LIFE AFTER THE NFB Nora Alleyn, Hooked on Nature, Images and Words

by Marie-Pierre Tremblay
December 2004

Long fingers push back a rebellious curl. On the table are fresh flowers and a steaming pot of tea. Her huge apartment, with its magnificent woodwork, is pleasantly chaotic. And with good reason. Nora* is in the midst of renovating ! Seventeen years have passed since she left the NFB. It has been a life full of adventures, dreams and people.

Vermont, The Adopted Country
Vermont has fascinated me for a long time. When I took early retirement, I was already renting a house there. My plan was to live there part of the year. But this plan got off to a rocky start. The realization that I no longer had a job came as quite a shock. A bad case of sciatica pinned me to my bed for a month. I lived alone on 100 acres in an isolated spot, in real "rock and roll" country... Sometimes, at night, the idea would occur to me that if I were broken into, I couldn't defend myself. My neighbour, an emergency-room doctor, would bring me dinner when he wasn't working. It was a difficult time. But it was also springtime, and I could watch the leaves slowly unfurl outside my bedroom window. I had never witnessed that before.

In 1990, I bought a big old farmhouse - with two barns, a double garage, a pond, fruit trees. Paradise, in a manner of speaking. The day I took possession of the house, there was a freak snow storm. No electricity, no heat, no furniture. A friend and I slept on the floor. Our only company was a mouse. Wrapped in our blankets, she and I played cards by candlelight... Four years later, I realized that my dream was a trifle grandiose. I sold my lovely 19th century farmhouse.

In 1997, as I was walking along a mountain road, I saw a huge field sheltered from the road by a row of trees. A magical meadow. But it wasn't for sale. However, on the night of Hallowe'en, with a full moon blazing, the owner capitulated. And I had a wee house built at the top of the field abutting the forest. It was a difficult birth because I had more ideas than money. My only neighbours were of the four-legged variety. I sold the house this summer in order to buy the apartment I've been renting for 28 years.

Vermont is an ongoing adventure. The people I see, for the most part, are pretty marginal.

And with marginality comes the unexpected. Like spending Christmas Eve helping an old woman butcher part of her cow. I've made good friends. The social fabric is very diverse : hippies who settled in the 60s, artists, writers and of course the "real" Vermonters - as distinct from us fatlanders. We all share the Northeast Kingdom, as my part of Vermont is called. Knowing these people has enriched my life a lot. Some of them have even inspired short stories which were published in the bimonthly The Green Mountain Post.

Film - New Territory
"In 1987, after recovering from sciatica, I came back to Montreal. I had always dreamed of doing some editing. Dorothy Todd H�naut gave me footage of an interview she had made for Firewords, which she never used. I became a bag lady in the corridors of the NFB, begging for Steinbecks, at the mercy of everyone's kindness. Finally, the baby was delivered : Fragments of a Conversation on Language. The documentary brings together writers (including Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik and Jovette Marchessault) who question language and the sexist values it carries. The film is in the NFB catalogue.

This experience whetted my appetite. I felt like doing a documentary about a woman in Kamouraska . Studio D lent me the equipment. Jacques Drouin gave me film stock left over from an animation shoot. Alanis Obomsawin did the sound. But the film never saw the light of day. My lack of confidence prompted me to seek, and listen to, a variety of opinions, and I ended up with "thin gruel". It was a hard lesson. You have to follow your bliss. It's a pity. The images were beautiful, a gift from Paul V�zina, a great friend and a great cameraman... So, I bought myself a video camera and filmed people I found exceptional. For my own pleasure.

Writing - Digging Down
"I continue to freelance for the NFB (translation, writing videojackets). In 1998, I was accepted into a program of intensive writing at Galway University, in Ireland. A stimulating, and uncomfortable adventure. I lived in an ancient thatched-roof crofters' cottage, postcard style, by Galway Say, out in the country. The farmers' free-range chickens would stroll across my threshold. The cottage sweated humidity. Kitchen and bathroom were caricatures of the genuine article. If I missed the bus for Galway, I had to hitchhike, holding up a cardboard sign. After an exceptionally rainy month, I felt I was growing moss. At the end of the course, I flew to Cyprus to dry out, and visit a friend."

New Career
I gradually became interested in literary translation. After becoming a member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada, I ventured into a new career. Few people realize how much work is involved !

Literary translatons double as literary agents because, generally speaking, it is the translator who approaches the publisher. I hunt down a book. Any method works : book reviews in Le Devoir, libraries, bookstores, friends. When I find the book, then I do research to see what publisher might be interested. And I put together a kind of press release which includes reviews, publicity, etc. My aim is to sell the book, and myself, to the publisher. And that is when my years of working in publicity at the NFB come in useful. Query letters have to be "punchy". Otherwise, they end up in the wastebasket. This preparatory work is unpaid. If the publisher is interested, he or she approaches the Canada Council for a grant, and if all goes well, I finally start the translation. The work is arduous, solitary. And at the end of it all, the translator receives $0.12 a word ! The profession is underpaid and under-valued. You have to like words. In Canada, I know only Sheila Fischman who makes a living. She works like a demon and has thirty years under her belt. Most literary translators have another job - and some even abandon the profession. The plus side is that it can be done anywhere - in the city, in the country, abroad... I love translating poetry because you can really play with language. The original text becomes one's own, in a sense.

Last year, out of curiosity, I took a course at Concordia in which we translated excerpts from Qu�becois novels. One thing struck me : the university doesn't prepare students for the difficulties of the workplace. They were very surprised to hear me describe what awaited them. �

Some of Nora's translations :
Histoires saintes by Carole David; Quelqu'un by Aude; Let Me Go by Anne Claire Poirier; Les Coureurs de bois (fiction segments) by Georges-H�bert Germain; Kimberly, m�re de Dieu by Andr� Pronovost. In progress : Adieu Belqrade by N�govan Rajic, Maurice Duplessis by Marguerite Paulin; Et la nuit by Anne-Marie Alonzo.

Still Dreaming ?
Always. I'm fixing up my apartment which was built in 1904. There have been a few surprises. You try to straighten out a floor and discover three broken joists underneath...

My other dream is to build a straw-bale house in a former commune in northern Vermont, surrounded by my eccentric friends. And to go back to Scotland and visit my former husband and the Scott-Moncrieff clan. Thirty-five years ago, I shipped out rather unceremoniously ! "

A graceful hand pushes back that rebellious curl. The tea is already cold. The carpenter has just arrived, carrying his skill saw. It is time to leave. Regretfully, I was not able to fully grasp this woman who is both warm, and distant. But how do you sum up seventeen years of freedom in 1,500 words ?

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* Nora Alleyn joined the NFB in 1971 as secretary/translator to the Commissioner, Sydney Newman, before going into publicity. She retired in 1987, but has never really left the NFB since she still freelances there.