Email Anita at anita@anitadaher.com
Star Phoenix July 5, 03
75 years at City Park Collegiate
Bob Florence
The StarPhoenix
Saturday, July 05, 2003
She wears a uniform to high school, but it's a uniform of a
different sort.
It's unique, put it that way.
She has a padlock around her neck, a jacket with a Union Jack she
has hand-stitched on the back, a set of army fatigues which she got
from Rose's Auction on Avenue B.
The year is 1983. Punk rock rules and Anita Stampe is playing that
tune.
She walks the hallways at City Park Collegiate in this G.I. Joe
getup -- she and her best friends Joan Morris and Theresa Fields;
punk times three -- and it's like they are radioactive or something.
Conversation stops. Crowds part. Clear the track, commandos coming
through.
Stampe isn't a troublemaker. But those clothes she wears. That music
she listens to: Gen X. The Clash. Ten Thousand Maniacs. This girl is
twisted, sister.
She likes it when other students step aside as she comes down the
hall. It makes her feel strong. Anita likes being different.
Conventional and ordinary go against her grain. OK, so she drives a
red '73 Vega and works part time at the Skillet Restaurant at
Zellers and how revolutionary is that? But still . . .
Such imagination, this girl.
Always the adventurer.
As a kid growing up in Nunavut she lost herself in books. Late at
night in bed, tucked under the covers and holding a flashlight, she
read animal stories and mythology. She read at the dinner table,
too. She read whatever books she could find at the small school
library in Baker Lake.
She dreamed of writing her own book some day.
It wasn't just a dream. The little punkster did it. Anita Stampe --
class of 1983 at City Park Collegiate; now Anita Daher, wife and
mother -- had her first book published last year.
"The classmates who knew me well will probably be pleased," she
says. "I think they knew the interest I had in writing. The
classmates who didn't know me well will be completely
surprised. 'Writing children's books? Her? Wasn't she that weird
chick?' "
Her book, Flight from Big Tangle, is for ages 7-11. A girl, Kaylee,
gets trapped by a forest fire and her only way to escape is to fly
her mother's float plane. Also starring Sausage, a basset hound.
Daher lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., with her husband Jim and
daughters Erin and Sara. She left her job as a flight services
specialist with Transport Canada to dedicate herself full-time to
writing children's books. She has a sequel to Flight from Big Tangle
in the works.
"I remember how passionate I was as a child for reading; the sense
of adventure I found in books," she says. "To think I might write a
story that will inspire children the way those books inspired me is
exciting.
"Writers," she says, "were my heroes."
And a teacher was her guide.
Bob Sigstad was one of her high school English teachers at City Park.
"He was amazing," Daher says. "I had an interest in writing and
he
encouraged it. He took the extra time to help me out. He made a
point of telling me that if I ever had some writing I'd done on my
own, something that wasn't assigned, to bring it in and he'd offer
an opinion on it. He was the first one to take a critical look at my
writing.
"Maybe he knew what I didn't know, that I had potential.
"Being a teacher is a thankless job in a way," she says. "You're
in
front of a group of kids who would probably rather be elsewhere.
They're thinking about socializing, about what they're going to be
doing this weekend. The teacher just goes about the job. They're not
likely to hear 'Thank you.' Students grow up. They move away. They
never get a chance to connect (again with their teachers).
"I would tell Mr. Sigstad the difference he made. I would remind him
of the extra effort he made. I would say 'Mr. Sigstad, thank you.' "
Email Anita at anita@anitadaher.com