Discovering Canada Local Colour. Edited by Carol Martin. Douglas & Mcintyre. $27.95 EADING TRAVEL writ- ing is a vicarious vaca- tion, an imaginative “petaway,” right? Not necessarily. Sometimes, if you're lucky, it takes you home in a way that makes you “know the place for the first time,” as T.S. Eliot said. Editor Carol Martin has done a superb job of putting together a superficially serendipitous collec- tion of unique travel pieces that lives up to its subtitle: “Writers Discovering Canada.” Not only is this not the mechanically gushing “travel journalism” of slick in-flight mag- azines, Martin has also resisted the temptation to produce a “celebrity anthology” packed with an all-star Canlit cast that would, no doubt, have been an easier sell. Only Margaret Laurence and Al Purdy’s names ring bells in the alphabetical roster (no star billing), and instead of an obvi- cus piece by Farley Mowat, we get a subtle excerpt from his wife, Claire, who discovers in Newioundland that a woman who is banished to the kitchen with “the woife” sometimes finds out a loi more a lot faster than the husband BS-ing on the porch with the byes. Malcolm MacRury’s lead-off iece alone bears any resem- bance to hackneyed travel writ- ing and that's deliberately ironic. MacRury took on a task similar to Vancouver's recent “Be A Tourist In Your Own Town” promotion: he agreed to become a Canadian tourist in Canada for the Globe & Phata: Cindy May john Moore BOOK REVIEW Mail’s Destinations magazine, with unexpectedly amusing results. MacRury doesn’t so much set the tone as invite you to expect the unexpected from the outset. Martin has carefully chosen pieces that offer unfamiliar points of view and illuminate some of the hidden places at the secret heart of this country that will never appear on a Condé iNast Traveller itinerary. British anthropologist Hugh Brody seems an unlikely choice, yet his “Maps of Dreams” about hunting with the natives of north- eastern B.C. embodies all that is best (and too seldom seen) in scholarly writing. Initially, he imposes his analytical system on the data, noting when people hunt, who goes, who doesn’t etc., ‘which dramaticaily sets up a counterpoint ‘ “revelation” when he simply lets the native hunters speak for themselves. They then express the moral/spiritual essence of the traditional hunters world-view with the insight and eloquence of a college of Zen masters. No piece demonstrates the writer's “discovery” of a place better than Jim Cristy’s account of “Visiting Carcross” on the White Pass-Yukon railway line. t What can vou wate about visit- ing a place that almost isn’t a “place” in human ierms any- more? Well, you can write about the time aman sang | Love You Truly lo the tune of an Indian drum at the well-attended formal funeral of a parrot buried in the cemetery Christy is one of those vagabond writers whose articles you read and never forget, but whose name escapes you. Write it down, take it with you to the library and the bookstores. He has writen several excellent and unusual books: his Flesh and Blood, A Journey Into the Heart of Boxing (published by Douglas & Mcintyre a couple of years ago), is one of the best books ever written about the not-so “sweet science.” There is an elegaic note, a sense of vanished or vanishing ways of life, that emerges from the best pieces in this book. Lawrence Millman’s “Last Place, about a camping trip to the ancient Viking settlement in Newfoundland becomes a dual elegy as the difficulty of empathizing with the ancient Norsemen in their distant outpost is resolved in the recent destruc- tion of the unique “outport cul- ture” by Joey Smallwood and the federal government. Yet, this is not a sad book. It conveys a sense of the marvel- lous geographical! and cultural richness of a country that the mandarins of multiculturalism in Ottawa seem to think was a blank slate until 30 years ago. Personal and apolitical, it’s the best bock about Canada I’ve ever read and ought to be a high school textbook. ” Fresh summei fru ait bas arrived and L. onsdale Quay Market is looking hot in “Cherry Red”! Straight from the tree to you, we have the finest, freshest cherries around. Gather all your meal-time ingredients from our rainbow palette of fresh, brightly coloured, fruit and vegetables. Plus, dont forget to put a fresh cherry on top! 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