The Trees of Calan Gray

Calan Gray talks to trees. They speak back to him. Not in words, exactly; he hears the language of trees. They become his sanctuary against a violent father who wishes to commit him to an institution for expressing such delusions. It is 1964, and the world is a harsh place for those who are different.When his grandfather, Dunmore McLeod, arrives from Scotland, Calan begins a journey against a backdrop of trees, from the hard, rural, prairie life of the sixties to the birth of environmentalism on British Columbia's west coast, where, in 1971, protesters sailed to Alaska to stop the Amchitka nuclear blast. Under the tutelage of Grandpa Dunny, Calan struggles to understand a world view in which an intimate relationship with the land is something to value, not denigrate, and he comes to know the different ways of being and knowing in the natural world.In a prose that is haunting and lyrical, Danial Neil weaves a romantic tale that is unsettling, profound and ultimately liberating.

Danial Neil was born in New Westminster, British Columbia in 1954 and grew up in North Delta. He began writing in his teens, journaling and writing poetry. He made a decision to be a writer in 1986 and took his first creative writing course in Langley with Rhody Lake. Danial worked steadily at his craft, completing eight unpublished novels. And then his short story was published in the 2003 Federation of BC Writers anthology edited by Susan Musgrave. He went on to participate in the Write Stretch Program with the Federation of BC Writers teaching free verse poetry to children. He won the poetry prize at the Surrey International Writers' Conference four times and studied Creative Writing at UBC. His poetry and fiction articulate a close relationship with the land, its felt presence in his narrative and vision. Danial lives in the South Okanagan of British Columbia, Canada.