Paddling through Canada

There are a lot of travel writers these days setting off ‘in the footsteps of’ someone else, gathering clues and arguing with ghosts. This is partly pragmatism: there are so few untouched trails around that you might as well make a virtue of necessity, lend your narrative some historical backbone and a point of comparison. It means that as you stare across at an interlaced network of concrete motorways and slab-like apartment blocks, you can contrast the contemporary carnage with the three wooden huts your predecessor observed, or discern the vestiges of the past among the urban clutter. Yet at times the genre can flag: the footsteps simply aren’t compelling, the structure is creaky, the premise ultimately dubious. The genre easily becomes formulaic — earnest depictions of the pursued, self-indulgent musings from the pursuer. This all makes Robert Twigger’s book something of a relief: a ‘footsteps’ book that also passes muster as a truly interesting journey, told with wit and panache.