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History
On August 3, 1983, with great ambitions and a contrastingly
tiny budget, the SunCoast Writers' Forge launched the first Festival of
the Written Arts at the Arts Center in Sechelt, British Columbia. By the
time the event was over, it showed a shortfall of $1,600—a considerable
sum considering that the entire budget was only $7,000. Had it not been
for the unbridled optimism of the volunteers who made it happen, there
might never have been another Festival of the Written Arts.
Regardless of its financial shortcomings, the 1983 event
established the Festival’s longstanding tradition of presenting only
Canadian writers, editors and publishers. Among the first year’s special
guests were novelist Jack Hodgins, poet Dorothy Livesay, playwright
Leonard Angel and children's writer Florence McNeil.
The 1983 Festival also set the format that would be
followed successfully in subsequent years: individual hour-and-forty-five
minute showcases for each writer combined with a Saturday noon-time panel
discussion.
Indeed, the success of the first Festival forced the
organizers to relocate the event the following year to the much larger
space provided by the Greene Court Recreation Center. By the third
Festival, a more generous budget allowed organizers to invite authors from
outside of British Columbia. And when the popularity of the Festival
continued to grow, the nearby elementary school gymnasium sheltered
audiences who came to hear writers like W.O. Mitchell, Peter Gzowski and
John Gray.
But by 1987 even the gymnasium wasn't large enough and a
400-seat tent was erected beside the hall at Greene Court. During these
years, the Festival welcomed P.K. Page, George Ryga, L.R. Wright, Al
Purdy, Edith Iglauer, Allan Fotheringham, Christie Harris, David Suzuki,
Lynn Bowen, Knowlton Nash, Sara Ellis, W.P. Kinsella and many other great
Canadian literary figures.
On April 15, 1987, just before the fifth Festival, the
Festival of the Written Arts separated from the SunCoast Writers' Forge
and incorporated as a new society, although Festival leadership remained
with the Forge members who had organized the Festivals from the beginning.
At this time, in addition to the annual Festival, the new society
undertook a second project: a series of writers-in-residence workshops.
By 1988 and the sixth Festival of the Written Arts, it
had become a three-and-a-half day, fifteen-event celebration that included
readings by poets, newspaper columnist, novelists, romance writers,
biographers, historians, environmentalists and children's writers.
Organizers balanced well-known names with rising stars.
But the sixth Festival made it evident that the time had
come to move to a new venue. Greene Court had embarked on a building
program for the site on which the festival's tent had been erected each
year; in any case, audience numbers had outgrown the size of available
tents. It was obvious that the Festival of the Written Arts needed a
permanent home, and the board of directors looked to the Rockwood Center
as the obvious solution.
Located on the rise of ground to the west of Sechelt
village, the Rockwood Center's main building is a lodge built in 1935 to
accommodate vacationers arriving via the Union Steamship line. Set in an
acre of rhododendrons, magnolias and evergreens, it provided quiet
seclusion although it was only five minutes walk from the shops and
seashore.
In 1988 the Festival Society drew plans for an outdoor
pavilion to be constructed in the northeast corner of the Rockwood
grounds, in a grove of old cedars and firs. The 465-seat pavilion,
constructed entirely of BC fir and cedar, completed in 1989, nestles into
the hillside to take advantage of the natural slope. It is, according to
columnist Charles Lynch (Festival '89), "one of the wonders of the
Coast."
It is to the Forge members' credit, that in spite of
that 1983 deficit and not much more heartening financial showings on the
next three festivals, they persevered, recognizing the tremendous value of
the event to Canadian writing as well as to the Sunshine Coast community.
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