After the Last Day, collapse thread
ISBN 9781775245926 (Soft cover)
When a global economic collapse hits a small town in Dufferin County, Ontario, Canada, many residents flee in search of relief while others choose more-horrible solutions. The catastrophe overwhelms elected governments as the long-distance supply of food collapses and desperate populations fight for meagre rations. Local residents have joined together to survive, but an elite that sees collapse as a chance to take control threatened their efforts. Bloody fighting between ethnic groups and criminal gangs spills out of the cities, engulfing much of the countryside. Threatened by repression and murder, the local progressive leadership seeks allies in order to survive. They join the small, free enclave of Huron Territory and its struggle against internal shortages, starvation and preparations to fight the brutal dictatorship that soon dominates most of Ontario.
ISBN 9781775245940 (Soft cover)
In this second book of the After the Last Day saga, five families have fled north into a seemingly safer territory focused on Owen Sound and most of the former Grey and Bruce counties north of the Saugeen River. These refugees settle on a complex of three farms in the lower Beaver River valley and labour under the shadows of their lost past. The threat from the racist dictatorship colours their lives and for the next several years they struggle to survive and hold the fascists at bay.
The fight for freedom climaxes in a desperate battle beneath unfriendly November skies. Those skies turn into an ally, giving hope that a free future might be possible.
ISBN 9781775245957 (Soft cover)
In this third book of the After the Last Day saga, the fascists, weakened by the military and natural consequences from their attempt to destroy Huron Territory, are finally subdued.
Nature’s fortune benefits the people of Huron, and in The End of Shadows, they enter the future taking advantage of an uneasy peace to overcome the lingering but fading emotional and physical shadows of the lives they had been living before the last day of industrial society.
Nature again reminds them to be humble, but adversity strengthens them to face bravely the uncertain future. This is somewhat the personal journey of the travelling scribe, Brandi Shadly. Her world strives for political, economic and emotional security against a backdrop of constant struggle.
ISBN: 9781775245995 (Softcover)
A century and a half after the collapse of the global economy, the residents of the Great Lakes basin struggle with the aftermath of the industrial ‘Before Time’. Climate extremes remind all of the dangers of straying from the loop of life. Wise elders see a risk of losing useful knowledge from the brief intellectual, industrial era of humanity’s existence on Earth and sinking into a world of total mysticism and ignorance.
A young girl, Annie, receives the responsibility, the quest, to find the true light of wisdom that balances the spiritual with the scientific. She grows into a mother and grandmother walking paths that lead her astray from the quest. In her concern for the trend to mysticism, she eventually realizes the larger threat from attempts to restart technological domination of the natural and human world. Her seventh path leads her back to confront her true quest.
“Sing Annie. Sing for the family. Sing for the people. Sing for the land. Sing for happiness. The world will always sing back and heal our hearts.”
t.
ISBN: 9781775245933 (Softcover)
Annie, on a quest given to her by an ancestor, travelled from her home north of Lake Huron to the Beaver Valley, the place where her hero Nimise Makwa, Brandi Shadly lived and died. Her mother charges Annie with completing Nimise’s search for the light of knowledge and peace to protect it, she believed, from growing mysticism. This journey takes place in the book, The Seventh Path. Invaders, from the aggressive industrial power, Erie Nation take Annie hostage along with several friends. The captors take them to Erie nation, which occupies much of what was once the state of Ohio south of Lake Erie. Annie soon understands that her quest is to destroy this entity. She realizes that its misuse of knowledge is a greater threat than mystical belief. She does not realize, until later, that she will not be the one to complete the task, but she is bringing the young boy who will be the key to success. The solution required uniting good people within Erie Nation with a powerful force from the south. The final struggle leaves hope and Annie can then return home, free of her quest, and reach her journey’s end.
Science Fiction
ISBN 9781775245971 (Soft cover)
Return is a sequel and homage to Steven Spielberg’s mini-series Taken. It does not pretend to achieve the level of a Spielberg approved script, but it attempts to embrace his portrayal of aliens as a non-aggressive and perhaps a bit of a bumbling entity. It would be helpful for the reader to have seen the ten-part mini-series, first aired in 2002. It would be good to get familiar with E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to get a feel for Spielberg’s portrayal of star visitors. You will not find invading space monsters here. Some of the character names from Taken and general references to events from the series appear here to give continuity. It is not an official sequel, and no one connected with the television series has sanctioned it. The promised sequel did not appear, and after 18 years of waiting, I wrote my version. Charlie Keys, father of Ellie Keys, fled into obscure exile to the small Canadian town of Goderich, Ontario. He wanted to escape the notoriety surrounding the aliens taking his daughter, Ellie, up in a star-ship. Twenty years later, Ellie returns with a daughter, RoH, as part of an alien project to absorb the positive human traits of empathy and conviviality. Ellie, mostly human and RoH half-human, both want to save life on Earth from a certain ecocide by humans. Circumstance thwarts their plan for a gradual introduction of their existence. Canadian journalists expose the alien presence and the American government’s attempt to exploit them. A rogue visitor to the inner solar system threatens the Mars settlement and forces an earlier and more spectacular alien appearance. It also requires them to interfere more deeply in human affairs than they want to. The undeniable existence of aliens forces humans to re-think our place in the cosmos against a backdrop of political and economic chaos and religious hate.
ISBN: 9781775245988 (Softcover)
RoH – Alien Legacy is the direct sequel to the story, Return.
After decades of ridiculed stories, and evidence only the American government had, aliens landed on Earth. In a spectacular show on New Year’s Eve, they rescued the thousand first settlers on Mars as a massive comet slammed into the planet. As part of the unplanned intervention, the visitors disabled the militaries of all countries. This caused massive economic turmoil as defence industries collapsed and took over half of industrial economic activity with them. Perhaps an even greater dislocation came from the destruction of the myth of the special place of humans in the cosmos held by most religions. Both disruptions drove increasing conflict among humans and the fragmentation of most countries. The aliens only wanted two things, to gain empathy from humans and to have humans find the cooperation necessary to save life on Earth. RoH, the half alien human, whose star name translated as ‘New dust that spreads new life’, had come to Earth as a key part of the effort, but her discovery of a rogue alien hybrid led her into a chase against time. The dangerous mutant threatened both aliens and humans. RoH must either tame him or kill him. The aliens considered RoH as the first of a new entity that would take the next step for sentient life in the galaxy. She mesmerized aliens and humans as she brought humour and power to all problems. Less than a year after RoH and her mother Ellie arrive on Earth, everyone including RoH is surprised when she is called to fulfill her role in the galaxy. A star-travelling species emerged from its self-imposed dormancy in the Sagittarian arm of the galaxy when they discovered that RoH existed. This species named the Miigis thousands of years before by Anishinaabe of central North America, summons RoH. She leaves Earth amidst hope and heartache to fulfill an unknown destiny.
ISBN: 9781738064120 (Softcover)
Book three in the saga of aliens interacting with Earth as we know it.
This part of the story takes us away from Earth to the moon planet Jewel (Z263-A) and its alien mystery
When aliens announced their existence to a stunned world, humans had no idea how mysterious the sentient galaxy might be. As feudal organization on Earth unravelled, the aliens take quantum physicist, Siglinde Hilfreich and anthropologist Liz Davis to the moon planet Jewel. They are inserted into a fascinating but disturbing alien experiment and learn that the alien reality is more complex than they thought.
Murder and mayhem
ISBN: 9781738064113 (Softcover)
Steam dominated the railways of the world for a hundred years, but the powerful marriage of internal combustion and electricity gradually pushed steam aside. By the end of the 1950s, steam was fading fast and diesel locomotives were dominating. The old romance of living steel and tough men would not go quietly. On a small backwater sub-branch of the Canadian Southern Railway, the men of the old and the new collided. Love, hate, ambition and intrigue came together to end in tragedy. Ex-Mountie Mike Donovan, hoping for a quiet semi-retirement as a railway cop soon discovered that sleepy backwater Ontario provided more excitement and mystery than he thought possible. As Donovan digs deeper, he finds killers are not always evil and victims are not always deserving as the old motives of lust, jealousy, love and fear play out their deadly dance. In the end he finds, Despite of all, love wins.
ISBN 9781775245902 (Soft cover)
“We will destroy Toronto. We will destroy industrialism.”
In a world where industrialism devastated the planetary ecosystem at a fast pace, the environmental movement split into two factions. The established environmentalists evolved into business operations where paid jobs, fundraising, government and corporate grants became the main focus. This faction believed that green corporations and growth could save the planet and allow the destructive ballooning of human numbers to continue. They thought that electing members to industrialist controlled parliaments would make a difference. The second faction understood that only total destruction of industrialism would be effective, allowing the remaining species to survive and perhaps some humans. At the extreme of this group sat the deep resistors, organized in cells so black that the security forces were not aware of them until they first attacked. Sherwood Green, in a spectacular series of fires and explosions, launched a surprise attack on Toronto, the strategic financial centre of Canada. The frantic, response of police focused on the above ground supporters of Sherwood Green. Jos Amiel, a young reporter for the local, superficial TorontoNewsNow television network, hoped covering Sherwood Green would build his career. Events drew him in deeper as the stress of the attacks exposed the seamy underside of the fragile city culture. Jos began to understand that if Sherwood Green succeeded, they would destroy Toronto along with his career.
High Falls Spanish River Ontario
ISBN 9781775245919 (Softcover)
Don Hayward’s memories of his early life in High Falls, Ontario, on the Spanish river framed as a fictional return to the disappeared town sometime in the early 2000s. The span of memory is from about 1948 to 1961. In the engaging stage play Ipperwash, Falen Johnson and Jessica Carmichael lead us to consider place, loss of home and dislocation from our roots. They presented the story as an explanation of the native peoples’ connection to the land. I left the Blythe Theatre with a mixture of excitement and sadness in my heart. Our industrial culture over the past 200 years has led to dislocation for most of us, as economics has forced people to move or has obliterated our places of youth, and in my case, both happened to High Falls. It had disappeared by 1980.
ISBN 9781775245964 (Softcover)
This annotated, pictorial history of High Falls, Spanish River, Ontario is compiled
and assembled by Don Hayward.
It covers the period from 1904, when the first generating station was being built, until
1986 when the last house
was removed.
There is some material post-1986.
The book is only available directly from Don Hayward.
(Please e-mail requests)
