By Kevin Land

Kevin Land is the owner of Speaking Volumes Books and Audio in Markdale and serves as chairperson on the Grey Highlands Public Library Board. Besides being a playwright, screenplay writer, lyricist, educator, producer and stage director, he also hosts Slipstream, a series of introductions to films currently available on Kanopy. Kevin lives in Grey Highlands.

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BY KEVIN LAND — I seem to be thinking about the concept of home a fair bit lately. Your home certainly goes well beyond your address, and I’ve had plenty of those. If I lined them up, they’d go something like this: Hamilton, Waterloo, London, Toronto, Victoria, B.C. Hamilton again, Flamborough, Ancaster, and finally, Priceville. A few years ago, it occurred to me that, outside of the house where I spent the bulk of my childhood, I had never really thought of the place where I lived as “home”. Not the two houses I had owned previously, where I lived happily with my wife and children. Not the years I spent studying and producing theatre in Victoria living with two of my dearest friends in their beautifully kept home. Not until 2012 when my wife Mary-Jo and I bought a log home in need of finishing in Priceville.

All things considered; it probably shouldn’t have worked out that way. The place was built but never made complete. It wasn’t simply off-the-grid as advertised. It was off-the-off-the-grid. It boasted a generator that was pooched, a solar system whose wiring was shorted out by the sun, and a wind turbine that wouldn’t have produced enough energy to power a fridge light. By necessity, we had electricity within six weeks, and a finished basement, outside decks, as well as wooden doors where there were only openings, by the following summer. We were in the process of discovering that home was a state of becoming.

One of the immediate blessings of that place I call home is a sparkling clean, spring-fed pond that empties into the Saugeen River at the end of the property. Despite not having written a new play in over five years, and the feeling that my best writing was behind me, there was something about that body of water that seemed to stimulate an old idea from the nineties. Within a year and a half, I wrote a screenplay set in Grey County and then adapted it as a six-part limited series.

Home is a place of comfort, but it is more than a location where you live. It can nurture and inspire, as it does for both my wife and me. It does not, however, exist in isolation. So much depends on the surrounding community. Since moving here, we have felt welcome, made new friends, and settled in in a way we would not have been able to imagine. What would a home be without a sense of community?

Almost nine years ago, I opened a bookstore in Flesherton. I moved it to Markdale in 2022 and have since felt even more woven into the surrounding area. At any given time, the store might be part of a “Grey County Cares” committee meeting, a “Warm Green Evening” gathering, and even a local writers’ group. Or it could simply be a group of friends sitting around a table sharing a coffee — Peter, Sharon, Wilmer, Chris, Stewart, Tim, Steve, Delia, John, the other Chris, Don, Phil, Tracy and Marty, as well as anyone else who might have dropped in that day. Like you, for example.

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