Out Of Focus

Margaret Buffie is from Winnipeg, MB

Margaret Buffie has spent almost every summer of her life at Long Pine Lake in Northwestern Ontario. "My grandfather built a log cabin there in 1919, and my husband and I built our own place there about 20 years ago," she says. One summer in the early 1980s, Buffie found an old, abandoned garbage dump on a small island near her cottage. Digging around, she found some interesting bottles and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. "I wondered what would happen if I put them on and could see into the past," she says. That idea formed the premise of her first published juvenile novel, Who Is Francis Rain?

"All my books start with a place I know well," she says. The Warnings is set in her home town of Winnipeg, in a working-class neighbourhood with small backyards, neat hedges, and elm-lined boulevards. My Mother's Ghost takes place in Alberta cattle country, where one of Buffie's sisters lives.

Just as all her books begin with a place, they end with a twist. Buffie feels she can best achieve this if she doesn't know the ending herself as she writes. "I may have a general idea where I'm heading, but I figure if I've predicted the ending myself before I get there, it'll be predictable for kids too. They're always so alert to what's going on; it's hard to surprise them in terms of plot."

There were certainly several predictions in Margaret Buffie's path to becoming a writer. The first happened when she was in grade 4. "My favourite teacher took me aside one morning and handed me a story I had written in class the day before," says Buffie. "I had received an A+. 'I think you'll be a writer one day, Margaret,' she said. I never forgot her words."

Even so, it took almost 30 years for Buffie to become a writer. "My father told me how much he would like me to be an artist," she says. "He died when I was 12, and I hugged memories of his praise close to me and made a decision: I would be an artist."

And become an artist she did. Buffie received a degree in fine art from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and, shortly afterwards, married fellow artist Jim Macfarlane. After graduating, she worked as an illustrator for the Hudson's Bay Company before obtaining a teaching certificate in 1976. For the next two years, Buffie taught high school art and continued as a freelance illustrator. She also exhibited many of her own oil paintings in Winnipeg.

The next catalyst in Buffie's life occurred when her daughter was about 12. "I began reading some of the books she was reading," she says. "I found that the writing was astoundingly good, and I suddenly had the urge to write again."

Buffie began by writing a journal describing her father's last illness, her mother's struggle to hold down two jobs in order to make the mortgage payments, and Buffie's effort to find her own identity among three strong-willed sisters. "It was when I was writing this journal that I realized how hard those years had been for all of us, and how lonely and frightened I'd been during so much of them."

The dichotomy between individuality and family plays a strong role in all of Buffie's writing, and through these conflicts, she draws upon her own memories and experiences to articulate the teenage voice convincingly. In 1996, Buffie received the prestigious Vicky Metcalf Body of Work Award that is awarded annually to a children's author whose writing is inspirational to Canadian youth. To explore her themes, Buffie uses the supernatural as her impetus. "I don't believe that great lives die," she says. "There is a link between generations - characteristics passed on and stories told - and I explore those links. I know that when I sit down to write, I will have to explore my brain's ghostly side."

Selected Bibliography

• Out of Focus, Kids Can Press, 2006
• Watcher's Quest Triology
  • The Finder, Kids Can Press, 2004
  • The Seeker, Kids Can Press, 2002
  • The Watcher, Kids Can Press, 2000
• Angels Turn Their Backs, Kids Can Press, 1998
• The Dark Garden, Kids Can Press, 1995
• My Mother's Ghost, Kids Can Press, 1992
• The Warnings, Kids Can Press, 1989
• Who is Frances Rain?, Kids Can Press, 1987