Long Shots
A
Nova Scotia native, Trevor J. Adams is the editor of Halifax Magazine.
With more than a decade's experience in the business, Trevor has hundreds of
magazine articles under his belt and has co-authored two previous books, Today's
Joe Howe, and Atlantic Canada's 100 Greatest Books. Adams’ latest effort is Long Shots, an engaging
and entertaining examination of the development of early hockey in Atlantic
Canada and the four Maritime clubs that competed for hockey's greatest prize,
the Stanley Cup.
What inspired/motivated
you to tell this story?
I
became a hockey fan around age 10 and right away, got really interested in the
sport's history. One year my brother gave me a book called "The Stanley
Cup" by D'arcy Jenish for Christmas. In it, he mentioned these Maritime
teams that challenged for the Stanley Cup in the early 1900s. There was hardly
any detail, just this one little mention, but the idea of teams from Halifax,
New Glasgow, Moncton and Sydney playing for the Cup just captivated me. It
rolled around in my head for years and as I got older, I started researching
the teams a bit, just gathering data. I didn't really have a book in mind.
I just wanted to learn more about them. Then about four years ago, my research led
me to a woman named Bev Wigney, who lived in Arizona. She was the
grand-daughter of a player from one of those teams. She had a trove of
information she shared with me--his unpublished memoirs, newspaper clippings,
personal letters and more. I spent a few months looking at all this, and the
information I'd gathered over the years, and realized I was about 75% of the
way to a book already. There was a good story here, and I just needed to do a
bit more research and then I could tell it.
Did the work come
together quickly or did you really need to work at it?
It
wasn't quick, but it wasn't arduous either. It was more of a steady process of
chipping away at it. There always seemed to be more research to do, and
everything I found led me somewhere else. There were a lot of tangents that
were fascinating but they led away from the story I was trying to tell. It took
a couple of drafts, each much shorter than the previous, before I drilled down
to that core story. It was a lot of sifting and sorting and rewriting and
editing, but that's all just part of the process.
What was the most
challenging aspect of the process?
It
was really important to me that Long Shots be factually accurate. But when
you're dealing with events that happened a century ago, it's difficult to ever
be sure just what's true. I had a wealth of information to draw on but even
then, accounts often differed. Newspapers would spell players' names
differently, sometimes in the same story. Team names were "unofficial"
and often varied from account to account, and seemed to change every couple of
years. Unpublished memoirs were a great source of information, but sometimes
said things that were clearly contradicted by other records. It required a lot
of sifting through research, fact-checking, confirming and reconfirming
everything. Fortunately, I got some great guidance from historians like George
and Darril Fosty (authors of Black Ice) and Phil Pritchard at the Hockey Hall
of Fame in Toronto. You know the guy in the white gloves who carries out the
Stanley Cup when it's presented to the winning team? That's Phil.
What was the most
rewarding part of the experience?
It's
incredibly rewarding to finally tell a story I've been carrying around for so
long. Long Shots is a book I've wanted to read for as long as I've been hockey
fan, so it's a hell of a thrill that it finally exists, and that I wrote it.
What did you learn
during the process?
I
learned a ton about seeing through the clutter to your core story. I had an
editor at Nimbus, Patrick Murphy, who was great about identifying all the
extraneous bits, and really helping me keep the story focused and well paced.
How did you feel when
the book was completed?
Relieved.
I've been carrying this story around in my head for a long time. It's nice to
have it out.
What has the response
been like so far from those who have read it?
I
haven't heard any actual reviews yet but people I know who have read it seem to
enjoy it. A coworker told me she'd read Long Shots even if she didn't know me,
which is pretty decent feedback.
What made you want to be
a writer?
It's
not something I ever really thought about being, really. It just kind of
happened. I always enjoyed writing and I had a high-school English teacher
named Faye Haley who felt I had a bit of talent in that respect, and really
pushed me to do more with it. But I never thought 'Yeah, I want to be a
writer.' I studied journalism in university, worked in magazines after I
graduated and then these chances to write just flowed from that. It's not a
path I consciously chose but in retrospect, I can't imagine how it could have
gone any other way. Sometimes life just works the way it's supposed to.
What makes a good book?
I
suppose that really depends on the reader. If you're just looking for some fun
escapism, it'll be one thing. If you want to be challenged and learn something
new, it'll be something else entirely. For me, the mechanics of the writing
have a lot to do with it these days. I'm on a real Patrick O'Brian kick these
days, mostly because the way he writes just blows my mind. No one should be
allowed to use a semi-colon until reading a couple of his books. He crafts these
incredibly intricate sentences, but every word, every clause, advances the
plot. He's such an efficient writer.
What are your thoughts
on the current state of Atlantic Canadian literature?
It's
really inspiring to see all the great literature that's produced here, all the
time. Both commercially and artistically, there are so many cool things going
on here. And it's such a collegial group. When I was working on Long Shots, I
got some fantastic advice from Steve Vernon. Silver Donald Cameron is always so
gracious and encouraging.
Do you have any advice
for aspiring writers?
In
journalism school, I learned copy-editing from a ruthlessly blunt professor.
Every conversation with him was humbling, and he taught me a lot. But what it
all came to was: Master the fundamentals. Read books like Elements of Style and
On Writing Well. New writers often feel like they don't need to worry about
those nitpicky things like grammar and sentence structure. Those aren't
just airy academic ideas; they're essential to effective communication. If you
can't effectively communicate an idea, your writing ambitions will never come
to anything. Once you master the form, you can violate it, but master it first.
What's next on your
creative agenda?
I
have a couple historical non-fiction ideas rattling around in my head and I'm
sort of feeling an itch to start working on one. I've been outlining and
researching a couple ideas. The most promising one is set about two centuries
ago in colonial Nova Scotia. It's hard to say how it's going to turn out, but I
think I'll be working seriously on it soon.
Long Shots will be launched,
Monday, October 15, at 5pm at the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame
