
Mrs. Nobody by Y. S. Lee, illustrated by Marie Lafrance
Alice and Mrs. Nobody love getting up to no good. While giving each other fashionable haircuts, belting nighttime duets, or scribbling magic-marker wall murals, the two friends are inseparable. Until the day they disagree on what to play next.
Mrs. Nobody wants Alice to play Puppy. But when Alice pushes back (she was Puppy last time!), she feels the wrath of Mrs. Nobody, who grows bigger and bigger and louder and louder before disappearing altogether.
Although Alice suffers a long, lonely night without the company of Mrs. Nobody, she finds some solace in the sound of her own voice. When Mrs. Nobody reappears the next day, Alice knows what she must say.
This debut picture-book by award-winning novelist and poet Y. S. Lee puts a surprising spin on the concept of setting boundaries — particularly with those closest to us. Readers will find themselves immersed in the fanciful world of Alice and Mrs. Nobody — brilliantly rendered by internationally acclaimed illustrator Marie Lafrance — while delighting in the twists of an imaginary friendship gone awry. (From Groundwood Books)
Saturday morning, East Pender Street was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. She lives in Kingston, Ont.

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CBC
29-05-2025
- CBC
Books by past CBC Poetry Prize winners and finalists being published in 2025
Being a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize can jumpstart your literary career. Need proof? Here are books that were written by former CBC Poetry Prize winners and finalists that are being published this year. The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until June 1, 2025 at 4:59 p.m. ET. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems. The submission will be judged as a whole and must be a maximum of 600 words (including titles). The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books. Compulsory Figures by John Barton The collection Compulsory Figures reflects on John Baron's childhood in Alberta, his coming of age as a gay man during the AIDS crisis and all the people and things that shape us. Through lyrical poetry, it also explores the depths of grief after the poet's loss of one of his sisters in 2015. Barton was the editor of The Malahat Review from 2004 to 2018. He is a three-time winner of the Archibald Lampman Award and his collection Lost Family: A Memoir was nominated for the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. He was the city of Victoria poet laureate from 2019 to 2022. Barton won second place of the CBC Poetry Prize in 2002 for In the House of the Present and Assymetries. The poems in No One Knows Us There shows two portraits of early womanhood. The first, a devoted granddaughter responding to needs in hospital hallways, the second, the same woman ten years older, looking at her younger self with compassion and hopes for healing. Jessica Bebenek is a queer interdisciplinary poet, bookmaker and educator living between Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and an off-grid shack on unceded Anishinaabeg territory. Bebenek's writing has been nominated for the Journey Prize, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2021 she was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry. Bebenek was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize. She was recently announced as a reader for the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize. In Born, a pregnant high school teacher is trapped in a classroom during a lockdown caused by a troubled student with a knife, while relying on her students for support as she unexpectedly goes into labour. The novel explores the complexities of the school system, motherhood and the student-teacher relationship. When you can read it: June 17, 2025. Heather Birrell is the author of the Gerald Lampert award-winning poetry collection Float and Scurry, and two story collections, Mad Hope and I know you are but what am I? She has also won the Journey Prize and been shortlisted for both the Western and National Magazine Awards. Her work has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. She lives in Toronto. In 2022, Birrell was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. The Longest Night by Lauren Carter In The Longest Night Ash Hayes is locked out of her family home in Minnesota on a cold December night. Looking for shelter, she heads to her neighbours whom she's never met. The next morning she discovers that their house is completely void of modern technology and all its windows are blocked. Ash will have to figure a way to alter her past in order to reconnect with her future. When you can read it: Sept. 1, 2025. Lauren Carter writes, teaches writing and mentors other writers. She is the author of four books of fiction, including This Has Nothing to Do with You, which won the 2020 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. She has also received the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Her short story Rhubarb won the Prairie Fire Fiction Award. Her debut novel, Swarm, was longlisted for Canada Reads 2014. She is based in Winnipeg. In 2017, Carter made the CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Lie Down Within the Night. It was her second time on a CBC Poetry Prize longlist. Before that, she'd made the 2013 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Migration (1851-1882). She was also longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2015 for River's Edge. Kingdom of the Clock by Daniel Cowper Kingdom of the Clock is a novel in verse that explores the lives of the inhabitants of a coastal city during a single day. The cast of characters include an aging stock promoter, an artist, an elderly chess player and a homeless man, among others. Each citizen facing different experiences throughout that same day. Daniel Cowper is based on Bowen Island, B.C. He studied medieval literature, philosophy and law in Vancouver, Manhattan and Toronto. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Arc, Vallum, Freefall, Prairie Fire and Contemporary Verse 2. His first chapbook The God of Doors was the co-winner of Frog Hollow Press' 2016 chapbook contest. Cowper longlisted for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize for Earth on the Ocean's Back. SCAR/CITY by Daniela Elza The poems in SCAR/CITY are inspired by the tireless work in communities to protect and grow homes that are affordable and provide security of tenure. They interrogate a system that has allowed homes to be mined for profit. When you can read it: July 22, 2025. Daniela Elza is a Vancouver-based poet. Her previous collections are the broken boat and slow erosions. In 2024, she received the Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. Her debut prose collection Is This an Illness or an Accident? is also be published in 2025. Elza was on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for scar/city I. Is This an Illness or an Accident? by Daniela Elza Is This an Illness or an Accident? is a memoir inspired by having to answer the question "But where are you really from?" Elza explores the ideas of belonging, identity and the question of home. It also incorporates the concept of the world citizen, pushing back against the rise of nationalism. Daniela Elza is a Vancouver-based poet. Her previous collections are the broken boat and slow erosions. In 2024, she received the Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. Her poetry collection SCAR/CITY is also be published in 2025. Elza was on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for scar/city I. Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor Shadow Price borrows its title from the finance term — "the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists." It's a poetry collection that explores what holds value in a capitalistic world. Farah Ghafoor is a poet whose work has appeared in The Walrus, Prism International, Room, Ninth Letter and Hobart. Her poems have been taught at Iowa State University and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She won the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry. Born in New York and raised in New Brunswick and Ontario, she currently works as a financial analyst in Toronto. Ghafoor was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2022. Keener Sounds: A Suite by Roger Greenwald The poet, when young, listened to a violinist practicing and wondered: "Could words as well be made to say the wordless?" Keener Sounds: A Suite is a sequence of contemporary sonnets in which music, as both subject and inspiration, accompanies explorations of love, grief, time and memory. Greenwald attended The City College of New York and the Poetry Project workshop at St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery, then completed graduate degrees at the University of Toronto. He has published three earlier books of poems: Connecting Flight, Slow Mountain Train and The Half-Life. He won the 2018 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Award from Exile Magazine. Greenwald won the CBC Poetry Prize in 1994 and First Prize in the CBC Literary Award for Travel Literature in 2003. Beaver Hills Forever by Conor Kerr Beaver Hills Forever is a genre-bending novella with poetic verses that looks at the intertwined lives of four characters — each one of them representing one of the paths available to Metis people on the Prairies. They all share their inner dreams, hardships and even their delusions of grandeur. When you can read it: Sept. 9, 2025. Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who has lived in a number of prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton and teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the poetry collection Old Gods and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the ReLit award the same year. His most recent book Prairie Edge was shortlisted both for the 2024 Giller Prize and for the 2024 Atwood Gibson fiction prize. Best Canadian series 2025 edited by Anita Lahey The Best Canadian anthologies are a yearly endeavour shepherded by series editor Anita Lahey. Every year, a featured guest editor is selected for each of the three categories: stories, essays and poetry. In 2025, the guest editor for fiction was Steven W. Beattie, Emily Urquhart edited the nonfiction category and Aislinn Hunter served as the editor of the poetry collection. Anita Lahey is an Ottawa writer. Her books include Spinning Side Kick, Out to Dry in Cape Breton, The Mystery Shopping Cart and The Last Goldfish, which was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. She has been the series editor of the Best Canadian yearly anthologies since 2018. Lahey was on the CBC Poetry Prize longlists in 2009 for Men and in 2010 for The Foe. i cut my tongue on a broken country by Kyo Lee Through the poet's reflections on growing up queer and Korean Canadian, i cut my tongue on a broken country poignantly details her coming-of-age that's marked with beauty, pain and a quest for love. Kyo Lee is a queer high school student from Waterloo, Ont. Her work is featured in PRISM International, Nimrod, The Forge Literary Magazine and This Magazine, among others. Lee is the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize, for her poem lotus flower blooming into breasts, and the youngest finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Alice loves to play and get up to no good with her friend Mrs. Nobody. However, after Alice pushes back on her idea because she didn't want to play a game they'd already played, Mrs. Nobody disappears. Alice has to spend a lonely night without her friend and figure out what to say when Mrs. Nobody reappears the next day. Mrs. Nobody is for ages 3-6. Y. S. Lee's fiction includes the YA mystery series The Agency, which was translated into six languages. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Event, Room, Rattle and the Literary Review of Canada. Her poem Saturday morning, East Pender Street was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. She lives in Kingston, Ont. Lee was a finalist for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her piece Tek Tek. Elegy for Opportunity by Natalie Lim Natalie Lim is a Chinese-Canadian poet based in Vancouver. Her work has been featured in Arc Poetry Magazine and Best Canadian Poetry 2020, among others. She is the author of the chapbook arrhythmia and has won the Room magazine's 2020 Emerging Writer Award. Cut Side Down by Jessi MacEachern Cut Side Down is a collection of poems that explores the themes of autobiography, desire, invention, landscape and memory. The poems also feature the important places of the Jessi MacEachern's life — P.E.I. and Montreal. The poems touch on the fantasy genre for even better storytelling. MacEachern is a poet from P.E.I., who now lives in Montreal where she teaches English literature. Her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada. Her previous poetry collection was A Number of Stunning Attacks. MacEachern was on the longlist for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. The Northern by Jacob McArthur Mooney In the summer of 1952, three men are hired by an upstart Mormon baseball card company in Western Ontario. Their two weeks in the Northern League will have them living in an ever-growing chaos. The Northern depicts a world shaped by the trauma of World War II and those left behind by it. The book is a character study on grief, adolescence, and family. Jacob McArthur Mooney's previous collections have been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award in Poetry and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Originally from Nova Scotia, he now lives in Toronto. His fourth book was titled Frank's Wing. Mooney was on the longlist for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2014 for a poetry collection titled Bindled Back: Three Travel Poems. From a lovelorn journalist entering a diabolical pact to a tourist attempting to stay sober, Dead Writers is a collection of short stories exploring what the ever-changing concept of "bargain" means, and the heavy price that comes with corrupting your soul. Regina-raised Cassidy McFadzean is a past finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. Her previous works include the poetry books Drolleries, Crying Dress and Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also wrote a crown of sonnets called Third State of Being. She currently lives in Toronto. McFadzean was a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013. We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek In We, the Kindling, three women who, as children, survived the horrors of war in Uganda continue to experience the trauma of their past, even when they've started families of their own. Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, a poet, fiction writer and scholar born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, currently lives in Kingston, Ont. Her first collection of poetry, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Lushei Prize for African Poetry. Her second poetry collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. We, the Kindling is her debut novel. Planet Earth: Stories by Nicholas Ruddock Planet Earth is a collection of short stories and novellas that explores themes of love and passion with a specific awareness of humans' carelessness in burning up the world in fresh and unexpected ways. The provocative and contemplative stories are humorous, quick-witted, paradoxically positive with a fondness for humans and their failings. When you can read it: Nov. 4, 2025. Nicholas Ruddock is a physician and writer who has worked in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Yukon and Ontario. He has had novels, short stories, poetry published since 2002 in Canada, U.K., Ireland and Germany. He is the author of the 2021 novel Last Hummingbird of West Chile. Ruddock has been a finalist for each of the CBC Literary Prizes. He made the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Storm as well as the 2016 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Hummingbirds. Most recently, Ruddock was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize for his story Marriage. Goalie by Ben von Jagow From rookie to retirement, the collection of poems in Goalie vividly captures the highs, lows and everything in-between of a hockey career — exploring the glorious moments of ambitious pursuit and the vulnerable times of facing set-backs.


CBC
23-05-2025
- CBC
3 'must-read' poetry book picks from the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize jurors
Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Paul Vermeersch and Britta B. will judge the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize. The jury selects the shortlist and winner of the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize. A panel of established writers and editors from across Canada review the submissions and will determine the longlist from all the submissions. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books. The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until June 1, 2025 at 4:59 p.m. ET. We asked each juror to recommend a book they think poets should read before submitting to the CBC Poetry Prize. A Calendar of Reckoning takes a look back at youth in contrast with the heavy subject matter of one's own mortality. Although Margoshes writes about poets and poetry, the mainly lyrical poems focus on family, death and the experience of facing the death of our parents. The collection also explores the struggle of having to reconcile the reader's past and present. Dave Margoshes writes short and long fiction and poetry on a farm west of Saskatoon. He has published several collections of short stories, including Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, which was book of the year at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards and a ReLit Award finalist, and A Book of Great Worth which was named one of Amazon's top hundred books for 2012. He has appeared six times in Best Canadian Stories and been a Journey Prize finalist for his book The Wisdom of Solomon. Carol Rose GoldenEagle is a Cree and Dene writer, poet, playwright and musician. She was named the Saskatchewan Poet Laureate from 2021-2023. GoldenEagle's previous books include the novels Bearskin Diary, Bone Black and The Narrows of Fear, and the poetry collection Hiraeth. GoldenEagle also writes children's books including Mother Earth: My Favourite Artist as well as an upcoming collection of poetry, Singing to the Moon, that will be released later this year. Fugue with Bedbug by Anne-Marie Turza, recommended by Paul Vermeersch In her second poetry collection Fugue with Bedbug, Anne-Marie Turza uses the fugue form to weave a series of poems about time and mortality. It is part musical reference, part portraiture, part essay and a musical score. Turza is a poet and author who lives on Vancouver Island. Her other poetry collection, The Quiet, was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial and Bronwen Wallace awards. Paul Vermeersch is a poet, artist and editor from Toronto. He currently teaches at Sheridan College. Vermeersch holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph for which he received the Governor General's Gold Medal. His other poetry collections include The Reinvention of the Human Hand, Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy and Shared Universe. His eighth collection of poetry NMLCT will be published in September 2025. Nomenclature by Dionne Brand collects eight volumes of the celebrated poet and author's work that were originally published between 1982 and 2010. With a critical introduction by the literary scholar and theorist Christina Sharpe, the book features a new long poem, the titular Nomenclature for the Time Being, which is a thoughtful and wide-ranging reflection on location, consciousness, time and the current state of the world. Brand is an award-winning poet and novelist from Toronto. She won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Trillium Book Award for her 1997 collection Land to Light On. Her collection thirsty won the 2003 Pat Lowther Award. In 2009, she served as the poet laureate of Toronto. Her novel What We All Long For won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2006. She won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for Ossuaries and in 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. Britta Badour, better known as Britta B., is an artist, public speaker and poet living in Toronto. She is the recipient of the 2021 Breakthrough Artist Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation. She was named one of CBC Books ' 2023 writers to watch. Badour was among the .


Winnipeg Free Press
17-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Alice's Wonderland
Ageless Gardens is a popular documentary series that travels to gardens across Canada and introduces viewers to inspiring people who share the stories of their gardens. Filmed by Gemini Award-winning director and cinematographer Ian Toews, the series is produced by Toews and Mark Bradley, who collaborate through 291 Film Company in association with VisionTV and ZoomerMedia Limited. The Season 5 première started on May 5. The May 19 episode, Gardening for All Seasons, features Leanne Dowd, a Neepawa gardener whose garden is a story of rediscovery and transformation. The beginning of the episode takes place in April when plants are beginning to reawaken. Every gardener can relate to the joy of discovering new growth emerging from the ground in spring, but for Dowd, each new discovery brings her closer to learning more about the vast collection of plants that were planted by the garden's previous owners, Alice and Bill Moger. Ageless Gardens photo Neepawa gardener Leanne Dowd is featured in Ageless Gardens Season 5 in the episode Gardening for All Seasons. It airs May 19 on Vision TV. Alice died at the age of 87 in 2018, two years after her husband Bill. They were well-known for hybridizing lilies, delphiniums, daylilies and irises. Their once beautiful garden, however, had fallen into neglect in their later years. Dowd purchased the one-hectare property in spring of 2020. Since then, she has painstakingly uncovered and nurtured hundreds of lilies, peonies, roses, clematis and delphinium that were buried beneath layers of overgrown grape vines, raspberry canes, chest-high weedy growth and a thick carpet of fallen leaves from the many trees on the property. 'It was probably five years before Alice passed away that anything was last done with the garden,' says Dowd. 'By the time I bought the property, the garden had been sitting untended for at least seven years.' But the garden's past was so significant that Dowd set about immediately to uncover its treasures. 'The first two years, I would spend hours tiptoeing around the garden because I knew there could be plants beneath the fallen debris. I carried a fistful of orange flags and every time I came across even just a hint of a plant, I would mark it with a flag. Within months, the garden was an absolute sea of fluttering orange flags. It drove my family crazy because they had no idea where to walk on the property.' That first year in the garden was also an enormous task. Ageless Gardens photo Leanne Dowd identifies a treasure trove of hidden and rare plants left by her garden's previous owner, Alice Moger. 'Alice wanted something of everything and what resulted was a property that was jam-packed with plants,' says Dowd. 'So many old, half-dead trees had to be removed. There were mountains of debris — fallen branches — that had to be removed and rampant growth that had been left unchecked. Every bed needed to be re-dug and every plant had to be transplanted. 'Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) was one of the plants that suddenly showed up and at first I had no idea what it was. It was just a tiny little thread of a thing. I lifted it out of its unfortunate location and planted it in a different spot and last year it just exploded with growth. That has happened so many times after plants were uncovered and exposed to more sunlight.' In 2023, while on a walkabout during the first filming of the episode which features Dowd, director Toews was intrigued by Northern Nodding Trillium, the most northerly occurring trillium in North America. 'It popped up a couple of years ago and is one of the really special plants that Alice left behind,' says Dowd. Dowd never doubted that the plants would survive and thrive. 'The garden took care of itself,' she says. The organic material that fell on the beds over the years had been left undisturbed and allowed to slowly decompose and feed and enrich the soil. 'But it's also a testament to the bone-cold-hardiness and disease resistance of Alice's plants,' says Dowd. Leanne Dowd photo The door to Alice's Wonderland in Neepawa leads the visitor into a garden full of wonder and mystery. The May 19 episode of Ageless Gardens touches on the enormity of the task of plant identification. There are, for example, hundreds of unnamed lilies and peonies, many of which Alice planted from seed decades ago. While Dowd is an experienced and knowledgeable gardener as well as a lily hybridizer and the author of Canadian Lily Hybridizers and Their Lilies (Pegasus Publications, 2023), identifying the treasure trove of rare plants left by her garden's previous owner has taken many hours of careful research and networking with horticultural experts in Manitoba and across Canada, including the Canadian Rose Society and the Canadian Peony Society. Dowd has applied for historical status for the vast collection of Canadian-bred lilies that grow in her garden. 'Heritage status would ensure their protection once I am gone,' says Dowd. 'Unless we keep a dialogue going about the history of horticulture in Canada, the push for discovery as well as preservation of the plants introduced by hybridizers, past and present will fade away.' If the application is successful, the garden would be open to the public and allow visitors a chance to see the extraordinary plant collection. Dowd is also attempting to register some of the Martagon lilies hybridized by Alice Moger with the Royal Horticultural Society Lily Group. Leanne Dowd photo This one-hectare Neepawa garden features a stunning collection of hundreds of lilies, peonies, roses, clematis, delphinium and more. The garden contains plants from some of Canada's best-known plant breeders — Frank Leith Skinner, A.J. (Bert) Porter and Isabella Preston. The vast collection of roses holds many fascinating stories. One example is the Dr. Merkeley rose, an ultra hardy (Zone 2B) double pink rose which a soldier brought home to Canada after the First World War. He gave a cutting from the rose to Dr. H.J. Merkeley, a dentist in Manitoba, who gave it to Frank Skinner who had a nursery on his Dropmore homestead. Skinner named the rose after Dr. Merkeley. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Dowd cannot resist backstories. 'It's the backstory that intrigues me as much as the plant itself,' she says. She is not only maintaining the numerous plants that Alice originally planted, but she also adds new plant acquisitions every year. 'I have an order of roses coming from Cornhill Nursery in New Brunswick. I add eight to 10 new roses a year,' she says. Dowd has named her garden Alice's Wonderland. The door to Alice's Wonderland leads visitors into a garden full of wonder and mystery. Be sure to watch the episode of Ageless Gardens that airs on May 19 on VisionTV at 8 p.m. The episode, Gardening for All Seasons, also travels to a protected woodland and public-cultivated garden on Vancouver Island, as well as to a beautiful private garden in Waterloo, Ont. The photography is breathtaking and the original score uplifting. The entire series affirms all the reasons why we garden — therapeutic benefits, a sense of community, and above all, a love of plants. For the series trailer and exclusive webisodes, visit colleenizacharias@ Leanne Dowd photo The fascinating story behind the origin of the Dr. Merkeley rose dates back to the First World War and involves a soldier, a Manitoba dentist and legendary breeder Frank Skinner. For advice, ideas and tips to keep your outdoor and indoor plants growing, sign up to have Winnipeg Gardener, a free monthly newsletter I write for the Winnipeg Free Press, at Colleen ZachariasGardening columnist Colleen Zacharias writes about many aspects of gardening including trends, plant recommendations, and how-to information that is uniquely relevant to Prairie gardeners. She has written a column for the Free Press since 2010 and pens the monthly newsletter Winnipeg Gardener. Read more about Colleen. Every piece of reporting Colleen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.