Charlie Mountford Fireside Chat with Merilyn Simonds: On Aging, Creativity, Friendship and the Poetics of Paying Attention

Event Details

Event type: All Ages

Join us for an intimate conversation with author Merilyn Simonds, as she reflects on her deeply moving book, Walking with Beth—a lyrical meditation on friendship, memory, and time. In a fireside chat with Heidi Sander, Simonds explores the intertwined themes of aging, friendship and creativity through the poetic lens that runs throughout the book.
 
Simonds walks not just beside her friend Beth, but also beside questions of how we live, how we remember, and how we make meaning in the face of loss. This is a story steeped in the quiet poetics of observation and presence—of finding beauty in the everyday, especially the complexities of growing older, and turning that noticing into story.
 
Whether you're a writer, a reader, or someone navigating the changing contours of age and memory, this conversation will offer a rich exploration of how we can live more fully by slowing down, listening closely, and honoring the moments in between. The event will be followed by a Q&A book signing.
 

ABOUT THE BOOK
Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.

In the spring of 2021, worn down by pandemic isolation, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, which struck her as mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Yet she was still active, still writing and felt as strong as ever. Beth had just hit her centenary, a smart, vibrant woman who'd held a job until she was 99, still lived alone, and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?

During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.

In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives rarely seen, reminded us that even though they are closer to the end of life, they have as much at stake as people of any age. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom in enriching every passing day.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MERILYN SIMONDS is author of twenty books, most recently Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay, an innovative memoir/biography of Lawrence, an extraordinary self-trained ornithologist who became one of Canada’s greatest naturalists. Born in Winnipeg, Simonds grew up in small-town Ontario and Brazil. She published her first book in 1979 at the age of 29, and since then her work has been anthologized and published internationally in eight countries. She writes in a wide variety of genres—personal essay, memoir, travel, literary fiction (such as the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice) and creative nonfiction, including The Convict Lover, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction. In 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of The Convict Lover in Canada’s literary landscape.