PWAC@MagNet Conference fast approaching!

Hello all PWAC members in the Prairies and the North Region!

Just writing to let you all know I am off to the National Conference and AGM as part of MagNet conference in Toronto next week (Canada’s Magazine Conference Jun 5 – 8, 2012 Magnet.MagazinesCanada.ca)

Some of you are also attending and I look forward to meeting with all our Regional delegates.
Our Regional meeting is set for Thursday June 7th in the Courtyard Marriott host hotel in the Bay Room from 12:30 to 1:45.
I look forward to welcoming you all in attendance but also I would ask those who are not able to attend the PWAC@MagNet this year to feel free to send along any concerns or questions you wish to be raised during our Regional meeting at the conference. I will report back to everyone on the notes of that session. There was a request that perhaps those not attending be able to skype into the meeting – I am not promising that could work but we could try – so if you are wanting to do that please contact me with your skype details and perhaps a few of us there can make that happen!

The annual regional Board reports, committee reports, budget and full annual report package will be available and sent from head office shortly. I encourage you all to read them and again please feel free to voice any concerns or comments to me to bring to the AGM on your behalf. The AGM is set at the end of the MagNet conference on Friday Jun 8, 2012 at 4 p.m. in the Courtyard Marriott host hotel. Again I will follow up with a post conference and AGM report following the events.

For those attending I look forward to meeting you all in person. For those not able to make it consider planning to attend next year as PWAC@MagNet is a rewarding annual conference. If Toronto seems to far and costly sets your sights on planning to attend the first Regional conference coming in September hosted by the Saskatchewan Chapter in Saskatoon – this will be a great event and more details from Chapter President Bonnie Zink:

PWAC-SK has joined with PWAC-Calgary to plan and deliver the first annual PWAC Prairies and the North regional conference. This one-day professional development opportunity is open to PWAC members and professionals working in creative industries across Saskatchewan, our region, and Canada. Connect, Celebrate, and Collaborate, will highlight the success of PWAC professionals as they present delegates with expertise on developing best practices and applying them to their own success.

Presenters include Doreen Pendgracs (two-hour travel writing workshop) and Marie Powell-Mendenhall, a successful Saskatchewan professional members. Delegates include PWAC members, professionals working in the creative industries, members of other writing related organizations, and anyone who is interested in learning how to develop best practices and how to apply them to their own success.

Date: September 22, 2012
Location: The Refinery, 507 & 509 Dufferin Avenue, Saskatoon SK
Early Bird Fees (available until August 15, 2012): PWAC members $75; partnering organization members $100; general public $120

 With the support of PWAC National, this event has the potential to become a hallmark annual event that will encourage membership growth while developing stronger ties between chapters within our region as well as promote PWAC members as accomplished professional writers ready to put their expertise to work for potential clients from local communities and business sectors. Sponsors currently include PWAC National, Saskatchewan Tourism, and the Saskatoon Writers' Coop.

Thank you to all our Chapter President and members who help make our PWAC Prairies and the North region a great place to be!

More news later this month when I return from Toronto, Board Meetings and MagNet.

Happy summer just around the corner!

Michelle Greysen

Regional Director PWAC Prairies and the North

www.MichelleGreysen.com

NATIONAL & REGIONAL Conferences scheduled

PWAC NATIONAL CONFERENCE & AGM / MagNet 2012
Canada's Magazine Conference - JUNE 5-8, 2012 
FOCUSING FORWARD - LEARN, CONNECT, CELEBRATE AND GROW
PWAC is a participating organization at MagNet and hold the PWAC AGM during the   conference as well as hosting many exciting events and sessions. 
  It is not too late to be a delegate for your Chapter!
           http://www.pwac.ca/eventsandresources/pwacnationalconferenceagm
       or
           http://magnet.magazinescanada.ca/
         SAVINGS for early bird rate your registration must be received by 5:00 pm (EST) on May 4, 2012.


UPDATED NEWS on the fall REGIONAL CONFERENCE:
Join PWAC Prairies and the North as members come together in sunny Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to connect, collaborate, and celebrate with PWAC professionals about bestpractices and travel writing. 

This full-day conference features:

• Learning about best practices in the business of writing from Marie Powell-Mendhall and Darrel Noakes, two successful PWAC-SK members.
  
• A two-hour workshop, delivered by Doreen Pendgracs, that will help attendees learn how to create a travel story from virtually any experience, whether at home in their own backyard or half way around the world. The workshop will also focus on developing markets for travel writing and how to seize the many opportunities that are right in front of you.
  
• learn how to develop your skills and apply them to your success as a freelancer from the professionals: This panel discussion features professional writers living, working, and making a living in a diverse range of markets across the PWAC Prairies and the North region.

Contact Bonnie Zink, PWAC-SK President, at bonnie@bonniezink.com for more detail or to register.

• Date: September 22, 2012
• Location: The Refinery, 507 & 509 Dufferin Avenue, Saskatoon, SK
• Time: 9:00 am registration with program to begin at 9:45 am
• Fees: PWAC members $75; partnering organization members $100; and general public $120 

Save the DATE!! Regional Event next fall!

PWAC Prairies & the North Region invites you to save the date!
Connect & Collaborate!

Join us in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
on
September 22, 2012
for a full day of professional
development and networking fun.




For more information, please contact:
Bonnie Zink (PWAC-SK Pres.)
Email: bonnie@bonniezink.com
Phone: 306-262-5651
SKYPE: bonniezink

Edmonton Chapter's BLUE CHAIR CAFE meetings!

Edmonton members Kate and Cynthia have sent along this exciting news - if you are in the area please drop in and join them the first Thursday of the month - all writers welcome!

Hi everyone!

Spring is in the air and I’m sure everyone is ready for some sunshine?  I know I am!

We’re going to try something new with the Edmonton Chapter of PWAC this year.   We’re going to start having a standing informal coffee/lunch get-together once a month.  We do know that people work and being able to plan ahead for a particular date makes life a lot easier than trying to find a date on the fly that may or may not work.

So our meetings will be on the first Thursday of each month.     Our first will be on Thursday, April 5^th.

Location: The Blue Chair Café – 9624-76ave

http://bluechair.ca/

Time: 11 am

We’ll get together and make our first meeting a chance to get to know each other again, and then going forward we can focus our meetings on particular issues, topics, and so on.

Please let me know if you can make.  Cynthia and I will be there with bells (and laptops) on.

Kate

PWAC National Office update on Bill C-11 ...

Bulletin # 3.7 Copyright Modernization Bill pushed through committee
The members of the Legislative Committee studying Bill C-11 began the clause by clause study of the legislation on Monday, March 12th and had completed their work by 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13th. The Conservative majority on the committee rejected all 17 amendments put forward by the NDP members and 15 by the Liberals. They passed 8 amendments of their own.The legislation now returns to the House of Commons for Third Reading and then will go to the Senate.
The Government was true to its word in only making a small number of technical amendments. All amendments presented by the opposition were defeated. No amendments whatsoever were made to any of the education or library exceptions. The government relations professionals with whom we worked through the process said they had never seen such haste taken over such a complex bill.
Two technical amendments improve the Bill in favour of rightholders. First the "enablement" provision designed to go after the bit-torrent type websites was tightened to make it easier for rightsholders to rely on this provision to shut-down sites that primarily exist for the purpose of enabling acts of copyright infringement. Second the private purpose exception was clarified to ensure that the private purpose in question must be that of the individual that owns the original copy.
Both the NDP and the Liberal Party had plans to introduce an amendment to the fair dealing provision that would see the 6 CCH factors enshrined in the legislation. Given our discomfort with the CCH factors and our hope that the Supreme Court of Canada will improve upon these factors in the K-12 case, enshrining the CCH decision would be worse than doing nothing at all. The Book industry pulled its efforts together and combined them with those of the broader creative community to convince first the Liberal Party and then the NDP to not present such an amendment. While this was a small victory, it is a victory none the less. Had one of he opposition parties presented such an amendment, rumour has it that the Government may have voted in favour of the amendment making fair dealing for education more difficult for us to work on improving it through the court process.
The C-11 Legislative Committee is expected to report to the House of Commons by March 29th at the latest (likely earlier). The Bill will then be referred to the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. It is worth noting that the Conservatives have a majority in the Senate as well and this will make it very difficult to make any changes to the Bill in the Senate.
While the outcome is not as we had hoped,the "book" industry alliance (including PWAC, TWUC, CANSCAIP and both english and french publishers organizations) has done at tremendous job and has worked collaboratively in an unprecedented way. There is little, if anything, that we have not done in order to convince the Government that changes were needed to Bill C-11.
We want to thank all of you who responded through letters to your MPs, signatures on the PWAC Toronto petition, tweeting and re-tweeting our messages and even studying the issues and going to Ottawa for PWAC. Special thanks to Bruce Wilson and Michelle Greysen from our board and Jaclyn Law, Jane Langille and Karen Luttrell for their extra effort.

guest BLOG by PWAC B.C. member, Lyn Hancock ...

COMING SOON TO CALGARY, EDMONTON, BANFF AND AIRDRIE

APRIL 19-28

LYN HANCOCK

and her 20th book

THE RING:MEMORIES OF A METIS GRANDMOTHER

the story of Sam and Jane Livingston, Calgary's first settlers

Hi, fellow PWACers,

I'm on my way to your side of the mountains to present the culmination of a multi-decade history project on a family that I call the Forsyte Saga of Canada. A story that I feel merits some screenwriter to make into a documentary or feature film and where better to begin than in the Prairies or the North?

Can I tempt you with home-made bannock and buffalo jerky, Metis music, arts and crafts, photo displays and archival documents, slides, readings and lively conversation at one of my presentations in Calgary, Edmonton, Banff or Airdrie (schedule below) to hear about it? Of course, you can always buy the book or ask your library for it. And if you visit my blog The Perils of Self Publishing at www.lynhancock.com you'll find that the story of how it came to be is as tumultuous as the history of its hero and heroine. Actually, you could write a novel on how my website came to be and perhaps that tears-and-laughter drama could enfold over wine, coffee or a beer? And perhaps the ongoing saga of The Perils of Self Promotion to be written in a future blog.

Sam Livingston was a flamboyant Irish immigrant, a gold prospector (Forty-niner), buffalo hunter, fur trader and pioneer farmer who walked and rode across the American prairie from Livingston, Wisconsin (named after the family) to the California gold rush, up to the Rockies to the Northwest Territories, Fort Edmonton and finally made his home in what was to be Fort Calgary. Meanwhile, Jane Howse, a Metis girl from the Red River Colony and the granddaughter of Joseph Howse, the first HBC factor to cross the Rockies (Howse Pass) and build the first fur trading post, rode a Red River cart across the Canadian prairie to meet and marry Sam in Fort Victoria.

They had 14 children and their 13th child, unlucky Sam Livingston 11, died at 25, forcing his widow to give up their son, Sam Livingston 111, for adoption. His name was changed to Sam Letourneau. Lost for 64 years and never learning his true identity, he discovered his roots serendipitously in 1986 by reading a review in the Alberta Report onTell me, Grandmother, my precursor to The Ring. The magic of books. Read the website blog.

You'll find the Livingston name on many Calgary landmarks, a school, a fish hatchery, a federal building, two skyscrapers, a nature trail, the Big House in Heritage Park, a sculpture of his head at the airport - and even a beer. The Howse name is remembered in a river, a mountain and a mountain pass. Yet Tell me, Grandmother and The Ring are the only books written on this should-be-famous family. I don't want to write a screenplay but would you?

So it would be a privilege to see some of you in Calgary, Edmonton, Banff or Airdrie at a presentation or a private place. Anyone want to help with serving bannock and buffalo? If not, you can check out the book at Audrey's in Edmonton, or the Glenbow Museum, Fort Calgary, Heritage Park, Owl's Nest Books, Page's, or Monkeyshines in Calgary.

Yes, I am trying to bridge the generation gap. The book begins with the picture of one of Sam and Jane's great grandchildren playing with an orphan gibbon ape who spent a year with them in my grade six classroom in Victoria, BC. And that's how an animal book (for which I am mostly known..An Ape Came out of my Hatbox and Gypsy in the Classroom) led to a history book The Ring: Memories of a Metis Grandmother.

There's something for everybody as you can see in the schedule below. The one private presentation is on Sunday April 22 at the Beverley Centre long term care facility in Midnapore.

And now a picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Such are my lack of skills at the computer that you may find them inserted below or above on the attachment line. But don't forget to look at the schedule. Thanks for listening. And thanks if you can spread the word to media and your significant others!


For the complete schedule of Lyn's tour visit ...
 http://lynhancock.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/image0011.jpg

NEWS around the REGION ...

PWAC-Calgary Chapter Meeting Announcement
PWAC-Calgary chapter will be holding its next meeting on:
Date: Friday, March 9, 2012
Time: 7 - 9 p.m.
Place: Dudley's Lounge in the Carriage House Inn (9030 Macleod Trail South)
Guest: Michelle Greysen, PWAC Regional Director, Prairies and the North
Cost: Free; pizza provided; members to purchase their own beverages, if desired
RSVP: Andrea at pwaccalgary@gmail.com  on or before Thursday, March 8

The Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (AMPA) will be holding their annual conference on March 22-24, 2012, at the Carriage House Inn in Calgary  ( www.albertamagazines.com ) . The conference offers several sessions of interest to freelance writers. (In fact, PWAC's president, Craig Silverman, will be giving a presentation.) Please check out AMPA's website to view the complete brochure. Congratulations to Calgary Chapter member and past president Heather Cook for winning her Chapter draw for a complimentary session at the conference.

VISIT the new fbook page and tag your writing friends in the southern Alberta area with info on the soon open newly forming LETHBRIDGE & AREA CHAPTER – now that IS exciting!

 http://www.facebook.com/pages/PWAC-Lethbridge-Area-Alberta-Chapter/333509543354065

Congratulations to the new President of the Saskatchewan Chapter, Bonnie Zink! Joining her on the executive for the coming year will be Past President Kelly-Anne Riess, Vice President, Marie Powell Mendenhall, and Member-at-Large Darrell Noakes.  Bonnie  notes “...Joining a committee or becoming a member of our executive is a great way to build skills, connect with our members and get to know PWAC from the inside out ...” and welcomes any Saskatchewan chapter members to contact her for details on how they can get involved.

Manitoba member Irene Gordon has just launched her most recent book, People of the Fur Trade. Her reading event scheduled for Mar 2 has rescheduled due to bad weather and it will now happen as follows: 
(thanks for the update Irene)  ... "I am giving a reading/talk on my books at the Selkirk Library on Friday March 30 between 1 and 3 p.m. The library is in Selkirk, Manitoba, on the corner of Main Street and Ross Avenue. "The group is informal, sitting round a table with coffee/tea and sweets with good conversation and interest to our invited guests," according to the leader of the group. Everyone is welcome."

There has never been a better time to join PWAC with the national membership drive on until March 31/12 and a great welcoming offer! http://www.pwac.ca/joiningpwac/joinpwac 

As a current member you can earn your next year’s dues and MagNet conference opportunities by welcoming new members!  The MagNet information is now up and early bird rate, your registration must be received no later than 5:00 pm (EST) on May 4, 2012.  http://magnet.magazinescanada.ca/

And don’t forget that PWAC is hosting an online auction Donation Drive with great offerings at 
 http://www.32auctions.com/organizations/3072/auctions/3434