City Wolves author
Dorris Heffron

You have written successful books and also kept dogs as companions for many years, but until now you always managed to keep your writing and your dogs separate. What happened to bring your two passions together in City Wolves?

Dorris Heffron: Something very strange. My previous novels, even though animals were present in them, were inspired by real people and real life situations. City Wolves was inspired, I should even say driven, by a sled dog whose name was "Yukon Sally." That must sound quite weird coming from a writer of realistic fiction.

It does, but that's what I'm trying to get at. What happened?

Heffron: Well, my previous novel was in the process of being published when our beloved collie mutt "Frauzie" died of old age. I was bereft. My youngest child had just gone off to university so I was suddenly too alone. I knew I needed another dog right away since I couldn't function, was weepy, didn't want to get out of bed without Frauzie to share my breakfast, walk and talk with, lie by my desk, greet me when I came home. I was in bad shape.
          I didn't dare go to the pound for a dog as I always had because I knew I'd come home with every one of them. I decided it was time to spring for a purebred and wanted to have an indigenous Canadian dog. Thought first of a Newfoundlander so I could have a swimming companion. My husband vetoed that on account of its size.
          "My second choice is an Alaskan malamute," I then responded, "A dog I can ski with."
          "Oh, all right," he said, having no idea about the difficulty of malamutes.
          I had come across this breed reading the catalogue Dogs in Canada. But our vet warned me that sled dogs, particularly the Alaskan malamute and Siberian husky, are "independent thinking." They're more like wolves than any other dogs, he added. That intrigued me. As I lay awake the night before our appointment to see the one remaining pup for sale at Wolfrunner Kennels, the name Yukon Sally occurred to me.

Yes, but what happened?

Heffron: It was love at first sight on my part. But it took some time for Yukon Sally to honour me with hers. She was a very regal malamute yet could never become a show dog because she was too much of a "throwback." Yukon Sally had more features of the wolf: ginger eyes, narrow chest, long legged, not to mention her character!
          She enthralled me. I sought to learn all about her, her ancestry in sled dogs and wolves, the land and people of her origins. I travelled with her throughout the Yukon and Alaska. I read books, interviewed and researched more than I care to remember.
          But Yukon Sally kept leading me on. We sold our house in Toronto and bought fifty-two acres in Beaver Valley in central Ontario so she could have space and a companion pup, "Yukon Jake." I named this property "Little Creek Wolf Range." You might say I had moved from enthralled to obsessed, or even possessed, by Yukon Sally.
          Over the course of her ten-year life she led me into ancient times of the Arctic, across the life of the first dog doctor, and up to the Klondike gold rush in the glory days of the malamute sled dogs. Then she dragged me through the most challenging and arduous writing time of my life. When the full story had been researched, verified as to both the imagined and the historical, the manuscript completed and the work sent off-the finish line of our own peculiar kind of Yukon quest finally reached-Yukon Sally expired in my arms. That was on the 21st of December, the darkest day indeed.

That is an unusual story of "inspiration." But how did you actually go about doing all the research? You depict the Klondike gold rush with a real flavour of authenticity.

Heffron: Thanks for bringing me back to the practical! I flew to Whitehorse with Yukon Sally in the pet compartment. Then we rented a van and travelled to all the places the gold rush people had gone, camping along the Yukon River route, taking boat trips, hiking the trails, renting a cabin in Dawson City where much has been preserved of the Klondike gold rush days.
          Yukon Sally was like having an entry ticket. When seeing her with me, the mushers, breeders, native people, local historians, bartenders, everyone, trusted me and opened up more than they would have if I had shown up on my own as yet another wacky writer snooping around and asking questions.

So your wolf-like dog became a research assistant as well as an inspiration for this story?

Heffron: She did. I also took a lot of photos and kept a relevant journal as well as the usual research notes. But I think it was being there, not just seeing the spectacular landscape and hokey towns, but actually feeling the atmosphere, experiencing first hand the spell of the Yukon. There's also fear in the Yukon. I'll never forget hiking up into the mountains, fearing an encounter with a grizzly bear. Maybe it was Yukon Sally who kept them away.
          After that personal experience of the Yukon I did all the usual researching in books, papers, museums. The most illuminating accounts I found of the gold rush were in Pierre Berton's history book, Klondike, and Jennifer Duncan's Frontier Spirit, biographies of women who went to the Klondike.

Your novels have been more contemporary in themes and locales. What caused you to switch now to "historical fiction"?

Heffron: I think what is common in all my novels is a strong sense of people within the context of their times. We are products of our time and place.
          Although my second novel was set in the Second World War, that is not very far back in time. The cause was, as I said, Yukon Sally. It was she who led me so far back in time with this book.
          But the sweep of history always lurks in my thinking. I studied literature at university in the context of the history of writing, from the Middle Ages through each century. Because I write realistic fiction, I strive hard to get the real details right. And I don't like to mess with history. I try to be true to what happened and what real people actually did. So it was a lot of work getting everything accurate in City Wolves.
          I often cursed myself for attempting something so difficult and of such wide scope. But then Yukon Sally would give me that look of "a wolf doesn't give up" and on I'd trudge.

What surprised you most when digging into the tales of Dawson City?

Heffron: Discovering how adventurous, entrepreneurial, freethinking and, in modern terms, "liberated" women of that time and place were. They were also exceptionally achieving. Women like Belinda Mulroney built much of Dawson City, including putting in electricity. She became as rich as the Klondike Kings. Women wore boots and trousers if it was more practical.

Anything else?

Heffron: I was also amazed at the international mix of people who made their way to the Klondike. Fifty percent were Americans, and of course there were Canadians, but others came looking for gold from as far away as New Zealand, Asia, Europe. The place had a truly international cast of characters.
          And how valued the sled dogs were! A black prospector owned a team of matched malamutes with a "bar," I'm talking booze bar, attached to the sled. That "limousine" was worth about $10,000 in the 1890s, a huge amount of money.
          The law and order that the Northwest Mounted Police managed to maintain in Dawson City, largely through the prohibition of guns, was astounding, particularly compared to the violence and corruption that reigned in the Alaskan town of Skagway.
          And sex trade workers in Dawson were respected and well paid.

Meg Wilkinson, the strong and independent woman at the centre of your story, has decidedly modern views about many things. She may not conform to some readers' traditional view of "the Victorian Woman." Do you yourself see her as modern or Victorian?

Heffron: I think the big difference between modern and Victorian women is access to birth control. So much of the Victorian woman's life depended on the fact that if she had sex she was likely to get pregnant. If she got married she was expected to have babies every year or so until she was too old. In the late nineteenth century women were getting into universities, becoming doctors, running small businesses, travelling with guides, becoming famous as writers and entertainers. There was a common term, "the New Woman," to describe this liberated ideal.
          At the turn of the century, as a result, it was quite commonly said, "Now women can do anything!" Except have reliable control over their fertility.
          Meg is certainly one of the strong-minded, adventurous, liberal-thinking women of her time, but she is helped in this by her husband, Randolph. He helps her financially, intellectually, socially-and he doesn't make her pregnant. That is what really facilitates Meg's becoming a veterinarian in Victorian times. Meg's sister Alice sees that and is very jealous of it, because Alice cannot continue teaching after marriage, and she got pregnant on her wedding night. That curtails her ambitions and fuels her bitterness.
          I see as a stereotype the modern woman presented as someone driven by the need for sex much more than love. I'm sceptical of that take on women. I certainly don't believe it when a contemporary author depicts a Victorian or earlier woman as obsessed with sex. Meg is truly Victorian in her avoidance of completed sexual intercourse until she's with a man she would marry. Her need for love and interest in men is, shall we say, timeless.

The Inuit couple, Ike and Piji, play an important role in City Wolves, even though they are long since dead by the time Meg reads their story and their spirits follow her in the Yukon in the 1890s. What is it like writing a novel where a couple of the characters have become spirits?

Heffron: A lot of fun, actually! It involved the creative, imaginative part of writing fiction that I love. Those passages with Ike and Piji, as ancient spirits commenting on Meg's life and times, arose so naturally and humorously out of the main story that I sometimes shrieked and laughed out loud as the wording came to me. Sometimes the passages had to be really worked at, for truth and word perfection, but when I got them right it was the most delightful eureka part of creative fiction. I doubt that I'll ever come up with a better final line than Piji's at the end of the epilogue.

Their role in this story is so significant you could say it wouldn't exist without them. Does that parallel your own approach off the pages of fiction in real life?

Heffron: The reality basis of these spirit characters is something I've come to believe is profoundly true and helps me to deal with death. Bodies die. That's for sure. But I think the character, the influence, what amounts to the soul or spirit of that creature, does live on, in what they have created or continue to influence.
          I grew to love Ike and Piji and their whole community of people and wolves and dogs when I created their story. My characters do live on in my mind. Real people and animals I have had to lay to rest likewise live on in my mind.
          So when I was steered by my very good editor, Dominic Farrell, to make some structural change in the final editing of City Wolves and the concept of Ike and Piji as spirit characters came to mind, I suddenly realized they were the only true and profoundly real means to do what was required. My realist sense of spirits is that they are in no way tangible; they can't actually speak to us. They can just "be," and watch and accompany us. That must be pretty frustrating to them when they see us going off the rails! Hence Ike's tirades, and Piji's sense of sorrow.

Turning from spirits to wolves and sled dogs, because they are also essential to this story, what is the risk of humans writing about animals and ascribing human attributes to them, or thinking for animals with a human brain? Did you encounter that challenge?

Heffron: Oh yes! As a child I read many books in which animals spoke and thought as human beings. Those books help children sympathize with and understand animals as fellow creatures. But I also grew up with a strong determination to "tell it like it is," to be a realistic writer. I love and admire animals as they are. I do not want to turn them into human beings.
          As Emily Dickinson said, the wonderful thing about dogs is that they know but they don't talk. There are, very intentionally, no talking animals in City Wolves.
          But I did extensive research and observation of wolves and sled dogs so that I could portray some of their inner life, as a writer should, in portraying any characters in their full dimensions.

Is it a stretch to say wolves are like humans and humans like wolves?

Heffron: In European culture there's a lingering image of the wolf as dominantly ferocious. This is underscored in the Grimm fairytale about the wolf eating an old woman and child, Little Red Riding Hood. But there are counterbalances, such as the legend of Rome being founded by Romulus and Rimus who, as children, had been lovingly raised by wolves. In North America, we're more aware of the intelligence, strength and tenderness of wolves. Though we, too, have poisoned and slaughtered them. Governments here placed bounties on wolves to financially encourage people to kill them.
          What we might emulate about wolves is nicely summed up in Del Goetz's The Wolf Credo:

Respect the elders
Teach the young
Cooperate with the pack
Play when you can
Hunt when you must
Share your affections
Voice your feelings
Leave your mark

With that approach, it is easier to see why City Wolves is an exploration of the deep natural connection between wolves, dogs and people.

Heffron: Yes, because it looks at their behaviour when they are brought together in a community. There's Ike's village. There's Halifax and Boston, Vancouver and the unusual community called Dawson City.
          As an author, I refuse to be explicit. Readers will make their own conclusions as to what is important and meaningful. But I have my own bent and some playful manipulations. It's there in the title and in some chapter titles. I want the readers to enjoy making their own interpretations of what is meant by "city wolves."

Well, without being explicit then, you must at least have observed some similarities between wolf pack behaviour and human family and social behaviour?

Heffron: Yes, there are strong similarities and they are implicit in City Wolves, but so are the important differences.
          For instance, there are some trans-gendered people and there are some trans-gendered wolves. What might be learned from that? The important thing in my mind is that wolves and humans are ultimately integral to the order of things. I see dogs as the loveliest link. But let's not forget the big differences. Wolves could not invent the atom bomb or penicillin. Wolf packs are not egalitarian or democratic. Don't we think that human societies should be, and haven't we worked to make them so?

Your first three books, in pioneering a new genre of novels about teenagers for teenagers, reached a wide audience in different language editions in many countries. Now you are pioneering in City Wolves, too. How would you describe the fresh ground you are breaking here?

Heffron: I don't think I'm turning up essentially new ground. Profound psychoanalysts like Carl Jung and all the great religions recognize the interconnection of people and animals. This is a very universal theme.
          There is a long tradition in literature of portraying animals and people. It's particularly appropriate in a country like Canada where wilderness fortunately remains.
          But where ground did have to be broken is that contemporary publishers tend not to be open to the mix these days. City Wolves is an unusual combination. It's not old-fashioned allegory or new-fashioned fantasy fiction. It's not suspenseful contemporary fiction including animals separated from people, like the bears in Andrew Pyper's The Wildfire Season, a novel I much admire set in the contemporary Yukon. City Wolves is realistic historical fiction portraying animals with people and spirits. It implies similarities but also differences. That's a new kind of mix which a "Think free.be free!" publisher like Blue Butterfly Books, I'm most happy to say, is open to.

That's nice of you to say. That's what blue butterflies are all about-a new kind of mix. But getting back to your writing, in addition to confronting such barriers in literature as you just described, City Wolves also celebrates a woman who demolished social barriers. Is it important that she was a first female veterinarian in Canada?

Heffron: Pioneering women today, such as the first woman astronaut, object to being described as "the first woman" to do this or that. It seems they want to emphasize that they are great astronauts or whatever their profession or calling may be, and play down being the first woman at it.
          But as for Meg, it was obviously of huge importance that she was seen as the first woman trying to get into the profession. That is what made it so difficult for her. She had to be not just courageous, but doubly qualified, more persistent, a skilled diplomat, a better negotiator, well supported, and fortunate enough to have men at the top who had their own good reasons for wanting her to succeed-just as male lead wolves seek out female lead wolves. Oops! I'm being explicit. Time to stop.