Who Wouldn't be Left Behind. Who Wouldn't be Left Behind came from a variety of sources. Joan Finnigan is a poet, a social historian, a play-wright, a children's author, an Ottawa Valley native, a mother and a grandmother but, most of all, she is a storyteller. Writing is her labour of love. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Left Behind, published this spring, is her second children's book.
Some books are harder to write than others.
The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Left Behind follows a long list of creative endeavours. Her first book came out in 1965 and now Finnigan has twenty-one books to her credit. Most of these are collections of poetry and oral histories. Joan Finnigan readily admits her interest in writing children's books is peripheral to what she really does. Her focus is her role as a social historian, collecting oral histories of the Ottawa Valley.