Praise St. John’s and the Maritimes!
You have to love the Maritimes! The people there are the friendliest one can possibly imagine. (Of the places I’ve been, only Denmark is up there.) And it’s far more culturally rich than one would ever expect. One has to wonder why some places seem so friendly and others far less so.
The Canadian Writers’ Union was concerned about attendance, given the very substantial distances (and cost) of holding the annual AGM in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Fortunately, the attendance was excellent. I suspect many members knew about the charm of the Maritimes—and how many literary lights hail from there. For example, The Fiddlehead, a old and venerable Canadian lit mag was started there. (They published my first chapbook back in the Seventies, and The Dalhousie Review was the first periodical to publish one of my poems)
