LITTLE CURRENT—Nearly every year since she was seven, Emily De Angelis and her family came to Manitoulin to camp, her experiences here led the author to not only settle on the Island but to set her latest novel, ‘The Stones of Burren Bay’ here on the Island as well.
“My mom was physically disabled,” said Ms. De Angelis, “so we had some times where we were homebound but my parents bought a trailer, so we came here and stayed at Green Acres.”
“When we got married and had children, my husband and I started coming to the Island with them, first as tenters, then that got old and we bought a trailer. In 2018, we bought property on Ice Lake.”
The couple are currently building their dream home here on Manitoulin. “When I say we’re building, I mean he and I are building—like physically building. We bring in my sister and my brother-in-law on occasion, but yeah we’re doing it ourselves. The exterior is entirely finished, we have water, we have hydro to the building, it’s been roughed in, but you know, we have one outlet,” she laughs ruefully. “But we’re happy as pigs in poop with one of them. We have been living in an old six-wheel trailer on the property until it’s done. So, we’re hoping by the end of the summer all of the electrical plumbing and septic will be in.”
“In 1992, after we both finished university, we came to the Island to live and work,” said Ms. De Angelis. “My husband received grants to finish school if he went to an underserviced area afterwards. So, we were in Mindemoya at the hospital there for a little bit and while we were living here, we met people, you know, formed friendships and they brought somebody who lived on the Western part of the Island. They took us out there and that’s when I saw my first lighthouse in person and that had a huge impact—set that little seed of the story.”
But that was just the seed and there were many miles to go before she could set pen to paper.
“There’s a difference between loving to write and knowing how to write,” she said. “Knew I needed to invest some time in learning how to craft. I joined organizations, I took courses and workshops, and then I received an Ontario Arts Council Grant. That allowed me to do the Humber School for writers. I got accepted to work there and that’s where the bulk of the novel started and got fleshed out.”
“The Celtic spiritualism came in because, around the same time I was also doing family history research and on my father’s side, his mother, her people came from Ireland in 1830 and settled in Southwestern Ontario—and so that whole thing took me down the Irish road.”
“So that got me thinking about the whole Irish component and then I needed a place,” said Ms. De Angelis. “The Island was perfect because in my opinion, and I don’t know if it’s the Indigenous history or what, but there is a spiritual sense to this place. I’m not Indigenous, I didn’t want to suggest that, although I have Indigenous characters and Indigenous themes, but I don’t have and I’m not Indigenous.”
Her protagonist is not Indigenous. “I wanted another kind of spirituality in it that seemed natural and one of my characters is a spirit who came to Manitoulin Island with her father to manage a lighthouse in the late 1800s.”
“That brought everything together and then the last piece was because of the alvar pavements, the limestone formations on the West End of the Island,” she said. “They have similar ones in a place called The Burran in Ireland and County Clare. So, I did some research around that and that seemed to have a connection as well—a unifying element. It just seemed to be the right place and I love coming here and I love being here and it’s very inspirational as a writer.”
Ms. De Angelis will be at the Jabbawong Storytelling Festival in Kagawong on July 6, where she will be reading from her works and her book, published by Sudbury’s Latitude46 Publishing Company, is available in The Expositor bookstore.
