The Trans Canada Trail is the longest multi-use trail system in the world, winding more than 28,000 kilometers from sea to sea to sea. It is also the common thread that ties together Not the Same Road Out: Trans Canada Stories, a new collection of short fiction from Tidewater Press.
“They weren’t supposed to be travelogues, they weren’t supposed to be nature stories. They were supposed to be stories about people and journeys and traveling. And the trail, the various segments of the trail, is the setting for the stories,” said editor K.J. Denny.
“I was essentially looking for good storytelling that was tied to place.”
Not the Same Road Out features 13 pieces, one for every province and territory, from authors at various stages of their writing careers.
“We are basically an incubator press. So, we work a lot with new authors and new writers who have very limited experience in publishing,” Denny said.
“And we always say that the technique can be easily addressed, but the essence of understanding good storytelling or how to tell the story is something that’s almost innate. Some people have a feel for it, some people don’t.”
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So, what makes a good story?
“A good short story can be any genre, any style. It must engage the reader from the very beginning, it must draw you into the characters, and it must be very succinct,” she said.
The book takes its title from The Road in Is Not the Same Road Out, a Karen Solie poem that opens the collection.
“And when I read it, I thought, yes, there’s something about this poem that captures the feeling of a personal emotional journey as well as a physical one. There’s the ambiguity and I just felt it was absolutely perfect for the book,” said Denny.
The first story in the book is Anne Baldo’s Field Notes on Cryptids, which takes place in Ontario. It revisits an adolescent love triangle and the betrayal of a friendship many years later.
“I thought it was so apt and so clever of Anne to situate it on a section of the Trans Canada Trail that’s actually known as the Friendship Trail, because this story was all about friendship and how friendships and things that happen to us and the people we know when we’re teenagers can affect us for our whole life,” she said.
“But there is a subtext there that’s very clever. And underneath is that, from the perspective of these two friends, is that perhaps our narrator wasn’t 100 per cent the angel or innocent party that she portrays herself to be.”
CityNews colleague Lillian Au drew upon her time as a journalist in the Northwest Territories to contribute a piece entitled Invasive Species. It’s about a hunting guide who has a change of heart about wild pigs after a pig valve implanted into his heart saves his life.
“She knows the Northwest Territories very well, so that sense of place and that intimate knowledge of the kind of people who live there and inhabit that space is firsthand. And that immediacy comes across to me,” said Denny.
“It’s a near-future disaster story, really because it’s the pigs coming in and the pigs are the invasive species. But we learned very quickly by reading the story that in essence we are the invasive species. It’s the humans that have invaded nature and caused all the problems that led to the disaster depicted in the story.”
Sense of place not only informs this piece, but all the stories in Not the Same Road Out. Each one seems like a little world unto itself, and just as you begin to navigate it, the story ends – often abruptly.
Kenny says that’s the idea: to leave the reader wanting more. But that’s not the only takeaway.
“I hope they get out of this book a strong sense of place, the essential Canadian-ness of the stories, and the variety of characters and styles. I hope they find the stories enjoyable and appreciate the space and the locations. I hope that that that comes across as well,” she said.
Not The Same Road Out: Trans Canada Stories is published by Tidewater Press.