February Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: What Nobody Saw

Time Setting: 2020

Genre: Life

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: April–May

Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba

Main Characters: Walker Kuznecov

Background Information: 

Born the youngest of three children to an electrician and a nurse living in Winnipeg, Walker was three years old when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to Ontario, where she’d been born and her mother had returned following her own divorce.

Along with his older sister, Walker was taken to Ontario, where his mother moved around on a regular basis because she didn’t buy or rent a place of her own, she just moved in with whoever was her latest boyfriend; at his request Walker’s older brother remained in Winnipeg with his father.

This was hard on Walker and his sister, who cherished their summers in Winnipeg with their father because of the stability and constancy of everything there — in fact, to this day his father hasn’t moved out of the house that Walker and his siblings were brought home from the hospital to after they were born.

Like his father, and his brother, Walker developed an interest in sports; unlike them, his interest wasn’t in the Canadian Football League — be it the Winnipeg Blue Bombers or the Toronto Argonauts — but in baseball and hockey.

As the only MLB team in Canada, the Toronto Blue Jays came to be Walker’s favourite baseball team, but when it came to hockey, in spite of his living closer to Toronto for most of the year, Walker actually chose the Phoenix Coyotes as his favourite team.

He made this choice because of the fact that his dad told him that they had once been the Winnipeg Jets, and since Walker preferred to be in Winnipeg, he chose to like the team that had once been based there.

At the age of nine Walker got sick and tired of all the moving around — which was so bad sometimes he’d leave one house in Ontario for the summer and come back to a different one — as well as being annoyed by his mother’s inexplicable distaste for his budding sports fandom and asked to be transferred into his dad’s custody.

His sister also made the same request and the two of them moved to Winnipeg, spending only a few weeks of the year in Ontario — which Walker didn’t mind because his maternal step-grandfather proved to share his interest in sports and was responsible for taking him to see the Blue Jays a few times, as well as his first NHL game when the Coyotes played in Buffalo.

In Winnipeg, Walker found support for his sports fandom, and was even allowed to play the two sports he liked for himself, becoming a catcher for a local baseball team of kids in his age group, and a goaltender for a local hockey team.

When he was twelve Walker — and all of Winnipeg — was elated to learn that NHL hockey was returning to Winnipeg with the purchase and relocation of the Atlanta Thrashers, who were renamed the Winnipeg Jets.

For his birthday Walker was surprised to tears by tickets to the first-ever game the Jets played in their return to Winnipeg, and has been a dedicated fan of the team since, and a season ticket holder since he moved out to live on his own.

Because of the return of NHL hockey to Winnipeg Walker made the choice to pursue hockey more earnestly, scaling back his baseball play to more of a recreational practise.

When Walker was fourteen he started scaling back on his hockey playing when he realised that hockey players had to face the potential of being traded and, recalling the unpleasantness of his life spent moving around Ontario, didn’t like the idea of possibly having to move around whether he wanted to or not.

The following year Walker was informed by his father that it was time for him to start earning money for himself to buy things he wanted when his birthday or Christmas weren’t near, and helped him find a job with a renovation company his friend owned.

Walker enjoyed the work and even kept up the job through the school year by working after school and on at least one day of the weekend either helping to prepare supplies for the next day’s work, building pieces that could be constructed and then transported to the site, or painting things needed for jobs.

When he graduated Walker decided to attend trade school to become a certified carpenter, while keeping up his job so as to get the hours required for him to be certified; he completed his schooling two years ago.

Aside from working and attending every Winnipeg Jets home game — and taking in all of their road games through radio or TV — Walker spends his free time with friends, participating in recreational baseball and hockey teams, and being a catching coach for his former baseball team back when he was a kid. Once a year he goes down to Ontario to spend a weekend with his grandparents, which usually involves going to see at least one Toronto Blue Jays game live.

Although he isn’t playing sports professionally, which he would’ve liked — save the whole being traded unexpectedly business — Walker is pleased with his life, and doesn’t really have any sort of grand aspirations, he just wants to keep working at his job and maybe, eventually, getting to the point where he’s a site foreman or supervisor type, but he’s in no hurry.

Pronunciation:

Kuznecov: kuhznehkauv