By Connie Tabbert
Editor
BEACHBURG — Heather Campbell is launching her book Heather’s Musings and More next Thursday afternoon in the activity room at Country Haven Retirement Home in Beachburg.
Ms. Campbell writes a column, Heather’s Musings, for her home-town newspaper Bancroft Times and she decided to write a book based on those columns and a few other tid bits from here and there.
There are 70 stories in the book, and 25 of them are based on her columns.
“I updated some of the stories, added photos, wrote some new ones,” she said. “The readers like me to write about back in the day, they like to read about how things used to be, although many of them are from back in the day as well.”
It was around Christmas last year that Ms. Campbell decided it was time for another book. By January, she was serious and started to develop it. And in September the book was off to the printer.
“My daughter calls it my baby because it’s so labour intensive,” Ms. Campbell said with a laugh. “It’s such a relief when it’s finally out there.”
This is Ms. Campbell’s fifth book. The first book, The Show Must Go On, was about life with her parents and what they accomplished.
“It was the only book I was ever going to write,” she said. “I was going to write about my parents and all the different things they had done in their life.
“They were real entrepreneurs,” she recalled. “We owned the telephone system in Wollaston Township (near Bancrot). That was pretty interesting. That’s what I grew up on. When I was 10 years old, I was an operator at the switchboard to help.
“He showed educational films in the schools because there was no electricity and he had a Jeep with a generator. He went to 44 different schools, but that was in the Hastings area because that’s where I grew up.
“Dad was also in municipal politics for a while.”
Following the book’s publication in 2003, Ms. Campbell said many people felt she should do another book. So, she did. She branched out telling stories about friends and acquaintances.
“The stories are about back in the day and they could have happened to anybody,” she said. “The stories are about things you laugh at in hindsight.”
A year later, she published Dear Hearts and Gentle People followed by Because You Asked in 2007 and Sunny Side Up in 2010.
Ms. Campbell recently launched Heather’s Musings and More at a tea room in Ormsby, which is about five miles from Coe Hill, near Bancroft, which is where she grew up.
“The tea room used to be a school house, and I just love to go there,” she said. “It went really well.”
The Bancroft Times even put the press release of her book launch in Ormsby in colour on the front page, she said.
“I was surprised,” she said. “I thought it would be buried somewhere in the back in black and white,” she said.
Looking back, Ms. Campbell said she grew up in Coe Hill near Bancroft, went to North Hastings High School in Bancroft, then it was off to Peterborough’s Teacher’s College and then almost 35 years as a teacher.
Once she retired, she remained active and is organist each Sunday morning at St. Andrew’s United Church in Beachburg and Trinity United Church in Foresters Falls; she is a mother of two grown children and has two granddaughters.
As a matter of fact, she noted granddaughter Amanda Gervais, who now lives in Ottawa, designed and did the layout of Heather’s Musings and More. Ms. Campbell’s late husband Frank used to do most of that.
Ms. Campbell belongs to The Swinging Swallows, a modern square dancing group that meets weekly at Wesley United Church in Pembroke; is chair of Beachburg’s writing club the Hen Scratchers; writes a weekly column for the Bancroft Times; enjoys crocheting and spends each Wednesday afternoon at Country Haven Retirement Home helping with a craft group.
“I also follow the Ottawa Senators, I’m a hockey fan,” she said.
Thursday’s book launch begins at 1:30 p.m. Profits from the books sales, and each book is $19.95, will go to the Alzheimer Society. She noted at the launch, a volunteer from the Alzheimer Society will be present to talk about the disease and hand out literature.
She chose the society because “I have two really great friends in the first stages of alzheimers. It’s very frightening. The statistics are quite staggering. One in 10 people will get alzheimers.”
Heather’s Musings and More will be available at Joanne’s Gallery in Beachburg or you can email Ms. Campbell at [email protected] or call her, 613-582-3257.
