Oh, Canada!

July 1 is Canada Day. It’s like Canada’s Independence Day, for those of you who don’t have your finger on the pulse of Canadian holidays. I do because, y’all, I love Canada.

If you haven’t learned anything else about me, you should at least know that wanderlust and booklust are incredibly intertwined for me. I know I’m not unique among the reading world, but if I am planning to go somewhere new, I want to read every possible thing I can find that is set there or written by people from there. Lately, though, I seem to have reversed this. After reading books with a strong sense of place, I quickly develop mini-obsessions with the real-life settings and have no rest in my hindquarters until I get there (see my Longmire post for another example of this affliction).

One such place I’ve become absolutely obsessed with visiting is Canada, and it has been a dream bookish destination for me for the last year or two. This is largely thanks to Louise Penny and her excellent Inspector Gamache series. I’ll reveal my love for Ms. Penny and her work in another post soon (she deserves her very own post). For now, suffice it to say these books, among the many other things they do for me, paint such a lovely and vivid picture of a pretend place inspired by a real place that my feet are itching to cross the border.

The Great White North first entered my consciousness as a young girl when my mother (who swears she doesn’t recall this conversation) answered my question of “Where do you think I’ll end up in life?” with, among other more vague statements, “I can see you married to a bearded Canadian, living deep in the woods in a cozy house with your two bilingual sons.” For a kid with a deep and romantic imagination, this was all it took for me to start fantasizing. (And to her credit, my mom got the “bearded man” and “two sons” parts right, although, ironically, it is only my daughter who speaks French.) Canada, to this day, still remains a romantic destination for  someone like me who:

• loves being outside but hates being hot
• adores walking in forests, or within sight of mountains, especially in the snow, but lives in a mostly treeless and relatively flat Southern suburb where even a chill in the air is relatively rare
• is passionate about hockey
• longs to have nature adventures without having to fight traffic or crowds
• is thrilled by the idea of putting maple syrup or brie (or at least cheese curds) on everything

While Quebec (the province in which Ms. Penny’s fictional Three Pines is set) is on the agenda, for me it needs to wait until the weather is frosty enough outside to necessitate cozy, roaring fires inside. As a compromise of sorts, and because I possess nearly zero patience when I get excited about something, especially travel, I recently visited Calgary and some national parks in Alberta (Banff) and British Columbia (Kootenay and Yoho). It was a breathtaking trip I’ll never forget.

Calgary was an absolute gem. I’m so glad we booked a full day of city strolling because it was a remarkably hip and walkable town. I got to visit my first Tim Hortons, stroll past the Saddledome (hockey) and through the grounds of the Calgary Stampede (rodeo), brave the glass floor at the Calgary Tower (it was a process), learned about Canadian history at the superb Glenbow Museum, had an amazing affogato at a local cafe -and had a moment of both bookish serendipity and full geek-out worship when I stumbled upon the newly opened Calgary Central Library.

Not only was the building itself an architectural wonder, but it took less than five minutes inside for me to realize this was truly a community hub for readers and students and children, of books and learning and curiosity. I mean, you gotta love a place that has a word bison (a sculpture of a bison made out of letters) and a ceiling like this:

I highly, highly recommend the Canadian Rockies at any (accessible) time of year, but going in the late spring was magical. The snow melt was filling lakes and rivers with a gorgeous frosty aquamarine, and the temperature was perfect. Days were warm enough not to need a heavy coat, but cool enough that I was always comfortable. (Did I mention I hate being hot?) I could not get over the site of the beautiful mountains, and thankfully they were everywhere!

Daytime during this trip was full of driving and hiking and gaping in awe at the snow-capped peaks, crystalline lakes, and verdant forests, so reading time was reserved for evenings in the hotel. I tried to read only Canadian authors with relevant Canadian settings on this trip, and I’m happy to say I found a couple of good ones. I had The Outlander by Gil Adamson on my Kindle, and although it took me awhile to get into it, I finished it shortly after I got home, relishing this wonderfully rich, raw, and kinda strange historical novel set in the Canadian Rockies. I also read In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany, the first book of a police-procedural mystery series based in interior British Columbia. I love stories set in small towns, and Delany’s Trafalgar (based on the real town of Nelson, BC) has me enchanted, so I’m sure I’ll revisit the rest of the series.

We saw a couple of mule deer and a black bear (from a distance), but the wildlife I was most obsessed with in Canada were the birds. I’m a bird lover anyway, and it was fascinating to me to meet feathered friends I haven’t seen “down south.” But when I saw a raven up close for the first time ever, I was in love. So even though the author is not Canadian, I had to listen to the audiobook Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich. It’s a very science-y book, so I am still dipping into it every now and then, but I’ve learned an incredible amount about these clever, clever birds. This is one of the things I love about being a book nerd: No matter where you are or what sparks your interest, there’s a book for that. 

Visiting the Canadian Rockies was the best kind of pleasant and life-affirming surprise. When I planned the trip, it was sort of on a whim, a way to indulge in my Canada love and sate my curiosity until I could make it to the province of Quebec in winter. I didn’t do a ton of planning, figuring I’d let Canada show me what it would. I expected an adventure, certainly, and, wow, was it ever.  I had no idea how hard I’d fall for the hip, vast, western, grand, simple, pure loveliness of it all, and I’m still overwhelmed by it. In fact, I’m running out of words to describe its awesomeness.

Oh, Canada, you truly are “glorious and free.” I left a piece of my heart in the Canadian West, so I’ll be back. (And this time, I’ll pick up some new adjectives from the word bison.)