Site Profile
About the Bookmark
On October 4th, 2011, the Town of Midland became home to a plaque commemorating author Sylvia Maultash Warsh’s novel, The Queen of Unforgetting, published by Cormorant Books. The plaque will display a passage from the novel set in Little Lake Park, where the permanent installation will be displayed.
The installation marks the eighth unveiling in the Project Bookmark Canada initiative, a charity that aims to permanently place text from Canadian works of poetry and fiction in the exact location described within the passage.
Warsh and Midland Mayor Gord McKay unveiled Warsh’s Bookmark at Little Lake Park. “Midland is honoured to have Sylvia Maultash Warsh’s novel, The Queen of Unforgetting, Bookmarked in our Little Lake Park,” said Mayor McKay. “This is a wonderful occasion to celebrate our community’s literary heritage.”
The unveiling in Midland is particularly special to Warsh. “I'm very honoured that The Queen of Unforgetting has been chosen to be part of Project Bookmark Canada,” she said. "It's a thrill to think of the words from my book going on permanent display in Little Lake Park in Midland, a place I've felt a connection to since I was young.”
Marc Côté, publisher of Cormorant Books, also shared his opinion on the Bookmark experience. “The idea of celebrating our country's literature by situating it in the very locations where the stories take place helps to make our stories and poems a greater part of everyday life. These plaques enrich our experience of walking in a park or crossing a bridge. They tell us that our nation isn't just the geography and history of a region, it's more than that because it lives in our imaginations in the specific settings of many different books.”
Thanking the town of Midland for their willful participation in the installation and unveiling, Project Bookmark Canada founder Miranda Hill said, “The Town of Midland has been instrumental in assisting us to Bookmark this site and to promote its role as a literary setting. It’s wonderful to see a community celebrate its stories in this way.”
About Midland
The Town of Midland is located on Georgian Bay, in Simcoe County, Ontario, and is the main town of the southern Georgian Bay area. Situated at the southern end of Georgian Bay’s 30,000 islands, it is the economic centre of the region. Its population swells in the summer months, as it is a popular seasonal destination of cottagers and tourists alike.
Midland was founded in 1871 when the Midland Railway of Canada selected the minimally populated area of Mundy’s Bay as the new station and end of the line of the railway. Settlers were soon attracted by the convenience of the railway, and the town thrived due to the shipping afforded by Georgian Bay and the lumber and grain trades.
Midland is home to a number of murals painted by the late artist Fred Lenz. Most depict scenes of past local businesses and images from Canadian history. They are scattered in and around the area, with the largest (depicting a meeting between Samuel de Champlain and a local native) painted on the silos overlooking Midland’s main harbour. Other notable attractions are the Huronia Museum, with nearly one million objects including artifacts pertaining to native and maritime history, the Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, now a living museum depicting missionary life in the 17th century and the Martyrs’ Shrine, a Roman Catholic Church commemorating the Canadian Martyrs, five missionaries who were martyred during the Huron-Iroquois wars.
Author Profile
Sylvia Maultash Warsh immigrated to Canada when she was four years old, having been born in Germany to Holocaust survivors. She grew up listening to her mother’s stories of the Holocaust, fleeing form the Nazis in Poland and surviving the labour camps. These stories heavily influenced Warsh’s fiction.
Wash has a BA from the University of Toronto and a Masters degree in Linguistics, and has been teaching creative writing to seniors since 1989. After starting a family, her short stories and poetry began to be published.
Warsh is known primarily for her Dr. Rebecca Temple historical mystery series. The first novel of the series, To Die in Spring, was published in 2000. It was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award by the Crime Writers of Canada for Best First Novel. Her second of the series, Find Me Again, published in 2003, won an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It was also nominated for two Anthony Awards and was published internationally. The third book, Season of Iron, published in 2006, was short-listed for a ReLit Award.
Book Profile
Sylvia Maultash Warsh’s The Queen of Unforgetting (Cormorant Books) is Warsh’s first foray into novel-length literary fiction, a departure from her typical historical mysteries. In many ways, The Queen of Unforgetting is still a mystery novel at heart, exploring secrets buried and hidden in the protagonist’s shadowy past.
In order to research a thesis on a poem about Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf, Mel Montrose takes a job at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, the site of Brébeuf’s death. But Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons is uncomfortably close to Midland, Ontario, Mel’s hometown and where her estranged, guilt-addled parents still live. Mel’s parents have secrets too, and their long repressed memories of the Holocaust mirror Mel’s research and fictional account she begins to write of the massacre of the Hurons at the hands of the Iroquois.
Further complicating things, her ex and fellow student Hugh has followed her to Sainte-Marie, and threatens to reveal a closely kept secret about Mel that could destroy her academic career and everything she’s worked so hard for.
The Queen of Unforgetting is an engrossing story about the power of the past to shape who we are and who we choose to become.
Praise for The Queen of Unforgetting
“Sylvia Maultash Warsh delivers an unforgettable heroine here – a young woman obsessed with history who cannot bear to confront the pain of her own past.”
—Claire Holden Rothman, author of The Heart Specialist
“Maultash Warsh tackles the loaded themes of racism, anti-Semitism, saints and sinners, and religious and personal martyrdom in her fourth novel. The first half of the novel is quite enjoyable and quirky: There are many lively, beautifully written and well-imagined scenes, such as Brébeuf’s encounters with the foul-mouthed, begrudging Huron tribe and Mel’s touching relationship with her landlady’s neglected child, Dot. Such exchanges reveal a complex Mel-cum-Malka – the drowning Queen who discovers how easy it is to forget and how difficult it is to forgive herself.”
—Ibi Kaslik, The Globe and Mail
"Told with a passionate blend of innocence, sexual persuasion, guilt, desolation and peace…A must-read on my 2010 list.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
"The novel is both a mystery and a history. As the story develops, Mel finds an intersection between the
sufferings of Brébeuf and her parent’s experiences during the Second World War. Mel, who learns the meaning of sacrifice and truth, also finds love. It’s a great summertime read that can be followed with a visit to Sainte-Marie, only a few hours from Owen Sound.
—Andrew Armitage, The Owen Sound Sun Times