Tales from a Snowbank

by John Horner

Overview

In Tales from a Snowbank, you will read about the challenges of surviving in a sub-arctic community, such as walking home from school with the fear of turning a corner and coming face-to-face with a big white bear. This is an autobiographical collection documenting the author's growth to adulthood in a small but significant Canadian community: Churchill, Manitoba. The work details his unique life and times, with humour and tenderness, and examines how the community and the author's life experiences were instrumental in shaping him. The book provides a wonderful glimpse back in time, as each chapter touches on different adventures in different decades, from illicit pool hall escapades in the 1950s, to meeting a pretty nurse in the 1960s. The book closes with the author's return to Churchill with his new wife to visit his parents during the Christmas of 1970.

This work shows readers a part of the world and a way of life very few have experienced, describing elements of the North, such as the polar bears, belugas, and seals; living in isolation and loneliness; the beauty of Hudson Bay, and the northern lights; and the warmth of community.

The book will appeal to readers around the world who appreciate nostalgia, history, or biographies, as well as those interested in understanding what the North has to offer, and the deep historical ties Churchill has with the rest of Canada.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160710068
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	01/17/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	625 KB

About the Author

John Horner grew up in the sub-arctic community of Churchill, Manitoba in the 1950s and the 1960s. Once he was attending university on the “outside,” he would return to Churchill for summer employment and to spend holidays with his family. He last saw the community with his then new bride at Christmastime 1969, and his family left when the military base closed in 1973.

With his first book, John seeks to show the reader what life was like in Churchill in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, and how the community had changed by his last visit. He also desires to share with readers the historical importance of Churchill since 1700, how global warming has changed the North over the last fifty years, and the importance of preserving wildlife and wild spaces.

Having always been a reader of history and biographies, living in Churchill, and later the Yukon, gave John the opportunity to experience the presence and making of history. The manuscript was inspired by his experiences working as a teacher for thirty-one years in rural Manitoba and the Yukon, spending the last twenty-five teaching British History, Canadian History, American History, and the History of Western Civilization. John’s hobbies are reading, writing, cooking, woodworking, travelling, and volunteering as a guide at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada.

John lives in Winnipeg with his wife of over fifty years, Valerie, surrounded by their loving children, in-laws, grand-children, and grand-pets.