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Posts Tagged ‘Canadian writers’

Farewell, Ed Griffin

Posted in books about prison, e-books, Ed Griffin, Indie authors, leaving the priesthood, prison, prison reform, prisoners, tagged , , , , , , , on October 24, 2015| 5 Comments »

Ed Griffin

It’s with regret that I hear of the passing of Ed Griffin, Canadian writer, champion of prison reform, and mentor to many, who taught creative writing at a number of Canadian prisons, until his progressive views on the rehabilitation of prisoners saw him barred from giving any more of the classes that had meant a lot to many inmates.

Ed was no stranger to controversy. He was active in the civil rights movement of the ‘60s, and marched in Selma with Martin Luther King. He became a Roman Catholic priest in 1962, but left the priesthood in 1968. In 1976, he opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee with his wife Kathy, raising children and growing flowers. In 1988 the family moved to British Columbia, where he helped to establish a writing community in Surrey. He is the founder of Western Canada’s largest writer’s conference, the Surrey Writers’ Conference.

I met Ed during my early forays online in 2012. He turned out to be a good friend, writing reviews for my animal novel MagnifiCat, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0ORWQY and for a number of the short stories I formatted and put on the web, http://www.amazon.com/Danielle-de-Valera/e/B00H286LXI Quick with an encouraging word, and never one to complain, he told us of his diagnosis of prostate cancer about a year ago. Gradually his posts at Writers Write Daily, https://writerswritedaily.wordpress.com/ and Prison Uncensored, https://prisonuncensored.wordpress.com/ slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. When I emailed him one time to ask how he was, he replied cheerfully, saying the medication he was now on made him lethargic and it was difficult for him to write posts. About a week ago, I woke up one night thinking about him and rose to find an email in my Inbox, telling me of his passing.

As part of his championing of those in prison, through the John Howard Society, a humanitarian organization, http://www.johnhowardbc.ca/ Ed started a little bursary called the Ed Griffin Educational Bursary This bursary, to which anyone can contribute, aims to help inmates with the expenses of higher education. Those contributing receive a tax receipt from the John Howard Society, who present money to the educational institution the winning inmate has chosen. Anyone wishing to honour his memory in a concrete way might consider donating at: http://www.edgriffin.net/bursary.html

I know Ed would like that.

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Writing VETO, by Ed Griffin

Posted in Canadian writers, e-books, the UN veto, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 8, 2012| 7 Comments »

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy hearing other authors talk about the genesis of their work. Below is Ed Griffin’s raison d’etre for the writing of his latest novel Veto, available now from Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Veto-ebook/dp/B005ZIT5DK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1346464570&sr=1-1&keywords=Veto

Ed Griffin: What’s the matter with me?  I know that action adventure stories sell best. Then why do I go and write a story about a woman who becomes Secretary General of the United Nations?

I remember sitting down with my brother-in-law after dinner at his house. I told him about my idea. He clearly thought I was nuts.

But the story wouldn’t let me go. What if the UN really lived up to its promise? What if it could really help people? What if it was more democratic? Why should the winners of World War II have a veto over the actions of everyone else? France, England, the United States, Russia and China? What about India, Germany, Indonesia, Japan? The recent trouble with Syria – how would it be different if the UN was different?

So a woman, a UN bureaucrat, gets herself chosen as the Secretary General. She tries to help people and is stopped by moneyed interests and eventually by the veto. Does she throw up her hands and say, “Well, I tried.”  No, she goes after the problem at the heart of UN failures, the veto.

And of course, the closer she gets to succeeding, the more the opposition tries to get her out of the way. And that is the action-adventure part.

Where did I get this interest in the UN? I’m almost reluctant to name the first mentor who put me on the UN path. I don’t want to be seen as some sort of religious nut. But it was Pope John the 23rd, the one who opened the windows in the church and called the Vatican Council.

He wrote a letter (encyclical) called Pacem In Terris (Peace on Earth). This pope was well-loved, but conservative commentators did not like this letter. Four important paragraphs are dedicated to the UN. He wanted every human being to “find in this organization an effective safeguard of his personal rights; those rights, that is, which derive directly from his dignity as a human person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable.”

He praises the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed by the United Nations General Assembly, because “it is a solemn recognition of the personal dignity of every human being; an assertion of everyone’s right to be free to seek out the truth, to follow moral principles, discharge the duties imposed by justice, and lead a fully human life. It also recognized other rights connected with these.”

I wish the Catholic Church of today followed the ideas of this pope.

I also was amazed at the European Union. How could these countries which had fought each other for centuries, come together in a political and economic union? I read a history of the European Union and learned that it IS possible to set up structures that can help the world become a better place.

Where did I get all this information about other countries? From the Internet. There is a world of information out there. I spent hours on line. For example, where does the Secretary General live? What kind of home is it?  The answers are all on the Internet, but it does take some careful work.

Why so much attention on Somalia? When I was at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, my roommate was a man from Somalia, Abdul Elmi. He taught me a lot about Somalia and gave me a feel for the country and the people. I read more and more about Somalia. Abdul was an architecture student and he had to learn all about building below the frost line, even though there is no frost line in Somalia. He returned to his country, but the leader then was Sid Bare, a cruel dictator. Abdul was able to get out of Somalia and return to America, where I sponsored him to enter the country. He still lives and works in Milwaukee. So Somalia is almost in my blood. Most of us white people cannot tell one African from another, and no doubt I could not tell a Sudanese from a person from Zambia, but I can spot Somalis. I was waiting in line at McDonalds recently and I walked up to a guy and asked “Somalia?” He smiled and said yes and we had a great conversation.

What did I learn from writing VETO? I learned that it is possible for institutions to change. First the world tried the League of Nations and then the UN. Maybe someday a Pilar Marti will come along and make the UN an effective tool to help people.

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