“A Story is Not Like a Road You Follow…It is More Like a House.” – Alice Munro

On this Canadian Thanksgiving Sunday, it is not hard to look back on this week and recall just how much we have to be thankful for. I will start with the quote in the title of this blog. As many of you know, Canadian author Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. Munro’s body of work is celebrated, not only for her gift as a compelling story-teller, but also for her deft use of the power of words to paint a vivid picture that helps us better understand the workings of the human spirit. Munro’s full quote goes as follows:

“A story is not like a road you follow…it is more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can always go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter but beguile you.”

I have paired Munro’s quote on the power of story with a photo I took this week at Brookfield Place in downtown Toronto. This past Tuesday I took in The World Press Photo Exhibit displayed in the hall of this beautiful, unexpected, airy space. I have to admit that I was both impressed and shocked by what I saw. You see, this exhibit displays photos taken by the most celebrated and talented photo journalists working today in the war-torn corners of the world. Many photos are beautiful in their composition, but sadly, many, too many, are disturbing in their subject matter. You might wonder why images of man’s constant inhumanity to man are celebrated in this way. They are not. The message of this exhibit from the photographers to those who witness the pain and power of their work is to feel or, more importantly, to do something. The images are meant to tell a story that compels action. The stories these images tell are not roads we follow but the very houses we live in in our increasingly small world.

I would urge you to visit The World Press Photo site. View the images if you can but if you cannot (I would not blame you; many are very hard to witness), I urge you to watch this video of photographer Paul Hanson. In this short interview, Hanson describes his award-winning photo, why he took it, and what he believes his role is as a photographer. He would say, as most photographers do, that his role is to tell a story. The story might be simple, beautiful, provoking or all three. The power of photography, like the power of story-telling, is to allow the reader or viewer in to Munro’s “house”, to wander its rooms, meet its inhabitants, and eventually leave, forever altered by the experience.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, we Canadians have so much to be thankful for. The relative peace that surrounds us. The love that flows between us. We are very, very lucky.