My mom loved Western People. She kept every copy that came into the house. She was an
avid reader whose youthful ambition had been to write. Mom had let life get in the way, so
she was more than willing to encourage my own decision to make a career out of words.
Mom’s new ambition was for me to make it into Western People. However, never a writer
herself, she didn’t understand the struggle to get into print. By the time she died in 1985, I
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had an assortment of credits, and a little pile of rejection slips from W.-10-P.
Mom died on March 19. The night before her funeral, a Saskatchewan blizzard blew into
Foam Lake. We had assorted Eyolfsons on the roads, struggling to get to home, and other
assorted Eyolfsons bunched up in the local motel. Emotions were running as high as the
wind and I was coping with the extra joy of a weather-induced migraine.
By 9 -10-P.m., I knew I had two choices: to go for a long walk into the blizzard or to throw
myself down onto the motel carpet and write. I chose writing.
When, back in Montreal, I stumbled across the green-covered coil notebook and read the
pages of red ballpoint scrawl, I muttered to myself, did some re-writing and polishing, and
sent the results to Western People.
There was no note with the response. There was only a cheque. My first Western People
piece appeared Sept. 5, as close to my Mom’s birthday (Sept. 8) as Mary Gilchrist could
get. It was titled Snow Fairies in the Shadows, a story about coming home.
It was Mom’s story, blended into our journey by car from Winnipeg, following our flight
from Montreal. Fifteen years later, even though I ache to smooth some of the rough spots, it
still pleases me.
It was a perfect way to say goodbye to Mom, and the ideal introduction to my 15 years
connection with W-10-P. And yes, I always suspected that, on the day it came out, Mom sat on
her cloud and cheered.
– Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Foam Lake, Sask.
