the story of this remarkable man, capturing Lien’s outsized personality, his passion, and his heart. Chafe also speaks to the Newfoundland experience in a respectful, clear-headed way that doesn’t portray folks from the outports as simple fishermen and avoids the condesending overtone of colonial era portrayals of the “noble bayman”. There is a short speech by Lien in the penultimate scene, where he tries to explain to his wife Judy why he goes out to rescue the whales. He tal