Renowned children’s author Robert Munsch never made up stories while touring, but as his website says, “sometimes stuff happens.”
And when inspiration struck at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel dining room in Fredericton more than 20 years ago, little Victoria Campbell just so happened to be his muse.
“It was my birthday, I was turning six [and] my grandmother wanted to take me out for lunch to a fancy restaurant,” said Campbell, now 27, recalled.
“Robert Munsch was doing a show here in Fredericton at the Playhouse, so she got me tickets for my birthday.”
But first she and her grandmother had lunch.
“And it ended up that we were the only people in the restaurant, apart from two men sitting at the table next to us.
“I kind of looked to the side, and I recognized Robert Munsch sitting next to us immediately. And I was pretty star struck — ‘Grandma, Grandma, I think that’s Robert Munsch.’”
The rest is history, but that moment in the hotel, now known as the Crowne Plaza, led to the creation of Swamp Water, which was published in 2013.
Munsch is responsible for classics, such as The Paper Bag Princess, Mud Puddle, Love You Forever and nearly 100 others. He has sold more than 80 million copies of his books in North America alone and his stories have been translated into 20 languages, including Anishinaabemowin, Arabic and Swedish.
Sitting next to Campbell on the table that day was a story collection that she hoped to get signed by Munsch after the show. But instead, she got a personal meet and greet when he came over to their table, introduced himself and offered to sign Campbell’s books.
Meet the woman who inspired Robert Munsch’s Swamp Water more than 20 years ago
Campbell continued on to the show, but the next day at school, she heard from friends who had gone to Munsch’s later show, where he told a story about a girl named Victoria who went to lunch with her grandmother.
For Munsch, the story came to him just before the show, as he thought back to his lunch encounter with Campbell, according to his website.
“There I was making up a story just 10 minutes before a show, making it up for Victoria, whose last name I did not even know,” he wrote.
Not knowing her last name, Munsch didn’t know how to get hold of Campbell to share his story with her. So, he contacted the Daily Gleaner, and the newspaper ran a story with the eye-catching headline, “Victoria, read this story!”
That’s when Campbell got in touch with him, and the pair wrote back and forth. The original story, Campbell said, was actually titled Victoria’s Lunch and the swamp water — a mix of cola, orange soda, ginger ale, root beer and chocolate milk — was originally called “moose juice.”
But the little girl getting lunch with her grandmother didn’t change.
In the story, as she and her grandmother make their way to the “fancy restaurant,” Victoria asks if they could go to a hamburger shop, a chicken restaurant, a taco place. When they get to the fancy restaurant, Victoria ultimately convinces the staff to make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with swamp water to drink.
While Campbell said this isn’t what she had to eat that day at the restaurant, her meal didn’t necessarily match that of an upscale restaurant with “linens on the table.”
“I actually had a hot dog and chocolate milk, which [is] not quite fancy restaurant material, but I was also five.”
When Campbell was 15, years after her initial contact with Munsch, he wrote her another letter including the illustrations for the book. Then later that year, 2013, it was published.
Campbell has fond memories of her correspondence with Munsch. They wrote back and forth for years, and when he came back to Fredericton to do another show, he even got in touch with her school and paid a visit to her classroom.
“He was just so friendly and so kind [and] that will always stick with me,” said Campbell, who went on to get a university degree and now works at the Chalmers Hospital as a laboratory technologist in clinical microbiology.
To this day, Campbell still cherishes the book and the memories that accompany it — including the special moments shared with her grandma, who has since passed away.
While Munsch, now 80, isn’t writing anymore and has talked about his dementia and Parkinson’s diagnosis, he said in 2021 that his stories “will be the last thing to go.”
For Campbell, Munsch’s stories are still very much alive to this day.
“He has so many great stories that are such a part of his legacy,” she said.
“I am at the age where friends and co-workers are having kids, and my story, Swamp Water, has become a favourite gift to give to new babies coming. But even co-workers that I have that have kids, they’re still reading his books to this day, and I think it’s just such a great legacy to have.”
