Three years ago, I was delighted to drive down to the Niagara Peninsula to be part of the very first Ridgeway Literary Festival. The other participants were Charles Foran , talking about his majestic biography of Mordecai Richler, and Andrew Westoll, telling us about his prize-winning book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.

It was great fun, although I missed the spectacular events of the Saturday, when the celebration of the Battle of Ridgeway went sensationally askew. According to my informant, the reliable David Wilson (biographer of D’Arcy McGee), the two proud Canadian regiments involved in the original battle (“headlong retreat” is not used in regimental histories) were unable to agree on who should march at the head of the line, following the historical route from the Ridgeway train station to the nearby battlefield.

Total standoff.

In the end, the gallant lads from Hamilton flounced off, and the Queen’s Own Regiment led the way through cheering (well, ice-cream licking) crowds to where the new monument was to be unveiled.  The local MP, Harper’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Nicholson, made a speech where he paid tribute to me as an impressive performer the previous evening at the Literary Festival named (long pause) “Doug (…..even longer pause) Wilson!”

The unveiling of the monument went no better, because the canvas cover had been tightly lashed down against high winds, and the ropes had to be slowly sawed through, whereupon the cover billowed and snapped like a sail until it was caught and hauled down, as I have described in a previous blog

Nevertheless, the Ridgeway organisers, led by the tireless Mary Friesen, had warm memories of me, and invited me back to Ridgeway this June. The occasion was not a Literary Festival, but a Literary Evening grafted onto a remarkable historical event entitled “THE FENIAN RAIDS HISTORICAL AUTHORS CONFERENCE” .

The people in attendance were historians from Canada, the United States, and Ireland, and for two days I sat and admired their professional skills as they explained the significance of this battle, which had taken place exactly 150 years earlier, to the day, June 2, 1866.

The background is this. Many Irish immigrants with bitter memories of British rule in Ireland fought for the North in the American Civil War. When the war ended, many of these hardened soldiers were persuaded by nationalist Fenian groups that an invasion of British Canada might pressure Britain to give up their rule of Ireland, to in effect swap Canada for Ireland. Inspired by this idea, these Fenians invaded Canada at several points, most famously across the river from Buffalo, to Ridgeway, beside Fort Erie.

The battle was a disaster for the Canadian volunteers, whose officers were so incompetent that they sent their men out in sweltering June weather in winter uniforms, and without canteens to give them water. I took a battlefield tour with Peter Vronsky, the author of the Penguin history of the battle, and the tales of military folly were predictably amazing. As the Canadians advanced, the Fenian general was luring them, Civil War-style, to a killing ground. But someone shouted out “Cavalry!” and the panicked Canadian commander had the chance to use his favourite parade-ground manoeuvre, which always brought warm applause from crinolined spectators,

“Form a square!” he bellowed. The troops loyally shuffled into position, ready to repulse the non-existent cavalry.  The Fenians, with their inaccurate breech-loading muskets, could hardly believe their luck as their opponents clumped together to form an easy mass target.

Soon the Canadians were rushing back to Ridgeway. This hasty retreat meant that they avoided the planned killing ground, but nine Canadians died, while fourteen Irish Americans also lost their lives.

It was a fine historical conference, but many of the attendants were…er…deeply eccentric. One enthusiast, for example, had driven many hours from Vermont in a car bearing the licence plate FENIAN. Others were historical re-enactors. They are the sort of hobbyists all too keen to march around reconstructed battles in precisely correct uniforms, dying dramatically, arms outflung, until the announcer at such events  intones through the microphone  “THE DEAD MAY NOW ARISE.” I’m sorry that we had no such event at our Conference.

The musical entertainment in Ridgeway involved a famous Irish group, Derek Warfield and the Young Wolfetones. Their long-running tour of Irish America meant that their praise of all things Irish was without a trace of irony, and sentimental rebel songs full of weeping mothers were greeted with hoots of delight.

I like Celtic music.

Across Canada By Story tells how I came to sing a solo of “The Wild Rover” at the Royal Ontario Museum. But what, you may wonder, was I doing at this Ridgeway conference?

Well, the Literary Evening featured Guy Vanderhaeghe, whose last historical novel, A Good Man, featured a narrator scarred by his experience at the Battle of Ridgeway, who later encountered Fenians out west, when he was dealing with Sitting Bull’s arrival in Canada after The Little Big Horn.

My role was to interview Guy, or have an on-stage conversation with him. He’s such an old friend that we go back to Man Descending, his first book, which I published in 1982. Not only was our conversation a success, because Guy is such a thoughtful writer. Socially, it was a great time for us, from the moment when Jane and I picked him up at the Toronto airport on Thursday, until we dropped him off on Saturday.

I especially enjoyed our time together, roaming around downtown  Ridgeway. We visited the fine bookstore on the main street run by Mary Friesen, where I was pleased to find that my photo (along with Charles Foran and Andrew Westoll) adorns her walls. Just a few minutes down the street, past The Flying Squirrel restaurant, I found the theatre where I gave my original show. It shares a building with a lively brewery that produces a beer named “Brimstone.” There may be a song there.

Certainly, the menu at our Fort Erie hotel deserves wider fame. For dinner, Guy noticed, it is possible to order a steak “grilled according to your likeness.”

Dawson City is one view of the Yukon. Whitehorse is another.
In every sense Whitehorse is the capital. It’s a recognisable urban centre. With 30,000 people, more than half of the Territory’s population lives there, and the streets are full of three-story buildings, with lots of space for parking around them. It’s very different from the 1890’s sense of Dawson, with its old buildings cheerfully jammed side by side.
The airport (and in the Yukon all flight paths lead to Whitehorse) is situated above the town, which makes an idle traveller start to wonder why every airport is not located so sensibly. But there is a real downtown, down near the Yukon River, where we stayed at the, yes, “Edgewater Hotel”. It’s on Main Street, just a couple of blocks from a splendid bookstore, Mac’s Fireweed Books, where Jane and I were stopped in our tracks by a window display of my books. Inside, it was just as delightful (talk to any author about what it’s like to find a display of her books!) and I found myself babbling and signing the stock they had. I resisted the temptation to sign the displays of Terry Fallis’s books, and Terry was in to sign them all the next day.
The Northern Lights Literary Festival this year featured me, Terry, and the storytelling Ivan Coyote. All of us were lucky enough to do events at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre, a magnificent building along the river from downtown. To get there we had to jostle our way through the high excitement and the many big trucks and instant marquees of Ron MacLean’s travelling “Hometown Hockey” event, which was in Whitehorse that weekend, and was A VERY BIG DEAL.
I gave my evening show at The Old Fire Hall Theatre, supported by a very professional group of assistants, and attracted about 80 book-lovers, many of whom stayed to buy signed books. Later I gave a couple of workshops with 25 keen local writers. There was a magical moment when one writer was talking about her fascination for ravens, and I turned the room’s attention to the omnipresent ravens outside…..just as a bald eagle flew beside our building, along the river!
The kind organisers (thank you, Lily Quan) had arranged for Jane and me to get out of town, into the real Yukon. We were picked up by the writer, Al Pope, who lives with his impressive politician wife Lois about 20 miles out of town, near Watson River. Lunch of goat curry was unforgettable, and so was the snowy walk along the edge of the lake (“That track’s a martin! See where the hare took off there. Look at the moose track across the trail here!”) Later, in Whitehorse, we bought a powerful winter landscape painting by J. Dowell-Irvine that will bring Yukon memories of our hike that day to our placid Toronto dining room.
Finally, in the Departure Lounge at the Whitehorse Airport, there was great excitement when Ron MacLean came in to wait for the flight to Vancouver. He chatted easily with fellow-travellers, then after a bit I edged over to have the “Ron, I don’t know if you remember me, but…” conversation. Before I could begin he leaped to his feet and said “Doug Gibson! Hey, everybody, let me introduce you to the man who…” followed by lots of kind compliments. I was able to introduce him to Jane and Terry, and he was able to say that he had been too busy to attend our shows, although he really had wanted to.
A very nice guy, Ron MacLean
Oh, yes, where did Whitehorse get its name? From the rapids (since removed) on the Yukon River near downtown, where the constant foam looked like the mane of a herd of galloping white horses. A fine poetic origin for a great place for a lucky author to visit.

To visit the Yukon in the middle of January may seem an odd choice, but when The Northern Lights Literary Festival invited us, we were very keen to go. As Lily Quan told Jane and me, “When you come here in mid-winter, people don’t look at you as a cheechako, a sort of summer tourist. They know that if you come in winter, you really want to be here.”
We really wanted to be there.
We had never been to the Yukon, so the first delightful news was that we were going not just to Whitehorse, the capital city where the vast majority of the people in the territory live, but all the way north to Dawson City, by plane more than an hour further north and west, near Alaska. It’s still based around the old Gold Rush town from 1897, when it sprang up to become the biggest Canadian city west of Winnipeg. The wooden buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, with the occasional tin building imitating the stone fronts that can’t survive above the permafrost. It’s like one big movie set, with many of the buildings maintained for the summer tourists by Parks Canada.
From Monday through Thursday we were based in the Downtown Hotel, which is right …um…downtown, on Main street just a block away from Front Street, which is right beside the Yukon River, just after the Klondike has joined it. The Yukon is a big river here (it’s the third longest river in North America, and I bet you didn’t know that!) so it was a thrill to walk across it, over the ice-bridge that allows cars and brave trucks to follow the path of the summer ferry.
It was cold, of course, but we had dressed for it (bulky parkas, long johns, big boots, fur hats with ear-flaps) so we walked everywhere. While the sun was up, that is, from roughly 10 till 4. Banker’s hours.
The literary community in Dawson is a lively one, and with our friend Dan Dowhal we visited Sheila Plunkett at The Berton House, where she was the Writer in Residence. Our visit revealed what a fine thing the Berton House programme, encouraged by a grant from my old friend Pierre, really is. It enlivens the local population by injecting talented people with names like Ken McGoogan, or Lawrence Hill, or Charlotte Gray , and then it sends them back to the rest of Canada, to rave about Dawson City, and the Yukon.
I was glad to do a couple of events. First, I ran a workshop for a dozen local writers (including ten year-old Alan, and his mother). Then on the final evening, in the grand ballroom of the old KIAC Building, I gave my “Stories About Storytellers” show to 30 kind Klondikers.
I learned that there are three special terms with a specific local meaning:–
1 Here “Han” does not refer to an ancient Chinese dynasty, but to the ancient local native people, and their language (we sat in on a conversational language class in the fine Native Cultural Centre down by the river, and learned just how sophisticated the language is.)
2 Do not use “mushy” as an adjective describing writing. Many people in town, like our friend Dan (a refugee from Toronto, who was a resident at Berton House who never recovered) are now keen on “mushing”, and dog teams are to be seen swishing along the streets as the owners pursue their passion.
3 You think you know what “kayak” means. In Dawson it means “KIAC” the fine Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture, run by Matt Sarty, who was a cheery host.
Next….on to Whitehorse. And how did a Northern town in the mountains get that name?

The morning after the grand launch at the Lieutenant-Governor’s chambers in Toronto, Jane drove me to the airport and I flew to Winnipeg.
There I was met by my pal Gordon Sinclair, who knows Winnipeg better than anyone else. He’s the last of the old-time columnists, who writes about whatever catches his eye. Sometimes it’s serious stuff, like the police shooting of the native leader J.J. Harper, which became the 1999 book I was proud to publish, Cowboys and Indians. Sometimes it’s more relaxed, about the seasons, or the streets and the parks, or the interesting characters or tales he has encountered. He’s been doing this very personal column for 34 years now, and the “Winnipeg Free Press” readers really like it.
In Across Canada By Story I talk about getting The Gordon Sinclair Tour of the City, including a visit to the Ralph Connor House at 54 Westgate, and then a trip to the site of the Battle of Seven Oaks, which I talk about in the book, with reference to Margaret Laurence. This time our travels (and I was staying with Gordon and Athena) took us back to the bright yellow Gabrielle Roy house on Rue Deschambault in St. Boniface. I was surprised to see that Gabrielle, born in 1909, lived at home there until 1937. I was even more surprised to learn that Gordon knew about the jealous oldest sister, whose bitter book hastened Gabrielle’s death. The twisted sister came to Gordon’s “Free Press” office, trying to peddle her hate-filled story to him, without success.
Just as you may be surprised to learn that Farley Mowat was the Boy From Saskatoon, it may be startling to think of Marshall McLuhan as the Boy From Winnipeg. But Gordon knew the house where he grew up, right opposite Gladstone School on Gertrude. We went there, and I was photographed outside the old house. Later, on the same principle, we went to Assiniboine Park where I posed affectionately beside the busts of Carol Shields and Gabrielle Roy. All three Winnipeg authors, plus Margaret Laurence, are in my new book, and in the new show.
In the evening I returned to the place, the McNally-Robinson Prairie Ink Store, where I gave my very first bookstore “Stories About Storytellers” show. As luck (very good luck) would have it, once again my show was in the skilled hands of John Toews. (Since I’m the husband of Jane Brenneman, he even puts up with terrible Mennonite jokes like “Toews Soews!”) The show ran smoothly in the well-appointed store, and once again I was thrilled by the old friends who showed up.
Two stand out. First, David Friesen, whose company over the years printed millions of the books I published, but — as his presence that night showed — really cared, personally, about the books.
Second was Morley Walker, now retired from his constant role as the Books Editor of the “Free Press”. I quote him, gratefully, as saying that I have “ a greater appreciation of regional Canada than 99% of us born here”. And that was before I published Across Canada By Story!
Thanks, David, and Morley, and John and Gordon and Athena. I always enjoy Winnipeg.

Every Canadian Province has a Lieutenant-Governor, whose formal role is to represent the Crown. In recent years I have been lucky enough to know two of Ontario’s Lieutenant-Governors very well. The first was the Right Honourable James Bartleman, whom I knew in a previous life as my author Jim Bartleman. The second is the current occupant, the distinguished public servant Elizabeth Dowdeswell, who has been a friend for many years in our joint support of The Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs.
It was at the 2014 Couchiching Conference that the subject of my new book came up. “Across Canada By Story?” said Elizabeth, the incoming L.G.” I’d like to launch that book in my official chambers.”
I was intrigued, but only made polite murmurs. It wasn’t fear that a Vice-Regal launch might involve a bottle of champagne being smashed across my bow that stopped me from enthusiastically advancing the idea. I didn’t want to seem, well, pushy, and I didn’t know if Lieutenant-Governors really did official book launches.
But some months later I ran into Elizabeth again, and she said, “Now, I really want to launch this book of yours. When should we do it?”
So her people talked to my people, meaning my friends at ECW, and lo and behold, on September 28 Jane and I walked into the elegant Suite in the north-west corner of the Ontario Parliament building in Queen’s Park. It was a formal, warm and welcoming event for my friends in the book world and beyond. Our very informal grandchildren, Lindsay (11), and Alistair (8), sat happily on the carpet for the speeches, and Alistair was later able to tell the Lieutenant- Governor his opinion that his Grandad’s greatest publishing achievement was to get Roy MacGregor writing The Screech Owls hockey books.
The formal part of the event was astonishing, since from the podium Her Honour (and such was the name I was remembering to call her) proceeded to talk about my new book in a thoughtful, imaginative way that would have graced a major book review. (It was, we learned later, all her own work). In response, I noted that the stories from the book came from literally right across Canada, with one coming from this very room. Then only a slight expansion in distance into Queen’s Park was required to take in the strolling Robertson Davies, the statuesque Al Purdy, and the nearby world-famous academics, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. I then concluded with an indiscreet story quoting Newfoundland’s salty Lieutenant-Governor, the Rt. Hon. John C. Crosbie.
It was a very memorable event. And, not for the first time, I was reminded how fortunate we are to have Elizabeth Dowdeswell as Ontario’s Lieutenant- Governor.

When I published Stories About Storytellers in 2011, I was pleased to be asked to play my part in Word-On-The-Street (WOTS) in Queen’s Park. I was honoured to be part of the “Vibrant Voices of Ontario” in the booming tent of that name, and I tried to keep my voice as vibrant as possible as I read from my book. I tell the story of my limited success that day in Across Canada By Story.
This year WOTS moved south to the refurbished Harbourfront, where the attractive new street patterns have been carefully designed to create conflicts between walkers and cyclists. But despite all things being new, I was back at, yes, the “Vibrant Voices” tent. Before we started, the pleasant and efficient young woman who was the MC for all the events there explained that she would introduce me, then I would read from my book for 10-15 minute, then she would direct a Question and Answer Session with the audience, then she would call a halt.
No, no, no, I responded.
What she should do is introduce me, then sit back. Instead of reading from my book, I’d talk very briefly about how I’d created the “Stories About Storytellers” show, and how I’d created the new book, Across Canada By Story. Then I’d read out the list of authors featured in the new book, and at the end I’d say “OK, who do you want to hear stories about?”
She looked a little dubious, but I said, “Trust me, this will work. And I’ll rely on you to say ‘One last question’”.
And it did work. Hands shot up to ask questions…..about Guy Vanderhaeghe….about Marshall McLuhan…about Nino Ricci…about Grey Owl…about Alice Munro….. even about Mordecai Richler, who was not on my list. And as I told stories about each of them, the crowds of people drifting by stopped to listen, and in some cases found a chair, swelling my audience.
By the time of “One last question”, it was clear that we had a very successful session on our hands. Whenever my time is short I’ll use that format again. Trust me, it will work!

I’ve written about my family links with Saskatchewan, with my Granny’s sister leaving Scotland in 1903 with her new husband to try her luck in Canada’s West . This was before Saskatchewan became a province, and Saskatoon was where they landed. Homesteading soon followed.
So I was delighted to be asked to come along and take part in the 2015 Word-On- The-Street (WOTS) celebration of books and authors. I’ve been at WOTS events right beside the salt water in Halifax, not far from it in Vancouver, and in several spots in freshwater Toronto. But in Saskatoon it’s held downtown, just three blocks west of the South Saskatchewan River, with a small tent city cheerfully blocking streets around the Library.
That Library plays a large part in the WOTS celebrations. Indeed, my show was held in the Library Theatre, and I was proud to whizz through all of the authors in “Across Canada By Story” in time for my successor, W.P. Kinsella, to follow on from me with his interviewer, Yann Martel.
Later, I had fun interviewing Guy Vanderhaeghe on another stage. I’ve been his friend ever since I published Man Descending in 1982. I had warned Guy that my questions were likely to begin “How can you seriously expect us to believe…..?”, and so on, but in the end the predicted inquisition proved to be a very warm conversation, one which the audience apparently enjoyed. And they certainly applauded when I finally paid tribute to Guy – as I do in my book – as “one of Canada’s greatest novelists.”
A final note about the Library. Angus Mowat, Farley’s father, was the librarian there. So Farley grew up in Saskatoon, as readers of The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be are well aware. Saskatoon’s pride in him is evident in the statue of Farley, plus dog, that you can find on the University of Saskatchewan campus.
But there’s another link from his early years with Farley’s fame as a writer of gripping non-fiction. Angus was far from being a model father; indeed he even involved his son in hiding his bigamy. But as a librarian, to attract readers of popular fiction to the pleasures of good non-fiction, he would insert copies of the very best non-fiction books among the widely-borrowed fiction titles, in the hope that readers would stumble upon them, like what they saw, and extend their reading range.
Isn’t it interesting that Farley was to pioneer the idea of using the devices of fiction – including scenes, and dialogue – to make his non-fiction books more compelling?

If you live far from BC, there’s a fair chance that you only know the BC coast, especially Vancouver and Victoria. If so, you’re missing a very different part of Canada. I know it because my brother-in-law Peter and his wife Heather live in Kelowna, which draws us there often. They were among the more than 200 people who lost their homes when the great firestorm of 2003 swept into town. After our success in publishing The Ice Storm, we at M&S knew how to rush out books about Canadian natural disasters, cold or hot, East or West, so by enlisting the help of the Kelowna Daily Courier we swiftly brought out Firestorm: The Summer B.C. Burned.
As I say in Across Canada By Story: “It raised lots of money for reclamation projects, although it was nothing compared with the estimated 250 million trees lost in the fire.”
In September I tried to (ahem) set the house on fire in the Okanagan College Theatre in Kelowna, where a polite audience, not all of them relatives, watched the very first public performance of my new power-point stage show, “Across Canada By Story”. It went well enough, and the fire brigade was not involved. The organiser, the tireless author and teacher John Lent, then outdid himself by arranging another show for me THE VERY NEXT DAY in Vernon.
Three points there. The drive from Kelowna to Vernon shows the Okanagan (pronounced “awe-gan”) at its very best. High, dry hills roll down to scenic lakes, with irrigated fields producing apples and wine-bearing grapes and many lesser fruits and vegetables. One of the towns along the way is now named simply “Lake Country”, although Vernon itself now has around 50, 000 people. Second, the show was held at the fairly new Okanagan College Vernon campus, surely the most beautiful campus in all of Canada, perched high above Kalamalka Lake. And third, the afternoon show revealed that the area is now rich in writers, including my old friend, the fine poet Sharon Thesen.
Finally, a quick trip into Vernon reminded me that we were now in Across Canada By Story territory. Signs there directed us to Nelson, where Jane and I had greatly enjoyed our time at the Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, before driving west into the breathtaking scenery of the BC Interior.

In Ancient Rome, before a Caesar dared to launch a major campaign, he always consulted the natural world for predictions of success. The entrails of slaughtered goats, sheep, or pigeons would be messily probed, and events like high tides, floods, or thunderstorms would be pondered by skilled authorities. It was serious, head-scratching stuff.

Which brings us to Vancouver, and the launch of my new book on Monday, August 31. That evening the launch was held in the Book Warehouse on Main Street, hosted by James and Mary Ann. About 30 people came to hear me talk, and to celebrate the fact that a book whose title began with the words Across Canada should most appropriately take off there, in that great West-Coast book centre. Hal Wake (who  runs the superb local Vancouver Writers Fest) gave me a very generous introduction, and then, wearing a tie whose colours you can guess, I chatted about my adventures. The world of books was well represented in the audience, by Mel Hurtig, Mark “Raincoast” Stanton, Mary Nicol (wife of Eric), Alan “BC Bookworld” Twigg, Trena (former colleague) White and other friends. It was good to be able to pay my fond respects to two retired book stalwarts who were sadly absent, Jim Douglas and Allan MacDougall.

All went well, and a fair number of books were sold and signed. The omens seemed good.

But a soothsayer would have been concerned. The weekend before the launch the Vancouver area was hit by freak storms that smashed down hundreds of trees. Power cuts affected more than 600,000 people. Our own North Vancouver hotel was left powerless and dangerous, since groping our way through the blacked out corridors required the use of our cell phones for slivers of  light. We moved, delightedly, to The Sylvia, where I once lunched with George Woodcock, and which Jane and I on an earlier trip flip-flopped from, en route to a swim in English Bay.

But what would the ancient soothsayers have made of this freak weather? Is it very good news for my book, or the reverse? Time will tell.

As many of you know, writing a book is an all-consuming task. Other responsibilities — such as keeping your blog going out to faithful readers — fall by the wayside, as you work on this chapter, then the next one, then the next. So now that my new book is done (it exists, I can hold it in my hands, and even find it displayed in bookstores!) I can get back to the blog.

The immediate excitement is that, in accordance with the book’s national scope, we’re launching it in Vancouver. You , and your book-loving Vancouver friends, are invited to the Launch at 7.00 p.m. on Monday, August 31, at the Book Warehouse at 4118 Main Street. For a book called ACROSS CANADA BY STORY, the West-Coast launch is appropriate.

There will be other public events across the country, of course, with Festivals in places like Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon sweeping me up, not to mention places as far-flung as Moose Jaw and Quebec City. But since my STORIES ABOUT STORYTELLERS show has hit 97 Canadian communities — so far — I expect to be everywhere with this new book, and the new show that goes along with it.

A final note about how far-reaching that show proved to be:  in July this year Adventure Canada hired me to run a Floating Book Club on board their cruise ship going up the Labrador Coast. I had Terry Fallis to talk about his novel THE BEST-LAID PLANS ( set in Canada’s national village, Ottawa) and Kathleen Winter to talk about ANNABEL (set on the Labrador coast we’d sailed alongside). They were both superb, and the Cruise guests loved them. Finally, after we’d sailed around Cape Chidley, Labrador’s northern point, we were in Ungava Bay, level with the top of Hudson Bay. There I gave my own show, so that I can now claim that I’ve performed it in Canada from coast to coast ……to coast!