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A Road for Canada
Riding the asphalt ribbon
The Buddhist poet Gary Snyder has suggested the best way to improve the world is to stay home. If you take home to mean your own country, Dan Francis's latest book is a grand home improvement project.
Sudbury has the Big Nickel. Echo Bay has the Big Loonie. Wawa has a giant goose. Sault Ste. Marie has a huge baseball, as if left behind by giants, and Moose Jaw has Mac the Moose, ten metres high. White River has a marbelite statue of Winnie the Pooh clutching his honey pot.
They're just some of the roadside attractions in Daniel Francis' illustrated story of the Trans-Canada Highway, A Road for Canada (Stanton, Atkins, Dosil $39.95). As Francis first discovered during his three-month honeymoon journey in an orange Volkswagen camper, Canada's other National Dream is the world's longest highway, an automotive spinal cord that stretches from Victoria to St. John's-twice as long as the Great Wall of China.
"Driving the Trans-Canada is rite of passage,"; he recalls, "but it can also be a trial by fire."; Back in the late Sixties, he and his new wife always parked on a slope, enabling them to jump-start the vehicle each morning. "Canada was several days wider than I had given it credit for,"; he recalls.
While paying heed to iconic moments-such as watching a weathered grain elevator grow larger on the horizon-Francis also explores the roadway's historic and symbolic significance. "As Canadians know from our periodic constitutional squabbles, the thread might break. Meanwhile, the highway reveals us to ourselves.";
The highway's half-way point is Chippewa Falls in Ontario. 09732346-7-9
[BCBW 2006]
The Buddhist poet Gary Snyder has suggested the best way to improve the world is to stay home. If you take home to mean your own country, Dan Francis's latest book is a grand home improvement project.
Sudbury has the Big Nickel. Echo Bay has the Big Loonie. Wawa has a giant goose. Sault Ste. Marie has a huge baseball, as if left behind by giants, and Moose Jaw has Mac the Moose, ten metres high. White River has a marbelite statue of Winnie the Pooh clutching his honey pot.
They're just some of the roadside attractions in Daniel Francis' illustrated story of the Trans-Canada Highway, A Road for Canada (Stanton, Atkins, Dosil $39.95). As Francis first discovered during his three-month honeymoon journey in an orange Volkswagen camper, Canada's other National Dream is the world's longest highway, an automotive spinal cord that stretches from Victoria to St. John's-twice as long as the Great Wall of China.
"Driving the Trans-Canada is rite of passage,"; he recalls, "but it can also be a trial by fire."; Back in the late Sixties, he and his new wife always parked on a slope, enabling them to jump-start the vehicle each morning. "Canada was several days wider than I had given it credit for,"; he recalls.
While paying heed to iconic moments-such as watching a weathered grain elevator grow larger on the horizon-Francis also explores the roadway's historic and symbolic significance. "As Canadians know from our periodic constitutional squabbles, the thread might break. Meanwhile, the highway reveals us to ourselves.";
The highway's half-way point is Chippewa Falls in Ontario. 09732346-7-9
[BCBW 2006]
Submitted on October 15, 2006 in By David.
