Michael Winter
Michael Winter
began brought buy discovered family few gone happened house interest land next owned piece plot trying war
A few years ago, I was trying to buy a piece of land next to a house I had in Newfoundland. I discovered that the plot had been owned by a family, and the son had gone off to World War I and been killed. It began to interest me: What would have happened on that land if the son had lived, had brought up his own family there?
relationship war
I've grown up, luckily, with only a distant relationship to war and soldiering.
examples fantastic germans less lined memorial preserved
The fantastic thing about the memorial to the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel is that it's one of the rare examples where they've preserved a battlefield more or less as it was. You can see all the trenches, where the British were, where the Germans lined up.
antidote footage giddy trench
If you look at footage of the Newfoundland Regiment, you see they are at rest and giddy and being silly with one another. Silliness is the antidote to trench warfare.
author died follows footsteps fought traces trained war
'Into the Blizzard' follows the author as he traces the footsteps of the Newfoundland Regiment during the First World War: where they trained in Scotland, where they fought in Gallipoli and where they died at the Battle of the Somme in France.
box guy plan
I plan to live to be 98, so I'll be the guy at Dundas and Yonge flogging a box of mouldy novels.
accurate evolve notion versus war
How does the past ambush us? How can we be accurate about what happened, how can we be true to it? And can war be declared over? And can we ever evolve from the notion of war, of nations, of us versus them?
canada country great grow joined lives men might somehow sort success talk
Before Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, there was the same sort of talk of young men sacrificing their lives so that a country might grow - that somehow it had been a great nation-building success for Newfoundland.
characters cups head
If I didn't write sex scenes, all my characters would head to the kitchen and make cups of tea.
jurors literary mercenary stands venture
I approached writing a story for the CBC Literary Awards as a mercenary venture - $5,000 for one story, not bad. Now, how do you win it? Jurors are wading through skyscrapers of paper, looking for one story that stands out.
death life major stories
You can't go wrong with major life and death stories when it comes to a competition, so I thought I'd have a go at writing one.
bad everybody falls literally truth
The truth is, everybody falls into an incinerator of some measure or other. Not literally one. The question is what are you going to do with those bad times? Are you just going to let them gnaw at you?