Author receives the Order of Canada

An author who grew up in Turner Valley can add a unique title to her name for her next book signing.

Young readers author Jacqueline Guest can add the initials ‘C.M.’ in recognition of her receiving the Order of Canada at the end of 2016.

“It means Member of the Order of Canada except it is the initial C.M.,” Guest said with a laugh from her Bragg Creek home. “That’s the big mystery. I don’t get it either, but I can add the initials C.M. to my name.”

Providing mystery and adventure for young readers is one of the reasons she received the Order of Canada.

Guest received the order in recognition of her children’s book which not only help promote literacy among young people but also Canadian history and multiculturalism.

She has written 19 books, ranging from hockey stories to dealing with the Battle of Batoche.

Guest has also visited many classrooms. She was the keynote speaker at the Foothills Young Authors Conference in High River last April — a conference attended by nearly 600 students from Turner Valley to Blackie.

“My kids are all the kids of the world,” Guest said. “I try to tell them reading is the key. I tell them if you want to be an astronaut, if you want to be a doctor, it all starts with reading.

“If you want to better yourself, it starts with reading. And I am living proof of that.”

Long before Guest was a member of the Order of Canada, life got in the way. She was a high school dropout — later earning her GED while raising a family.

“There is that stigma I lived with my whole life,” Guest said. “Without reading, I don’t know where I would be… Holy Cow, to have someone phone me up and say you just received the Order of Canada for being a children’s author… What do you say to that? I’m just doing my job because I firmly believe in what I do.”

When Guest received the word in November, she went from young readers’ author to investigative journalist, by asking an important question.

“I actually asked the guy: ‘Are you sure you got the right person,’’’ she said with a laugh. “He said: ‘We don’t make mistakes when we call.’”

Guest became an avid reader as a young girl growing up in Turner Valley — long before the Sheep River Library and schools providing an abundance of recreational reading material.

She got lost in verse and at escaping beyond the looking glass.

“I had (Robert Lewis Stevenson’s) A Child’s Garden of Verses and (Lewis Carroll’s) Alice in Wonderland, those were the only two books in our house,” Guest said. “Turner Valley was much smaller then, but reading was just as important back then as it is now.”

She called herself a ‘girl’s girl’ in a family of a tomboy and two older brothers.

“I would retreat into my books,” Guest said. “I could live in the fantasy of the book. I was safe in the book, I could control the book — any time I wanted to stop the adventure or the suspense, I could close the book. I was golden.”

She said books are a perfect fit for the students who may not fit in.

“I want kids to know that reading is empowering, gives you opportunity and gives you your best chance for success,” she added. “Kids ask me where I am from and when I say originally from Turner Valley they say ‘No’ because writers have to come from some big city.

“I explain to them writers come from everywhere and it all starts by becoming a reader.”

Success doesn’t come easy. Rejection is all part of success.

She said she could wallpaper her Bragg Creek home with rejection letters. Getting published for the first time was, now, the second-most exciting event of her career.

“Being published for the first time and you open the box and see your first book and the cover —it’s like holding your first baby in your arms,” she said.

“But the Order of Canada was a whole other order. In my mind, I’m just doing my job. For me, it was affirmation that all the hard work for the past 25 years was noticed. It was a total, out of the blue lightning bolt for me… I had hoped about getting published but this (the Order of Canada) was something I never thought about — again, I am a high school dropout from Turner Valley.”

Many of her books have adventures taking place in southern Alberta. She also writes historical novels, dealing with history that young readers — and even older ones — don’t know much about.

“My first historical book was Belle of Batoche and it was about the Northwest resistance of the Métis people of Batoche in 1885,” said Guest, who is Métis. “That was a pivotal point of Canadian history and yet I didn’t hear a thing about it growing up and I thought ‘Let’s fix that.’”

She used a Métis girl to tell the story – a girl who gets involved in adventure and mystery.

“While they are reading this great adventure book, they are also learning an important piece of Canadian history,” Guest said.

Her latest book, The Comic Book War deals with life in Canada during the Second World War. She describes her next book as a “Nancy Drew-type mystery” — and it has Alberta history ties it.

It’s history that goes way back.

“This one is set in the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller – it’s all about dinosaur-bone theft,” she said. “I just started a second book that is meant for older teens, that I hope going to be a time-travel mystery.

“I have never done anything like that, but if you don’t keep pushing the boundaries, what is life all about.”

For more information about Guest go to www.jacquelineguest.com