Talk:Jayne Eastwood/@comment-142.177.130.54-20180204164048

Jayne Eastwood,

You are an amazing actress. I first saw you in the movie, Going Down the Road in the 70s. The song, Going Down the Road, still brings tears as it brings back memories of my teen years, leaving my PEI home for a better life in Toronto back in the early 70s.

I have seen you in so many shows; one of my favourite shows was the soap opera series, Riverdale. I watched every show, never missed tuning in every week. You were brilliant in playing the mom of a rather dysfunctional / troubled youth and again, it’s because I could resonate with the characters including, Gloria. I, too, had a rocky go of it in my youth, mostly searching for freedom and better times in the Big Smoke. I was so disappointed when the series came to an end. Although the characters were fictional, I often wondered about what happened to Gloria and her family.

Jayne, I am reaching out to you because you are a Canadian icon I admire and respect. I wrote a novel, Ashes of My Dreams, which is thinly disguised as fictional. I want send a copy to you if you provide a physical address to my home email of [mailto:rphelan@pei.sympatico.ca rphelan@pei.sympatico.ca]

My novel, Ashes of My Dreams is about a teenage mother on Prince Edward Island who fights to keep her newborn son from the Charlottetown nuns wanting to adopt him out to a “better home” in exchange for money.

Prince Edward Island is more than the land of Anne of Green Gables and growing spuds. For decades the Charlottetown nuns, particularly, Sister Mary Henry operated a home for unwed mothers and arranged adoptions of the babies to wealthy Americans in exchange for “donations” of thousands of dollars.

It’s the story of a young girl, Gracie, is smitten by the attention of an older business man, Morgan. He gets Gracie pregnant and then ditches her. Morgan walks about in society living in an upscale neighbourhood while Gracie is scorned and judged and lives on welfare. Gracie and other single mothers are targeted by “Pecker Detectors” (welfare financial workers) who sexually prey on young girls like Gracie, voiceless women in a system responsible for housing, feeding, and clothing single mothers and their children.

It’s a PEI based story with references to Toronto, such as the former Gasworks bar on Young Street, Toronto bikers, etc.

My novel gives voice to women who were and continue to be silenced out of fear and public shame. It has been well received and the feedback from women has been humbling. Ashes of My Dreams is now part of a PEI university class.

My goal is to take Ashes of My Dreams to a larger audience. I have no idea how to do this. And this is why I am reaching out to you, Jayne. You have connections to the film world that could give wings for my novel to fly to a much larger audience. It’s not only for personal recognition but to free the voices of the women who were and are still silenced out of fear and public shame.

I believe it’s possible that a no name with a lot of baggage can be successful in life if I can make the right connections with people such as you.

At night, I clutch my medicine bag that hangs from my bedpost. In the dark, I visualize celebrities who I can resonate with in some way or another, the ordinary person who became a legend Icon: Rita MacNeil, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Lucy Maude Montgomery, Maria Campbell, Tom Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Richards, Charles Dickens and Rosa Parks. This nightly ritual inspires me to Dream Big in life.

With Respect, Stella Shepard of Prince Edward Island… at [mailto:rphelan@pei.sympatico.ca rphelan@pei.sympatico.ca] 

I am sending the most recent book review. Every time a person reads Stella Shepard’s novel, “Ashes of My Dreams,” the voices of many women who have been silenced out of fear and public shame get heard. “Ashes of My Dreams,” tells the story of a single mother, fallen from grace, who survived the hostilities of Charlottetown in the 1980s and raised her son. Gracie, pregnant and abandoned, resists aggressions from social workers who counseled her to give away her baby. Gracie learns survival tricks from the other single mothers; lively, engaging characters from her apartment building on Upper Hillsborough Street, who teach her about social assistance and all its inconsistencies. “Ashes of My Dreams.” is very much a woman’s story of motherhood, from an authentic contemporary perspective that has rarely been vocalized in literature.

Shepard introduces the story with Gracie’s home life on a farm in Rural PEI. It is a clear and captivating illustration of the symbiotic relationship between her mother and father and the personality traits and social customs that contributed to survival on the farm. Gracie leaves in disgrace and the tense family dynamics and memories intertwine throughout the rest of the novel. Gracie is of Acadian and Cree heritage and has special gifts of insight and conviction that contribute to her survival.

“Ashes of My Dreams” is an important work of Prince Edward Island Literature. The cultural dominance Catholic social and moral ethics in Prince Edward Island society is critiqued from the vantage point of a rarely heard member of the flock. Stella Shepard offers readers access to the circumstances of single mothers, experiences of hostile oppression and stigmatization that many Charlottetown women survived in the 1980s. In ‘Ashes of my Dreams,” barriers are illustrated as systemic; marginalizing and dehumanizing practices employed by the very agencies entrusted with protecting the rights and dignity of families like Gracie’s. This is a great book that is available at Indigo and the Bookmark. Cover art by Sandy Kowalik  by Norah Pendergast, BA, BEd