Sue Kenney's My Camino [Paperback]

I was immediately struck by the book design, even before getting into the text. Simple, uncluttered, but different - a good complement to the storyline.

There is a saying that everyone walks their own Camino. That is true, but Sue Kenney's My Camino brings out the common threads we all share: the past experiences that influence our walk; the separation of friends and family, the physical demands of this five hundred mile journey and finally; the changes it brings to our inner selves.

The book begins interestingly with a competitive rowing scene: eight women rowing across Lake Ontario: "the set cadence acts like a mantra to free the mind to focus on the body." This phrase made me instantly think of walking across the meseta. "in a moment of transformation the boat and crew's 1500 pounds propel forward with force and grace." The rowing results in a gold medal in the World Masters Rowing Championship in Montreal and provides mental resources to draw on for the challenge of the Camino.

Then comes Kenney's background: the despair of having a younger sister with terminal cancer, the typical downsizing job loss - being called to a meeting and handed a box to pack your office belongings, age over forty, teenaged daughters, divorce. The rowing allowed her to put her anger at cancer into the water.

The demands of job and family result in a lifetime of giving and little time for herself. Sue Kenney looks at the Camino as an opportunity to face her fears and love herself.

She started her trip in early November, so had a very different experience than those walking in the popular months of May through September. Many refugios were closed. Winter weather was setting in and pilgrim numbers had dwindled to the very few. Those who have walked or are contemplating walking off season will find much to relate to in the thread of the physical journey that makes up most of this book. They can appreciate the themes of pain, friendship, rain, mud, distance and darkness, closed refugios. During a highpoint of the day, a hot shower, Kenney talks about "the simple pleasures of being a pilgrim."

During this off season time the refugio experience was quite different than it would have been a few weeks earlier. Sometimes a refugio would be staffed by caring hospitaleros, but frequently refugios were not staffed and just a basic room with the companionship of a few other pilgrims. The pilgrim experience during this season is usually a more intimate one with the fewer numbers of travelers. Frequently they would share meals in the refugio kitchens.

One of her chapters, "The Honor of Being a Pilgrim", talks about the freely given support one gets from the local people who honor the effort of those on pilgrimage. She talks about an old women caught her attention from across a square, made the sign of the cross and bowed her head with respect.

One thing that is very clear in this book is Sue Kenney's openness with others on the Camino and with her readers.. She connects with people even though her Spanish is very limited. Her search for self love is not my search and though she finds herself on the pilgrimage, those parts of the story don't hold my interest as much as the tale of the walk itself. Contacts with home happen infrequently on the Camino, and I do relate to the rejuvenation drawn as she gets a phone call through to her daughters.

I think Sue Kenney looks at this as an inspirational self help story, but it is also a fine adventure tale and a worthy addition to the modern pilgrim accounts of the Camino.

I have read many books about the Camino. Some are an endless diatribe of whining and complaining. Not so with this lovely book. As a matter of fact, this is one of my favorite books on the subject. Sue Kenney has a wonderful style to her writing that pulls you in, and before you know it you are walking the Camino vicariously through her eyes.
I have been wanting to walk the Camino for over 10 years. Being a petite woman (and not bilingual), I am not very comfortable with the thought of walking it alone, however, this book makes me consider the possibility. I've read her second book and seen her documentary. Both are quite insightful and enjoyable as well.

Sue Kenney's store in Washago, Ontario, in south Muskoka, called The Whistle Stop, felt as though it was about as far from Holywood North as Toronto is from California. Sue Kenney is making that journey the way she made her way along the Camino -- the hiking trail in Spain where apostles were buried and many people have deep spiritual experiences. She had faith she would complete that hourney. She also had chutzpah.

That word seems wrong for a Catholic Canadian woman whose story is spiritualy, but there is something about Sue Kenney's drive that is so remarkable it needs a word like chutzpah.

When Sue was downsized by surprise from a high powered corporate job, escorted out the door by Human Resources personnel, like many people she decided to go for a walk, to try to figure out what to do with her life. Unlike most people, she decided to go for a long walk: the two week hike in Spain known as The Camino.

That takes a combination of nerve and confidence -- or, in a word, chutzpah.

when she returned from her walk and discovered people liked her stories, she got herself booked by the corporations she used to do business with in her old life. Marketing story-telling to corporate C.E.O.s takes more than skill and experience. It takes moxie -- or chutzpah.

There is much more to Sue Kenney than chutuzpah, of course. Her stories from the Camiono are simple but profound and she believes deeply they are not just her stories but should be shared.

"Everybody working in the big corporations said they longed for a more spiritual life," she says. "They surprised me by showing they had a lot of respect for the simple life, even though their own lives are so complex."

First she made a c.d. to share her stories with other people and then she turned the c.d. into a book, and now now she is turning the book and c.d. into a movie. First, she's making a documentary.

Her c.d. sold a thousand copies in its first year. "Independent record producers say they do well to sell two hundred in a year and a thousand is fantastic, I've learned," she said.

She took the c.d. to Word On The Street, in Toronto, and found a publisher in White Knight Publications of Toronto. "Everybody said it would take two years to find a publisher," she said. "I walked up one side of Queen Street West in the morning and down the other side in the afternoon, at Word In The Street, and I had three publishers interested by the end of the day. I talked to everybody who would listen to me and gave them my c.d."

She told her publisher she wanted to have the book out in a year. He told her he would need the manuscript in two months. She said, "What's a manuscript?"

Then she did the math and decided all she would have to do was write a thousand words a day for two months and that would still give her a couple of days to relax. The publisher was amazed when she met her deadline.

The editing process did not appeal to her but by serendipity she met a writing partner she could work with at a New Year's party. Sue Kenney and Bruce Pirrie worked so well together, they entered the Muskoka Novel Marathon as partners, to create a book length work of fiction in just three days.

Pirrie is a screenwriter and was the lead writer for The Red Green Show on CBC TV.

"I was living in Washago and running workshops at The Fern Resort, with my daughter, Tara, looking after the store, so running up to Huntsville for the novel marathon was the perfect sort of weekend for me," she says.

He accompanied Sue on her second walk on the Camino. He also gathered a group of friends from the acting community for a reading of her screenplay at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Kathryn Greenwood, best known for her work on Whose Line Is It, Anyway, played the part of Sue. Peter Oldring, who was in The Widowmaker, with Harrison Ford, played the love interest. Alvar D'Antonio, who was in Bonnano: A Godfather's Story, played the romantically aggressive Dino.

The screenplay focuses on the relationships between the characters described in the book, including some romance.

"I've got a lock on the role of the hostel owner. That's a deal-breaker," he said at the reading. "I think this project is a natural for an international co-production as it has characters from different countries, especially in Europe, where the Camino is enormously popular."

A reading from the screenplay with Toronto actors from Second City, some with movie credits to their names, was a feature of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005. At the event, held at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, she announced she would like the film to premiere at the T.I.F.F. in 2006.

That action was captured on video by Pasha Patriki, the cameraman she is taking on her third trip to the Camino, this fall. She is leading four woemn on the trek, including one diagnosed with terminal cancer, who has her doctor's approval to make this spiritual journey.

When she returns, she will go to Brazil, where she has been invited to give a talk about her book.

"In Brazil, they're Camino crazy," she says. "Ten percent of Camino walkers are Brazillians. A book about the Camino by a Brazillian, called The Pilgrimmage, sold 50 million copies. I'm getting My Camino translated into Spanish and Portugese."

She has come a long way quickly, since being downsized from the corporate world. Sue Kenney has already made the journey from Muskoka to Hollywood North. The next stop could be Hollywood, California, but she will go the long way, via Brazil and another trek across the Camino.

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