Rick Antonson's To Timbuktu for a Haircut (Dundurn $26.95) is an amusing memoir about his intrepid journey to Mali, via Senegal, to visit the fabled city, and his resulting determination to help preserve Timbuktu's approximately 700,000 endangered ancient manuscripts. The title is derived from a favoured expression of his father whenever his two young sons pestered him as to where he was going. Antonson's father would reply, "I'm going to Timbuktu to get my haircut.";

Some fifty years later, Antonson's long-imagined journey was undertaken in the wake of his participation in the successful bid to procure the 2010 Winter Olympics for Vancouver/Whistler. "We were stuck. Everyone in the Land Cruiser jumped to the ground to lighten the load. Two weeks earlier I had used my hands to scuff snow from under the wheels of a friend's Jeep that had got stuck in Canadian mountains. Now, I carved armfuls of sand from behind the Land Cruiser's wheels to achieve the same effect. We pushed and the vehicle lurched forward. We continued toward Essakane. Our vehicle's shocks abdicated. It was an atrocious experience, and I loved it. These hours, as we bore north, were among my most memorable experiences of the land-vast, faraway, uncertain. It was what I'd long envisioned Timbuktu to be."; 978-1-55002-805-8

[BCBW 2008]