The Passion series

Author Ken Murray opens Wellington Library series

A grey, rainy and unseasonably mild January day provided the perfect beginning for the Friends of Wellington Library’s third annual Passion Series on Saturday. “This series was designed for a day like today, to brighten January and February a bit,” said Friends member Brian Durell. The series is a countermeasure to the bleakness that accompanies the first two months of the year under the grip of an Ontario winter. It provides a forum for the interesting and talented people of the County to speak about their passion and what motivates them. The first speaker this year was County author and radio host Ken Murray. His first book, Eulogy, was published five years ago to wide acclaim, and while that book provided the framework for his talk, he began by reciting two short poems that he wrote, the second of which was penned that morning:

Good stories are like life
Well underway before you’ve realized they’ve started
And then over far too soon

He said that the common advice of “write what you know” is not one that fits well with him, but instead the advice that he follows and the one he gives students in his creative writing class is “write what obsesses you”. He described Eulogy as being the culmination of 10 years of obsessive work. “The themes that are worked out in the book are themes that I’ve probably been thinking about all my life,” he said. “Ten years of work—writing, discovering, rewriting, starting over again and finally getting something that felt like a real book—and then the long road to publication. I will never forget the feeling of holding the first copy in my hand. This was the book that changed my life.” The book eventually sold a little over 1,000 copies in two printings, and he wryly noted, “By the industry standard, for an unknown author and a small press, that was a ‘smashing success’.”

Author Ken Murray speaks at the first session of the Passion series at Wellington Library.

After the initial flurry of activity following the publication of his book, Murray’s life returned to normal. “Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed,” he said. “Life had changed, but I didn’t know it, and the only way to find out was to keep on doing what I was doing.” Since that time, he has continued writing. His new book in progress is a collection of personal essays that is based on his other passion—or obsession—in life, which is the love of sports, and this is a passion that he shares with his wife, Olympic rower Emma Robinson. They cycle together, go out on kayaking trips, cross country skiing excursions, and in the last decade have both learned the sport of kiteboarding.

Murray read excerpts from some of his essays, which encompasses his life in sports from venturing out on a hockey rink at age six, to cycling in the County last autumn. The proposed title of his book comes from an experience he had as a teenage rower on the Ottawa river. After an exhausting row, his coach noted the dismay on Murray’s face when told that he’d have to work even harder. “Listen, you’re not going to die,” his coach said, and thus the title of the book: You’re Not Going to Die, and Other Lies. Murray did initially have some misgivings writing about his life experiences. “I once thought that I had not lived long enough to write a memoir. Sadly, that time has passed.”

For Murray, his love of writing and obsession with sports have a common origin, and that is in his escape from a stifling religious upbringing. “I was born into two religions, neither of them my choosing,” he said. “My obsession with sports comes down to this: that is where I belong. I belong on that trail, I belong on that bicycle, I belong on those skis. I am at home there. I want to write about these things that are my obsessions, and to do it in a way to see what I can learn. I hope if I make this as personal as I can, there is something there for the reader as well. I think obsession falls into that strange intersection of where what you know butts up against what you don’t. My hope is that whatever I do know, I have the suspicion that contradictory spaces makes for good writing and an engaged life. I think passions sprout when you discover an open door, a way of thinking or seeing the world, or when you discover something new to do. I didn’t know I had a passion for writing until I was close to adulthood, but certainly if I look back as far as I can remember if I wanted to understand something I would write. The background thoughts that come by writing go deeper, and it makes a big difference. It’s just part of how I live.”

The speaker series will continue for the next five Saturdays at the Wellington Library, starting at 2:00 p.m. Coming up are Corey Engelsdorfer, Geoff Heinricks, Linda Downey, Conrad Beaubien, and Craig Mills. Murray offered enthusiastic praise for the speaker series. “I love the way this has been structured,” he said. “The Friends has created a venue where people can, on an easy-going afternoon, talk about the things that matter to them. I think that kind of engagement really works, and it’s nice to do stuff that keeps the library vibrant. The library needs to be— and I think we’re doing a really good job here—the hub of the community, for ideas, for activity, for communication. It’s a place where people can sit and work, but it’s also a gathering place for conversations, and it’s essential that we make the most of these public assets.”