Spending time selling books in person is always a blast. For this spring, I have two appearances in Waterloo Region.

Saturday, March 29, 2025: Indigo Kitchener

Once again, I’ll be at Indigo’s by Fairview Mall! The focus this time will be Love on Belmont. The fourth book is in the works, and if all goes well, it’ll be out by Christmas. So…if you’re lagging behind on the series, or want to grab signed copies for a friend or family member, drop by!

And, as always, if you bought your books elsewhere, even on Amazon, and would like them signed, do drop by. I love getting to know readers in person.

Time: 12PM–4PM

Address: Indigo Kitchener, 225 Fairway Rd S Unit CRU-04, Kitchener, ON

Saturday, April 12, 2025: Heffner Spring Show

Spending the afternoon at the family business that has helped me so much in life is always a blast. I’ll have both series with me: Between Worlds and Love on Belmont.

Other vendors and companies will be there, and I’ll update this blog post as soon as I find out more details

Time: 10AM–3PM

Address: Heffner Toyota building, 3131 King St. E., Kitchener, ON

I hope to see you this spring!

I love reading romance novels about characters my age or older: What experiences do we share? How do their lives differ from mine? What might I be able to look forward to as I near my 50s, 60s, and 70s? Later-in-life romance novels follow older characters looking for love. Since my Love on Belmont series is about an entire community, it also includes later-in-love romance books.

What Are Later-in-Life Romance Books?

This romance subgenre focuses on protagonists who are 40 or over. So if you like reading about people over 40 falling in love, this is your jam.

This subgenre can come in all levels of spice, from clean novels to sweet romance to spicy to erotica. In other words, it’s not about heat level but about character age. Looking for a novel about people in their older years? This is the subgenre to search for. Amazon.com has a subcategory for it, too.

Why Write Later-in-Life Romance Novels?

Unfortunately, this subgenre doesn’t exist on Amazon.ca, which suggests it isn’t that popular north of the border yet. To underline the lack of popularity, Booknet Canada reported earlier this year that interest in later-in-life romance books is decreasing.

In a 2022 report by K-Lytics, which analyzed Amazon data, later-in-life romance books were fifth from the bottom of a list of 24 subgenres. Contemporary romance topped the chart, followed by mystery & suspense, romantic comedy, and paranormal.

From a financial perspective, it doesn’t make sense to write later-in-life romances.

However, I find so much more to explore when characters are older:

• Pauline (47) and Todd (43) meet because they’re both forced out of their physically demanding artistic careers (Tea Shop for Two).
• Tracy (48) and Ben (35) show a strong gap between their generations: Tracy has to care for her teenaged son, who has epilepsy, while juggling renewed interests from her estranged husband (51), and Ben has never been married, doesn’t have any children, and was recently fired from a company he’d spent 10 years at (Oh, What the Fudge).
• Claire (76) and Richard (79) find themselves at opposite poles when they realize they have different goals for their stage in life, putting their marriage of 50 years at risk (Teas of Joy).

Although these plots aren’t impossible in younger age groups, I have a lot more to work with, like career legacy and lifelong community impact.

Will All Love on Belmont Books Be in This Romance Subgenre?

Because this series involves a real community, the series will not focus on a single age group. For example, Tracy’s son, Austin, who’s 16 when the Love on Belmont novels begin, will have his own romance story when he’s old enough. So that readers don’t have to wait too long, that will happen when he’s in his early 20s.

Which Love on Belmont Books are Later-in-Life Romances?

At time of writing, almost all of them. But to be specific, these are the titles:

• Trick or Tea (a short-story prequel)
• Oh, Christmas Tea (a short-story prequel)
• Tea Shop for Two
• Oh, What the Fudge
• Teas of Joy

Which Books, Then, Aren’t Later-in-Life Romances?

So far, only Claire's Tea Shop, the first short story prequel, doesn't qualify as a later-in-life romance story.

To start a new later-in-life author, give the Love on Belmont series a try and let me know how you like it. If you sign up to my bi-monthly newsletter, you’ll get the three short stories for free as a thank you for joining my community.

What do you think about later-in-life romance novels? Yea or nay?

This article is part of the series The Trials and Jubilations of Working in the Rubber Industry: Rubber Worker Stories and is supported by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund.

Do you dream of lifting 450 lbs. every five minutes? Would you enjoy an irregular work schedule that includes night shifts? Do you eagerly await the chance to blow black gunk out of your nose at home every day? I’m guessing not, and yet thousands of people in Waterloo Region took on jobs at rubber factories and tolerated these harsh working conditions in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

What Kind of Jobs Were Available at a Waterloo Region Rubber Factory?

Rubber factories employed people in a myriad of jobs. Most of the participants I interviewed worked on the floor, either mixing the rubber compounds or manufacturing the tires.

Brian worked on the floor at Uniroyal on Strange St. in Kitchener from the 1970s until the factory closed in 1993. You got the “crappy jobs” when you started, but better jobs came your way the longer you worked there. If you transferred between departments, you started at the bottom of the hierarchy again in the new area.

Most of the work on the floor was manual labour, which injured the body over time. Brian was lifting 450 lbs. every five minutes. “I think I was lifting well over a million pounds a year,” he says. We spoke in 2019, and he was waiting for his second back surgery.

Office jobs were also available. Eric, for example, worked on the mainframe computer at Uniroyal. This may be hard to imagine today, but the mainframe computer was the size of a van. It ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week and needed workers throughout. Office jobs came with fewer occupational hazards.

Working Conditions in Rubber Factories

Don S.* worked at Uniroyal only from 1980 to 1990. “You stand around and look at the old people operating machinery on a midnight shift and you realize, God, there’s gotta be a better way, because that man does not look happy.” He understood immediately the toll that this factory work took on each person’s body and began applying to college programs as soon as possible, working as many night shifts as possible to support getting an education during the day.

“Every part of your body ached after your shift,” says Brian. “It’s not that you weren’t in shape. It was so demanding.”

Wayne, who worked at the BF Goodrich plant on Goodrich Dr. in Kitchener from 1971 to 1990, spent several of his early years building tires for tractors and large trucks. He found the summer especially difficult. “It was hard work, no question, very hot in the summer,” he says. “Lots of these great big guys were walking around that plant with a broom because they screwed up their backs, especially back in the early seventies.”

Wayne had to take time off about once a year because of his back in his early days. “But I was a young guy. Things heal and back you go.”

The factories were dirty in the 20^th century. With poor ventilation and little or no personal protective equipment, workers were exposed to harmful substances, including carbon black, now acknowledged as a carcinogen.

However, things have thankfully changed over the years.

Part of the former Uniroyal plant is now home to AirBoss, a rubber compounder. Glenn, a current employee at AirBoss, began at Uniroyal in 1971.

“It’s more safety-oriented now,” he says. “We have to wear masks. Everybody wears eye glasses. Everybody wears hearing protection. The guys in compounding, they’ve got to wear masks and gloves, all the PPE.”

(Compounding is where the rubber is mixed with additives.)

In addition, ventilation in the factory has greatly improved. Dan, who used to work at AirBoss, says that every mixer has its own continually running ventilation hood, for example. Workers responsible for weighing out chemicals wear respirators and other personal protective equipment (PPE), too.

What Is Shift Work and How Did It Affect Family Life?

My grandparents worked at the Uniroyal factory on Strange St. My grandmother worked at the canteen, so she didn’t work at night, like my grandfather sometimes did. When we visited them, there was something I didn’t understand: Why did I always see my grandmother, but not my grandfather? All of my other grandparents kept predictable work hours, only my Opa Wolf didn’t. Sometimes he was home, sometimes asleep, and sometimes awake but in bed. Why?

It was because of his shift work: he didn’t work the same hours every week. At Uniroyal, the shifts ran from 7AM to 3PM, 3PM to 11PM, and 11PM to 7AM. The workers changed shifts every week.

My grandfather passed away shortly before I turned nine, so I couldn’t figure out a pattern to his inability to visit with us. My family was on a regular schedule: we slept and were awake at the same time every day. When we visited my grandparents, though, my grandfather’s schedule was different every week.

“It really destroys your clock,” says Brian. “It took me a long time to learn how to cope with it.”

Mark worked on and off at Uniroyal, finally leaving the year he turned 30. He had a love-hate relationship with shifts: He enjoyed working 7AM to 3PM, but found the other shifts difficult. With 3PM to 11PM, he would just get something started in the morning only to have to leave for work in the afternoon. Working 11PM to 7AM meant he missed out on partying with his friends.

“Eleven to seven was hard on your sleep pattern,” he says. “I would get home, and I just didn’t feel like going to bed. So, sometimes I’d be awake at ten, eleven in the morning, but it’s like, ‘Man, I got to get to sleep because I know I got to go to work at eleven o’clock at night.’”

Although the shift work was difficult to adjust to, some of the rubber workers I interviewed appreciated the schedule. Brian, for example, came to like it because it gave him more time with the kids. Jim, who worked at BF Goodrich for 32 years, didn’t mind the midnight shifts: he would sleep on a cot in the basement if he needed to. It was actually the afternoon shifts that bothered him, because they interfered with his Boy Scout responsibilities every three weeks.

Why Do Such Work?

It’s hard for me to fathom why anyone would take on such physically demanding and dangerous work. Other jobs existed: shopkeeper, sales clerk, welder, electrician, teacher, baker, mail carrier… Why would thousands over the decades work in such conditions? Based on these interviews, conversations with my family, and articles I’ve read in our local paper, people worked in these factories first and foremost because high wages made it easy to support families.

Don D.*, who worked at Uniroyal for almost 40 years, had been in the same house for 59 years when we spoke. Although his wife was teaching when they married, he also needed a good job to help pay off the mortgage on their $16,000 house. (That number is not a typo.) The $1.80 per hour or so he was paid at the rubber factory was an excellent wage when he started in the 1950s.

Wayne, who began building big tires as soon as he met the age requirements, earned $4.26 per hour in 1972/73. The work was gruelling. However, he and his wife had two kids and a mortgage, and the pay was good in comparison with anything he could have earned elsewhere. “It was a good time to be a young person looking for a job with no education,” he says.

What did he mean by “no education”? Before December 20, 2006, it was legal to leave school after Grade 10 in Ontario.

Although supporting a family was the main reason for many to work in these factories, other factors also played a role.

It Was All in the Family

Getting a job at a factory was relatively easy compared to getting a job today: You just had to know a family member who worked in a factory, and it didn’t even have to be your own family.

“I can remember bulletins on the doors saying, ‘If you know any brothers or cousins or anybody needs a job, send them in,’” says Wayne. “I can remember there was a whole bunch of these guys from up around Killaloe (Renfrew County), somewhere in that area. One of them came and got a job building truck tires. He was a big guy, and before you knew it, there were about 10 or 12 of them.”

Here are more examples from the oral history project participants:

• Jim's mother worked for BF Goodrich, Kaufman Rubber, and Merchant’s Rubber.
• Mark's dad eventually reached plant superintendent, and Mark’s uncle and two brothers also worked at the same plant.
• Wayne said it was common for young family members to get summer jobs on the floor or in the office: “When they said their name, you knew who it was.”
• Brain's father-in-law retired from Uniroyal in 1989 after 44 years in service.
• Eric's wife worked at Goodrich, and her father and uncle worked at Uniroyal. 

Friendships That Lasted a Lifetime

The constant search for more workers meant that if you wanted to stay, you were almost guaranteed a job for life. This meant turnover in the factories was low, and fellow workers became long-time friends, and friends became like extended families. Workers formed baseball and hockey teams, and occasionally, an employee like Brian would step up and head an entire league.

The factories were big, so the leagues were all in-house. Brian arranged schedules and ordered uniforms and equipment for the Uniroyal teams. The men didn’t always wait for a scheduled game. They brought in their balls and gloves, or hockey sticks and pucks, and played catch or shot pucks throughout the factory. As long as the machines were running, most supervisors were fine with it.

The BF Goodrich plant had enough land for its own diamond out back. “I don’t know the exact number,” says Wayne, “but it was close to 90 percent of the people who worked in the factory played in the company baseball league.”

In addition, the foremen at BF Goodrich organized themselves into the KW Foreman’s Association. They met monthly and invited guest speakers. They eventually built the Foreman’s Club in St. Agatha, which ran for about 25 years before closing.

The office employees, too, had their social activities. At Uniroyal, for example, they formed a baseball team, would often go out on pub crawls, and frequently ate lunch at Mabe’s, a greasy spoon across the street.

“Absolutely the place to go for lunch,” says Eric. “People will remember Mabe’s. It was a wonderful, greasy place. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

Waterloo Region’s Rubber Factories: Work That Supported Families

I had some difficulties, though, reconciling the gruelling work conditions with positive comments about the work.

“I enjoyed working in the tire factory,” says Jim. “If it was still going, I would be there. It was like a family, kind of.” He adds, “I was lucky at the end, for the last five years. I was on the executive of the Foreman's Club.” When the club closed and its building was sold, the proceeds from the sale were added to BF Goodrich’s endowment fund and managed by the K-W Community Foundation.

Wayne says many former employees are living comfortably in retirement: “Many of those people, including me, are living today pretty comfortably on a defined benefit pension.”

Brian says it was good to work in a factory in Kitchener at the time—any factory. “You were proud of it. Everyone felt they made the best product.”

Family, friends and pride. Three important parts of a good life.

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* Two participants in the oral history project were named Don and had last names that began with the same letter. So, I’ve used letters from the ends of their last names instead to differentiate between them in these articles: Don D. and Don S.

This article is part of the series The Trials and Jubilations of Working in the Rubber Industry: Rubber Worker Stories and is supported by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund.

In Between Worlds, Juliana’s grandfather and uncle worked in a rubber factory that made tires from raw rubber. Like many aspects of the series, there is truth in the fiction: In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Waterloo Region in Ontario, Canada, had a strong manufacturing industry, and rubber was mixed in several factories. (Uncle Peter actually worked in two rubber factories. This reflects what happened in real life when one factory closed in Kitchener in 1993.) In this first of a series of three articles, you’ll learn how rubber was mixed during Opa’s time.

What Is Rubber?

We use rubber in many products, such as rain boots, bouncy balls, and of course car tires.

Natural rubber comes from rubber trees: it is latex, a tree sap. Synthetic rubber is made from petroleum.

Pure rubber, either natural or synthetic, becomes brittle when it cools. When it warms up, it becomes gooey. Not a practical substance on its own for tires! You have to add other ingredients to make rubber useful for tires.

What Do These Ingredients Do?

Additions make rubber strong enough to hold up a car but soft enough to grip the road. Producers change the extra ingredients depending on the kind of tires a car needs.

For example, if you drive a car where the winter temperature dips to -20˚C, then you need winter tires. The additions in these tires keep them soft in cold temperatures so they can grip the snow and ice. But if you keep winter tires on your car in the summer, they become too soft and wear easily.

Drivers in warmer climates need tires with rubber mixed to run well in those temperatures. These tires feel soft in warmer weather, but once temperatures drop below -7˚C, the rubber becomes too hard to grip the road. This becomes very dangerous when you have to brake and turn.

The Basic Steps in Mixing Rubber at Uniroyal

Don D.* worked at the Uniroyal tire factory in Kitchener for almost 40 years before he retired in 1993. He said mixing rubber was like following recipes in a cookbook that listed different mixtures of chemicals and pigments for different tires.

Think of when you go to the grocery store and buy bread, which is pretty much the same no matter what. Knead together water, flour, yeast, and a little salt into a dough. Let your dough rise, punch it down, place it in a loaf pan, let it rise again, bake it, and you have a loaf of bread.

Yet the grocery store has shelves and shelves of different kinds of bread. Why? Often, it’s because the ingredients are a little different. Some breads have more whole wheat flour while some have more white flour. Others have rye flour.

Mixing rubber for tires is no different: the basic process is the same, but the recipe for each kind of tire differs.

The following lists the steps taken to mix rubber for tires at Uniroyal in Kitchener. Much of the work was done manually.

1.     Rubber was cut out of its moulds and sent to the scale.

2.     A compounder weighed all the chemicals and pigments and sent these to the scale, too.

3.     The scale man weighed the rubber and added the other ingredients.

4.     Another  operator mixed the rubber, chemicals, and pigments in a single batch in a Banbury mixer. (Picture a bread machine you might have at home, but instead of kneading 1 kg of dough, the Banbury kneaded 250 kg of rubber compound).

5.     The batch was then allowed to drop to the floor below into a mill, where it was cut (“sheeted”) into sheets of rubber compound that were usually 20 inches x 20 inches (about 50 cm x 50 cm).

6.     The sheets were weighed again, then ground down and re-mixed.

7.     The material was milled a second time into sheets and then sent away to be built into tires.

Each step required very hard labour. Brian, who also worked at Uniroyal, held the scale job for one and a half years, lifting 450 pounds every five minutes.

“I could bend a dime with my fingers after a while,” he says.

One Very Dangerous Chemical: Carbon Black

In Between Worlds 7: What Will Come and Between Worlds 8: A Father’s Journey, Juliana expresses concern that Opa will develop cancer from his work at the rubber factory because of a substance called carbon black. I learned about carbon black and its role in causing cancer through my local paper a few years ago. Sadly, it’s left many families without fathers and grandfathers. (Mostly men worked in these factories.)

So, what is carbon black? Why was it used in making tire rubber compound? And is it still used?

Carbon black is derived from soot, makes rubber stronger, and protects it from UV damage from the sun. The material is therefore still being used in tire manufacturing.

The rubber factories of the 19^th and 20^th centuries in Waterloo Region were filthy, and the Uniroyal factory’s black dust covered the surrounding neighbourhoods. Eric, who worked in the office at Uniroyal, remembers hearing that no one hung out laundry to dry on Mondays, because that’s when the factory cleaned its tanks.

“You'd get black film over everything,” he says.

Jim, who worked at the Goodrich plant on Goodrich Drive in Kitchener, recalls a similar story: “So, my parents lived in the backyard of [the Uniroyal] plant and carbon black was in our underwear and our clothing from the time we were small. My mother would hang out her laundry and the odd time there would be a vent of carbon black into the air. Next thing you know, she would be upset because she had to wash the laundry again.”

Thankfully, working with rubber is a much cleaner process today.

How Rubber Is Mixed Today in Waterloo Region

AirBoss of America Corp. now occupies the former Uniroyal building on Strange Street in Kitchener. The company works with rubber, but doesn’t build tires.

The rubber manufacturing process has improved in many ways over the years. AirBoss says the following in its 2020 annual report:

AirBoss operates five mixers at its Kitchener location, including a white/colour mixing line. The mixers and material handling within the plant are highly automated. The Company uses the latest modern technology for the automated handling of many different grades of carbon black, automatic weighing systems for powders as well as custom designed robotic equipment for piling and packaging of finished compound in strip form.

The earlier method for mixing rubber required many people. (Brian estimates 500 to 700 people per shift, but that includes those who built tires.) Today’s automated process brings people into far less contact with hazardous substances.

In the next article in the series, you’ll learn how tires were manufactured in Waterloo Region.

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* Two participants in the oral history project were named Don and had last names that began with the same letter. So, I’ve used letters from the ends of their last names instead: Don D. and Don S.

This article is part of the series The Trials and Jubilations of Working in the Rubber Industry: Rubber Worker Stories and is supported by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund.

In Between Worlds, Juliana’s grandfather and uncle worked in a factory that made tires from rubber. Like many aspects of the series, there is truth in the fiction: In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Waterloo Region in Ontario, Canada, had a strong manufacturing industry, and rubber was turned into lots of different products in factories. (Uncle Peter actually worked in two rubber factories. This reflects what happened in real life when one factory closed in Kitchener in 1993.) In this second of a series of three articles, you’ll learn how tires were built during Opa’s time.

The Basics of Building Tires

Building a tire is like baking a cake. For the dessert, you mix dry and wet ingredients, then pour them into a round or square pan, whichever shape you want. Depending on the exact ingredients and method, however, you can end up with angel food cake, pound cake, or even Boston Cream Pie. Similar things happen with tires. They are made out of common ingredients, but you wouldn’t put a big, bulky tractor tire on a racing car; the ordinary driver doesn’t need to pay a premium for racing tires; and winter tires aren’t the best for running in summer heat.

Because of all these variations, it’s impossible to explain in one blog post how all tires are made. In addition, advances in manufacturing and technology have changed the process. In this blog post, though, I’ll explain the basic steps in some of Kitchener’s rubber factories in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

The Basic Components of a Tire

Tires have three basic components: fabric, beading, and the rubber compound.

According to a Uniroyal brochure that explained how a tire was made¹, a conventional passenger-car tire weighed about 22 lbs. broken down as follows:

• 2.5 lbs. natural rubber
• 7.5 lbs. synthetic rubber
• 6 lbs. carbon black
• 4 lbs. chemicals and oils 
• 1.5.lbs fabric
• 0.5 lbs. steel for bead wire

The first four components were compounded in the mills and Banbury mixers before being used as coating for fabric and bead wire.

Fabric in Tires

Fabric gives shape and strength to the carcass of the tire.

Fabric arrived at a tire plant and was passed through a calendar, which had nothing to do with days, months, or years. Instead, calendars were large machines with giant rollers that coated the fabric with rubber on each side. The process had to be so exact that, according to Uniroyal’s brochure, “the thickness of the rubber on each side of the fabric [was] not allowed to vary more than .0005 of an inch.”

Don D. started working for Dominion Tire—which later became Uniroyal—in 1953. One of his jobs was in calendaring, or producing this rubber-coated fabric that became the first layer in building a tire.

Using Steel Wire to Make Tire Beads

Don S. worked in the Uniroyal prep department as a bead coiler from 1980 to 1990.

Tire beads have nothing to do with the decorative objects used in crafts. Instead, tire beads are lengths of steel wire. Whereas the rubber-coated fabric created in the calendaring process provides the shape and strength of the tire, a bead coil provides the grip necessary to keep the tire attached to the rim of the wheel.

Don S. says beading was one of the best-paying jobs in that department, which also meant it was one of the worst jobs. Difficult or not, Don enjoyed working with the machinery: “It was a mechanical beast that had lots of gears and stuff like that, and I found that always fascinating.”

Building a Tire

Tire building in the 19^th, 20^th and even early 21^st centuries in Waterloo Region was mostly a manual process.

Basically, tires go through three stages:

1. Assembly
2. Curing
3. Control

A video is the easiest way to show how the job was done. This first clip is from Brunswick Tires in the United States in 1934. Tires were manufactured somewhat differently in Kitchener. For example, Brunswick Tires made the fabric onsite. But the three stages happened in both places.

Notice how many people were involved in the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjhV2LEpPo

Assembling a tire, as the video shows, involved manually lining up the rubber-coated fabric, beading, other layers, and the tread on a drum.

Wayne, who worked at the Goodrich plant on Goodrich Drive in Kitchener from 1971 to 1990, built truck tires for a time.

“It was quite dangerous, when I think back,” he says. He recalls one task that involved the drum, with a band of rubber on it, spinning very fast while the builder passed a rod with bearings over the assembly.

“Every now and then, one of these things would get caught. Some people would stand on the brake pedal when you did it, just in case something happened.”

Because of the physical demands of building truck tires, Goodrich required that all truck builders be at least six feet tall, 200 lbs., and 21 years old or older.

Mark worked on and off at the Uniroyal plant until 1988, including as a truck-tire builder.

“It was very hard, very slogging, and you're tired at the end of the day,” he says.

Next, watch this video from German tire manufacturer Continental Tyres. Although it’s unclear when the video was made, it was posted in 2015, 81 years after Brunswick Tire produced its clip. Notice the lack of people in the newer video and how much work the machines do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjViHN6xuwk

Did you also see how clean the factory is? I was told many times that the rubber factories in Waterloo Region were filthy. Several men said they would come home and blow carbon black out of their noses. Even when the factories shut down for the last two weeks of July every year for maintenance, they were not fully cleaned.

Curing Tires

We can accurately say that each tire building station was manned by one individual who constructed each tire by hand. However, other workers would bring him the materials he needed to construct the tires. Once a worker finished building a tire, he lifted it off the drum and onto a conveyer, which transported it to curing. As the videos show, this involved immersing each tire in a hot bath to give the tire its final properties, including imprinting a pattern onto the tread.

Quality Control

Tire construction is governed by strict safety laws in Canada and the United States, so Uniroyal, BF Goodrich, and all other tire manufacturers have to test their tires frequently.

Jim and his team at Goodrich tested about five out of 100 different types of tires being manufactured each month. They subjected tires to high-speed, endurance, and bruise and puncture tests.

The bruise and puncture test was the most dangerous. The tire was mounted on a split rim housed in a cage, inflated, then punctured down the centre until the tire broke.

“So, it’d be an awful loud bang when you actually would destroy the tire,” says Jim, “and it would scare the living bejesus out of somebody.”

If the split rim was assembled incorrectly, however, the test could cause the tire to explode with such force that it would damage the cage.

“I personally knew a guy I went to school with who was involved with mounting one of these tires locally at a tractor-trailer yard and actually lost his life when this thing came apart,” says Jim.

Jim believes technology advances have made the job safer since he retired over a decade ago. However, overinflating tires can still be dangerous.

Quality control didn’t involve just testing tires. Jim’s team also inspected different samples of rubber and fabric that went into making a tire.

“We would check those every shift, every day, three times a day,” he says.

They also inspected machines and products throughout the stages of assembly.

Lots of Variation in Tire Building

The performance requirements for airplane tires are vastly different from those for a sedan’s all-season tires. In other words, they required different recipes, and the workers had to learn each customer’s recipe book. It was exhausting work that has left its physical toll on many workers’ bodies. Today, much of the physical work is done by machines, making it easier to meet customer requirements and lessening the physical damage for workers.

Despite the physical toll, these jobs were meaningful in many ways. Next, we’ll discuss why these people (mostly men) worked at these factories for decades, often encouraging family members to sign up, too.

*Two participants in the oral history project were named Don and had last names that began with the same letter. So, I’ve used letters from the ends of their last names instead: Don D. and Don S.

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¹ Uniroyal. How We Build a Tire. Date unknown, although judging by the images, probably the 1970s.

Candice Leyland, watercolour artist and art teacher, never imagined she’d be where she is today: making a living from her art. As a writer, I can empathize. One stereotype that still exists is that of the starving artist (or writer). In this blog post, I’ll share with you Candice’s thoughts on art, painting, creativity, and if you should only practise art to earn money from it.

Who Is Candice Leyland?

Candice studied history and art in university and has her degree in studio art, where she did mostly photography. She had fallen in love with art in high school. However, after she finished her education, she got what’s often referred to in artistic circles as a “real job” and worked in a bank.

“I didn’t really touch art again,” Candice says. “I thought I could never make a living from it.”

Candice, like most students, graduated with student loans. How could art support her life while she had to repay debt?

Arts + Kid = New Life

It’s amazing what happens when you have children. I had stopped writing when I entered university and only picked it up about 10 years later, when I was pregnant with my first child. Candice experienced a similar shift when her son was little.

In fact, it had been so long since she had created any art that her friends and colleagues didn’t even know she had any artistic skills.

But Candice didn’t start off where she’d left off. Instead of returning to photography, she explored watercolour painting and urban sketching. Her first success was a watercolour of the corduroy road, an archeological find dug up in 2016.

 “It was relevant and people wanted it,” she says. “The way I sketched it…it was fun and topical.”

The City of Waterloo bought the painting, The Waterloo Region Record shared her story, she had prints made, and her dad bought several copies.

“That was my first big break,” she says. “I look back at that piece now, and I feel I could do so much better.”

That’s a common feeling creators have, but it doesn’t signal failure. Instead, it’s a milestone: we’ve grown.

And nothing motivates an artist more in their art than growth.

Growing as an Artist

Candice and I talked about how improving leads you to view your previous work from a negative perspective. But here’s the irony: enjoying your artistic side doesn’t come with some standard you reach and then stop growing. It’s not like when you learn to peel carrots: once you can remove that skin in maybe 30 seconds, you don’t need to grow anymore as a carrot peeler extraordinaire.

That’s the beauty of art: you keep growing, keep reaching points you never dreamed of.

“We are so hard and critical on ourselves as artists,” Candice says. She explains what happens in her mind: “I’m putting myself to a ridiculous standard. I’m like ‘the brushwork on the left-hand side is amateurish and trashy and terrible.’ But people look at it differently. Viewers never pick it apart like I would pick it apart. That’s what I remind myself when I’m making it.”

“Now as a teacher,” Candice says, “the biggest thing is I hear that cycle going on in everyone’s head.” She tries to encourage them to move past it, because, hey, everyone does it, anyway.

The Starving Artist Stereotype

Candice and I tackled the starving artist stereotype. Basically, we hate it.

“I think some of it is a myth because everyone says this,” Candice says. “But some of it is business. It’s like an equation: business side, marketing, personality out there, is almost equal to your art.”

I couldn’t agree more. Here’s my point of view: If you want to make money off your creativity, you’re starting a business. That includes investigating different ways to earn money from your creativity. I don’t just write books; I also write marketing copy for clients.

For Candice, she found teaching as another viable source of income. “So it’s like finding different income streams.”

You might think that having different income streams puts more pressure on the creator, but Candice sees it differently. So do I. By expanding the different ways she lives in art, she’s not putting pressure on herself to make a living selling framed art pieces.

But for those who want to make a living selling their art only, it’s also not impossible, she says. “There is a lot of money spent on art, but it’s difficult. You have to give it a good try. It’s definitely possible.”

(If you want to learn more about different streams of income for writing, visit Joanna Penn’s blog.)

Art Is Relaxing

You don’t have to make a living from art in order to practise it, Candice says. Art is important for stress relief. Create to relax!

“I think creativity is important to have in your life in some form,” she says. “I think it’s really healthy for your mental health, whether it’s dance or writing or journaling or something. Not just work and Netflix.”

If you’re worried about the money needed for art, Candice says you can set your worries aside: Art needn’t require gobs of supplies. She points immediately to sketching, which requires paper and a pencil to start. If you want to try watercolours, you buy a set of watercolours, one brush, and paper. (I believe I actually saw a beginner’s set at Indigo with three colours you mix as needed.)

“Water colour is the cheapest to get into,” Candice says. “You don’t need turpentine, giant canvasses, or tons of brushes. It’s non-toxic, doesn’t smell, and clean-up is easy.”

In other words, perfect for any stage of life, even if you have little kids at home.

Art Teaches You to Accept Yourself

Candice does find adults stopping at roadblocks when they’re trying to learn art.

“Watercolour is unforgiving,” she says. “You have to allow yourself to make mistakes. Not every piece has to be a masterpiece. Sometimes just getting the techniques and painting for the sake of painting is really important.”

But, she adds, the problem doesn’t always lie with the artist. Bad supplies can also cause issues. For example, the watercolour kits for kids and other low-quality paints can lack vibrancy, or perhaps the paint just sits on the paper and doesn’t soak in. Candice says you don’t need to buy the top-grade, expensive supplies. But don’t get the cheapest you can find either.

“Set yourself up for success a little bit,” she says. That includes understanding that learning a few techniques at the beginning is important. “But once you learn them, you can paint anything. It’s like getting past that bump.”

Candice adds that you can express yourself so much better once you learn some of the theory. Writing a good story follows the same pattern: It’s easier to craft something strong and enthralling if you learn the basic techniques first.

Your Art Is All About You

But keep this in mind, says Candice: “Do it for you. Just get a sketchbook for the sake of doing it for the stress relief, for enjoying it. You can really turn your brain off when you’re creating.”

For Candice Leyland, that’s the most important part. “It’s almost like meditation when you really get into the zone. It’s a flow. It’s so important.”

Just like people don’t tell others doing sports to stop because it doesn’t bring in money, art hobbyists shouldn’t be told to stop their art for that same reason. “It’s so enjoyable,” Candice says.

*Updated March 2025

One of the most fascinating aspects of historical novels is the clothing, wouldn’t you say? What did people wear? Why did they wear that particular style? How was their clothing made? This is perhaps the hardest detail to keep track of in Between Worlds.

Ancestral photos from that general time period are either sepia or black and white, so I had to rely on information from one book and photos of traditional dress worn at modern festivals. In this blog post, I’ll take you through what I do and don’t know about how Elisabeth would’ve dressed.

My Own Preconceptions

It’s important to start here. I've always enjoyed looking through old photos, and there was certainly no shortage of them from both sides of the family. In fact, given what little they could bring with them when they left Europe in the 1950s, I'm surprised at how many photos made it across the Atlantic.

For example, every photo I've ever seen showed women's and girls’ hair either covered or pulled back. In addition, a photo from Liebling, one of the feeder towns to Semlac, showed girls with their braid pinned on top of their head. The clue I didn’t recognize at the time was that the girls were wearing dirndls, which were not part of the dress code in Elisabeth’s time.

It took me a year to realize that Elisabeth’s hair was pulled back, not pulled up. She likely formed two braids—one at each side of her head—and incorporated them into a single braid down the back. In addition, she would have woven a thick ribbon through the single braid and then tied it into a bow at the bottom. I’m sure it was absolutely lovely.

Blouses in Semlac

Some old photos make it look like the women wore dresses. They generally didn’t. Instead, women wore a skirt + blouse + full apron. The blouses were hand-decorated and could have lots of notions and stitching.

The other piece of clothing worn on top was the tschurak, a somewhat tight-fitting, light jacket that extended just past the hips. It was part of the traditional dress earlier on but, according to my book on Semlac, was eventually replaced by the blouse as just described.

The following photo is from 1917. The woman seated is Elisabeta Wolf née Stefan and is X old, and standing next to her is her daughter, Katharina. Notice the crisp folds in the aprons.

Elisabeth’s Skirts

In Semlac, the coveted style of skirt for women was made of cashmere and ideally dyed blue-green. I did my best to look for photos online, but alas, despite what we all believe, Google still hasn't found everything. However, I do have this photo of Katharina Wolf, the inspiration for Elisabeth. It was likely taken during World War I. Notice how her bangs are short, but her hair is pulled back.

Footwear and Socks

Exactly what their shoes look like has been perhaps the most difficult aspect of this. The best I could find was that women wore leather slippers during the week and satin slippers for their Sunday dress. Girls wore what appear to be ankle-high boots made of black leather with laces.

Heels and buckles apparently did not enter the village until the 40s; however, the book does have a picture of girls in the 1930s wearing white shoes with buckles and heels.

Socks for girls until around Elisabeth’s time were hand-knit. In the winter, women knit socks from wool and in the summer from cotton. They had horizontal stripes: blue-black or green-black in the winter, and white-black or white-blue in the summer.

Economic Status

The next layer of difficulty is economic status. The book about Semlac says that the wardrobe and style of dress described in its pages are specific to farmers. Rich people dressed differently. Hair length was the single example I found that illustrated the difference: women who belonged to the higher strata in the village may have cut their hair short by this time.

Writing Historical Fiction

One beauty about historical fiction is reliving what life may have been like in a different time and place. I am sorry that I can’t recreate Elisabeth’s dress codes exactly. But I hope the important aspects are clear: She never wore pants (inconvenient, from my point of view) and had to wear her hair in a prescribed way.

On the other hand, her clothing showcased the handiwork crafted by the women in her family and broader circle of friends. That’s certainly something we’ve lost that would be beautiful again, isn’t it?

You’ll find more information about Between Worlds here.

I was diagnosed with absence seizures when I was 11. I'm now in my 40s, and although I've never actually asked my parents what they thought when they heard the diagnosis, I know that I would be terrified to receive that diagnosis in one of my children if I had no idea about absence seizures to begin with. However, whereas my parents didn’t have the Internet to learn more, you do.

This blog post is for parents who have children with absence seizures and are hoping to get a better idea of what's going on. Please be aware that these are my experiences. Your child's experience may differ from mine, but if there's one thing I'm hoping to get across in this blog post, it's that the diagnosis is not the end of your child’s life.

Please note: I won’t answer any medical questions about absence seizures, including about medication. Talk to your healthcare team about those topics. In this blog post, I’ll be talking about living with absence seizures.

What Are Absence Seizures?

I'll leave it up to the folks at the Epilepsy Foundation to explain absence seizures in more detail, but here’s what they are for me: Basically, my brain short circuits for a few seconds before coming back online. During this time, my eyes flicker and I usually stop talking. I believe I keep moving (I danced for 20 years and never once stopped on stage), but I may forget what my conversation partner and I were talking about.

A “bad” seizure for me is when my short-term memory is completely erased. A “good” one is when I’m aware I had one but still remember what we were talking about.

My family and I have always referred to my seizures as “blanking out,” but perhaps in today's parlance, the term might be “Wi-Fi offline.”

Are You Scared About a Diagnosis of Epilepsy?

As a parent, I can understand that fear. However, knowing that your child has absence seizures is necessary.

This is going to sound very harsh, but you need to hear it: The reason people with uncontrolled seizures can’t drive is because they can easily kill someone (or many) with a car. How would your teen feel knowing they’d killed a child who’d run across the street right when your teen had a seizure behind the wheel? Please investigate the reason for your child’s staring and/or flickering: It may seem scary now, but it could save all of you (and others) a lot of grief down the road.

How Did I Experience Absence Seizures as a Child?

As a kid, I had no idea that I was having seizures. The only reason my parents even sought medical help was because they didn’t know what was causing my eyes to flicker. My marks were fine, and there were no other suggestions that my brain was short circuiting.

Only over time did I begin to recognize some of my seizures. So, if your child stares blankly for a few seconds or if their eyes are flickering for a few seconds and you ask them what happened and they say they don't know, they are telling the truth. They really don't know.

When I do recognize a seizure, it's either because I've stopped talking and remember that I was talking but lost my train of thought, or it's because somebody asked me if I just had a seizure and I detect a few missing seconds from my short-term memory. But I don’t always know when I’ve had a seizure.

However, I was recently made aware of another symptom of my seizures. For years I believed that I would stop talking during my seizures, but recently I realized that I may actually continue talking sometimes. From what I can gather, it's only a word or two that slip out, and I believe they make grammatical and syntactical sense, but they don't necessarily make contextual sense.

For example, I recently asked my one son to stop wiggling in his chair because otherwise he'd fall off. My older son joked that my younger son would have to get on the table first before he could fall off the table. I was confused for a moment until I realized that I had said “table,” but I clearly had a memory of saying “chair.” After talking with my family a little more, it appears this sort of thing has happened in the past, but because my seizures aren't instantaneously recognizable, it may come across as my own conscious choice of words.

Can Your Child Hear You During a Seizure?

I know children sometimes say what they need to in order to get out of trouble, but when it comes to seizures, take their word for it. I don't hear anything during a seizure, which can be embarrassing in a conversation , especially if the person I'm speaking with doesn't know I have seizures.

The thing with absence seizures is they’re a bit awkward to explain: on the one hand, it's sometimes important for the person I’m speaking with to know I have seizures. On the other hand, because the seizures are not a common type, the person I’m speaking with can become nervous and my disclosure leads to an awkward detraction of our conversation.

I would classify my type of seizure as an invisible disability: Although my fluttering eyelids are visible, most people won’t recognize that symptom as being caused by epilepsy. In fact, a co-worker once thought I was rolling my eyes at her. I was in my 30s at the time and had never heard that before. Add my quiet and sometimes withdrawn personality to the mix and I do wonder how many people I’ve come across over the years who thought I was, to put it in plain language, a bitch.

Is Your Child in Pain During Their Seizure?

I have no reason to believe that a child experiencing an absence seizure is in pain. I certainly have never been in pain; however, being in pain may cause more seizures.

What Triggers My Seizures?

Because I’m not aware of every seizure I have, I can’t tell you every trigger. But here are the main ones I know of:

• Low blood sugar
• Intense emotions
• Changes in breathing
• A change in my visual perceptions, e.g., rubbing my eyes closes my eyes, so my brain goes, “Hey! Who turned out the lights?!” Seizure.
• Different inputs: Answering a phone is a big one. I believe it’s because the voice is coming from a source I can’t see, so my ears are telling me there’s a person somewhere and my eyes are telling me there is no one. That’s my best guess. 
• A tired brain, which happens to everyone. I’m likely to have more seizures after I’ve exhausted my brain by focusing too long on a task, for example.
• Strobe Lighting

If You Remove Those Triggers From Your Child’s Life, Will They Stop Having Seizures?

I don’t think so. Besides, if you do remove those triggers, your child will be living in a white cell.

Kids need to live and explore life, but I can also appreciate that they want to communicate with others and do well in school. I’m really enjoying this new push for a concept called neurodiversity. View your child’s brain from that lens: it simply functions differently from what’s considered normal. Work together with them to find a good balance between reducing seizures (including with medication) and letting them enjoy life.

Do I Drive?

No, I don't.

This doesn't mean that your child won't learn how to drive. My not driving is based on healthcare decisions I’ve made over the years that haven’t given me full control over my seizures. I’m not going to explain those here, because I don’t want them taken out of context. But talk to your medical healthcare team and check the laws in your province or state. Driving isn’t automatically off the table with a diagnosis of absence seizures.

I will admit, I did feel very left out when everyone around me was getting their license. I will also admit that having a driver’s license would be quite nice. However, I know my health would be in much worse shape now than it would have been had I gotten my license because I wouldn’t have been forced to walk and bike around.

How Do I Get Around?

I walk, bike, take public transit or a cab, or get a ride from someone. Not the most convenient way to get around in North America, but it is what it is.

Should Your Child Stop All Physical Activity?

Do talk to your doctor, but here’s the way my life panned out: competitive dancer, culminating in two years on the Canadian National Tap team when I was 19 and 20. I bike, lift weights, use an elliptical machine, occasionally go for a jog, often sprint for the bus, enjoy swimming when I get the chance, completed life guard training in my teens…In short, there was nothing I couldn’t do if I wanted to.

Well, except for go-cart racing. I did try it once. I was horrible. And don’t ask my younger son about his having to “drive” with me in a Disney car ride.

Can Your Child Have Absence Seizures While Being Physically Active?

Yes. What your child needs to learn, and this can be hard to teach them, is to pay attention to how their brain feels throughout the day. I can't promise that focus will cure seizures, but I do know that if I'm emotionally upset or mentally drained, seizures can come more easily.

I remember once in my early 20s seeing a green traffic light at a major intersection. When I crossed, cars honked at me. I looked up and it was red. I’d had a seizure in between. I now approach lights more slowly and to my knowledge have not had a repeat.

I’ve learned to pay attention to my ability to focus while biking, and I'll often refuel before I get back my bike if I’m tired. Or if I’m doing weights and my mind is all over the place, I'll choose weight exercises that don't pose an immediate danger. To my knowledge, my body doesn't go limp when I have seizures, it's just my eyes that flicker, so I'm comfortable making those decisions for myself.

With your child, help them understand that their brain health is really important and teach them to take responsibility for managing their situation. Just as you would over time allow a child with diabetes to administer their own insulin, allow your child with absence seizures to over time learn how to monitor themselves so they know when it's important to push themselves so they can grow as a human being and when it's important to take an extra rest.

Are There Natural Therapies That Cure Epilepsy?

I do not believe there are any, and any medical doctor will tell you that there aren't any. But I can tell you what general health practices I have benefited from that raised my seizure threshold.

When we talk about seizure threshold, it generally refers to how stressed the brain can become before a seizure happens. I can't emphasize this enough: this is what I do. You have to work with your child and trusted healthcare practitioners to see what works for your child.

• I do my best to limit added sweeteners of any kind, but I will also be the first to admit that this is very difficult. Moreover, my family will immediately tell you about my chocolate addiction. But maintaining level blood sugars is, in my books, the most important dietary factor to raising the seizure threshold and reducing (but not fully eliminating) seizures.
• I do my best to eat a diet full of whole grains, a variety of healthy meats, plant-based fats, and lots of fruits and vegetables. The idea is to reduce inflammation in my body. I know the concept of inflammation is perhaps in some ways controversial , so I do encourage you to do your own research on the subject and to use trustworthy sources. But anything that raises inflammation in the body most likely also raises inflammation in the brain and reduces the seizure threshold. 
• I do my best to exercise every day

Will Your Child Outgrow Their Absence Seizures?

Talk to your neurologist, though I’m sure they’ll say they can’t guarantee an outcome. In my life, I’ve met a range of people with a range of seizures, including someone who’d outgrown her absence seizures.

But don’t spend your days hoping your child will outgrow their absence seizures. They have them now, so focus on the now, not the future. They may worsen, they may disappear, or they may simply stay. Keep a good eye on their health, but also let your child live, following any guidelines your healthcare team has set out for your family.

Will Your Child Have a Job?

There are some jobs that aren’t suited for people with absence seizures. Firefighter would be one of them, for example. But I’ve never been unemployed because of seizure activity. (I didn’t always disclose it at interviews: I just didn’t apply for anything that required a license or could put anyone’s safety in jeopardy.) I wouldn’t worry about it.

Will Your Child Have a Family?

I’ve been married for over a decade and have two amazing kids. I can’t make any guarantees about your child’s future, but I can tell you that it’s possible. I wouldn’t worry about this either.

How Do I Feel About My Absence Seizures?

I have a love/hate relationship with them. They can be embarrassing, and they are most certainly inconvenient, but I also have an immediate barometer to my health.

The biggest issue I deal with is explaining them to others. I always thought I could pass for “normal,” but if I’m saying the wrong words and people think I’m consciously saying them, or people believe I’m rolling my eyes at them, then explaining the seizures would be a good idea. Education is always good, right?

But then there were job interviews. Would employers see my seizures as a risk they didn’t want to take on? Yes, there are laws, etc., etc., etc., but I can always be “not properly qualified” for the job. The only time I disclosed my seizures was if I was applying to work at a small non-profit that likely didn’t have the HR knowledge about employment laws and might expect me to have a license despite the lack of such a requirement on the job description.

Actually, that happened recently: I interviewed with a non-profit, and after spending 4-5 hours preparing my resume and then for the job interview, I discovered they were expecting me to do a lot of driving (on a volunteer basis, too, I believe). I really wish they would have said something at the beginning.

Is Your Child With Absence Seizures Happy?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being a parent, it’s that honesty is important, but so is my own emotional well-being. If I constantly worry or am frequently angry, my kids will pick up on that. Treat your child’s healthcare regime the same way you would brushing teeth or tying shoes: this is simply the way life is, and that’s okay. If you can teach your child to understand how their body works and to take responsibility for their health (as is appropriate for their age), you’ll be giving them the same gift of freedom every parent hopes their children will receive.

Lisa LaTouche began tap at age eight after her mother showed her a little time step. Her career has taken off since. She’s studied under Buster Brown, Gregory Hines, and Savion Glover and performed on Broadway, including at the 70th Tony Awards. We talked about all angles of tap: emotional connection, its cultural roots in the African-American community, and finished off with a few tips for current students and adults eying that beginner adult tap class. 

The interview below is edited for clarity and brevity—we could’ve talked for hours, but she had her rehearsal schedule and I my writing schedule. Enjoy! 

Lori: I did CDTA syllabus for tap and we had to learn a bit about the history of tap and we would memorize things like, "The shim sham shimmy comes from black slavery and was danced and the end of a long workday." We learned it but at the same time I had absolutely no emotional connection to it. Can you explain your connection with tap? 

Lisa: My dad is actually from Trinidad and I grew up in Alberta, primarily Calgary and Edmonton. So, I learned a little bit about Caribbean history. I always had this understanding what a “minority” is. But I had lunch with people from all ethnicities all the time. I didn't really think about it too much, but I always had an awareness. 

Lori: You eventually moved to the US. What did you experience there? 

Lisa: I get to the States, boom, it's in your face. I worked with Mad Rhythms in Chicago. I learned a lot about black versus black discrimination within the black community. We would do school shows, and that was the only time in my life that I finally saw what they meant by an all-black school or all-Latino school or a white school based on the different areas. So it was a great eye-opener to America. And then I ended up following more pursuits and in New York and it's just like no matter how far you get, you keep digging into the root of this. 

Lori: So how does tap fit into this for you? 

Lisa: Very much as an African-American folk dance. So here I am someone of color that isn't particularly African-American, digging in and eventually at some point representing an African-American art form. So, I am very much emotionally connected to it. I think what's important to talk about now is to make sure that we're celebrating the heroes. So I feel like tap dance is such a hero through such grotesque times. 

Lori: Tell me about your piece for Fall for Dance North, Fool’s Gold, which has its world première on October 3rd. Why that name? 

Lisa: I was standing in the Canadian Rockies, taking a break this summer, really obsessing over Pyramid Mountain in Jasper Park [Alberta, Canada], that had fool’s gold. It stood such tests of time. Glaciers could not in the ice age slice this rock because the elements that were formed were so sturdy. And that spoke to me because that’s the way tap dance is. It's stood the test of so much time and it came through such oppression. Society, etc., has tried to yes, whitewash, yes, colonize, yes, put it as footnotes. It's tried to undermine it so many times and the public can't get enough of it. Whenever someone sees tap dance, it's always celebrated. It's just always celebrated. You put it up next to a gorgeous ballet. You're going to revere the ballet, but the crowd goes wild when you see tap dance done well. It's exciting because it's progressive. So at the end of the day, they're still knocking on our door. People still want tap dance. 

Lori: A bonus is that you don't have to bend in half backwards to be able to do it well.  

Lisa: What's interesting is the flexibility thing. I think of the Nicholas brothers and others. I think of all these women in these chorus lines, like Jeni LeGon, I think of Juanita Pitts. The list goes on and on and on. We don't have to do that anymore, but they did. 

Lori: I hadn’t thought of it that way. 

Lisa: There's a great documentary called Plenty of Good Women Dancers. And they tell these stories like you come and you audition for these producers and it was slave driving. They would say, "Can you do the splits? Can you do a back flip?" You had to do all of that just to get the gig. And then you still have to enter in the back room. And women had to have secret codes amongst each other to make sure that the brothers weren't messing with them. 

Lori: I had no idea. So, what kind of an impression did that leave on you? 

Lisa: The women are so heroic. They would do a Caribbean show one day. They'd have to be en pointe the next day. They'd have to do all acrobatics. They had to do everything. And usually it was the male acts that got to do just a little act and hit it and quit it. But at the same time, I'm reading this grotesque book called Ring Shout Wheel About, and it talks about from the moment that they were put on these slave ships, the slave masters would whip them into dancing just to keep them strong. They're still a herd of cattle at the end of the day. It wasn't like, "Oh, let's sit, let's give you a break." They were whipped into submission. 

Lori: Did that change once slavery was abolished? 

Lisa: Lincoln abolished slavery, but the South didn't really let the slaves know until the very last moment that they could. So that's why Juneteenth is celebrated because that's the day that finally every black person realized they did not have to work for free. After that, they are taken away their rights. So, in order to make a buck, you had to do whatever you had to do. So a lot of times the dancing again was for survival. 

Lori: I didn’t know that either. 

Lisa: So now, you're starting to make a couple of bucks. You have to have an act, you have to have a novelty. You have to be able to do the back flips and the splits. You have to do that in order to get the gig. Do you know what I mean? All these heroes did all that they could so that we can still enjoy tap dance. It's supremely magical and it's supremely...we're survivors. 

Lori: See, and that's the part that wasn't in the history lesson for me. 

Lisa: No, but why would it be right? And I don't think it's anyone's fault. It's just is what happens. Things get brushed under the rug. And now with all the civil unrest, again, it's finally an appropriate time and we can talk about it. 

Lori: So there's all this history, what would you want Canadian students of tap today to, to know about the history of tap? 

Lisa: I would really want Canadians to understand that we're not spared. We're not as belligerent [as in the US], but we're not spared. The hashtag for a while was “white silence is violence.” Just silence in general is violence. It doesn't mean, okay, everybody gets BLM on their window. It just means: Can you please make sure you're just checking on your neighbors? The feeling that I have here and some of the arguments I've gotten into with some people here is that sometimes it's even been within family. It's that that doesn't exist here. “Lisa, you're too emotional.” And I'm like, “Stop it. I've seen pictures in the paper of KKK written on somebody's driveway, in the Northeast here in Calgary.” We still have assholes in humanity. You can't avoid it. Just be a good person. That's what it starts with. Do your history. I don't need everybody to pass the Afro experience quiz, but I just want everybody to be nice to everybody. 

Lori: I understand. 

Lisa: And now even more in a pandemic, it has me thinking a lot. This is kind of an industry for the privileged. It's so expensive. So how do I get this information and this art back to its people and make it accessible to everyone, not just to those who can afford the expensive classes and the costumes and trips and all that stuff? It's more than that. So I want everybody to continue to have reverence, continue to enjoy it, continue to share it, continue to study it and also pass it on. How can we get this into community centers, not just like private dance studio? 

Lori: Just a few weeks ago, I was caving under pressure so I threw a tap board down the floor that my husband made for me, turned on some music and banged it out for 20 minutes. I wish more people had that outlet. 

Lisa: This is a good time to have these conversations. It's not that we've thought about pointing out what everyone's been doing wrong or right. It's like, how can we continue to uplift things now? The worst thing that you can do is to turn your cheek and pretend that someone you know isn't affected by anything happening in the world. I mean, that's the beauty: the pandemic affects every person in the entire globe. And now this civil unrest and Black Lives Matter. I mean, it's a topic that no one could not know about. 

Lori: How can students of tap put their emotions into the technique? 

Lisa: Well, I think it goes back to what we originally were talking at the beginning about being emotionally connected to the craft. So I think the more that you do understand some of the backstories, or you find a tap dancer that you study that resonates with you—it’s going to be different for everyone—and then you have an emotional connection and a respect for the craft. When you are connected to your experience, you realize that you have this gift of dancing to let it out. 

Lori: I see. That makes sense. 

Lisa: It'll draw you to a piece of music, of choreography, to a movie. It will draw you to something. And you have an outlet. And I don't think you really realize it until you're going through something. Like you were saying, you felt the walls were closing in a few weeks ago. And you didn't realize how much throwing on those pair of shoes really just helped you. 

Lori: They did. And I’ve been out of practice for years, so my technique isn’t anything really advanced. 

Lisa: Whatever level of technique you have will show up on its own. It’s like learning your ABCs and eventually you don't think about your ABCs. You're just reading and writing. 

Lori: Right. 

Lisa: Continue to do your pliés. Continue to work on your shuffles. Continue to work on your time steps. Then figure out what it is that you're feeling and connect to something. Then use your dancing. 

Lori: That’s exactly how it works, now that you describe it. I’d like to talk about competition. You said you’re pulling back from it. 

Lisa: My question, to be honest with you, and I don't have the answer, is what in humanity fueled the idea to pit people against each other? It's different when you're running and there's a clock. But I'm reading all this stuff, what they were doing on the slave ships. We know stories of people beating each other to death. It's gross. Why is it celebratory to make sure that you win and you cut this person? I'm not with it anymore. There's healthy competition. There's still getting inspiration from another great artist that performs greatly. But I just fricking hate the gold medal for something that is so raw. 

Lori: I hadn’t thought of it that way before. 

Lisa: I hate it now. There's all these discussions. “Well, it does so much for someone's confidence, dah dah dah.” It only does if you win. I think about it as now a mom, right? If he's interested in whatever it is, I would want him to work with anybody he can learn from the most. And I personally am like, as a tap dancer, if he were to follow in my footsteps or whatever, I don't think I'd go that route for him. 

Lori: Really? 

Lisa: I definitely would not. I don't like the cattiness of the parents. I don't like the ignorance of the judges, especially when it comes to tap. Because a lot of them don't know what they're talking about. It doesn't feel good. So you leave frustrated. I don't think it builds the confidence. That's my opinion.  

Lori: What would you rather see? 

Lisa: I want them to feel what it's like to be applauded for sure. And validated for sure. And to be able to step on stage and be vulnerable. Absolutely. And be uplifted and have the audience say thank you. And I think that's enough. 

Lori: I see. 

Lisa: I just worked on this other Broadway-level project at the end of last year. This one dancer, who was the first place winner in So You Think You Can Dance in the US, wonderful person, beautiful person, very accomplished. But she was just like anybody else first moving to New York: She still had to figure out how she was going to find the right apartment and live where she's got to live. She still had to figure out the right connections. Of course, she has an agent, etc., etc. But she had to learn a whole other way of moving. She has to pay her dues just like anybody else. Which is art. It's different than when you are saying, "Okay, well, we got certain amount of balls in the hoop." You crossed the net. There was a goal. The end. You won. 

Lori: And you could have 100 people watching that, and coming to the same conclusion. 

Lisa: Exactly. 

Lori: Last question: Do you have a quick tip for adults who are thinking about starting tap lessons, but are too scared? 

Lisa: You're never too old to start! What I can say is that anytime I've taught an absolute beginning tap class, it's so inspiring to me. It makes me want to try something brand new in my adult life. And to see the joy of somebody trying something new, feeling so scared, walking in and then making a sound at them to get a big smile on their face. It's amazing. And you can do that with tap. You can go and not completely destroy your body. 

Lori: So true! 

Lisa: I say you're always welcome. And it ends up being really inspiring. 

Whenever I research the person I’m going to interview for a Spotlight article, I look them up online. Aniyah Stuart-Veira is 16 and has only begun her online presence, but one thing jumped out at me right away: her positivity. 

“I like to be positive,” she says during our call, “because better things come to you when you’re being positive, as opposed to being negative.” 

Now in grade 11 at St. Roch Catholic Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario (just outside Toronto), Aniyah started dance only four years ago, at age 12. Her friends were already flexible, skilled, and competing, so she knew she had a lot of work ahead of her to catch up. 

Every day, she stretched, and if she learned something new at her studio, she practiced it until she got it right. “You've got to work very hard to catch up with them since you've already lost so many years,” she says. 

For her 15th birthday, her mom gave Aniyah a practice space in the basement: it has a barre, a mirror, surround sound, and is sound-proofed so she doesn’t bother the rest of her family. Her practice always includes stretching, barre, and technique, and she ensures she practices a variety of styles through the week. 

Aniyah now receives her dance education through the arts program at her school. Although she finds balancing school and dance important, it can be a struggle. “Dance isn't a forever career,” she says. “You can get injured, so it's always good to have something to fall back upon.” 

She aims to practice for an hour a day, but she admits grade 11 has made it difficult for her to follow through on that because of the work required to prepare for university applications the following year. (Aniyah wants to be a pediatrician after her dance career.) 

Of course, Aniyah’s positive attitude kicked the struggle to the dustbin like a chorus kick line. It comes down to her priorities. For other dancers in the same boat, she suggests the same approach: "Whatever they think is more important for them, they could prioritize that.” That means Aniyah doesn’t come home from school and watch TV: she does her homework and, whenever possible, practices dance. 

Photo Credit: Andy Yu 

Her hard work is paying off. In January, Aniyah successfully auditioned a second time to perform at a half-time show for a Toronto Raptors home game. (Last year was her first such performance.) Dancers from all over Ontario participated, and Aniyah says she learned a lot and made lots of new friends. 

In 2016, after just a couple of years of dance, she landed a dance spot on the hit Family Channel show We are Savvy, performing her own choreography in the show’s segment called “Dance Mansion.” The experience taught her a lot about working in television. 

"It's a really cool experience,” she says, “because I’d never been on TV, so you got to see everything that goes behind it. I had to dance five times just to get different angles.” 

She also learned how filming can be unpredictable: weather wasn’t playing along that day, so she frequently had to sit and wait for the sun to come out before shooting another take. It had nothing to do with needing the sun’s light for brightness and everything to do with continuity: the final cut couldn’t have the sun turning on and off like a broken stage light during her piece. 

When she’s not busy with school or dance—which doesn’t seem to leave her much time at all—Aniyah volunteers for two organizations very close to her heart: Craft for a Cure and Brown Girls Do Ballet. 

Craft for a Cure is a charity that helps children have a positive experience during hospital visits by distributing donated crafting kits to emergency, clinic treatment, and operating waiting rooms. The charity also has an annual run, which Aniyah enjoys participating in. 

Brown Girls Do Ballet is a Texas-based non-profit that aims to improve diversity in the ballet world. It began as an Instagram movement and now has 109,000 followers. Aniyah is the organization’s first international ambassador and explains its purpose: “It's like outreach to other dancers and younger dancers to show them people they can look up to so they don't feel like there's this box and they don't fit in." 

Not fitting in is something Aniyah has experienced. “I started late and sometimes being the oldest in the class, and sometimes being the only black girl in class with the puffy hair, I faced challenges internally,” she says. Even in rec class, she knew the other dancers had danced previously. “At times, they weren't the nicest to me, and if I didn't get a move right away, they would look at me like, 'Why is she even in this class?'” 

That’s a hard reality to face. But true to her style and personality, Aniyah took the positive way out: “I learned to ignore them and push through. I was there to get better, so they shouldn’t affect me.” 

Photo Credit: Paula Whitten

Aniyah has no plans of stopping. She attended her first ballet summer intensive last year at the School of Cadence Ballet in Toronto, where she danced from 9-6 every day and absolutely loved it. She hopes to participate in more intensive programs this coming summer on her way to becoming a professional dancer with a dance company before she begins her second career in medicine. 

What’s the reasoning behind Aniyah’s positive attitude? "This is the only life you have to live, so why waste it being upset all the time and angry when you can see the goodness in every single day, and make the day more positive?” 

Exactly. 

www.browngirlsdoballet.com 
YouTube Channel: Brown Girls Do Ballet
Instagram: @browngirlsdoballet
Facebook: @BrownGirlsDoBallet
Twitter: @BrownGirlBallet

Follow Aniyah on social media!
Instagram: AniyahDance
Twitter: @AniyahDance

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