Interview with True North Country Comics Podcast

I recently did a Skype interview with the fantastic John Swinimer, host of the True North Country Comics Podcast. John and I covered a range of subjects, including my recent comics work (WOLF'S HEAD!) as well as the documentary film I'm a participant in (I AM STILL YOUR CHILD). We also talked about mental health and mental illness in general and how my mom struggled with schizophrenia, a pretty vile disease.

I love talking comics and creativity and this interview has quite a bit about that, too! There is something about storytelling, and comic book storytelling in particular, that I find exciting. I think the visual language of comics is endlessly fascinating, something I hope that I bring to my own work, not to mention how comics unites words and illustrations in a really neat way.

John was a great host and hopefully I did a good job as a guest. Give it a listen, eh? The MP3 for the podcast can be found at the links above or directly at https://truenorthcountrycomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Von-Allan-Jan-2019.mp3

CBC Montreal interview with Von Allan on Homerun (September 27, 2018)

Just prior to the September 27, 2018 screening of the documentary film I AM STILL YOUR CHILD in Montreal as part of the 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture (photos from the event are here), I scampered over to CBC Montreal to do an interview with Sue Smith on the drive home show "Homerun." And thanks to the CBC's Loreen Pindera, I now have an audio copy of the interview I can share!

You can listen to the interview by clicking here or by clicking play on the old timey audio player below. In addition, a lightly edited transcript is provided below.

Lightly Edited Transcript

Sue Smith: You know, we often talk about getting resources for people struggling with a mental illness. But what we don’t hear about are the children who act as caregivers for their own parents who live with a mental illness. Montreal filmmaker Megan Durnford saw this as a problem. So she made a documentary featuring three people who grew up as child caregivers.

Audio excerpt from the documentary film “I Am Still Your Child”: It can be a lot with mom and school, but like, thankfully she’s not super needy right now and I help her when I’m able to. You know, if something happened with her, I don’t care about my essay. Like, I’m going to do whatever she needs me to do because her mental health is more important than my grade for this class.

Sue Smith: That’s the voice of Jessie Bokser, one of three people featured in the documentary, “I Am Still Your Child.” Von Allan is also in the film. Von’s mother struggled with schizophrenia. She died more than 20 years ago. And Von joins me in the studio. Thanks for coming in, Von.

Von Allan: Oh, you’re very welcome. Hi.

Sue Smith: Hi. So I just came from the film. I’ve just finished watching it. It’s pretty emotional.

Von Allan: Yeah.

Sue Smith: So tell me a little bit about your story. What was it like growing up with a mother with schizophrenia?

Von Allan: It was tough. My mom had problems even before I was born, I’ve subsequently found out. So she was ‘mom’ when I was a little kid. And it was only as I got older, probably around nine, maybe even ten, that her problems — I think her ability to hide her problems from me diminished. And I was an only child. It was just me and my mom. And then her ability to want to talk to me more about it — to be more open about it — also increased.

But at the same time, her situation was getting tougher. She was having nervous breakdowns and [would be] hospitalized for a while. And so she would sometimes disappear for a few days, a few weeks. And then she’d be back and she’d be ‘mom.’ In hindsight, it was a more disruptive upbringing. At the time, I knew we were poor. I knew we were struggling. I didn’t know that things were, quote unquote, ‘wrong’ with my mom, until I became an early teenager. And I sort of realized ‘she’s not really like other moms.’ She’s smart. She’s capable. And then sometimes she’s not. So it was a unique upbringing. And there wasn’t anybody to talk to about it either.

Sue Smith: No. And you have this line that you say in the film that just came back to me as something like poverty, bankruptcy, schizophrenia, all three together. That was rough. I mean, that’s rough.

Von Allan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I’ve particularly as an adult, I get sometimes stunned by the courage it must have taken my mom to be trying to raise a kid, having these issues, and then — because we declared bankruptcy around when I was 12 or 13 and then we were on welfare in Ontario — she was trying to navigate a somewhat dysfunctional social service system then. And in many ways, it’s gotten much worse now. And I don’t know how she did it. And she did it without an ombudsman or an advocate. I was too young. There wasn’t anybody else. My mom and dad split when I was very, very young.

Sue Smith: Although you talk about the spaghetti incident in the film as a time when you did call your dad in. So it does seem like maybe once in a while he was able to help you.

Von Allan: Yeah, I think I was lucky for some of that stuff is my dad was in my life. I wasn’t living with him, but he was in my life. And through sort of the separation agreement, I would see him fairly regularly. So he was somebody there that I could, when things got really bad, between when my mom was hospitalized, I could stay with. So I wasn’t being, you know, put into foster care.

Sue Smith: Well, that’s what I was going to say. It’s kind of remarkable that your mother was able to keep you.

Von Allan: And I really wonder about that. Again, it’s one of those things where, as a kid, I have memories of social workers coming into our house and our house was pretty crappy. Our apartment was pretty crappy. And I know I was embarrassed by it a lot. But these — strangers from my point of view — would come in and sort of evaluate. And I have no idea to this day; was it close that somebody was like, “this kid should be somewhere else?” Or was it not? I have no idea. It’s those things that — particularly when you’re a little kid or even just a kid — you don’t have the context unless somebody really sits you down and talks to you about it. And for the most part… I mean, my mom was pretty open about some of what she was going through, again, into my teen years. But things like that, I had no idea.

Sue Smith: Now, you’re a graphic artist and you wrote a book about it, which is featured in the film, “the road to god knows…”. How did that or did that help you sort of somehow process some of this stuff? Because this is like really tough stuff for a nine-year-old, a 12-year-old. Even as an adult, it must be hard to process.

Von Allan: Yeah, well, it was certainly tough to kind of revisit it. But in a way, particularly after my mom died and I sort of set out on drawing and what have you, I knew for was my first book — particularly for a first story — I wanted to do something that was really personal to me. And at that time, looking around, there wasn’t anything else like that out there. So I thought this might be the kind of story that’s worth telling.

It’s fictionalized. So the main character is a girl named Marie, not me. So it’s sort of a fictionalized biography or autobiography, but that allowed me to play with a bit of time and compress certain events. But yeah, for the most part, all of it is true, except for me fictionalizing some of my friends a little bit.

Sue Smith: Yeah, of course. That’s why they’re still your friends, probably. So one of the things that’s really brought up a few times in the film is how when you have a parent who struggles with mental health issues, that affects your own mental health as a child. How has that affected your own mental health or even just worrying about your own mental health?

Von Allan: Yeah, I think worrying. I’ve probably been lucky, and it’s one of those things especially with schizophrenia, as more data comes out, it seems to be more of a genetic disease than anything else. So I remember, particularly in my 20s, kind of wondering, because my recollections of my mom were lots of moments; like days, weeks, months of lucidity, and then ups and downs, really just bumpy and unpredictable. So very, very strange.

And also her sense of reality, particularly with that disease, was very, very tough. Certainly things I knew she told me didn’t happen, but then there were other allegations, particularly sexual abuse and stuff, that may have happened and may not have happened. It’s impossible to disentangle. And in that case, everybody is dead. So there’s just no way to know. And so for myself, particularly at that time, it was tough and I worried a bit about it.

But as you get older and you kind of navigate your own life and what have you, it’s okay. So certainly there are… Because with my mom, there’s a difference between being unhappy — being discouraged by events — and being devastated by them. And I have memories of my mom not being able to get out of bed. Like she just… I’d get up to go to school, get my own breakfast, off I go, come home, and she’d still be in bed. And it’s just there were… she had anxiety issues on top of everything else. And then when you throw in depression, she also had migraines. And then I think it’s important to say, too, is that her physical health — particularly into her 40s, and she died at 48; she died very young — that also started to play an increasing role in all of the difficulties. So she’s not only dealing with a mental illness and trying to navigate a social system and get the help that she needs. And she was able to do some of that. But then her nutrition was awful. She gained a lot of weight. I have vivid memories of… She lost teeth. So, she couldn’t smile properly anymore. So it was just… you throw all of this stuff together and it sort of means that your sense of dignity — your sense of self-esteem — really diminishes. And you’re getting hit from what you’re struggling with, and then you’re getting hit from an outside, all these other events that are happening around you, and particularly poverty. It’s really tough.

Sue Smith: I mean, all these things that you’re talking about — poverty, mental illness, and the kind of, you know, letting yourself go, fearing your own mental illness — these are all really taboo subjects. And you are speaking about them super openly. Why is it important? Why did you decide to do this? What do you want people to know?

Von Allan: I think the bottom line is that a mental illness — any mental illness — is just that. It’s an illness. It’s a disease. It’s like cancer. And the people who have it, it’s not because they screwed up. It’s not that they’ve made personal decisions and they haven’t taken personal responsibility for their actions. It’s dumb luck. And it’s bad luck. And I think the worst thing that people can do is be scared of it. And in a way, because of the way I grew up…

Sue Smith: But it is scary.

Von Allan: It is scary, but a lot of things are scary. A lot of diseases, a lot of things that go wrong with our bodies, in just the physical sense, can be really scary, can be really difficult. But it didn’t mean my mom was any less loving. It didn’t mean she was any less compassionate or empathic or anything. She was, in her own way, a remarkable human being. And I still find to this day the thing I find most unfair about it is she died when I was 20. So I never got to know her as an adult. I came to art late. She never saw me draw. I’ve been married for 20 years. She never met my wife. This stuff is… All of these things are the costs that any illness, but mental illness, can extract on people, on human beings, on families. And it’s tough. And it’s not fair.

The big reason to get involved in the film and do the graphic novel is to help share her story. And to tell people, ‘yeah, there are scary moments.’ I’d be lying if my mom didn’t scare me at times. There were really terrifying things. The spaghetti incident is one, you know. She basically lost it and went crazy for a little while. And I don’t use that word lightly, but she scared the crap out of me when I was about 11 years old. And started smashing things and what have you. But that was a very small microcosm of what her entire situation was. And honestly, when you go through this, it gets less scary. So the first nervous breakdown, very scary. You know, the first episodes that she had — schizophrenic episodes — was very scary. The fifth, the sixth, less scary. It just is. You get more experienced with it. And at the same time, I think the lucky thing for me as a kid, I was getting older. So it got easier.

Sue Smith: It’s just a really compelling story, Von. And you tell it in a wonderful way here in person, but also in the film. Thank you so much for coming in.

Von Allan: You’re very welcome.

Sue Smith: My guest is Von Allan. He’s one of three people featured in the documentary “I Am Still Your Child.” There’s a free screening of the film tonight. It’s at Oscar Peterson Concert Hall at 7 o’clock. That’s at Concordia [University], at Loyola [Campus]. There’s going to be a panel discussion with the cast and crew. Our Loreen Pindera is leading that. And it’s online. It’s part of our ‘Absolutely Quebec’ film series here of CBC Montreal. And we will tweet out that link. It’s really excellent.

Low-Beer Memorial Lecture Photos

As I noted in my last post, I was invited to participate in AMI Quebec's 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture that featured I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, the documentary I'm involved in. The screening and subsequent panel discussion was held at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall on Concordia University's Loyola campus in Montreal. It was a terrific evening. Possibly the best part for me was just being able to reconnect with so many of the awesome people who were involved in the film (writer/director Megan Durnford, producer Katarina Soukup, designer Sara Morley, as well as film participants Jessy Bokser, Marie Leavins, and Rebecca Heinisch). And to meet new people, including our fantastic moderator Loreen Pindera of the CBC and AMI Quebec's Dr. Ella Amir.

What follows are various photos of the event. These are courtesy of myself, I AM STILL YOUR CHILD's twitter page, and AMI Quebec's Facebook page. The panel (from left to right) featured Rebecca, Marie, Loreen, Megan, and me.

2018 Edith and John Hans Low-Beer Memorial Lecture

I'm very pleased to announce that the documentary film I AM STILL YOUR CHILD will be presented at the 2018 Edith and John Hans Low-Beer Memorial Lecture in Montreal on September 27th 2018. The film is presented by AMI-Quebec Action on Mental Illness. Even better, there will be a panel discussion on the film featuring myself, Jessy Bokser, Sarah Leavens, Rebecca Heinisch, and Megan Durnford, the film's writer and director. It should be a pretty special evening and I'm really looking forward to it!

Update! Charlie Fidelman did a lovely piece on the film and some background on the screening in the Montreal Gazette on September 25, 2018. 

Here are the specific details:

Thursday, September 27 at 7pm
Oscar Peterson Concert Hall
Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke West
Free admission
Presentation in English

The poster is below. And a PDF of the poster can be found at http://vonallan.com/press/I-AM-STILL-YOUR-CHILD-lecture-in-Montreal.pdf

The film's trailer is below:

Glashan Symposium on Student Wellbeing and Mental Health

On April 20th, 2018, Glashan Public School hosted a symposium on mental health. I was invited by principal Jim Taylor to be one of the guest speakers at the event. It was a little daunting for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm actually a former Glashan student and, since my time at the school was not the happiest, stepping back inside was going to be weird. I literally hadn't been inside the school since I left it on my final day of grade 8. As it turns out, it was a "good" weird, but weird all the same.

Second, I was going to be talking a lot about my mom's struggle with mental illness. And since my mom died quite young, it was going to be emotional. On top of it, this is intertwined with my own memories if being a young teen while I went to Glashan.

It was, I'm very pleased to say, a very positive experience. All of the staff as well as the students helped me feel very welcome. I led two sessions of grade 8 students in a discussion about all of this. Probably about 30 minutes each, maybe a bit longer, plus a Q&A after. A number of kids approached me after each session to chat a bit more, too, which I take as a very good sign.

And if anyone wants to get a sense of what it all looked like, Glashan's Instagram page has a number of photos from the event. They're right here.

To prepare for each session, I made quite a few notes. I'm including them below (because, why not?) but the interesting thing is that I wound up not referring to them during the actual sessions. I felt comfortable enough and prepared enough not to need them. That doesn't always happen and I wasn't sure it was going to happen this time, but it did and I think (well, hope) that it means that it was a more natural conversation then a dry presentation.

Anyway! Here are my notes. A little stream of consciousness, but remember that these were here to help guide me if I needed them.

Starting with the Ending

I’m going to do something weird and start with the ending. So! My mom was diagnosed with mental illness when I was quite young. Maybe when I was around 8, but it may have even been earlier than that.

So, the bad news and the sad news was that my mom died quite young. 48, when I was 20 years old. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’tfair. Life’s like that sometimes, but it can be very hard to place.I’ll get into the specifics in just a sec.

My mom was never able to recover or lead a normal life. I don’t really want to say “beat” or “defeat.” It’s not that simple. But she could never find the right mix of medication to help her lead the life that she wanted to lead.And as she got older, she got physically sicker, too. It was a double-whammy; she was struggling with schizophrenia and everything else and then her physical health declined, too. Partially because she was getting older and partially because it was hard for her to look after herself.

This can be an issue with mental illness; it’s hard, very hard, to exercise and eat right when getting out of bed is almost impossible. That made everything worse. She didn’t have a lot of “reserves.”

This is important: she didn’t make a mistake and get mental illness. She didn’t make a bad decision and get mental illness. It just happened.

But, at the same time, it wasn’t like it was always bad. The danger in talking about situations like this is that it tends to make them seem worse then in some ways they were. Compressed.

My mom wasn’t sick every single day. She’d have good days and bad days. Good weeks and bad weeks. And sometimes even good months and bad months. We did have fun together. And there were good times mixed in with the bad.

Beginning

I was born in Arnprior.

I’m an only child.

My mom and dad split up when I was around five years old.

My dad moved to Ottawa shortly after that for work. His health wasn’t great, either, but it was all on the physical side. A lot of surgeries and a lot of pain. And he was ex-military, so he and I had very different personalities.

My mom and I moved to Ottawa when I was eight.

I went to Mutchmor and then Glashan and eventually Glebe high school.

Through it all we were pretty poor. A lot of poverty. There was never much money and it meant everything was a constant compromise. My mom went to food banks. Declared bankruptcy. We were on welfare. It was pretty tough.

And slowly, over time, I was becoming aware, probably around the time I was eight or nine, that my mom wasn't like other moms; but I didn't really understand why. She was my mom. And I think, looking back, she probably tried to hide some of what she was going through, too. Until she couldn’t anymore.

My Growing Awareness

Only later did I realize that what she was going through had names. Mental illness. Schizophrenia. Anxiety disorder. Nervous breakdown.

These descriptions are not well-defined. And, to make it even harder, science is still figuring it out. So, “schizophrenia.” What does that mean? Practically, it means that my mom couldn’t deal with things very well. She’d hear voices. Her sense of time (hours, days, weeks) would be very distorted (she’d say something happened yesterday that happened last month). Her thinking could be very confused. It was very hard to know if what she was saying was true or just what she thought was true.

What about “anxiety disorder?” Well, sometimes she’d get very, very worried and have a very difficult time calming down. She would imagine the worst (often involving me), focus on it, and be unable to imagine anything positive. This could go on for days.

What about a “nervous breakdown?” Well, generally it means that someone just can’t cope anymore. But what does that mean practically? In my mom’s case, everything became so overwhelming she’d be almost paralyzed. In these cases, she’d check herself into the hospital and get help. I can’t imagine the courage that must have taken. And how scary that must have been. She wouldn’t have known how long she’d be there. She wouldn’t know what would happen while she was there or when she got out.

And, to make it worse, she was also on medication and that would have an effect on her, too. Sometimes she’d be very, very dopey. Sleepy, but more than that. Other times the medication would work great and she’d be herself. It was just very unpredictable.

And, of course, it meant that my childhood and teenage years were pretty different from a “normal” one (whatever that might mean).

And there wasn’t much support. My grandparents and aunts and uncles didn’t understand and didn’t help much. My dad was there, to a point, but he didn’t understand, either. We’re not close, but to his credit he did help, especially when my mom was hospitalized. I could stay with him for a few weeks and that gave me some stability. There also wasn’t much government support (aside from welfare) and there wasn’t much in the way of education.

I also felt ashamed. It was hard to be poor. Hard to be embarrassed about my mom and my home. I rarely invited anyone over. And it was hard to fit in. It was hard to afford nice clothes, good school supplies, and all of that stuff.

It also meant I was pretty shy. Shy, quiet, poor, fat. So there was bullying and whatnot, too.

And sometimes it was hard to go to school. It felt kinda surreal compared to what was going on at home. Managing as a student was really hard sometimes. You need to have homework done and you need to be in school and all of that stuff. I’m not saying that school isn’t important, but there were times I’d get home from school and my mom hadn’t gotten out of bed all day. Or there were a few times on a school night that she passed out and I was picking her up off the floor. And then, of course, there were the times she couldn’t function at all and wound up being hospitalized. Or times where she just couldn’t function but wasn’t hospitalized. That meant she couldn’t be a mom. And there were times where she wasn’t even herself. Like a stranger had taken over.

Compared to that, things like homework didn’t seem that important.

Confusion and Stress

In my case, there was also a lot of confusion. No one really ever told me anything. And I didn’t know what questions to ask or even who to talk to.

There weren’t any supports at the time. Or at least none that I was aware of. It’s hard to know what to ask for when you don’t have the right information. Or who to talk to. Or who to ask. And remember this was pre-internet. I didn’t know who to turn to and there wasn’t anyone I could really ask.

No one really explained it to me; my mom tried, but it was very hard to understand what she was going through. It was pretty scary and it left me feeling very insecure and shy. This also meant that I didn’t talk to anyone about it, so no one knew what was going on.

Other parents didn’t know because I didn’t tell my friends. Teachers didn’t know, mainly because there weren’t any teachers I felt really comfortable about talking to. And I didn’t talk with guidance councillors because I never really trusted them.

And I was scared; what if I talked to a parent or teacher about this stuff and then they called social services? What if I was taken away from my mom? I loved my mom and I didn’t want to be separated from her.

Epilogue

But...the weird thing about this is that in some ways it got easier as time went on. What do I mean?

Well, at first I didn’t know what was going on and I was scared. A lot. And unhappy. A lot. And stressed. A lot. There was tension all the time, mainly because my mom’s struggle with mental illness meant that, emotionally, she was really up and down.

But slowly, I got better at taking care of myself.

The big thing that helped me was escaping. Just being able to read books or comics and kinda lose myself in them for awhile. Hang out with friends, playing games or watching movies or whatever. And exercise helped, too. I started doing a lot of biking.

Basically, getting away from it sometimes and learning to give myself a break.

I don’t mean running away. And I don’t mean pretending that everything was okay (though I did some of that). What I mean is just finding some joy, some happiness, and taking a break from the crap that was going on around me. I realized that I had every right to be happy.

Also, my mom did start talking about it, on her good days, sometimes. She was seeing a psychiatrist and was more open about what was happening with her. And she had a lot of hope.

And I got more experienced. The first time she was hospitalized was very scary. But it got less scary as it happened a few more times. I started to have a better sense of what to expect.

I realized, and this was hard, that I couldn’t fix this for her. I could support her as best I could. I could love her and be there for her as best I could be, but I couldn’t fix it.

And I started to understand that the mental illness is just that: an illness. It wasn’t my mom’s fault.

And, you know, my mom was a pretty amazing person. She was very kind, very loving, and very courageous. She liked to read. She taught me a lot about life, about being thoughtful and compassionate. I didn’t doubt, through it all, that she loved me. And she was a teacher. Despite all the ups and downs, I consider myself very lucky to have met her.

And you know, I started to realize that mental illness isn’t that scary. Yes, there are scary moments. Sure. And yes, it can be weird. And yes, it can be really frustrating.

Again, mental illness is an illness, just like any other illness. Science and research are getting better and better all the time. If someone was in my mom’s situation now, there’s now a whole range of options that weren’t there for her. So there’s a lot of hope.

A really good example is here, right now. When I was at Glashan, an event like this would not have happened. It just wouldn't have.

A lot of things are changing for the better. How we, as a society, approach mental illness. How science treats it.

It’s really amazing. We have a long way to go. There is still stigma and resource issues and all of the rest. But there's a lot of hope. And a lot to fight for.

I Am Still Your Child Canadian National TV Broadcast

I Am Still Your Child, the documentary on parental mental illness, will have its national broadcast premiere on Saturday, March 31st on CBC television! It's at 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. I'm really excited it to see it broadcast this way!

CBC's TV program guide is at http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/daily/2018/03/31/cbc_television/. You should be able to find the film in your time zone.

Speaking of the film: writer/director Megan Durnford was interviewed on CHML's Health and Wellness Show a few weeks back. If you'd like to get a glimpse of what went into making the film, please give it a listen at https://omny.fm/shows/chml-news/14-health-wellness-mar-11-2018. On top of it, Westmount Magazine did a great story on Megan and her work. It's at https://www.westmountmag.ca/megan-durnford/

The Trailer

Excerpts and Extras from the Film

The film's official YouTube page has additional excerpts and extras from the film. I've embedded a few below, too.

Documentary Short - Coping Strategies

I'm one of the subjects of a documentary titled I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, dealing with parental mental illness. In conjunction with the film, a number of short videos have been released; kinda like extra features on a film. The below deals with coping strategies. In my case, my mom was dealing with schizophrenia and it led to some pretty rough experiences. Being able to escape into comics as well as sci-fi and fantasy really helped. Sarah and Jessy, two other subjects from the film, also talk about their strategies in the short.

The entire short series can be viewed on the film's official Youtube page. They add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

Documentary Short - Financial Impact and Poverty

The filmmakers behind the documentary I'm involved in, I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, have released a number of short supporting videos that focus on different aspects of living with a parent struggling with mental illness. The one below deals with the financial impact of mental illness. Simply put: it ain't easy.

The entire video series can be viewed on the official Youtube site and add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

Lightly-Edited Transcript

Marie Leavens: Bipolar disorder implies when they go into a manic, they spend money irrationally. [Andy] drove us to bankruptcy because he would ‘max up’ my credit cards for all kinds of stuff. And even sometimes, like last year, the bank kept offering him an overdraft protection. First two times, it’s like, “you know, we could have some nice Christmas gifts.” And I’m like, “that’s nice, but we can’t pay it back afterwards. So, no.”

Eventually, he succumbed and took it. Didn’t tell me. Bought all kinds of goodies. Suddenly, I’m like, “where does the money come from for all of these?” Suddenly, dawned on him what he had done. He finally told me and showed me. Because now they were saying, “you need to start paying back.” He couldn’t do that. He had no income.

They don’t realize the implication and the responsibility of the money. You know, when they’re in that ‘mood,’ it doesn’t register. So it’s very difficult. Because of that, we’re in the process right now of activating his mandate so that he will never be able to have a credit card without my consent or anything like that.

Von Allan: Money was very tight. She had declared bankruptcy. So we were living pretty hand to fist a number of times. My mom was basically on her own. And then there was the support of systems in Ottawa and Ontario that could help her through this, which wasn’t much.

For anybody who’s dealing with this stuff now, it doesn’t seem — from my point of view — to have gotten much better. And then when you factor in my mom’s health, she suffered from migraines. Very, very bad migraines. So just to get out of bed in a day was a victory. And then, maybe on a day where she was actually fairly lucid, she physically felt awful and couldn’t function very well. And that means you don’t have the ‘ammunition’ to be able to cope with some of what you’re dealing with.

Jessy Bokser: My house was lost in the process of my mom’s mania sort of erupting. Through her destroying the inside of the house and I think her doing that was part of her facing the struggle of wanting to change her life and our home being that really concrete symbol for it. Because we had lived there for 20 years as this very normal, average family. And suddenly she was in this completely different mindset and she wanted to change that home space. And then in doing so, changed and took apart and sort of destroyed our mental and physical home space. And then, of course, because of everything, we were forced to move.

Von Allan: Fundamentally, I figure if we were rich, while there would have bee problems, some of the indignities that my mom went through wouldn’t have happened. For instance, dealing with mental illness — dealing with schizophrenia — and having to go to a food bank on a particular month. That wouldn’t have happened.

Or one of the memories I have is my mom would ask either my relatives or sometimes our landlord for either a loan or some type of cash advance or a gift of money or whatever to make ends meet, because we had a bad bill that month or something. If you are wealthy, some of those issues disappear.

That is not to say that people who are wealthy who are dealing with these things — dealing with mental illness of any form — aren’t struggling mightily. But I think poverty made it worse. And I think the indignity of really struggling and having to feed a kid, feed herself, and what have you, made it worse.

And I don’t think you can quantify that in any way, but it certainly didn’t help.

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Ottawa Citizen front page article on Von Allan

Well, this is pretty neat! Reporter Blair Crawford along with photographer Julie Oliver from the Ottawa Citizen did a feature story on yours truly. The story explores my childhood, my mom's struggle with mental illness (specifically schizophrenia), my graphic novel the road to god knows..., and the documentary film I'm involved in titled I AM STILL YOUR CHILD.


The full article can be found online at the Ottawa Citizen's website at http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-child-of-schizophrenia-graphic-novelist-von-allan-on-growing-up-with-a-mentally-ill-mother


I should add that the online article also contains a short two minute video interview with me. Plus the great and mysterious Corbin makes a surprise guest appearance! I've embedded the video below:

Scans from the Ottawa Citizen are below:

And the interior page (the scan is a bit hard to read, but the full article can be found online here):

Update!

As it turns out, the Citizen's sister paper the Ottawa Sun also ran a story. This is pretty much the same thing, though there are a few minor differences. I'm not crazy about the headline, but pretty neat all the same.

Potential Repercussions - Documentary Short

As I noted previously, the filmmakers behind the documentary I AM STILL YOUR CHILD have released a number of short supporting videos, including the one embedded below. The entire series can be viewed on their Youtube site and add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

In this short, the three subjects of the film (Sarah, Jessy, and myself) all talk about the repercussions of living with a parent who has a mental illness.

Maintaining a Relationship with the Ill Parent - Documentary Short

In conjunction with the documentary I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, the filmmakers have released a number of short supporting videos. The entire series can be viewed on their Youtube site and add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

I embedded one of these shorts below. Titled "Maintaining a Relationship with the Ill Parent," it showcases all three subjects of the film. For my part, I talk about my mom and her sensitivity and compassion. And, as a special bonus, Corbin makes an appearance!

I AM STILL YOUR CHILD Young Girl and Father Poster Process

Continuing the series of background "process" art for the poster series for the documentary film "I AM STILL YOUR CHILD." Today's poster features a young girl handling her father's medication. I knew clarity would be a problem, so I decided to go with a low "eye level" or horizon line. In this case, right at the ground plane. Why? It allowed me to put the medicine bottle strongly in the foreground and hopefully clarify what's actually happening. It also allowed me to make the young girl slightly bigger (closer to the viewer) than a more normal eye level would allow.

In discussing it with Stéphanie Couillard, my contact at Catbird, we decided that it still might not be clear enough so we added dialogue for the father just to be safe. There are no "right" answers with this; sometimes you want to be subtle and suggestive and other times you want to be crystal clear. In this case, clarity was one of the most important criteria.

Again, here is the Final Press Version with logo designed by Sara Morley of Design Postimage:

Initial Rough Layout sketch (approximately 2 inches in height). You can also see that I was initially thinking of making it daughter and mother:

Slightly tighter but still very loose figures. And again, illustrated pretty small:

A tighter rough, though still very small. The father was giving me some drawing problems at this stage, though it works itself out soon enough:

Tighter pencils:

Tighter pencils along with perspective grid and background:

And the final inked version:

As always, you can see the entire poster series at the film's official website. And the entire film can be streamed online at the CBC's website at http://watch.cbc.ca/absolutely-canadian/-/i-am-still-your-child/38e815a-00cec9fd824

I AM STILL YOUR CHILD Upset Girl Poster Process

As noted yesterday, I was commissioned to create a series of posters for the documentary film "I AM STILL YOUR CHILD." Today I'm looking at the development of another poster for the film and the support website. This one is a good example of how the process develops from rough concept to final version.

My initial thinking was that I wanted contrast between a very upset girl in the foreground and an adult, possibly in trouble, who isn't even paying attention. Initially I thought she'd be starring at the girl, but not really seeing her. Later, I changed my mind and had the adult sitting with her back turned. As the process continued and I received feedback from Stéphanie Couillard, my main contact for the poster series for Catbird Productions, the poster evolved. You can see that in the following sketches and I think the piece is much stronger based on Stéphanie's comment. 

Again, here is the Final Press Version with that great logo designed by Sara Morley of Design Postimage:

Initial Rough Layout sketch (as always, this is done very small, approximately 2 inches in height):

Slightly tighter but still very loose figures. And again, illustrated pretty small. You can also see that the foreground character is slightly off-balance here. It happens, but it's the kind of thing I correct as I go:

Tighter pencils:

Tighter pencils with that original concept of a "neutral" adult in the background:

This is where a number of things changed. A very different adult figure appears. She was roughed out and tightened separately and then digitally added into the piece. And the background finally shows up, too. Little bit of cheating here, but you can't tell. I hope!

And the final inked version:
You can see the entire poster series at the film's official website. And the entire film can be streamed online at the CBC's website at http://watch.cbc.ca/absolutely-canadian/-/i-am-still-your-child/38e815a-00cec9fd824

I AM STILL YOUR CHILD Poster Process for Girl In School

I was commissioned to create a series of posters for the documentary film project (titled “I AM STILL YOUR CHILD”) that I've been involved in. The goal was to create a series of stand-alone pieces that feature characters dealing with parental mental illness. Unlike traditional comics, these wouldn't have a narrative save for that unifying theme. And they would also need to be very bold and graphic to catch the eye and presented in black and white to ease desktop printing. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. The full poster series can be found at the documentary's official website.

Beginning today, I'm going to go through the creation of a few of these posters. I was given a great deal of creative room by the production crew; they encouraged me to draw on my own thoughts and feelings, especially relevant given my own background with my mom's schizophrenia (developed more full in my graphic novel “the road to god knows...”). Some of these images were inspired directly from my own experiences while others were “pushed.” In other words, still drawn from my own life but dramatized to some extent.

The one below is a good example; I was very shy at school, especially at this age, but showing emotion was something I tried very hard not to do (though how successful I was in a different question). This girl, on the other hand, is very upset. That was something I tried very hard not to show at school.

What follows, then, is a pretty good breakdown of how this poster came together.

First, this is the Final Press Version with a terrific logo designed by Sara Morley of Design Postimage:

Initial Rough Layout sketch (very small, approximately 2 inches in height):

Tighter pencils (figures only; this is slightly deceptive since I drew each character separately and then digitally composed the image to finalize their positions):

Tighter pencils with loose backgrounds and perspective grid:

Final inked version with completed background:

I should add here that sometimes I do pretty tight background renderings and other times, like here, I keep it pretty loose and finalize in ink (albeit digital ink since I use Manga Studio EX 4 for inking). Manga Studio also allows for some really nice shortcuts for tones, hatching, "zipatones," and splatters. I've done them manually (the ol' toothbrush and ink immediately comes to mind for splatters) but I much prefer doing them digitally now.

And that's that. Again, you can see the entire poster series at the film's official website. And don't forget that the entire film can be streamed online at the CBC's website at http://watch.cbc.ca/absolutely-canadian/-/i-am-still-your-child/38e815a-00cec9fd824

CBC Arts Profile on Von Allan

This is a short (approximately 4 minute) CBC Arts profile on yours truly. In it, I discuss art and comics, growing up with a parent that's mentally ill, and also my process of making art. I should add that this short is actually part of a larger documentary, titled I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, that is available to stream anywhere in Canada right now. Information on viewing it in other parts of the world should be known soon. The documentary's official website is a good way to keep on top of this.

As noted in the accompanying CBC article, the documentary I AM STILL YOUR CHILD gave me an opportunity to revisit the artwork from my graphic novel the road to god knows.... This is mainly because the original graphic novel was published in 2009 and the film premiered in 2017. That's a long time and my art has grown and developed between those two dates. For those who'd like to learn a little more about this, I did a short essay discussing the changes (including direct comparisons with the art).

If the player doesn't work, you should be able to find the video here.

On Getting Stronger

I wrote and drew a graphic novel titled the road to god knows..., which was published in 2009 after about four years of development. The story dealt with a young teenager's struggle to cope with her mom's schizophrenia. It's pretty autobiographical; to tell the story, I drew on a lot of my own experiences with my own mom's schizophrenia. It's fictional for all kinds of reasons, but the main one was that I wanted some distance from the story.

That said, the graphic novel was self-published and, art-wise, it's rough. I think there was a lot of heart to it, but my visual art was pretty weak. Figure-drawing problems, perspective problems, composition problems, value problems...you name a problem and road had it. In spades. I came to art very late and learning to draw is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Comics require a great deal of knowledge to do well. Those problems I mentioned? Well, you need everything to work together extremely well to create a comic. If that harmony isn't there...well, you get a pretty rough comic. And that certainly was an issue with road. But we learn by doing and I'm still proud, to this day, that I managed to do it. Rough spots and all.

So I published it and it did as well as could be expected, especially given my art skills at the time. And though it still sold a bit every year, I stopped thinking about it. I moved on with my life, continued to make art and comics, continued to get stronger, but putting that rough first graphic novel behind me.

Flash forward to April 2015 and I received an email out of the blue from a writer/director named Megan Durnford. She's working on a documentary film about the impact of parental mental illness and wanted to talk with me about road. To make a long story short, the film (titled I Am Still Your Child) was made (amazing!) and I was a part of it (shocking!). And it was made with empathy and sensitivity and deals with an issue that really isn't discussed much in public at all. I was (and am) very pleased to be included in the film.

The making of the documentary led to an interesting situation. Megan wanted to use artwork from the road to god knows... in the documentary. And...that was not good. I hadn't looked at the art in a number of years and, when I revisited it, I was dismayed (maybe horrified would be a better word). The art was rough. Really, really rough. And it put me in a bind; I didn't want to have road represent where I am now. That may sound weird; I think it did with the folks involved in the film, but because the graphic novel was such a personal project for me and because my art had certainly improved quite a bit from back then, the idea of seeing that art in a documentary left me cold.

So we worked out an interesting solution. I would revisit road and redraw selected pages and panels from the graphic novel that Megan wanted to include in the film. As it turns out, that was one helluva big job.

Some of the work was emotional; I was revisiting themes that in some ways I didn't want to revisit. For example, I was revisiting the death of my mom; the graphic novel is pretty autobiographical and while my mom died long before it was ever published, her presence is a big part of of the story for me.

Some of the work was practical; in order to keep the pages similar, I had to stay pretty close to how I did things almost a decade ago, even though I would not necessarily write or draw the same way now. That wasn't easy; how I approach composition is different now. My thoughts on how a comic book page is put together is different now. How I write is different now. And on and on. Plus there was that pesky fact that the original art was pretty rough. I could use it as a guideline, really a very loose thumbnail, but that's it. I would have to draw most of it from scratch, as if it was a brand new story.

The actual redrawn art presented another problem. By redrawing the art, I could accidentally give the impression that the new art is what the graphic novel actually looks like. I felt a little sick when that dawned on me, so the solution was to avoid it completely by making the graphic novel out of print. I realize that there still a few copies “out there,” but it's fortunately not so easy to find and hopefully anyone who sees the documentary (along with the caveat about the art in the film credits) will understand. It's one of those weird situations that is almost counter-intuitive; in a way, the documentary will bring more attention to the road to god knows... then it ever had before. But to redraw the entire graphic novel (to “fix it” if you will) would be a monumental undertaking. Even with the redraws I did for the documentary, I only wound up touching something like 10% of the book. To redraw the rest would require...well, certainly a very keen and excited publisher. For me to do that other 90%? Nope. Tempting, but nope. I would rather move forward then go backward.

Given all that, the redraws represent an interesting and fairly poignant “what if.” What if I hadn't published the graphic novel when I did? What if the entire graphic novel looked the way the redraws do? Would it have found a broader audience? Would it have found a publisher? What if?

Ultimately, who knows? We learning by doing. I did the best work I could on the road to god knows... back in 2005-2009. That the work wasn't the best is unfortunate, but that's life. If I hadn't done it, would I have given up on art by now? Who knows? Do I regret doing it? No, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wish the art in the original version was stronger. It was hard to revisit on that point alone.

You may note, by the by, that I don't say that I've gotten better. Better, in art and in life, is a judgment call that's difficult to make. Who's to say? What is better? But I know that I have gotten stronger. And that's enough.

It is pretty amazing to find that road still touches people, enough to be included in a documentary almost eight years after it was published. Enough that the book is still talked about today. I occasionally get emails, like the one I received from Megan back in the spring of 2015. And, despite my misgivings, I'm happy the book keeps touching people, even in its rough form.

And road, despite its flaws, taught me one thing. I love to draw. I wish I had found that out earlier, but I know it now. And that's not nothing.

The Redraws

What follows are a series of images from the original published version of the road to god knows... and the re-draw versions. These are presented side by side, without further comment from me.

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Trailer for I AM STILL YOUR CHILD documentary

I've been fortunate enough to be involved in a documentary project focusing on the children of parents with mental illness (COPMI). It's a pretty amazing project and I've been thrilled to be involved. Megan Durnford, the writer and director, Katarina Soukup, the producer from Catbird Productions, Stéphanie Couillard, Alex Margineanu (cinematographer), Stéphane Barsalou (sound recorder), and the rest of the crew have brought an empathy to the film that is quite remarkable. There are still a lot of societal taboos regarding mental illness and I think this film might help challenge that.

So why did they get  in touch with me? Well, my mom was diagnosed schizophrenic when I was quite young. I actually wrote and drew a graphic novel titled the road to god knows... that is an account (albeit fictionalized) of my experiences with my mom's mental illness and my growing awareness that she was not "okay." I didn't go the full autobiographical route for a number of reasons, but one of the main one's is that my mom died before I even started the comic and I wanted some emotional distance from the work and my own life.

The documentary uses quite a bit of my art through it, but I should note that I actually re-drew a number of pages specifically for the film (I'm going to do a follow-up post specifically on this subject in the near future).

The film will be airing on CBC Montreal through the documentary series Absolutely Quebec on Saturday, September 16th. It will have a wider release shortly after that. I'll update the website as I know more.

In the meantime, the trailer linked above really captures the tone of it very well.  I think it's beautiful. For more on the film, keep an eye on the Facebook page and the official website.