{"id":15622,"date":"2016-10-26T17:15:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T21:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15622"},"modified":"2016-12-14T12:49:46","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T17:49:46","slug":"one-book-one-aurora-culminates-with-words-and-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/one-book-one-aurora-culminates-with-words-and-music\/","title":{"rendered":"One Book One Aurora culminates with words and music"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

The living room of the Aurora Public Library was filled with eager readers on Saturday as author Kim Echlin and pianist Paul Neufeld came together for the grand finale of the One Book One Aurora campaign.
\nMs. Echlin\u2019s novel, Under the Visible Life, was chosen as the centrepiece of the 2016 program which aimed to get all of Aurora reading from the same page and circulating copies of the book through small lending libraries around Town.
\nIt was the first time a book by Ms. Echlin had been chosen for a One Book campaign, an initiative picking up steam across the country, and she too was eager to share the experience with local readers.
\n\u201cWhen I looked online and saw my book in the book boxes and imagined the whole community reading the book at the same time, it just felt like such a privilege,\u201d she said. \u201cI thank you for participating in this way. It is unusual, but we talk about what Netflix movies we\u2019re watching but we don\u2019t talk as communities about books as much as we used to. It really is a great privilege to be a part of this.\u201d
\nMany of those gathered in the Library\u2019s living room space were already familiar with the book, which follows the distinct but intersecting lives of two women united by music. Speaking to the audience, Ms. Echlin gave readers a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of the book, which was, in part, born out of her fascination with Ontario laws oppressive to women, which were not repealed until the late 1960s.
\n\u201cEvery woman I know would get arrested under this law!\u201d she joked, referring to the legislation where women could be arrested for being \u2018incorrigible,\u2019 a word which gave lawmakers plenty of wiggle room to enforce. \u201cIt could be applied between a woman and the judge with no one else present, so people were very vulnerable to the interpretation of this law, which was broad to begin with.\u201d
\nHer interest was compounded by her discovery that just a decade after Ontario repealed the archaic Female Refuges act, similar laws were being handed down in Pakistan governing \u201ca women\u2019s morality.\u201d This parallel intrigued Ms. Echlin, and she dove deeper.
\n\u201cThere are things all around us that we often don\u2019t see and feel, but we don\u2019t know how to know them,\u201d she said. \u201cThrough storytelling\u2026we begin to feel them in a different way. This book is about the things that are under the surfaces that we may feel but may not be consciously able to articulate. It is an art form that does very well with exploring this kind of thing.\u201d
\nSince One Book One Aurora launched this spring, the APL \u2013 and the community \u2013 have spearheaded a number of initiatives and tie-ins to engage Aurora at large. Jan Freedman of Jan\u2019s Country Pantry, a mainstay of the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market, for instance, created two specialty products for One Book One Aurora, which proved exceptionally popular. The Library hosted a panel discussion with community leaders on \u201cThe Changing Face of Canada\u201d, held writing and photography contests, hosted Amnesty International and their own Tuesday Philosophy Club in discussions and workshops, and partnered with community organizations for a series of concerts.
\n\u201cThis is the third year we\u2019re doing it and this year has totally flown and it has flown because of the community connections Aurora has,\u201d said APL\u2019s Reccia Mandelcorn. \u201cThe Library started this but a one book project doesn\u2019t really work unless everybody chips in. This has been led by the Library, embraced and programmed and attended and discussed by the community, so this is a celebration of the Library, of One Book One Aurora, the magnificent story of Under the Visible Life by Kim Echlin and the Aurora community, who make things happen all the time in mysterious and exciting ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The living room of the Aurora Public Library was filled with eager readers on Saturday as author Kim Echlin and pianist Paul Neufeld came together for the grand finale of the One Book One Aurora campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/2016-10-27-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-43Y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 20:58:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}