Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada [Paperback]

Reading Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada should be on everyone's list of ways to be more Canadian. McLean, the well-known author and radio host of CBC's Vinyl Café, takes his readers on a cross-country tour that avoids the highway in favour of the "long way." He aims to weave a tapestry of the nation by introducing his readers to the people and smalltown life in seven communities. Drawing inspiration from the venerable Farley Mowat, McLean writes with an impressive understanding of the deep-rooted connections between land and people, geography and history. In Pleasantville, Nova Scotia, for instance, McLean meets up with a mechanic who makes sculptures out of sledgehammered engine parts: "He stuck the sculpture [of a man] beside the highway, in front of his shop. It looked lonely out there, so he made the man a metal wife out of spare parts. He called her the Iron Maiden." From the first chapter on Ferryland, Newfoundland, to the last on Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, McLean's gifted storytelling and instinctive understanding about what makes Canadians unique shine through on every page. --William Newbigging

“Welcome Home is a faithful and often moving depiction of a way of life that once formed the soul of Canadian society…. What McLean finds in those widely scattered towns is a common thread, making Welcome Home one of the best arguments for national unity yet delivered…. Consistently fascinating and perceptive…an object lesson in the art of conversation.” - Maclean’s

“McLean’s world shines brightly; he sees and records the numinous in the prosaic…. He sees what sparkles in the ordinary, and he celebrates the common stuff of which most of our lives are made of.” - The Edmonton Journal

“This is an entirely delightful book, written by the only person I’ve ever heard send Peter Gzowski into helpless, schoolboy fits of giggling, and it deserves a place on every bookshelf in every home.” - Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal

“As he wanders from town to town…McLean encounters people who, more than Brian Adams, John Candy or Wayne Gretzky, define what it means to be Canadian…. Welcome Home is both a welcome and badly needed addition to Canadian literature.” - Calgary Herald

“Stuart McLean’s Welcome Home, a celebration of Canada’s small-town complexion, is like a tonic for our national ills…as penetrating as the wind on a cold prairie day.” - Vancouver Sun

“Stuart McLean’s Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada is a big, furry, friendly, Labrador retriever of a book…. I can’t remember coming across such a likeable animal in years.” - Montreal Gazette

“McLean has a whimsical delight in the extraordinary commonplaces of life…. His stories can’t help but kindle a desire to do some personal exploration of this vast, silly, comfortable land, as soon as the snow is gone.” - Georgia Straight

“McLean’s eye for detail and his sympathy make the stories in the book come alive…. This is life in Canada today, delivered in McLean’s whimsical, tangential style. Few journalists are as adept at telling a story in such an entertaining way…. Welcome Home may be just the balm that helps rekindle passion for this great country.” - The Daily News (Halifax)

“Stuart McLean reminds us in his well written and entertaining new travelogue [that] there is a never-ending supply of fascinating people and places to discover…a tender and inspiring read.” - The Toronto Star

“I felt I was learning more about Canada as manifested in its human beings than I had from any other single recent book…. McLean has found something near the ideal travel book on Canada.” - Quill and Quire

“Colourful vignettes about ordinary people told by an extraordinarily gifted writer.” - Times Herald (Moose Jaw)

“You are apt to come away from Welcome Home with a renewed faith in the basic goodness of people, the soundness of the country and some enduring memories of special people who just happen to live in a small community.” - Evening Telegram (St. John’s)

“Welcome Home is a travel book with a difference. It goes right to the heart of a community, something that most travel books seldom do. Sympathetically written, casual in style, Welcome Home makes us realize that no matter where we live we are all folks at heart.” - Gleaner (Fredericton)

“In these days of media concentration on ‘hard news,’ celebrity biographies and royal scandals, it’s nice to have people like Stuart McLean to remind us about the human side of life.” - The Whitehorse Star

“People have compared McLean to Garrison Keillor, but…the name that comes to my mind is E.B. White and I don’t think a higher compliment can be paid to a writer of non-fiction.” - Canadian Authors Association