Photo Karen Graham.
Journalist and author and playwright D’Arcy Jenish will be the guest speaker at a Millbrook Historical Society event on April 20th at the Lions’ Den.
D’Arcy Jenish’s career as a writer and journalist started with small-town newspapers in southwestern Ontario.
Originally from Saskatchewan, he attended high school in Peterborough and graduated from the University of Western Ontario. The West called him back in 1979 for a seven year stint with Alberta Report in Edmonton. As Senior Editor he covered business, politics and sports at a time of political upheaval, particularly between Ottawa and the province over the National Energy Policy, and in 1985 he became Alberta Report’s first Ottawa Bureau Chief, to cover national affairs from a regional perspective.
He caught the attention of Maclean’s in a very short time and joined Canada’s National Newsmagazine in 1986 as Senior Writer. His assignments took him across Canada and the United States to interview and write about leading personalities in the worlds of sport, business, the arts and sciences, but while he was covering royal tours, federal elections and major trials, he was also looking out for the local or regional story that would touch readers across the country.
Jenish left Maclean’s in 2001 to build a freelance writing business that has thrived. Along with newspaper and magazine features and commentaries, corporate reports and speeches, he has also written seven works of historical non-fiction, ranging in subject matter from the mapping of Canada’s West by David Thompson, the fall of the Plains Cree and the Blackfoot Confederacy, the FLQ Crisis, and hockey – clearly a passion as the sport is the focus of no fewer that three of his books.
And now, D’Arcy Jenish has stepped into new territory with his first play, The Tilco Strike, which will be premiered this July at 4th Line Theatre. The play tells the story of the year-long fight in 1965 by 35 poorly paid women at Tilco Plastics in Peterborough over a $25 bonus denied them by management. The strike escalated into an epic battle between organized labour and strike-breaking employers, and changed labour relations in Ontario forever.
There may be some here in our area who remember Tilco Plastics or were even employed there. Get in touch with us, please! We would love to include your memories in the evening when we welcome D’Arcy Jenish to come and talk about his breakthrough into playwriting and his research into the Tilco Strike.
By Celia Hunter
