Welcome Home, Travels in Smalltown Canada, by Stuart Mclean, Viking/Penguin Group, pp. 463, $27.99 Barbara Black BOOK REVIEW URAL CANADA speaks for itself in - A Stuart McLean’s book Welcome Home. While urbanites sit in traffic grid-lock in their cellular-equipped debt machines, rural Canadians sit nursing a coffee at the Star Cafe or having a leisurely haircut at Ed- die’s Barber Shop. Or they’ve al- teady accomplished half their day’s work after getting up al 4° a.m, to feed the livestock. McLean’s goal,-he explains in the introduction, is to create a “tapestry of the country” by visiting rural communities across Canada. His criterion? He won't include towns that have a bank machine. His seven-stop journey takes him to Maple Creek, Sask.; Dresden, Ontario; St-Jean-de- Matha, Quebec; Sackville, New Brunswick; Foxwarren, Manitoba; - Nakusp, B.C.; and Ferryland, Newfoundland. At each whistle stop he steps in- to the town’s damestic dramas, their intimate histories, and especially their coffee shops. Once ensconced in the town hotel (sometimes the only hotel), McLean ferrets out resident histo- rians (in the loosest sense of the word) who relate in their own words the founding of their small town, its struggles and its staying power. : We meet the people who refuse to leave and who have come to define the town. McLean is an unobtrusive observer, but never a dry statisti- cian, ; He finds the quintessential Ca- Nadian stories and lets them tell themselves. His style is benign, humble and inquiring, and his prose is straight and simple. The tapestry he creates has an interesting weave, indeed. In Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, we hear about the happy co-existence of the two solitudes: a French police officer posted in an English-speaking town. The loca! baker, Carson Currah, fills McLean in on the event: “Before he came | think all we ever heard was bad things about ‘presents . | TOUR OF EUROPE 1892 ~ TRAVELOGUE FILM narrated live in person by KENNETH RICHTER NORTH VAN. CENTENNIAL THEATRE Fri., Feb..12, 6:00 & 8:30 p.m. Tickets: 12.75 plus service charge includes GST TicketMaster Info and Chargeline 280-4444 ortance of bein the French on the radio. Then he arrived and, well, he has changed a fot of attitudes. “1 remember when he was first here he could hardly speak English. When be was giving someone a ticket he had to ask them for help so he could fill it out properly.” In St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, the conversation often turns to Quebec sovereignty. Sitting in Laurent Rondeau’s cabane a sucre (maple syrup shack) on a spring evening, McLean asks “Are you Canadian or Quebecois?” Laurent im- mediately answers “Quebecois,” aT ean ti = SPECIAL PURCHASE INFANTS PRINTED CRIB SHEETS | 90 cm 100% COTTON PERCALES © PRINTS & SOLIDS Ce eS) 137 crn 1 ASST. UPHOLSTERY HERCULON ENDS wh 2 westesnn, FANNY 5 FABRICS L Se laewere a ate” I bee Lett 1 WakinE OF { but then qualifies it but adding that he is Canadian also, Reading Welcome Home isa wonderful way to catch trickles of Canadian history. Dresden, Ontario, for instance, was a sanctuary for blacks escap- ing American slavery in the 1800s. They had freedom in the Cana- dian small town, but they were not to be free from discrimination until the 1960s. Resident Bruce Carter recalls a time when none of the restaurants in town would serve him a cup of coffee. Even to the present, the Carter family feels as if blacks in Canada ;RASHER SHI 116 cm PRINTED COTTONS & COTTON BLENDS j m Ce ee ee ) 150 cm WASHED CHAMBRAY STRIPES ~& SOLIDS ce) SLEEPWEAR PRINTED BRUSH NYLON i} I i) i] | t 1 i 1 i 1 t woe che ue i) i i} 1 t i I i] i I i z I are a non-people. Daughter Gayle Carter was shocked when she saw a movie about Canada at the Canada pavil- ion in Disney World recently, “But do you know? There is not one black person in the whole movie ... | thought, ‘Wait a minute, where am 1?" In Nakusp, B.C., ex-loggers tell stories about the art of tree-felling in the old days. "We used to put an axe handle on the ground,” says Mac Falkiner. “‘We'd try to drop the tree right on the axe handle.” The conversation is filled with a certain nostalgia. Loggers these SPECIAL PURCH ‘RE ANTS WER - CURTAIN PRINTS & SOLIDS 150 cm SOLIDS INTERLOCK FLEECE & JERSEY R EEC rT AR oriant days don’t pull in the money they used to. McLean shows that the key to survival in most small towns today is imagination and entrepreneur- ship. Most farmers have jobs on the side and many young people leave to pursue post-secondary educa- tion, But somehow the towns stay alive. A recent study on small-town Canada concludes, ‘If there is one aspect of towns and villages that we find remarkable, it is their persistence, their refusal to die out, their ‘staying power’.” 93! MANUFACTURERS '.450 om PRINTS T-KNITS FLORAL 150 cm . ASSORTED . NOVELTY. . KNITS SOLIDS — mm cone cm mee fee cme OE OU) EE me Oe CHILDREN’S & f