Love and Rivalries at a CBC Station

When I arrived at News of the North in 1978, the editor Craig McInnes, was leaving, along with his partner of the time, Elizabeth Hay who worked at CBC radio. So I never really go to know them. But I read Craig's articles while he was at the Globe and followed Liz's career as a writer. Her upcoming newest work of fiction is creating a buzz up here. It's set in the 70's in Yellowknife--and, well, here's the description on Liz's website:

Elizabeth Hay's new novel is set in motion when a man hears a voice on the radio and falls in love. The story is set in 1970s Yellowknife and centres around the loves, rivalries, and entanglements of a small and unlikely group who work at the local radio station. One summer they embark on a canoe trip that takes them into the arctic wilderness, following in the footsteps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who starved to death in the Barrens in 1927. In the wilds they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline. Weaving stories from the past into the present, Hay builds a fresh, erotic, darkly witty and moving tale about the power of a voice and of a place to generate love and haunt the memory. Like radio, the novel creates sudden intimacy over long distances, and like the North, it is spare, compelling, and charged with unusual life.

A lot of people will be reading this one, trying to match the characters with people from the past--even though we all know authors never base their characters on real people ... I'm just glad I arrived after she gathered her material.