On the left is my Silver Birch award from 2013. On the right is Sylvia McNicoll’s award from 1996.
2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the Silver Birch Awards and the list of winners is like a Who’s Who of Canadian children’s lit: Kevin Sylvester, Robert Weston, Eric Walters, Kathy Kacer, Kenneth Oppel, Carol Matas, Bill Richardson and so many more. . .
In 1996 when Sylvia won the Silver Birch (in addition to other awards for Bringing Up Beauty), my very first book had just been published. I remember viewing Sylvia from a distance with awe. I actually got to meet her in person a year later when we were both involved in the same book event at a Chapters store in Burlington. Children’s authors Gillian Chan and Gary Barwin also came. Gary brought worms as a prop for his picture book, The Racing Worm Brothers.
It was one of those sad events with well-prepared and enthusiastic authors in search of an audience. We all patiently listened to each others’ presentations, clapped loudly and bought each others’ books. And then became lifelong friends.
Winning the Silver Birch award this year was like the completion of a circle. Back in 1996 when I looked in awe at Sylvia, I would never have dreamed that I would win the Silver Birch just like Sylvia one day.
With this 20th Silver Birch anniversary looming, Meredith Tutching at the OLA asked all of us winners if we could each put together a 2 minute video to upload to Youtube. I emailed Sylvia, suggesting we interview each other with the video camera on our phones. She had a much better idea: her son Craig McNicoll is a videographer and editor. She’d ask him to tape us both and we could ask each other our questions. I thought this was a great idea! The McNicoll family is a talented clan. Sylvia’s husband Bob has a magic photographic touch, especially when it comes to photographing people.
Bob and Craig set up an impromptu set in the basement, and then Sylvia and I interviewed each other. It was a lovely day, not just because I got to spend some time with my good friend Sylvia, but I got to know her family better, sweet grandkids and all. Sylvia served a lovely lunch (and we won’t talk about the wine bottle I broke) and Gisela Sherman came over and joined us.
Now Craig is busy editing our our ums and ahs and massaging what we said into a cohesive and short whole. I can hardly wait to see the videos!
Here’s the link to Sylvia’s blog post about our day.
