Welcome Home:Travels In Smalltown Canada

by Stuart McLean

Across thousands of miles, the Canadian population clusters like loosely strung beads on the thread of the 49th parallel. This is truly Canada—a vast stretch of land and a bounty of small towns. In Welcome Home, Stuart McLean takes us on a heartwarming journey from one coast to the other to visit these small yet vibrant places and meet their remarkable citizens.

We visit Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, an old-fashioned "cow town"; Dresden, Ontario, once a destination for escaped slaves using the Underground Railroad; St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, where the worldÕs strongest man is buried; and Foxwarren, Manitoba, a quintessential hockey town. We wander along Main Street in Sackville, New Brunswick; explore Nakusp, B.C., which may have been the home of an illegitimate child of royalty; and watch the icebergs float by in Ferryland, Newfoundland.

Each town Stuart visits tells us a little about Canada's rich and often forgotten history and a lot about who Canadians are today. With a storyteller's eye for detail and an effervescent sense of humour, Stuart McLean introduces us to seven truly wonderful places and dozens of extraordinary people.


 

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Canada, Short Stories, History, Humor, Memoir

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Librarian Note: There was more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

From the Vinyl Cafe web site: Stuart McLean was a best-selling author, award-winning journalist and humorist, and host of CBC Radio program The Vinyl Cafe.

Stuart began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program's coverage of the Jonestown massacre.

Following Sunday Morning, Stuart spent seven years as a regular columnist and guest host on CBC's Morningside. His book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean, was a Canadian bestseller and a finalist in the 1990 City of Toronto Book Awards.

Stuart has also written Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were Young. Welcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors' Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993.

Stuart's books Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged, Vinyl Cafe Diaries, Dave Cooks the Turkey, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe and Extreme Vinyl Cafe have all been Canadian bestsellers. Vinyl Cafe Diaries was awarded the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Award in 2004. Stuart was also a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged and, most recently, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe.

Vinyl Cafe books have also been published in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

Stuart was a professor emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto and former director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. In 1993 Trent University named him the first Rooke Fellow for Teaching, Writing and Research. He has also been honored by: Nipissing University (EdD(H)); University of Windsor (Lld) and Trent University (DLH). Stuart served as Honorary Colonel of the 8th Air Maintenance Squadron at 8 Wing, Trenton from 2005 to 2008.

Since 1998 Stuart has taken The Vinyl Cafe to theatres across Canada, playing in both large and small towns from St. John's, Newfoundland to Whitehorse in the Yukon.

Close to one million people listen to The Vinyl Cafe every weekend on CBC Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio and on a growing number of Public Radio stations in the United States. The program is also broadcast on an occasional basis on the BBC.

Reviews

[Tonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twenty years later this book is still a relevant piece of Canadian literature reflecting on the lives of those individuals who live in rural communities. Working hard to survive and communities these people share with McLean what they love about living in small towns, what endures them to their community members, and the various ways in which they are attempting to survive together as urbanization increases and their rural populations decrease. From a hockey town in Manitoba, to the historic town of Maple Creek, to the far reaches of a bay town of Sackville, the reader is taken on a soft and melodious journey through the eyes of those who live and work in rural communities. I wonder if he has written an updated version. I think McLean should.

The most interesting part for me was the meeting McLean secured with the person who created the Canadian flag, George Stanley living in Sackville, New Brunswick. He was asked to create a version of a potential flag by a member of parliament as he had strong interests in history and heraldry (a means of identification, usually focused on country or familial commitment). He based his single maple leaf design on outfits Olympians wore during the 1928 Olympics, the games my grandfather Doral Pilling and his room mate Percy Williams both competed in. "One of the images I have carried with me all my life is a photograph I saw when I was a boy. It was a picture form the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam of Percy Williams breasting the tape and winning a gold medal for Canada. He was wearing a white jersey with a red maple leaf on his chest. It's an image that has always struck with me." Recently a book was written about Percy Williams by Samuel Hawley titled, I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World's Fastest Human (http://www.amazon.ca/Just-Ran-William...). Another book to read especially since the author consulted with my Aunt Arta Johnson who was instrumental in documenting her father's, Doral Pilling's, oral history which included stories about the 1928 Olympics and the athletic tours he participated in as the team returned to Canada. I also have two cousins who have taken this maple leaf motif from their Olympic uniforms and had tattoos made from them. Family stories and choices coming full circle. Thank you McLean for shedding more light on a family story of which I was unaware.

[Jason Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartwarming anecdotes of Canadian culture. Makes me nostalgic for things I didn't even experience.

[Jann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the homey feeling that McLean brings with his chats to the people of the various small towns he visits. Most are longtime residents of each particular town and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. In between the conversations which are related, many anecdotes and interesting facts are told, some which involve the history of our country. Some of the towns I have visited myself and I can agree with McLean's impressions but without the way he skillfully gets people to talk about themselves, their friends and their town, I would never have known most of the fascinating details.

I did find, however, that the book wasn't one that I wanted to read straight through all at once. Since I started it, I have put it aside several times to read other books. Due to the nature of the book I didn't have the same pull to keep reading that I do with a mystery, for instance, but I am glad that I kept picking it up again and finally finished it. The last two locations, Nakusp, British Columbia and Ferryland, Newfoundland are places I wouldn't want to have missed reading about.

I enjoy visits to large cities occasionally but generally they overwhelm me. All the towns chosen by McLean typify the sort of town I like to visit as I like the friendliness often found in them. As it was written in 1992 some things will have changed but not the welcoming nature of small town people. I would recommend the book to my Canadian friends as it relates so much about our country and I also recommend it to non-Canadians as it reveals so much about the country and its residents.

[Violet Sunflower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome Home: Travels in Small-Town Canada is the book every Canadian should read. Through the differing cultures and histories of seven small towns accross the nation, Stuart McLean shows the diversity as well as the essential connectedness of Canada. As with all of Stuart McLean's books, the reader is caught by the light-hearted style, and held by the sincerity of the emotions and situations expressed through the writing, ultimately leaving the reader with a deep feeling of nostalgia, sorrow and national pride. A brilliant work, well worth the read.

[KK Rebecca Lai]

What a lovely book. It took me time traveling all across Canada. I grew up and have lived mostly in big cities, but there is always something about small towns that have captured my imagination. One short main street, one restaurant, one store, one spot where everyone gathers for coffee in the morning. I had a taste of this when I lived in short spurts in Phoenicia NY, and I really enjoyed it. I imagine maybe I can do that someday. I loved how the writer found the most surprising things in unsuspectimg corners of the country.

In Maple Creek, Saskachewan, he chewed tobacco for the first time around cowboys. One of my favorite tidbits was the out-of-town sheriff learned that when "you arrest a cowboy you don't touch his hat... you don't just grab the hat from their head. You tell them what you are going to do and then you take it and put it down on the table carefully." He learns about native history with the small band of Cree who live outside of town.

In Dresden, Ontario, he retraces history as he reads the autobiography of Josiah Henson who was born into slavery in 1789 and looks for traces of history in town. There are still old people in town who remember the days of Jim Crow.

In St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, he learns about Quebec separatism, something I have little understanding about. Somehow, the strongest man in of his age in the Guinness Book of Records lives there, Donat Gadoury (he once lifted 1,000 pounds).

In Sackville, New Brunswick, he meets George Stanley who designed the Canada flag (When I was reading this, Canada was celebrating 60 years of the flag! It was on the radio all day.)

In Foxwarren, Manitoba, ice hockey is the beat heart of a dying town.

In Nakusp, British Columbia, it's all about logging. But then he goes down a rabbit hole looking into the history of whether a townie might have been an illegitimate child of the British Royal family, making an additional trip to Vancouver Island.

In Ferryland, Newfoundland, a town overlooks icebergs and run on fishing, an hour to the closest bank. Years ago, I read a book called The Shipping News about Newfoundland and have always been mesmerized by this island state dotting the Northern, Eastern most coast of the Americas. This chapter is wonderful.

In every town, he meets the most wonderful people who invite him into their homes for dinner and drinks, and even baby showers. I don't think one would get the same welcome in a big city. I know I might not ever find myself living in a small town like this because there are certain things I don't want to give up. But I loved a little tidbit from the intro: "Eventually I decided that we all live in small towns. Mine happens to be in the heart of a big city. It is Sam's corner store and Pasquale's bakery, Book City and the library down the street..."

[Judd Street · Rating 3 out of 5]

Welcome Home is a deviation from Stuart McLean's famous Vinyl Café fiction series, instead adopting a non-fiction approach and visiting seven tiny towns across Canada. McLean chose the towns with aspirational markers of this off-the-highway status, like not having a bank machine or still using pin boys at the bowling alley (rather than an automated setup). He visits each town for a few weeks, taking us with him through his encounters with the local community.

Your read on whether the book is 'nostalgic' or a questionable affection for an idealized, white, agrarian past is up to the reader. The vignettes can be sweet, but the selection of these towns is also limited and limiting, venerating a particular kind of pastoral history over other equally 'Canadian' encounters. It is a very situated kind of ethnography, which can be both beautiful and insightful in its idiosyncratic encounters, but also really myopic and haphazard in the stories that result. I think it's a worthy quest to understand, document, and warmly treasure this small town experience, but there are times where it feels like this shifts a little too close to a moralizing that other experiences - urban, suburban, immigrant - aren't equally worthy lives lived to the pureness of small town living.

Overall, it was a fine read in context, but it did leave me feeling like McLean's fictional writing was a little more captivating.

[Danaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like opening a time capsule. As I read about life in the small towns of Canada in 1993 I found myself wondering how much has changed in the intervening 30 years. Back then the internet and smartphones were not things yet. Computers were just beginning to become a household commodity (our family in smalltown BC got our first computer in 1993). It makes me feel a bit sad to listen to the nostalgia of those small towns and to know many of those communities have probably struggled a lot and a lot of placed visited by the author are now closed and that the things that contributed to the community identities might have faded. Still, there is something that is warm like a cozy blanket in reading about Canadians, particularly small-town Canadians, which is where so many of our roots started out before becoming focused in Canada's big cities. The book is showcase of what community can look like and how varied the concerns of different communities can be across the span of any entire continent.

[Mark Edlund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non fiction - Stuart McLean loved Canada and Canadians. This book has six vignettes of small towns across the country; BC, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. He lived for a time in each community. He interviewed the residents and shares their stories. He writes of the history of each town. It is not all roses and unicorns. He writes of the environmental problems of clear cutting; racism in Ontario, separatism in Quebec and the loss of the cod fishery. You can tell he really likes the people he has met.
Canadian references - too many to mention
Pharmacy references - he frequently mentions the pharmacies in the towns that have them. The Dresden pharmacist takes part in a protest as a major employer leaves town. He tells Stuart of his efforts to take care and know his patients. He has since retired but the pharmacy is still there.

[Bill Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a celebration of life in Canadian small towns. McLean chose ? towns in a number of provinces and visited each for an extended period of time. He spends his time getting to know the members of the community.

The towns visited were Maple Creek, Saskatchewan; Dresden, Ontario; St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec; Sackville, New Brunswick; Foxwarren, Manitoba; Nakusp, British Columbia; and Ferryland, Newfoundland.

The book provides perspectives that are likely new to urban dwellers. A absorbing read.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I realized through reading this wonderful book that no matter where in this country we were born, whatever religion, whichever hockey team we root for, we all work, strive and need the same things in this life. We are all living this life the best we can, searching for love, belonging and acceptance in each of our towns. It was a life changing thought to me and I come back to it everyday. Thank you Stuart Mclean for your gift of helping me see how beyond the coverings, we are all the same human family.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author travels to a variety of small towns in provinces scattered across Canada. He meets the average citizen of Canada from three decades ago. Small towns were struggling to survive back then, and I wonder how these towns are doing today. The author meets many people in these towns who tell their stories to him about their lives and living in a small town. This book was a ten-year anniversay edition.

[Marni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuart McLean (who died a few years ago) was a chronicler of small-town life. I thought of him as the Canadian Garrison Keillor since I lived in the US for 24 years and listened to Public Radio.

This is not a new book. In the early 1990's McLean picked out 7 small towns in Canada and then spent a week in each talking with the locals. His writing about these towns is delightful.

[Janet Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great way to wander through smalltown Canada. It gives you a great appreciation for folks.

[Travis Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Skylar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes me want to visit more small towns in Canada

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobody can make a story out of the ordinary quite like Stuart MacLean.

[Anna Noga · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect book to read when you’re sick. Easy, and mostly happy stories. I could see parts of my own rural upbringing in some of the stories.

[Christapher Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely a wonderful book. Little pieces of Canada stitched together by a wonderful author. I found it hard to put down

[Maria Parvulescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly enjoyable trip through small towns of Canada, and at this point a blast from the past as he wrote it in the very early 90's. Would love to know what those towns are like today, 30 years on.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is the way he talks to people and brings out their essence. How I miss Stuart...

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A romanticizing of small towns with an amount of honesty about Canada’s history that I wasn’t expecting

[Pierre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and sad. Stuart McLean can make us laugh about our own foibles without demeaning us, all his characters are real people and so representative of all of us. They are quintessential Canadians or, and this is the sad part, what we used to be. The people he interviewed or spent time with are for the most part all gone, I'm pretty sure. The Canadian identity has changed a lot in the last 27 years and most of the characters are already bemoaning the changes happening then!
Time stops for no one, the world changes constantly. For a good dose of nostalgia and some good laughs, the book is worth it. Thanks, Stuart.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome Home is a non-fiction book. The narrator of the story and also the author of the book is Stuart McLean. He tells the story of his travels in Canada. He goes to Maple Creek, Saskatchewan a small ranch town, where cow auctions still take place. He goes to Dresden, Ontario a small historic town of a mere 2 600 inhabitants. He stops by St-Jean-de-Matha, Quebec, which was by far my favorite town he visits. I liked it so much because he spoke about things I had heard about and also because he speaks of Black lac, another small town where my mother comes from. He also speaks about Louis Cyr, Champion des home forts. This also lead me to discover that my grandmother Doris Cyr is related to him. After that he goes to Sackville, New Brunswick a small town that was once the best farming town in Canada. He then travels to Foxwarren, Manitoba a small town that hardly classifies as a town. In this town hockey is not a sport, it’s a religion, literally. After that he goes to Nakusp, British Columbia. The town is so small that when Stuart decides to go the museum, the town gives him the key and tells him to close up when he is done. Finally he goes to Ferryland, Newfoundland. This town is so small that there is no bank, and that when you go to the Gas/Hardware/Plumbing/Electric/Fishing/Groceries store in town you don’t need money you just need your name. Now that’s what I call trust, the store just assumes that after two weeks the client will give a pay everything they purchased. I truly loved this book for the simple fact that it had a comforting feel to it. Every time I read it, I would feel that even in the worst of times there always small towns like these ones where they don’t worry about big city problems. Where everyone in town knows each other and there is no reason to not let your kids go play with other kids without supervision. The way Stuart McLean strings all these stories together is truly fascinating, you feel like you are right there, in the passenger seat as he meets truly unique people in each town. Stuart also teaches you some history of Canada along the way. For example, there was a time where war prisoners were aloud to walk into a restaurant with no questions but a black man in the Canadian army wasn’t. A-

[Rick Pozeg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is awesome to see the hospitality people have in small towns. The close knit communities. The way people will give for free with the optimism and trust they will be paid back but never with expectation. Small towns seem to be safer, everyone knows everybody else. Canada truly is a vast stretch of land made up of small towns. It is in these towns that true Canadian identity and history exist. It is where we have built our character.
It seems the people in small towns, they use only what they have, they keep traditions going and never beg for more, they make the best of it and rely on old principles.
But technology is inevitably on a path to eradicate these towns by destroying jobs.
Landmarks, they are infinite reminders of our life events
Whether it is a building or a tree planted, a tire swing, or an old clock, they are reminders of the past to carry on the future. They are reminders of our childhoods. They remind us where we are in the world, where we came from and where men before us came from. They perpetuate our lives in some way, through history and time.

They make up the places that we call home, wherever that may be.

We live in a beautiful country with such rich diversity from one end to another.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book of Stuart McLean's travels across the width of Canada, stopping in gems of small towns and staying long enough to really get to know the people and feel a true sense of the place. The towns he chose were Maple Creek in Saskatchewan, Dresden in Ontario, St-Jean-de-Matha in Quebec, Sackville in New Brunswick, Foxwarren in Manitoba, Nakusp in BC and Ferryland in Newfoundland. I particularly liked the way Mr. McLean was able to take every day lives and the simplicity of small town events and transform them into truly interesting stories. My favorite town was the "outport" of Ferryland in Newfoundland where everyday life is so far removed from my own experience of modern day living that it seems as if it were in another century. Mr. McLean also captures beautifully the characters of the people he meets. Interestingly, not one of the many people he met had any desire to leave their quiet towns; in fact, a number of them had escaped city life to find peace in small town Canada.

[Becca O'Hara · Rating 5 out of 5]

About two weeks before I began this masterpiece of a book, I started reading Bill Bryson’s “The Lost Continent: Travels Across Small-Town America.” As an American living in Canada, I thought it would feel like home... talk about an antithesis. Where Bryson’s book was witty, but oozing with sarcasm and cynicism, “Welcome Home” is warm, reverent, and wonderful. I have yet to make it past the first chapter of Bryson’s book, but Stuart McLean’s beautiful stories got me hooked from page one. How very Canadian.

Stuart McLean tells vignettes from the lives of hundreds of small-town Canadians, living in communities where people really care about their neighbors; where history and ancestry matter; where everyone is a story-teller. McLean paints a fascinating picture of a wonderful country.

Canadian or not, this is worth the read.

[Thebruce1314 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read all of McLean's books and loved them. This book was good...I'd give it a 3.5 if that were an option...but I found it really hard to make my way through. It felt more like a personal journey to me - McLean's memories of the time he spent with the people in the seven towns visited across Canada. It was a melancholy journey, at that. McLean laments the loss of innocence and the quirks that go with living in small town Canada due to modern technology and urban industry, particularly in this tenth-anniversary edition, where we learn that many of the places he visited are almost unrecognizable after a decade. Certainly some of the tales were enjoyable and the love for his subject-matter comes through in McLean's writing; I just didn't feel like the stories were meant for the reader, but rather for the author himself.

[Hilzpilz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books every Canadian can feel good about. And probably every Canadian knows someone who knows someone In the book. While I read it I was struck by how small the world is. As I was reading this book during a break at work my co-worker came up to me and said "ah yes Stuart McLean he's a great author, do you know he wrote a book about Maple Creek and in it he talks to my great aunt on a ranch?" It was weird because she didn't realize this was "that book" and i was on the Maple Creek chapter. It made me smile.

One complaint is there were a lot of spelling errors and grammar errors (a lot being approximately 10 errors which is 10 more than the average book I read). Which is annoying to a reader who can't skim and reads every word. Im sure people could find a bunch of errors in my write up, but I'm not an author and don't have an editor.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed all of Stuart McLean's "Vinyl Cafe" stories, but this is a more serious non-fiction account of seven small Canadian towns, their history, their struggles, and their attractions. It's a pleasant, quiet read probably not of much interest to non-Canadians, but it made me want to visit many of these places and spend more time in small towns.

If you're not a particular fan of McLean already or a student of Canadian history and small towns, I would probably recommend starting with a Vinyl Cafe collection instead, though.

[Violet Sunflower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome Home: Travels in Small-Town Canada is the book every Canadian should read. Through the differing cultures and histories of seven small towns accross the nation, Stuart McLean shows the diversity as well as the essential connectedness of Canada. As with all of Stuart McLean's books, the reader is caught by the light-hearted style, and held by the sincerity of the emotions and situations expressed through the writing, ultimately leaving the reader with a deep feeling of nostalgia, sorrow and national pride. A brilliant work, well worth the read.