A Force of Nature

Award-winning author Sheree Fitch uses rhyme to banish the dark and embrace the light

Sheree Fitch

If you’ve ever had the chance to spend some time

with award-winning author and Acadia alumna Sheree Fitch (’94, ’04 HON), you’ll know exactly what it’s like to hold lightning in a bottle.

A talented and celebrated writer, Fitch is also very much a force of nature whose honesty and candour are deliciously refreshing. You can imagine synapses firing as she talks, and few subjects are off limits. She is completely fearless when discussing her work, artistic expression, life, mental health and death. These curious and difficult things have woven a fabric of endeavour around her that informs her muse and governs her perception of all things great and small, and it is a treat to share a conversation with her.

Fitch was born in Ottawa in 1956 to Maritime parents: her father hailed from Nova Scotia and her mother from New Brunswick. She has lived in Miramichi, Moncton and Fredericton as well as Wolfville, Washington for a time, and currently resides with her husband Gilles Plante in the village of River John, N.S.

It’s also the home of Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe and Dreamery, a retail outlet she opened with her husband in the summer of 2017. A going concern, the Dreamery hosted 8,000 people during its first nine-week season and another 8,000 more over eight weeks last year. It will open this year on Wednesday, July 3 until Labour Day Weekend and folks from all over are invited to come for a visit. The opening will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Read By The Sea Festival and Wordplay (for children of all ages).

Take nonsense very seriously

Fitch grew up hearing about Acadia from family members who had attended, including her grandfather, Murray Fitch (‘34), who described a positive and welcoming experience that resonated with her.

She arrived in Wolfville as a mature student in 1987 after obtaining a BA from St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB, having been married, divorced and a single parent of two small children, Jordan and Dustin, by then. She had been developing her poetic voice as well and published her first book, Toes in My Nose, in 1987 as well, the same year in which she graduated from St. Thomas.

Acadia was the only university in Canada Fitch could find that offered a Master’s in children’s literature, thereby fulfilling her ambition to produce a scholarly work exploring the impact of oral traditions of childhood poetry and the value of nonsense in literature. Entitled The sweet chorus of ha, ha, he!: polyphony in utterature: a collection of writings on children’s poetry, it was a bold statement that had the full support of one of Fitch’s key mentors, Dr. Hilary Thompson.

“I always say, ‘I take my nonsense very seriously,’” Fitch notes, “and I’ve never felt that it was less literature. Different, yes, but not a lesser literature, and worthy of study. Hilary allowed me that opportunity. She changed my life: she encouraged me to study children’s literature, be a pioneer, and did so in a soft, gentle and loving way.”

It stoked the creative coals Fitch had banked as she navigated the failed marriage, and gave her the confidence to delve deeper into her craft and the rich traditions of poesy and nonsense. Her early stories, “came from a mother’s heart. Toes in My Nose was written for my son and it came directly from my experience as a young mother.”

Despite dark and challenging times, Fitch continued to write and dreamed of a bigger and better future for her young family. After hearing an interview on the radio between Alice Munro and Peter Gzowski (’96, HON), Fitch had an epiphany. She looked at her baby on the floor and said, ‘Honey, someday that man is going to interview your mother.’

Sheree Fitch, circa. 1994, receiving her Honorary Degree in Acadia University’s Convocation Hall.

“I think if anyone had heard that they would have thought I was delusional,” Fitch says, “but it was almost like vowing to that baby that I would make it.” And she did, reaching a national audience after doing an interview with Gzowski once Sleeping Dragons All Around was published in 1989. He was in Toronto and she was in Fredericton, and the pair connected immediately. Fitch would later become a frequent guest on Morningside and serve as poet laureate for numerous Peter Gzowski Invitational golf tournaments.

“I call him my patron saint of literacy. He was like my permissionary. He gave me permission to believe in myself, and my career would not have been my career without him. He had a big heart for children’s literature and the forum I was given to reach a national audience with my second book – he had a lot to do with how lucky I got.”

Successes and challenges

Over the next three decades, it seems the luck never ran out. After 30 books, plays, anthologies, adaptations and accolades aplenty, you would think Fitch’s life would be idyllic, but few things are as they seem. Adversity is very much reality at times, but her voice remains strong and her positive outlook is undiminished, although there are certainly days when a kind word and a cup of tea go a long way.

She is remarkably forthcoming about her husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and her son Dustin’s sudden death at age 37 in March of last year. Dustin was, by her admission, a labour of love who struggled with neurodevelopmental delays from an early age that

resulted in learning difficulties, depression, addiction and finally his death.

The past year has been a journey of hurt and healing for Fitch and her family as they have worked to find a new path amid unrelenting grief. Fitch’s most recent publication, EveryBody’s Different on EveryBody Street, is a multi-layered, complex and passionate call for compassion and ‘oneness’ in the world. It’s also a very personal reflection on mental wellness and illness that began with an overture from the Nova Scotia Hospital Foundation in 2001 to write a poem for the 10th anniversary of the Festival of Trees fundraiser.

The idea was to create a poem that would be part of a booklet to take into schools and distribute as a discussion piece to students in Grade 4 to Junior High. “I didn’t want to do it,” Fitch says. The subject was still taboo and hit perhaps a little too close to home. Her son was battling illness and addiction and she and her husband were in the thick of it when the commission was offered.

However, on a drive to New York City, Fitch and her husband explored the matter and Gilles told her he thought she was afraid to touch the subject because she was ashamed and felt somewhat guilty. “But look at what you’re living,” he said. “Who else could understand it?”

It was a simple and provocative question that lingered as she walked the streets of New York. Eventually, inspired by the diversity of the people around her, she wrote the poem and, 17 years later, published it as a book with artwork by Emma FitzGerald and Dustin’s blessing.

“Everybody’s got something,” she says, “yet at the core human level, we all love, we all cry, there’s a shared humanity. This book is a call to kindness, acknowledging that we are very different from one another, but we are one body.” In the end, ‘EVERYONE/Is travelling on EveryBody Street/And EveryOne IS EveryOne/And AnyOne you meet.’

The book will always mean something to her, Fitch says. “Because we have a knowledge of darkness, we have the power to create light.” Nonsense literature is a “literature of optimism and, in the end, good will out. There is always redemption and a way toward the light.”

It may not be so obvious sometimes and after Dustin’s death Fitch wondered if she could ever write another children’s book. Last September, though, she worked for three weeks and discovered she could still do it, could still find the joy. She hints as well that we can expect more to come in the next year or two, and we can’t wait.

Being quiet and listening deeply

You never know how things go. At the age of 62, Sheree Fitch holds three honorary doctorates (from Acadia, St. Thomas and St. Mary’s), is a Distinguished Acadia Alumni Award recipient and a Canadian literary icon. Yet she is content to spend her time with her husband on their Happy Doodle Do Hobby Farm in River John, listening carefully to those tiny and spirited voices that suggest she still has something to say and operating a small bookstore that deals in hardcover and paperback dreams.

“All of us have wishes and schemes,” Fitch says. She is so grateful to see incredible sparks of light in the people, community and world around her, and says with confidence that experience and time have taught her that “it all goes back to being quiet and listening deeply. I refuse to live in a world that’s dark and choose instead to aim high and modify when you have to. That’s the best thing for me. You don’t have to know everything you need to know to begin the dream.”

It’s all about hope and positivity, two things that are entirely characteristic of Fitch’s work, essence and philosophy. Like her intricate nonsense and boundless energy, she is both powerful and joyful, keenly aware of the dark but imbued with a light and presence that is just as strong today as it was once upon a time when dragons walked our earthly imagination and there was absolutely nothing wrong with toes in our nose.

Acadia Reminiscence

“There are so many,” says Sheree Fitch, when asked to recall a favourite moment at Acadia, “but I think about when I walked into Dr. Hilary Thompson’s office. It was a pivotal year for me and there she was, sitting in a wheelchair. She had a brilliant mind, a big soul, and I admired her so much. I was so scared and intimidated, but I remember sitting with her in that office and feeling her incredible stillness and peace. She was so lovely and giving, and I went, ‘This is the woman I’m going to study with and I am so blessed.’ She treated me as a person in the middle of a life; I felt nurtured that whole year and it was a very positive thing.”