Off the Map

In his third collection of essays, veteran journalist Stephen Hume demonstrates yet again that his understanding of British Columbia - and beyond - runs as deep as Hecate Strait and as far-reaching as the Rocky Mountains. In Off the Map, Hume takes his readers on a wondrous journey through western Canada, stopping at little-known places along the way to take a good look around, talk to the people who live there and absorb the local history and culture.

It is a testament to Hume's skills as a storyteller that he can write a lengthy and brilliant encomium to the Fraser River, praising its many incarnations from headwater to mouth, that is as personal and rivetting as his descriptions of the intriguing characters he has met while journeying into the remote nooks and crannies of BC.

In the Headless Valley of the Nahanni (on the Northwest Territories border), we meet Albert Faille, a trapper and adventurer who "lost his head" there - not to a marauding sasquatch, but to the valley's savage beauty and irresistible mystique. Turn a few more pages and you're on the west coast, where he elegizes the languages that have disappeared from here like drawings in the sand.