September 18, 2025 — Thank you, Julie Berry, for curating and organizing a magical Colleening 2025 evening celebrating Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry in her home town of St. Thomas, Ontario.

Performing at the Elgin County Railway Museum’s Rolling Stock Gallery were fourteen wonderful readers: Joe Preston, Barb Hoskins, Peter Bloch-Hansen, Cynthia  Snyder, Mike Baker, Rose Gibson, John Allen, Sally Martyn, Kayla Berdan, Bruce Parker, Steve Peters, Julie Berry, Susan Wallace and James Stewart Reaney. Many of the poems they read were about St. Thomas where Colleen Thibaudeau lived for much of her childhood.

Thanks also to audio-visual technicians, Devon Church and Dawn Garton, who made sure Colleen’s words and images more than filled the cavernous Rolling Stock Gallery, home to locomotives from the early 20th century.

Bruce Parker, who read Thibaudeau’s poem “The Glass Cupboard,” recalls that “The train museum, as you can imagine, is an enormous, echo-ey venue, with natural reverberation for the speaking voices. I must admit, it was rather cool to read in front of 200 tons of locomotive.” 

Colleening 2025 is a celebration of
the centenary of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).