The inspiration for Bella came from something I heard Don Taylor (keystone donor for Mount Royal University’s Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts) say in 2013.
He told the story of his mother, Mary Belle Taylor, and her first journey across Canada by train.
In 1912, at the age of 21, she travelled by train from Kingston, Ont. to join her husband, who had gone ahead to establish a homestead in Alberta. Due to some miscommunication, Bella disembarked at the wrong railroad siding, somewhere in the vast Eastern Alberta prairie, where she spent a night alone and without shelter.
I imagine her shivering as she listened to the sounds of unfamiliar creatures going about their business somewhere out in the darkness. The night passed, of course, Bella and her husband were soon reunited, and over time became leading citizens of Alberta.
There are two musical characters in my piece: the immense, unforgiving, and foreboding landscape of the Canadian prairies, as seen through the eyes of a newcomer; and Bella, a spirited young woman who is confronted by the reality of making her way in this unfamiliar and remote place.
