Graves Don

Don Graves Reviewer & Painter My first mystery was Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four. I was ten and avid reading became a life-long addiction. About Don: Most of my life has been spent in music and I ended up pursing voice and conducting as a career while harbouring a passion for painting and writing. I eventually came equipped with a McGill University degree in music (voice and conducting) but managed to talk my way into several absorbing English courses with the likes of Irving Layton, Louis Dudek and Robertson Davies while working my way into the music theatre orchestra pit and discovering English mystery writers.

Along the way I found a wonderful woman to whom I’ve been married for 41 years and helped raise two daughters who have safely delivered to me two sons-in-law and three grandchildren. After conducting in Montreal, we moved to Toronto, Ruth began teaching and I began 28 years at Sheridan College, founding their internationally recognized Music Theatre School and eventually becoming the Dean of Arts there: 150 faculty, close to 3000 students and I lost my hearing. Careless, perhaps, but the reality that there is not much market for deaf baritones, struck home.

After a brief stint at George Brown College in Toronto, I called it quits, governed by some serious health challenges that, over time, have morphed into a mixed blessing. I wrote four mystery novels encouraged by a close friend, the late English mystery author, W. J, Burley of the Wycliffe series. One of the brightest mystery minds in Canada, Cheryl Freedman encouraged me and drove me to a cross-roads dilemma. Writing mysteries or painting Canadian landscapes. The oils won, but in the great tradition of the Canadian compromise, I sought to do both.

Life as a Reviewer of Canadian Mysteries:

Over the years my library has grown, not surprising given that I read close to 100 mysteries a year. A passion grew into a cause: Canadian mysteries are as good and in many cases, better than the famed British and American canon. Along with that, my belief that good mystery writing is good story-telling with mystery as the feature, led me to the Books editor of The Hamilton Spectator, and for the past 5 years, I’ve been writing reviews called, Canadian Mysteries by Don Graves. As many of you write for something other than just money, I do this as my pay-back to a genre that has given me pleasure, interest and the companionship of a good book for over 55 years. If I were to wear a tee shirt, it would read, Canadian Mysteries— why they are the best. Wordy, but I am not known for brevity.

Singing, conducting, writing, and painting are not as disparate as you might think. There is rhythm on the canvas, colour on a page and form across the board. The link is that you must tell a good story, take people somewhere they might not have been before, engage their interest and trigger their pursuit for more.

And now to the commercial:

• You can find my reviews on the Spectator website if you look hard enough (I usually email Cheryl when the reviews come out).
• You can check out my painting at www.art-in-canada.com/dongraves or visit the studio, Tiger Group in Hamilton or at Gallery 435, also in Hamilton.