Take a road trip to three of CanLit’s most inspiring regions

Canada’s population base has shifted to the cities and suburbs over the past 50 years, but it’s the wild expanse of nature — the mountains, forests and golden plains — that has historically fuelled our national imagination. Nowhere is this more true than in Canada’s literature, much of which still reads like a poetic grappling with a vast and unknowable landscape. What better way to explore our literature than a road trip through the regions and small towns that inspired our writers?

Alistair MacLeod’s Cape Breton

Many authors’ works are described as “painterly” to highlight their vivid visual style. The late Alistair MacLeod’s fiction is more sculpted than painted, every carefully chosen word seemingly carved into the page. MacLeod’s output was modest — two slim volumes of short stories and one novel — but in those pages he gave voice to the generations of Scottish and Irish settlers who have made Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island home for centuries.

What to read: You could probably tackle MacLeod’s oeuvre in a single holiday weekend, but like a fine single-malt scotch, his work is best savoured in measured doses. His stories are collected altogether in “Island,” while his award-winning novel, “No Great Mischief,” has never gone out of print. If that doesn’t satisfy your Cape Breton fix, dig into the work of Lynn Coady, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Joan Clark.

What to see: Regularly voted one of the world’s most beautiful travel destinations, Cape Breton Island is astonishingly rich in natural wonders, history and art. Much of MacLeod’s work is set in the town of Inverness, a great base from which to explore the island. The spectacular Cabot Trail highway winds through mountains and coves as it follows the island’s north shore, offering stopoff points for hiking, whale watching and imbibing the island’s unique Celtic culture.

Alice Munro’s Huron County

Alice Munro’s fiction is so deeply embedded in world literature that her native region — Ontario’s Huron County — is regularly referred to as “Alice Munro Country.” Her stories are drenched in the sensuous details of Lake Huron’s northeast shore, the narrow country roads bordered by farmers’ fields, the bogs and tracts of scrub bush, and the prim Victorian houses with their eccentric Gothic accents.

What to read: In an early essay, Munro wrote, “There are few pleasures in writing to equal that of creating your town, exploring the pattern of it, feeling all those lives, and streets, and hidden rooms and histories….” That pleasure is evident throughout Munro’s Huron County stories, but several works stand out: “Vandals,” “Lichen” and “Who Do You Think You Are?” and the linked-story collections “Lives of Girls and Women” and “The View from Castle Rock.”

What to see: Whether lightly fictionalized as Jubilee, Carstairs, Walley or Hanratty, the town of Wingham, where Munro was born and raised, is the centre point on any map of Munro Country. For literary pilgrims, you can pick up a pamphlet at the North Huron Township Office (274 Josephine St., Wingham) for a self-guided literary tour of the town and surrounding area. From there, make your way to Clinton (where Munro lived for over three decades) and hike the trails of the Hullett Provincial Wildlife Area (41378 Hydro Line Rd., Clinton), a marshy reserve for turtles, birds and other aquatic creatures. Finally, don’t miss Goderich, dubbed “the prettiest town in Canada” for its stunning heritage buildings and homes.

Thomas King’s Alberta Borderlands

Thomas King is far too playful a writer to stay confined to one location for very long — the settings for his fiction range from British Columbia’s coastal islands to the mountains of California to Canada’s inner cities. However, King’s fertile imagination, which blends European and Indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions, seems most at home in the arid, quietly beautiful grasslands, foothills and big skies of southeastern Alberta.

What to read (and listen to): King set “Green Grass, Running Water,” arguably his best novel, and his beloved CBC Radio series “The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour” in Blossom, a fictional small town on the outskirts of a Blackfoot reserve in southern Alberta. The setting for his novel “Medicine River” (later adapted for a TV movie) was also a close-knit town also bordering a Blackfoot reserve. These communities, neither fully assimilated into mainstream Canada nor fully Indigenous, wryly symbolize the plight of King’s characters and their grappling with our nation’s colonial past and present.

What to see: The Rocky Mountains may get pride of place in Alberta tourism brochures, but southeast Alberta holds its own in the natural scenery sweepstakes. The Helen Schuler Nature Centre (300 Indian Battle Rd. S., Lethbridge) is a great introduction to the region: on-site interpretive trails lead visitors through southeast Alberta’s major ecosystems, including prairies, coulees and forests. Just down the road is Fort Whoop-Up (200 Indian Battle Rd. S., Lethbridge), a recreated pioneer trading post. For a full immersion into the area’s unique geography and history, don’t miss Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, a sacred site for the Blackfoot Nations.

The Star understands the restrictions on travel during the coronavirus pandemic. But like you, we dream of travelling again, and we’re publishing this story with future trips in mind.