Like many adults, Pamela McColl counts the traditional holiday poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas as a favourite read from her childhood.
She has two special items from her father, who is now deceased.
"One of them is an engraved letter opener and the other one is a copy of this poem. It has gone everywhere with me, and it's quite treasured," she says.
A longtime North Shore resident, McColl once owned a chocolate shop in Dundarave, but has recently moved to Vancouver. She returned to publishing after a long hiatus, and her first book back in the business has garnered a bit of controversy.
The book, Twas the Night Before Christmas, edited by Santa Claus, (Grafton and Scratch Publishers), is a version of the classic poem with references to Santa smoking a pipe edited out. McColl has received both negative and positive feedback for the book.
She says her intention was to simply offer the public a different option.
Not long ago, McColl was involved in a smoke-free initiative that was part of a World Health Organization project, which included encouraging movie-makers to not show smoking in their films. Her work with the project and further research about the topic inspired McColl to look for a way to bring more attention to the issue of tobacco prevention. Studies have shown links between tobacco imagery and teenagers smoking, says McColl, noting that a large percentage of smokers get hooked when they are teenagers.
"We do a great job of teaching kids when they're younger not to smoke, but somehow a lot of them end up smoking," she says, adding youth get weened off their parents' message by pervasive cultural messaging.
This holiday season as parents and kids sit down to read the classic Christmas poem, McColl says she hopes she has at least planted a tiny seed of awareness about tobacco imagery kids are exposed to and the effects that imagery may produce.
