SAANICH, B.C. — The video begins with a wide shot of a farm, before cutting to a close-up of a swan swimming and a narrator saying, “I’ve been to hell and back with this swan.” Then, the farmer reveals the bird’s name is Uncle Tallulah. Before we find out what happened between the fictional farmer and swan, we need to go back to the day Bruce McLean was surprised by a real-life bird. “All of a sudden, this humungous swan appeared before me,” Bruce says. The bird was hissing and flapping its raised wings. “It scared the daylights out of me,” he recalls. Although this happened during the 1960s, when he was working as a reporter in London, Bruce never forgot it. “I think it embedded itself into my psyche,” Bruce says. Decades later, after his byline had appeared in newspapers across the country and around the world, Bruce wondered about writing a novel about a bird. “I created this little world around the swan,” Bruce says. That world is depicted in a video that Bruce commissioned (from a designer who used AI) to promote his book. It shows how Uncle Tallulah suffers a debilitating accident that leaves the bird unable to fly, leaving the farmer who’s his adversary with a decision to make about the animal: amputation or euthanasia. “I cried my eyes out,” the farmer says during the narration. “And chose neither.” Although they were at odds, the farmer discovers that he and the bird have something in common—they’re both widowers. “You never get over that,” Bruce says. “You get back to some kind of life, but that loss is always there.” Bruce learned this after losing his wife Pauline. That kind of grief is depicted in the novel, which is why Bruce says his book is much more than an animal story; it’s a human love story. After living 97 years, the great-grandfather has learned that loving is what life is all about. “Family is everything,” Bruce says, pointing out the dozens of pictures of family members of all ages that fill a whole wall in his home. There’s the family that raises you, the family you create with your partner, and the family you choose. Asked what his family members think of his book, Bruce says they love it. “But what else can they say,” Bruce laughs, before one of his daughters, who’s been listening to the conversation, says, “We’re waiting for the movie.” There’s certainly something cinematic about what happens next in the book. The farmer feels compelled to craft a pair of giant wings that he attaches to his arms to try and teach the injured swan how to fly again. The family we choose can help heal us. “This magnificent bird kind of teaches him about love,” Bruce smiles. And that’s how a retired reporter once surprised by a swan was inspired to tell the story of how man and a bird—both grounded by grief—formed a friendship that inspired them to soar again.
