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DON HAYWARD
Don Hayward grew up at a hydro-electric generating site on the Spanish River, surrounded by the natural world of the Canadian Shield hard rock country. The experience of the north has influenced Don’s feeling for the natural world. During 1970 – 71 he backpacked in Australia. Returning to Canada to study photography, Don met his wife Diane in Toronto. The family ran a small part-time farming operation in Dufferin County as Don commuted to his job in the electrical industry. Don and Diane now live in Goderich Ontario on the shore of Lake Huron.
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Purchase books locally at:
-Fincher's (Goderich)
-The Book Peddler (Goderich)
AFTER THE LAST DAY SERIES
​The AFTER THE LAST DAY series is a thrilling five-book journey through the collapse and rebirth of society. It begins with a sudden global economic crash that leaves the world in chaos, forcing survivors in rural Ontario to fight for food, security, and control. As small communities form, power-hungry factions rise, sparking deadly conflicts. In the struggle to rebuild, some seek unity while others exploit the new order. Decades later, a young girl named Annie embarks on a dangerous quest to stop a growing industrial empire from repeating the mistakes of the past. Packed with survival, war, and a relentless fight for the future, this series delivers high-stakes adventure from the first page to the last.
STANDALONES
MURDER ON THE GODERICH LOCAL
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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 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 not always deserving as the old motives of lust, jealousy, love and fear play out their deadly dance. In the end he finds, in spite of all, love wins.
SHERWOOD GREEN ​
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“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, organised 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, if Sherwood Green succeeded, they would destroy Toronto along with his career.
ECHO OF THE WHIP-POOR-WILL
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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.
RETURN
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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.
RoH - ALIEN LEGACY
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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.
HIGH FALLS
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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.
