Daddy Doesn’t Always Know Best

Nobody’s Father offers revelatory stories that chart new territory

Fall was in the air the last time I saw Joshua Wilson. He leaned on a cane as he walked purposefully but cautiously down the sidewalk in front of his parent’s West Lethbridge home towards a neighbour’s house as I watched through the window. Josh walked that way because he had to: he’d lost half of one leg to the same type of cancer that killed Terry Fox and by then he’d had prosthetic surgery and many rounds of chemo. It was the last time I saw him because an hour or so later I left to return to Victoria—and a few months later, on a cold January morning, Josh Wilson died. He was 16 years old.

Josh’s story, “One Day I Will Lie Beside You,” written by his father—and my friend—Allan Wilson, is in Nobody’s Father: Life Without Kids, a new collection of personal essays edited by Bruce Gillespie and Lynne Van Luven. Not all the stories are as tragic or emotionally powerful as Josh’s, but all explore a territory worth knowing, a region that relatively few of us frequent, a land inhabited by men who, for one reason or another, are childless.

Bruce Gillespie says that when the project was first conceived as a follow up to Nobody’s Mother (also edited by Van Luven), people thought it was a good idea but cautioned that “men probably didn’t . . . or wouldn’t write about this kind of stuff, so we weren’t sure how many people we would actually hear from.” As it turns out they got far more than they could publish, including submissions from Japan and the United States.

They were looking for variety, says Gillespie—which they got in spades—but also well-told stories “that had a real sense of honesty about them.” He notes that many personal essays don’t work for readers because they get too personal, are poorly written, or lack honesty. “We were delighted with what we got. People really came through for us.”

Gillespie is childless himself and has never wanted children. “It was fascinating for me to see the real range of opinions out there . . . men who wanted to become fathers and didn’t or couldn’t because of their circumstances . . . men who didn’t want to become fathers for entirely different reasons than I had.”

These essays—written by straight men, gay men, younger men, and older men—are more than fascinating. Frequently, as with Josh’s story, they are revelatory and take us to the deepest part of ourselves.

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Nobody’s Father Book Launch
6:30pm Tuesday,
September 30
Open Space, 510 Fort
250-360-0829 touchwoodeditions.com