Dan Needles describes his new book Finding Larkspur – A Return to Village Life as a guide to rural living.
He has observed that small towns have historically been portrayed as unfriendly places that residents want to escape from, but Needles believes they have a lot going for them.
“It’s not peace and quiet,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to recapture the village, which is how our species has lived most often for the last 100,000 years. You don’t have to love [all the people] but you know them. You feel connected, you know your place, you know your story, you feel grounded and rooted. A lot of us crave that kind of certainty in our lives.”
While observing customs, traditions and institutions that endure, Needles reveals that the national character is often very much a product of its small towns and back roads.
“The book is really my path to my own Larkspur,” said Needles of the memoir. “It’s finding my way home and I have been on this patch of ground for 45 years now.”
The Nottawa playwright and author – a member of the Order of Canada and winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour – is the author of the Wingfield Farm plays, among others, and True Confessions from the Ninth Concession, which is published in quarterly magazines.
Needles became editor of the Free Press and Economist, a small town weekly newspaper in Shelburne, in 1974, where he began writing the Letter from Wingfield Farm column. The column developed into the plays set in the town of Larkspur in Persephone Township, a fictional community emblematic of small towns.
The book is “written both for the old-timers who wonder what to make of this sudden influx of city people and the newcomers who seek to understand their strange new surroundings.”
As a self-described blow-in, Needles finds the humour in the collision of cultures that he believes makes for a more interesting place to live.
“It’s an adjustment for everybody,” he said. “This has always been a bit of a mixing pot. I’m looking at what has changed, what’s new and what is as eternal as the limestone cliffs that loom over the valley.”
Needles says the book is a reflection on rural life, an exploration of the past and present.
“It’s not a complaint of any kind. It’s just a bit of a crop tour. It’s a wander down the concession roads,” said Needles. “The agricultural foundations are still poking up through the landscape… but the farm life and calendar have largely gone and we still use the language of crops and weather, it’s still in our speech, and it still has an effect on the way we think.”
He said newcomers become aware of it very quickly and discover that they live in a bit of a fishbowl.
“There is some pressure to lead a blameless life. It’s like a Thomas Hardy novel,” said Needles. “It’s harder to live anonymously in a place like Creemore.”
Finding Larkspur – A Return to Village Life, published by Douglas and McIntyre, is available at Curiosity House Books in Creemore and online at danneedles.ca.
Needles will be speaking at Beer and Books, hosted by Curiosity House Books on Thursday, Oct. 12 at Creemore Springs Brewery beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $25 (includes a pint). Email info@curiosityhousebooks.com.
Trina Berlo photo: Dan Needles held a book signing at Curiosity House Books on Saturday at the launch of his new memoir Finding Larkspur – A Return to Village Life, where he signed a book for Vivienne Bent, whose father went to school with Needles.