My Ontario

eading in bed
In the 1910s and 1920s, the site was a gathering place for
writers and artists, and the park’s lake is probably the most
painted lake in the province.
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Bon Echo Provincial Park.
A literary driving tour of southwestern Ontario could
include an overnight stay. The Little Inn of Bayfield is
the perfect place to spend the night and is close to
Clinton, Thamesville and Chatham. The dining room is
famous, and the Inn itself is full of history. Bayfield is
located conveniently close to the Stratford Shakespeare
Festival, Blyth Festival and Huron Country Playhouse.
If your reading taste extends to cookbooks, the Inn
offers cooking classes – using local ingredients with the
chef and covers cooking skills like how to perfect the
slow cooking of the Loire Valley, France.
Great Ontario Books
to travel with:
“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in
maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building
should be seen by morning light, at noon and
by moonlight.”
– Robertson Davies
These are books that are fully steeped in the
atmosphere of Ontario, from its cities to its isolated
farms. Read the book, and then take a journey to see
its birthplace. The ‘place’ will resonate in a totally new
way. And the memory will stay with you.
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
(set in Toronto)
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (set in Deptford,
a.k.a. Thamesville)
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro (short stories
inspired by her early years in Clinton and central
Huron County)
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (Toronto
and Lakefield)
Writer’s Map of Toronto, and Writer’s Map of Ontario,
by John Robert Colombo (available through his
website, colombo.ca)
Giller Prize for his second novel, Through Black Spruce, which
explores the rich Ontario background he depicted so eloquently
in his first novel, Three Day Road. Both novels visit the northern
Ontario wilderness near Moose Factory, and the bushlands
surrounding the town. Through Black Spruce vividly portrays the
clash between first nations sensibility and the modernity of
big city Toronto.
Hugh Garner’s Cabbagetown, Morley Callaghan’s Rosedale,
Margaret Atwood’s Leaside – these are places that have acquired
a permanent place in the hearts of their readers. Howard
Engel’s private eye Benny Cooperman lives in two rooms in a
recognizable office building in St. Catharines. Mary Lawson’s
Crow Lake recreates the chilly life in a northern Ontario farming
community so well that the reader may shiver.
When I asked John Robert Colombo if there was a place in
Ontario that has more meaning for him personally because of its
connection to an author or a literary work, he answered directly.
“Bon Echo Provincial Park (north of Belleville) has a strong
association with the great American poet Walt Whitman, and
with the writer Merrill Denison and his wife Muriel who wrote
the novel, Susannah of the Mounties. Lines of one of Whitman’s
poems are inscribed on Bon Echo Rock. In the 1910s and 1920s,
the site was a gathering place for writers and artists, and the
park’s lake is probably the most painted lake in the province.
“I also like Sudbury,” continued Colombo, “which is the
setting for one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time,
Roadside Picnic, written by two Russian authors and brothers,
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Twice it has been adapted to film.
It deals with the transforming effects of ‘alien artefacts’.”
So drag out your favourite Ontario-based book, or your
favourite book by a writer who came here to write about our
‘place’ – John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany comes to mind –
and reread it. Then set out on an investigative literary sleuthfest
to discover the places and the influences that insinuated
themselves into the book.
It’s a compelling reason to open a good book and it’s a great
excuse for a trip. Maybe you’ll write a book about it! MO
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