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"Your Mother Was a Giant"

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REPOSTED FROM SUBSTACK I go by two names: my writing name is Ann Diamond. My birth name is Anne McLean. I am also the granddaughter of the former mayor of St-Jean sur Richelieu, Doctor Alexis Bouthillier. Last year, by chance, I learned that his house at 240 rue Jacques-Cartier-Nord was being restored to become a shelter for homeless drug addicts and would reopen in 2024. I had never visited this house, which my grandfather sold in 1932, but I had seen photos of it and heard about it from my mother. In my possession I still had my grandfather's eight foot tall clock. Last October I spoke with the director of Le Musée du Haut-Richelieu who accepted it into their collection. I also left them the family photo album. I am currently working on a screenplay called The British Invasion, which begins in St Jean sur Richelieu where my mother was born in 1913 and lived until 1941. My mother Thérèse Bouthillier was almost erased from the history of SJSR but she was the only daughter of...
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POISON IVY

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Winter is ending and so is a phase of writing that involved exploring characters hidden in memory, drawing them out of hiding, understanding lines of conflict and how together they build the story. The mother, the father, their child- the actors whose movements create the whole world. Past, present, future - and the aftermath of events that ran off with your life when you were too young to know or react. Like footprints in flowing water, like stones at the bottom of a pond, truth reshapes memory into something bigger than we knew. If someone stole our memories, we can steal them back. *** My third Big Bang (climax) I had a book I had brought home from the Baron Byng High School library which I hadn't read or even opened. It was called Trilby by Georges Du Maurier - the story of a naive young singer who is controlled by a mesmerizing Jewish handler. Either the librarian had recommended it - she'd recommended other novels she thou It was important to me to figure out wh...
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Letter

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Hi Sarah I'm writing to you about a worsening problem I'm having with one of the lead plaintiffs in the Oak Ridge class action lawsuit. I'm a member of the Montreal Experiments Class Action which is moving forward in Quebec Superior Court. I have known Ellen Atkin for 12 years. She has been challenging to deal with since I first met her in BC in March 2014. I won't go into that story here since it would barely fit in this email. I don't really view myself as a "litigant" - I am a writer. In 2007, I self-published a memoir about growing up as the daughter of a Cameron patient in Montreal, along with other children who were inducted into his LSD experiments. I have researched this subject very thoroughly for over 20 years, and the more I find out, the more I feel compelled to write and share about this horrible program which existed at the fringes of mainstream science and damaged many lives. Recently I have set up an oral history project for survivors...
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My Fonds

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My ex- editor, the son of a Scottish-trained McGill doctor and contemporary of Dr Ewen Cameron, who claims to be acquainted with my "psychiatric history", was likely assigned to me in 1969 when he first approached me at a meeting of young student writers and later published my first book of poetry. This editor is now 82. CLG should subpoena him as a witness. I believe he has spent most of his life as a McGill associate surveilling and suppressing traces of the MKULTRA program including my family's files. I think he knows where my files and possibly others' are stored and hidden. I have known "Matthew"since 1969. He was my editor at Vehicule press /Signal Editions from 1977-95. In 1994 or 95 when he arranged for McGill to purchase 3 boxes of my journals, letters, mss, etc for which I was $14K. I thought at the time that this was "normal" and that McGill was acquiring papers for an archive of Quebec writers but it appears I am one of very few writ...
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My second Big Bang

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Not counting the one in 1959 - If anyone is reading this blog it's probably Camille Davis Russo and her sidekick Ellen Atkin (who still has a bad case of verbal rabies). I can sense this because of little clues that pop up on MkUltragirl's X account, which I check during lunch breaks to see what she's posting about me lately. It's usually boring repetitive drivel and mindless repetitive slander - the repetitiveness tells you she's running on empty or maybe the psych drugs are having the usual effect of narrowing cognition. Dry mouth? Weight gain? Memory loss? I'm sorry but it's probably a better outcome than prison. Which reminds me of a Stones' song that came up recently: Claudine's back in jail again. Poor, poor Claudine. But today I'm responding to Camille who's back on X again questioning my story about flying to London in 1963 and spending a night at Edith Grove on the eve of the Stones' first big break: the release of their not ...
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My insectual upbringing

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Prepare for my analysis. Here's father, his heart screwed on Yes, here he's got it I'm sure 'Cause he lost his life in an accident Found his heart in the man next door What exactly's gonna happen When they do transplant the brain Will my borrowed brain still compute the same Or will my daughter stop her sleeping out Here comes the girl, she's got her head screwed on But it ain't screwed on right Her ambition is to be a prostitute But the breaks just weren't right What exactly's gonna happen, tell me When her father finds out That his virgin daughter has bordello dreams And that he's the one she wants to try out Yeah There's ma, she's living dangerously It's a cinch she'll try it anything twice She thinks she can run right to the whirlpool's edge And stop herself just in time What exactly's gonna happen When she finally fizzles out The lovers will just be sucked into T...
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The Untellable Tale

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My story cant be told in words and thats why I'm writing it in scenes for a film. called The British Invasion. Most of my life happened behind the scenes and without my knowledge while I kept busy in the foreground doing stage business. I was a small local production - born in the year of the rabbit to a Tiger dad and mother Ox. They both had plans for us but my dad's were modest while my mom imagined her twins as future stars living large. Unfortunately my twin brother and I were harebrained amateurs made for the rabbit holes. That's the scenario - we fell between the cracks. My mother was my manager and remained in the background but her attempts to thrust me onto the stage usually failed miserably. I can rhink of several examples of this but the all-time biggest disaster was her attempt to marry me off to the boy from England. To say he was larger than life is a massive understatement. Our mutual misunderstanding was also the stuff of nightmare legend. He went right whe...
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