Robert Fisher
Staff Reporter
BARRY’S BAY – Fans of author Carley Fortune have noticed some new benches in Barry’s Bay dedicated to characters from two of her books. Fortune posted photos of the benches to her Instagram profile which were quickly shared on other social media.
Every Summer After, Fortune’s first novel and her latest book, One Golden Summer are both based in Barry’s Bay. One bench is at the waterfront where characters Percy and Sam spent a lot of time talking. The other is outside the railway station and dedicated to characters Charlie and Alice from Fortune’s latest book.
In Every Summer After, “there is a bench overlooking the municipal dock and the lake where, when they’re teenagers and when they’re adults, they go there and have their ice cream,” and talk. Fortune said she was visiting Barry’s Bay a couple years ago; her parents still live in the town, and saw some new benches along the waterfront, “and I was like, ‘Oh, this is the exact spot where Percy and Sam would have been.’ She thought a bench dedicated to the characters would be fun and learned of the bench program the township offered.
She started talking with Hannah Gutoskie from the township about the possibility of a bench at Kamaniskeg Lake about the same time her latest book was released. She asked readers what a bench for Percy and Sam should say via her social media profiles and readers responded asking, ‘what about Charlie and Alice,” so she had a second bench created for the characters in her new book. The second bench is at the railway station because a scene in the book takes place there.
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