Up in Ontario [Paperback]

So says Gil Dubois, a trapper and fisher who defiantly belongs to a place, and will not leave it for anything. Not for his wife in Winnipeg. Not for his impressionable young son Wade. Gil belongs to Lake of the Woods, and it belongs to him. On one level, Gil dominates Up in Ontario, the assured literary debut by former Manitoban James Sherrett. Gil is an attractive, classical archetype, a Marlboro Man in the Canadian backwoods, living by his own rules.

Yet rather than pursue the obvious Grizzly Adams parallel, Sherrett reaches for something far more significant. Up in Ontario is a tale of father and son, separated through distance and time, brought together in their mutual love of an idyllic wilderness.

Sherrett is a powerful enough writer to trust his talents, bringing about the story in his own relaxed manner. Like Lake of the Woods itself, Sherrett leisurely follows the currents and eddies of the Dubois's lives, touching on those precise moments where simultaneously nothing happens and everything changes.

Both Gil and Wade, as the years pass, find themselves struggling to discover their places in the world. Gil accepts that his life is an anachronism, part of an ever-shrinking population, railing against the encroachment of a constantly expanding civilization.

He lives "in the last century," knowing that there was "no changing the things that had happened, there was only being less afraid of the things to come."

Wade, growing up in Winnipeg, bemoans his realization that he is not his father. Influenced equally by Gil and the environment of a large city, Wade tries to unearth a compromise, a plan whereby both of his natures can be sated. Sherrett proves himself gifted at conveying the humanity of father and son. His unforced prose style effortlessly guides the reader through the pain and happiness of the men as they strive to bridge the gap between them.

Sherrett also displays exceptional skill at keeping the reader's attention through long passages where seemingly nothing occurs. As the men go hunting, the minutiae of the event are thrust forward.

The wind caressing the skin, the cocking of a rifle, the scrape of reeds against the hull of a boat. Sherrett creates more excitement though periods of absolute silence than the loudest Hollywood extravaganza.

Despite a lamentable tendency to speechifying near the end, Sherrett has produced an elegant elegy to the chasm that exists between us all.

Like a drowsy day at the cottage, Up in Ontario is a vacation for the mind and soul. Like Gil, Sherrett knows well "the feeling of arriving where you wanted to be, of needing time to let all else melt away, making the space for what you wanted."

Right from the first sentence James is testing his reader and promising a family epic. Reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude, he begins with one character and then moves to the life and family that unfolds around them. Rather than 100 years of solitude, James has focused on 30 years of the Dubois family. Gill Dubois is the solitude, or rather he chooses the solitude of his cabin on the shores of Lake of the Woods. A lifelong fisherman and trapper, he can't for love or money give up that life, not for his wife Christine nor for their son Wade.

The characters of Wade and Gill fascinated me. I'm drawn to their maleness, the blood on their hands from hunting, and the guts of the fish. But despite their manly pursuits there is a warmth and humanity to these characters, a tenderness and a wit that should not be underestimated. Up in Ontario is a story about men: their loves, alliances, compromises, dreams and deaths.