Cinda has demonstrated an enduring interest in women’s lives. Inspired to become a writer and learn about the literary tradition she wanted to join, she completed a doctoral dissertation on Canadian women’s writing during the “identity years” of 1965-1980.

In 1988, she published her first novel as a Harlequin Superromance set in Guelph. Her first historical novel, This Godforsaken Place, was published in 2015. In between these novels, she won third prize in an international short story contest, earned a Ph.D. in English, and raised two sons. In 2023, she published A Small Compass, welcomed two granddaughters, and has a new novel, Everything I Hope For, set in the 1970s.

Cinda’s presentation outlines her research for A Small Compass: Two historical women started out in 1806 on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Their journeys landed them together fighting for their lives in the Canadian wilderness.

Isobel Gunn disguised herself as a man to sail from Orkney, Scotland, to work as a labourer for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Canadian fur trade. In Québec, Marie-Anne Gaboury fell madly in love with a coureur de bois and insisted that he take her with him when he returned to the west. Eighteen hundred miles inland on the Canadian prairies, the "Orkney lad" delivered a baby on the hearth of a fur trade post, while the young French wife discovered why her husband didn't want to bring her back with him.

The first two non-Indigenous women to venture into the Canadian northwest had their babies within a week of each other in the same place, leaving no record of having met. In this story, not only do they meet, but these two new mothers must help each other battle what they know and what they don't to defend all they love.

Join the LUNCH BUNCH after the meeting at

Kelsey’s

(Burlington Centre Parking lot)

777 Guelph Line

Burlington, On L7R 3N2

905-633-9323

A separate email invitation will be sent for lunch sign up. You can also sign up as you enter the meeting room if spaces remain.