Robert Henderson comes to us from Watson, Saskatchewan. We know each other through St. Peter’s Chorus, a community choir that practices every Monday in Muenster, SK.
Hi, Bob. Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions today and let my readers get to know you. How about a little background to begin with?
BOB: I was born and raised in Tisdale, Saskatchewan. After graduating from high school, I worked in town for a year to earn money to attend the University of Regina in 1971. I graduated with a degree in Education in 1975 and immediately applied to work with CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas). I was accepted by the Papua New Guinean Department of Education and spent the next three-and-a-half years in that country as a boarding school teacher at St. Xavier High School on Kairiru Island in the East Sepik Province, and Fatima High School, Banz, in the Western Highlands Province.
Upon returning to Canada, I began teaching, got married and became the father of two. After the marriage failed, I was a single father for several years until I met my present wife, Margaret, whom I had dated before leaving the country. We married in 1993, and in 2005 adopted our son, Marcos, from Brazil. I retired from teaching in 2008. Now we keep ourselves busy with our band, “The Horse’s Mouth,” our seven grandchildren, and activism.
JAN: Love the band, Bob. Have you always enjoyed books?
BOB: Yes, I began reading a lot when I was nine or ten years old. I loved the Hardy Boys series and had every book. I got into reading adventure stories about exciting places on earth, and finally found The Hobbit. That led to the whole Lord of the Rings series and then into science fiction and finally into history.
JAN: Whole new worlds! When did you begin writing and what was your motivation?
BOB: When I returned home to Canada, many people were very interested in what I told them about my time in Papua New Guinea. My students were especially insistent on hearing more about it, so I started the story of Lahumpo, one of the boys I had taught on Kairiru Island. Being a single parent and a busy teacher, my writing times were limited to the summer holidays or rare quiet times.
After trying out my story on a number of classes, I realized it needed to be completed. When I retired I was determined to finish it, so began a serious effort to do so. It took much longer than I had expected, as so many other things took precedence, such as adopting and raising a seven-year-old boy who didn’t speak a word of English.
JAN: For details about the book and the story, see my review as well as Amazon.
Who are some of the people who most influenced your decision to write?
BOB: My mother encouraged me to write my experiences down, as I could never seem to get time to tell it all to her. I began it for her, but she didn’t live to see it finished. My own two children always wanted to hear about my life in PNG and I had to find a way to tell them why it had become so important to me. I also took advice from a man who influenced my life in ways that are hard to explain. Alphonse Gerwing O.C. read an early version of the beginning of the book, encouraged me to continue and gave me some important suggestions.
JAN: Ah! I met Alphonse Gerwing once; he was introduced to me as Brother Thomas, and his reputation of encouragement has lived on beyond him.
How and where do you write? Are you a plotter or a seat-of-the-pantser?
BOB: I need a quiet place with no distractions, preferably when the house is empty, the dog is out and the cats are sleeping! I cannot write fiction. I only try to compose into words what happened as well as my memory allows. I plan out everything I want to say—I must be a plotter—when I don’t have time to write, and then sit down and write it as quickly as possible when I get a chance.
JAN: No writing in cafés for me either! How do you research and how do you know you can trust your sources?
BOB: My writing style does not require much research, other than making sure that names, places and details are correct as I remember them. For my book, Cloud Over Kairiru, I used many of the audio tapes I had made, as well as many photos and letters I had sent home.
JAN: What do you like most/least about writing?
BOB: I love the emotional experience I get from telling something important that happened to me. Strangely enough, it is also what makes it hard to describe sad times. My next book will continue my PNG experiences, but there were no happy times at Fatima High School as tribal wars became so bad I was forced to flee. A lot of very bad things happened which I would almost prefer to forget, but I cannot.
JAN: All the best with writing all that out in your next book.
What have you found to be the best methods of promoting your work?
BOB: I fear I am not as good at this as I would like to be. I have advertised it locally and on Facebook posts, as well as promotions on Amazon. I have permission to sell the book at McNally Robinson and Chapters in Saskatoon, and have copies for sale in several local stores.
JAN: You’re not alone in this, Bob. Promoting is a huge learning experience.
What are your favorite/most effective social media?
BOB: I usually only use Facebook, but since I have almost 1000 followers it can get the word out to a lot of people at one time. The difficulty is to keep that information as up-to-date as possible. I have Twitter and Instagram accounts that I intend to use more since most of my former students prefer it.
JAN: How do you balance professional time with personal time?
BOB: Since I’m retired, it is all my personal time, so the only difference is when the house is quiet and I don’t have a rehearsal or a gig somewhere!
JAN: What are you currently reading? Do you prefer digital or print?
BOB: Say Nothing by Patrick Rodden Keefe, and 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B. Peterson. I love the hard copy, but when I can’t afford a big book in hardcopy, I buy it on Kindle! I bought ALL the classics on Kindle many years ago and still love going back to The Last of the Mohicans, or The Count of Monte Cristo.
JAN: What are some of your favorite things? What makes you unique?
BOB: I love animals. I have cared for and loved hundreds of different animals all my life, right since birth. I have cried over everything from marsupials in PNG to dogs, cats, hedgehogs, rabbits, salamanders, hermit crabs, pigeons, snakes, lizards, turtles, fish and even magpies. Our house was a menagerie while my kids grew up. I have another book half-finished called All God’s Critters Got a Place in My Choir. I was born into a five-hundred-square-foot home occupied by my parents and I with eleven dogs, nine of which were pups.
I have always been a bit of a risk-taker. As child, I would go rafting down the flooded Dog Hide River when the water was so cold it would have killed me if I had fallen in. My mother was horrified when I told her I was going to Papua New Guinea. It was a very dangerous place then, and even more so now. It never occurred to me that I might die doing it.
When Alphonse Gerwing asked me to play Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” in 2006, it totally changed the direction my life was taking. It required that I learn how to play a guitar, which broadened my musical career immensely. It also led me to be associated with an orphanage in Brazil called Fundanor, which led to the adoption of my son. Since then, many other factors have come to reality that seem impossible to explain as simple “good luck.” I do not believe in predestination in any way, but I have a lot of questions.
JAN: What keeps you writing?
BOB: I want people to understand me better. I think a lot of people think I am a bit strange when they first meet me, as I am never afraid to walk up to and talk with anyone I meet. I learned that as long as they are not armed, there is nothing to fear. I learned that the hard way.
JAN: I sense another story there!
What are some things you learned from your own writing?
BOB: I learned that I loved all those people, animals and places much more than I had time to appreciate at the time. I am trying to recover some of that pure joy by recalling it as well as I can for others to read. I enjoy painting a clearly detailed word-picture for people to be able to experience what I experienced.
JAN: You certainly did that in Cloud Over Kairiru.
What advice would you give to a beginning writer?
BOB: Firstly, write about what you know! Even if it is fiction, find out as much as you can about that topic before you start. Secondly, if you write as I do from memory, then you need to really care about what you’re writing about. Thirdly, if you are expressing an opinion, be sure it is based on the truth as well as you can determine it. Finally, don’t be afraid to edit and cut as you go. It is hard work to write a story and then feel the need to take out parts you first thought were good. Do it anyway.
JAN: Yes, I’ve heard it called “murdering your darlings.” It’s a hard thing.
Bob, I’d like to express my gratitude to you for allowing me and my readers into your life and work today. May you continue forward in your writing life, and keep playing in the band!
