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Notes From The Road
Across Canada With John Stackhouse
John Stackhouse's Notes from the Road will appear daily until the Labour Day weekend. His conclusions will be published in September.
Conclusions: Saturday, September 10, 2000 |
Divided we stand
Canada, as we know it, is dying. A month spent hitchhiking
from sea to sea leaves our writer certain that the nation is
embroiled in change that will either kill it or make it stronger
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Canada is a land of towering trees and mighty rivers, of courageous and humble people with resilient . . .
No, no, no.
Canada is a land in crisis, with dwindling resources and people who have ceded their national identity to a bigger, southern . . .
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Saturday, September 2, 2000 |
Day 25: Vancouver, B.C.
Despite its overwhelming beauty, Lotus Land has lost some lustre
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The last stretch of mainland highway shoots down the Fraser River valley through a canyon of shopping centres and ''adult living'' colonies until Vancouver rises on the horizon like a Pacific Oz.
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Friday, September 1, 2000 |
Day 24: Penticton, B.C. Not all is tranquillity in sunny valley where Stockwell Day is seeking office
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Deep in the Okanagan Valley are enough contradictions to sink any politician, and yet there is Stockwell Day's name on green, blue and white signs at every crossroad.There is Mr. Day's name in front of a sleepy retirement centre and near the finish of the Canadian triathlon. It marks the entrance to towns that are as white as the polar icecap and stands next to orchards harvested by immigrant labourers.
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Thursday, August 31, 2000 |
Day 23: Tete Jaune Cache, B.C.
Observations of 1864 trekker ring true in solemn stillness of B.C. bear country
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
When Viscount Milton, a gentleman British explorer, passed through this valley on horseback in 1864, he remarked on eastern British Columbia's stunning beauty, drawn by ''steep, pine-clad hills,'' narrow gorges and salmon-stuffed streams.
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Wednesday, August 30, 2000 |
Day 22: Edmonton Witty, spontaneous Fringe Festival keeps American culture at bay
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Long protected as Canada's northernmost provincial capital, Edmonton may be the city least affected by American culture, at least from Ontario west.Sure, there is the mall. The West Edmonton Mall, a giant blot of American consumerism, is very much part of the city, which is growing around it and keeping its 800-odd stores, wave pool and indoor amusement park humming.
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Tuesday, August 29, 2000 |
Day 21: Lloydminster, Alta.
Simple bag of pot tough to find in town where fat wages buy plenty
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The first sign of Alberta's oil boom is a neon sign for a liquor store. The next is a girlie bar. Then a run of motels, half a dozen fast food joints and an autobody shop, the First Truck Centre, with its large plastic steer out front.
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Monday, August 28, 2000 |
Day 20: North Battleford, Sask. Job seekers follow river of waste to beckoning land of plenty
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
In Saskatchewan, compact U-haul trailers and 12-wheel moving vans follow the same direction along the Trans-Canada Highway, the same direction Marcel Meersman is heading in his wobbly '83 Toyota wagon. West, to Alberta.
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Saturday, August 26, 2000 |
Day 19: Dauphin, Man.
Colourful landmarks bite the dust on the rapidly greying Prairies
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The tallest building in Dauphin, the one that can be seen from the Riding Mountain highlands or the wheat fields of a neighbouring county, is no longer a grain elevator. It's a retirement home.
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Friday, August 25, 2000 |
Day 18: Winnipeg, MB. Prairie city looks to the future despite problems from the past
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Day 18: Winnipeg Prairie city looks to the future despite problems from the past Where the Prairies hit a single mountain of glass and steel, where rural highways empty into Portage Avenue, there are two Winnipegs rubbing side by side, pushing the city forward while also holding it back.
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Thursday, August 24, 2000 |
Day 17: Dryden, Ont. Paper boom breathes new life into self-proclaimed forest capital
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The logging trucks roll slowly into Dryden as they have for nearly a century, carrying great loads of cut trees and wood chips from the forests around the pungent mill town, the ones that seem to stretch right from its edges to the ends of the Earth.
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Wednesday, August 23, 2000 |
Day 16: Ignace, Ont. Passions running high over bears roaming free in Winnie's wood
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Somewhere in Winnie the Pooh's original hundred-acre wood, hunters are just waiting to blow away a bear or two. But they can't.In the dense forests of Northwestern Ontario, birthplace of a real-life cub named Winnie, bears are running free this summer. And passions are running high over the province's decision in 1999 to cancel the spring bear-hunting season.
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Tuesday, August 22, 2000 |
Day 15: Wawa, Ont.
What's good for the goose is good for the hitchhiker
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
I first heard the Wawa legend in 1986, while hitchhiking in Oregon, where an aging hippie told me there was a small mining town in Northern Ontario, north of Superior, that was the hardest place in North America to thumb a ride.
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Monday, August 21, 2000 |
Day 14: Warren, Ont.
Members of fragmented society search for their spiritual homes
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The powder-blue box of a building looks innocuous enough, as unprepossessing as a suburban bungalow, but not to Father Norm Clement, who spots the Kingdom Hall sign from the driver's seat of his Oldsmobile.
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Saturday, August 19, 2000 |
Day 13: Grenville, Quebec
Province sets itself apart as distinct society for smokers
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
If there is one thing other than language that distinguishes Quebec from the rest of Canada, it must be the simple cigarette.In isolated villages and Montreal restaurants, in department stores and offices, pubs and ferries, the act of smoking is alive and well across Quebec. Unlike Ottawa or Toronto, smoking is not banished to glassed-in closets or street corners. Unlike Calgary or Vancouver, it is not sneered at as unhealthy, even unnatural.
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Friday, August 18, 2000 |
Day 12: Montreal
Blend of bohemian and bourgeois make this Canada's premier city
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
After years of recession and retreat, Montreal can claim to be back in the place it deserves, as Canada's premier city, the only one that can even enter the shadow of a New York or Paris.
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Thursday, August 17, 2000 |
ACROSS CANADA WITH JOHN STACKHOUSE
Day 11: Baie Comeau, Que. Where the Canadian flag seems almost like a souvenir from afar
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
All along the province's north shore, in fishing coves and suburban malls, the most visible emblem of Quebec nationalism flaps valiantly in the summer wind, a wind that comes from afar and is only gaining strength.
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Wednesday, August 16, 2000 |
Day 10: Sept-Iles, Que. Strange things happen on the road and then a '79 Dodge pulls over to the side
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Strange things happen under the summer sun to a hitchhiker who has been on the roadside too long. There are daydreams of Beemers, and air-conditioned buses and anything that says nonstop. But nothing compares to the dream that came true when a Dodge camper van pulled to my side.
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Tuesday, August 15, 2000 |
Day 9: Harrington Harbour, Que.
Isolation, long a curse, turns into blessing for anglophones surrounded by French
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
With a hazardous shoreline, pastel-coloured houses and Canadian flags flapping on every boat, the eastern gateway to the St. Lawrence River looks much more like the Maritimes than Quebec. Which is the way many residents say it should be.
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Monday, August 14, 2000 |
Day 8: Forteau, Labrador Revitalized Labrador Straits no longer the land that God supposedly forgot
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
It's been a while -- 466 years, to be precise -- since Jacques Cartier landed on these shores and sneered at his discovery of the land of Cain, a land so barren and rocky that it still struggles every summer to produce a hillside of berries.
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Saturday, August 12, 2000 |
Day 7: Deer Lake, Nfld.
On road to Gros Morne National Park, drivers butt up against moose -- and lose
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Along western Newfoundland's Long Range Mountains, where warning signs for moose are more common than fishing holes, it's nearly impossible to find a ride with someone who does not have a moose story.
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Friday, August 11, 2000 |
Day 6: Aboard MV Caribou Convivial drinkers spurn fast ferry for leisurely crossing to Newfoundland
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
There's a battle raging in the North Atlantic, one that's dividing families, pitting communities against each other and, worse, threatening the very constitution of Newfoundlanders.It's the battle of the ferries.
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Thursday, August 10, 2000 |
Day 5: Baddeck, N.S.
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The great Canadian escape is not what it used to be, at least in central Cape Breton where four campgrounds sprout like beetle infestations along the shores of Bras d'Or.
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Wednesday, August 9, 2000 |
Day 4: Wood Islands, PEI Judging by accent and skin tones, not everyone is welcome
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Beyond the emerald-green golf courses and rolling white beaches, away from the Charlottetown Festival and a thousand welcomes, Canada's seaside playground, the island that gave birth to the nation, has a secret well guarded from outsiders.
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Tuesday, August 8, 2000 |
Day 3: Shediac, N.B.
These days, the lobster traps snare more customers, fewer crustaceans
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
In Canada's lobster capital, in a town that uses a giant shellfish to welcome visitors, in a community that is so endeared to the prehistoric creature that it throws festivals in its honour, in a seaside resort that serves lobster for breakfast and on pizza, one of the great tragedies of our times is unfolding.
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Monday, August 7, 2000 |
Day 2: Purple Haze, salad days and choice: life for today's tech-savvy student
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
The new lost generation drives a beat-up Mazda van down the Trans-Canada Highway, to weekend tennis tournaments and summer dreams. There's work, of course, to pay for tuition fees and an uncomfortably certain future, but if Nick is right, to be a university student in the summer of 2000 is above all else to be adrift.
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Saturday, August 5, 2000 |
Day 1: Across Canada with John Stackhouse
By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Saint John, New Brunswick -- The shores where my ancestors landed, after they were turned away as undesirable boat people, are brimming again with foreign dreams and strange accents.In Canada's first city, the place of Loyalist grit and Irving money, there are Romanian database managers, new waves of French Canadians coming south for prosperity and a team of Russian software programmers who play beach volleyball outside Market Square.
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