Priests in the Attic: in My Father's House

"Little Elaine Sawchuk, a minister's daughter who grew up in the north end of Winnipeg with a need for attention and a love for singing, could see only the magic in show business. She pursued it after becoming an X-ray technician, she pursued it after becoming a wife and a mother, but as Elaine Steele, one of the best supper club singers in Canada, ... she had to pay a high price for the little bit of glamour and those moments of applause..." --Canadian Weekly, Toronto Star, May 8-14, 1965 Priests in the Attic, cast in Toronto during the tumultuous `60s through late`70s is a confessional story of lost faith, redemption and hope. This memoir is written through the power of reverie, a unique concept of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard --the driving force behind this work. In The Poetics of Reverie, Bachelard describes his use of reverie to unearth emotional truth. All of us possess our own emotional truth and thus, each of us has a unique story to tell --but who am I, that anyone should be interested in my story? Let my book tell you: "I'm everyone who has ever taken a breath and marveled at the wonder and miracle of life. I'm everyone who has discovered their own finitude and shuddered at the concept of one day, being no more. I'm everyone who has suffered the pain of loss, the torment of regret, the desolation of loneliness, misgivings of the past and a fear of the future. I'm everyone who, through an anguished cry for help, receives the possibility of a new beginning and a miracle of new life through God's immeasurable grace.... Who am I? I am one with you --and all of us have a story to tell. This is mine."