The Joy of Travel

About the Book

This collection of forty-one stories, poems, and recollections represents travel moments that the author and associates chose not to forget. The incidents are special. They evoke feelings of coincidence, humor, joy, wonder at the unfamiliar, distress and sometimes pain. Running through the collected works, as a common thread, is the evidence often of a greater, anonymous Being-one who holds the "Strings of Time". Can events that amuse, lend such emotion, involve such twists of fate, and tickle the internal funny bone to this degree, be just routine life experiences? Regardless of the philosophical background of the stories, they are too pleasurable, in most cases, and at least memorable, not to share.

Who can question the mystic quality of "Suzie Come Home"? What quirk of human nature inspired the final words in, "Enroute to Iona and the Devil's Causeway"? Is the truth indeed not stranger than fiction when one reads "On Your Thirty-First Anniversary"? When can we ever hope to replay the great flukes of Nature experienced in "Dining Deermouse", "Kangaroo Deer", "gift", and "Canola Carriers"?

A source of joyous amazement, appreciation and inspiration for the author, perhaps these stories can lift you too to a plain of awe, entertainment and delight.

About the Author

Darlene Kidd, BA '73, BEd '84, author of The Joy of Travel, is a recently superannuated high school Mathematics teacher from Macklin, Saskatchewan. Darlene has been a freelance writer since 1976 with manuscripts published in over 50 periodicals and newspapers including Toronto Star, Owl Children's Magazine, Western People, Canadian Children's Annual, Our Canada, The Yorkshire Dalesman, and broadcast on CBC Ambience.

A scholarship consultant whose students have won over $1 000 000 in local, provincial, regional, and national scholarships since 1989, Darlene received a Dr. Stirling McDowell Foundation for Research Into Teaching Grant to support research on the affect that scholarship awareness has on winning scholarships. Darlene was a recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003. She was a winner of the Prime Ministers Award (Local) for teaching Excellence in Science, Technology and Mathematics in 1993, Macklin Citizen of the Year Award in 2003 and Alliance Pipeline Community Hero Award in 2003.

The author of Your Guide to Scholarships and Bursaries, Darlene presents workshops in schools, travels as much as she can, and writes grant proposals for the Town of Macklin.

She and her husband, Pat, have two adult offspring, Kelly and Christa.