“Making a living, dealing with isolation: constants of a small-town life.” -Rosemary Neering
When I rode my KLR 650 up to Loon Lake in 2012 on my way to the Stikine River, I stopped for the night with fellow motorcyclist Mike Whitfield at a bed & breakfast. The couple that ran it along the glinting waters of the lake and had left high-paying jobs in North Vancouver to follow their dream to run a B&B along this beautiful lake. There was compromise. The same high-paying work was not available in the Cache Creek area. One of them took a job at a local gas station during the off season, the other did odd jobs around the community. But they were making it work. There are people in British Columbia who decide to leave the hustle and bustle of the big city for the charms of a small-town living: but the living can be challenging.
Rosemary Neering, in her road travels across British Columbia, has met many people like my Loon Lake couple, and has an ability to suss out the reasons people moved to a small town. In this reissue of Down the Road, accounts of her travels in the early 1990s also capture the province pre-smart phone, pre-Trip Advisor, where word of mouth and talking to locals was more valued in getting to the local spots of interest. She talked to people. Then she talked to people some more. But she also found the paradox of moving to a small-town: in going to live in a small-town idyll, privacy is lost. In the chapter ‘Coming Home: Kaslo,’ Neering points out how you know everyone in a small town, and everyone knows you. The big-city anonymity is gone. But there are people for whom this trade-off is welcome.
I highly respect Rosemary Neering and her solo road travels across B.C. and acknowledge how she created in-roads that authors like me could follow into these out-of-the-way places and seek out the stories there.
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Author: Rosemary Neering
Book: Down the Road: Journeys Through Small-Town British Columbia
Publisher: Whitecap
Year of Publication: (originally 1991) 2019 Revised Edition
