Driving to Shangri La

I’d go to Canada if I wanted to ski, or fish, or see the Northern Lights, but in the end it was only to launch my (Canadian) boyfriend D.W.’s book that I ventured west. I hate to think of myself as prejudiced, but even lyrical books like Will Fiennes’s The Snow Geese don’t do much to encourage Canadian tourism. Which made D.W.’s goal — to woo me into a love of the Great White North — difficult: I was determined not to be converted.

D.W. is a native of the Kootenay Valley, British Columbia, where, he says, ‘Men are men, and so are women.’ His book is set there, in ‘the Valley’, and is a hard-as-nails collection of short stories about sad men and lost opportunities. This — small-town Canada — was my destination.

D.W.’s ‘ma’ (pronounced maaaa), Kathy, met us at the airport in Calgary, a city somewhere west-of-the-middle. Upon deplaning, we were greeted by aged cowgirls who sing-songed ‘Welcome to Calgary folks!’ as they rocked on their booted heels. Kathy had driven ten hours for the privilege of picking us up and thank God she had, because Canada has a vendetta against public transport — one of the few characteristics it shares with the United States. She lives in Regina, and the landscape beyond her window is so flat that she says she could watch her dog run away for days.

Luckily, isolation had not turned Kathy into a monster but a woman of remarkable kindness and determination. She is what’s known as a ‘doer’. Most Canadians I encountered were ‘doers’ — they chopped and stacked firewood, hauled heavy equipment, cleared out basements, constructed terraces and held yard sales. Perhaps they don’t have enough to do. The town where D.W. grew up has, by way of entertainment, one cinema (open once a week) and one bar (open till 2 a.m.