A few long generations back, my french Canadian ancestors, having bludgeoned our name from the mellifluous and more ethnically identifiable “Narbonne” into the board-flat “Nerburn”, made their way south from Quebec and began to play their small laborers’ part in the shearing of the forests along America’s northern tier.
I am their inheritor and this is part of my story.
Twenty five years ago, one of my favorite books (my wife’s favorite), Road Angels, quickly faded from existence under the weight of bad timing (a book-buying public traumatized by 9/11), a bad title, and bad luck (It happens). In that book, which was a road trip down the West Coast in search of my own and my nation’s soul, I wrote a bit about my “touch go” point in Canada before I started my trip south. I loved what I wrote then, and I love it still — moreso now that we have descended into a xenophobic hell in which Canada, the country I’ve always looked at with admiration and neighborly love, has been cast as an adversary rather than the wonderful northern friend who gave us a slightly different vision of how to build a nation on this North American continent.
So I offer this to you, my Canadian friends, and to you, my American compatriots. I do so with sorrow and cultural shame. It is long, I know. But it says some things I feel needed to be said. Feel free to post or link or cut and paste and do whatever you can to get it read and heard. The world needs to know that what is going on in America does not reflect who we are and has many of us living quite unexpectedly as prisoners in our own land.
Here is the excerpt:
Being back in Canada has begun to put me at peace. Even my short half day here has opened the shutters and let the winds blow through. It’s strange how I’ve always felt at home in this country, sometimes more so than in my native land. There’s no national betrayal in this: I’m an American through and through. But I’ve always felt a spiritual affinity for Canada that I can’t deny.
I came to this affinity early. Minnesota abuts Ontario and Manitoba, so Canada was always on the north end of my consciousness. As a child, I would hear adults talk about fishing trips to places like Great Slave Lake and Sioux Narrows, and this would send me scurrying to my parents’ road atlas to try to locate these exotic-sounding destinations. I would pore over the map, tracing the thin lines of roadways and railways and imagining what it must be like to live in such inconceivably remote locations.
One line, above all others, haunted me. It was a small, crosshatched railroad line that angled north from Winnipeg, passing near towns with names like Flin Flon and The Pas and dead-ending at a place called Churchill, Manitoba, on the shores of Hudson Bay.
Dead end! Hudson Bay! It was Robert Service, Jack London, red jacketed Mounties, and fur trappers with knee-high moccasins and great round, bushy beards. It was knifings in barrooms and big bosomed women named “Lil.” I found it inconceivable that anything more exotic could exist on this continent. Go to the end of the line, get on a dogsled, mush out onto the frozen wastes, and start a fire with a single match. How could it be otherwise?
I don’t even want to brush against what I found when I finally did take that train up to Churchill. But reality did nothing to dampen my fascination with Canada. She had something that I longed for, something that seemed lacking in my “God shed His grace on thee” American existence.
We Statesiders—Canadians consider themselves “Americans;’ too—tend to presume for ourselves a political and moral centrality We’re the stake pounded in the center of the universe. If aliens were to land tomorrow and ask who it is they should talk to, we’d fee sorely put upon if any nation suggested it was anyone other than us.
I’ve always found this a little unseemly. I don’t much like people at parties who monopolize the conversation or wear lampshades on the’ heads. So why should I find it attractive in a country?
Canada has always seemed more willing to take a seat at the foot of the table. She doesn’t stand up and thunder her point of view to everyone else. She doesn’t give lectures on proper behavior while eating all the food in sight. She questions; she struggles; she keeps qpi and tries to judge other countries on intrinsic merit rather than on the litmus test of her own ideology.
Yes, her Anglophones and Francophones are always in a fistfight. Yes, they play too much hockey and are always on the verge of coming apart at the seams. But they have a humility in the face of nature and an honesty in the face of their past. How can you not admire a nation that looks at its history, sees the wrong it did to the indigenous people, and gives them a province of their own?
Try to give a state to the Indians in the United States. We couldn’t even leave them Oklahoma, or the western half of South Dakota. Every time we tried to leave them a little chunk of their own native soil, we took it right back as soon as we saw some economic value in reclaiming it. Now we’ve got them on little plots of land we’ve deemed worthless, and we’re trying to bribe them into taking our garbage and our nuclear waste. Canada took a chunk of land as big as the whole Great Plains and put it under Native control.
No, in some fundamental sense I like Canada better, and it’s in no small part because she’s a country where praising another nation doesn’t cause wild-eyed flag wavers to come up, blast beer breath in your face, and shout, “Then why the hell don’t you move there?”
And, in fact, it’s a good question. Why the hell don’t I move here?
I like the idea of living in a place where people are united not so much by a political philosophy as by the spiritual awareness that comes from waking up every day with a thousand miles of untracked wilderness right outside their back doors.
I like the idea of living in a place where lights dance in the midnight sky and you can never quite forget that somewhere north of you icebergs as big as cities are floating silently through the night. It provides a sense of perspective about life that we Americans can never fully understand.
Ours is a culture of history, not nature. We do lip service to nature, but, at heart, we understand ourselves as a great drama—a national journey from east to west, full of pilgrims, powdered wigs, coonskin caps and muzzle loaders; of slaves and antebellum mansions and men in blue and grey; of men in covered wagons and women in bonnets and babies buried in shallow graves, until it all morphs into our current reality of highways and housing developments and limitless shopping experiences. The land, majestic as it is, remains only a backdrop, a stage set on which it’s all played out.
Even when we choose to challenge the national plot line, or to demand that different players get leading roles, we never challenge the primacy of the drama itself. The play’s the thing, and the show must go on.
Here in Canada, the set remains bigger than the actors. Sure, they can turn south and face the rock and roll juju of American culture, But, even so, it’s hard to get too full of yourself when you’re giving the play on a glacier or a thousand miles of unmapped mountains.
If I were younger and alone, I just might consider this place. I could find some hamlet in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland or Vancouver Island or inland B.C. I could even take the ultimate plunge and go off into the northland where men look like bears and bears walk like men.
But those days are past me. I don’t have the stomach for expatriate reality, and neither does Louise. We have to be satisfied just knowing that a Canada exists, visiting her on occasion, and praying that the mountains and the winds and the icy fingers of the north can hold our American fast food hustle at bay. Our own task is to find a way to make our peace inside the room called America. We’ve got to accept the fact that our lives will be spent doing the Yankee Doodle dance.
Road Angels: Searching for Home on America’s Coast of Dreams
2001
Read about “Lone Dog Road” coming soon.
You’re more than welcome to visit our vast, and beautiful country. We don’t hate anybody, including writers. Sorry, couldn’t resist that one. 😉
A few years ago I had occasion to contact you, Kent, and I wrote that “Road Angels” was (still is!) my favorite of your books — hard as it is to narrow it down to just one, given that your books’ disparate genres make that task equivalent to comparing apples and oranges. I recall also writing that it appeared it hadn’t been as popular as I felt it deserved to be. It’s been a while since I reread it and coincidentally I’ve recently found myself contemplating doing so. (Its jacket’s spine design and coloring grab my attention whenever I walk past it!) Used copies of it (both HB and PB) are still “out there” and I highly recommend that any of your fans who haven’t read it yet try to find one!
Like I said, it’s my wife’s favorite. It is my most “natural” voice. I often say the two bookends of my sensibility are Road Angels and Native Echoes/A Haunting Reverence, which is far and away the most interior and poetic of my works. Both died an untimely literary death and I love hearing that someone remembers either of them. Thanks for keeping a tiny spark alive in your memory. It makes me feel very, very, good.
I am shocked at the rapidity of the decline in the United States, headed by incompetent people who passed through Congress. I never thought I’d live to see this happening. Below is a letter a friend of mine wrote to the Canadian people. It made one of their newspapers and the New York Times.
“To the Editor:
To my wonderful Canadian neighbors:
In light of the current political situation, I want to take a moment to express that many of us here in the U.S. did not vote for the current president and do not support much of what he says or does. It is deeply concerning to see the direction things have taken, and I share in the frustration and sadness that so many Americans have chosen this path.
That said, I want to acknowledge and appreciate Canada as a great neighbor and friend. Please know that many of us value our relationship with your country and regret any harm caused by the actions or policies of our leadership.
With respect and gratitude,
Scott McMullin
Lake Oswego, Ore.”
Lake Oswego?!?! My old home city before we moved back here to Minnesota. We all need to let the Canadians know that the government doesn’t speak for us.
Aye.
My wife and I have close friends who live in France—-they are in their 30s, we are in our 70s—who jokingly talk about asking the French government to take back the Louisiana Purchase, just so we could become citizens of France. That’s how far things feel off course here at home.
It’s hard to watch what was once a nation admired for its principles and stability now look, to us and to much of the world, like a comedy of errors. Sometimes, you really don’t know what you had until it’s gone.
Sad but true…
But this too shall pass.
I hesitated when I first saw the title “Road Angels” not knowing what the subject matter was about but any book with the author listed as “Nerburn” my thought was it had to be exceptional.
And it was. Thank you for reminding me it’s time for a reread….
Oh, how I long for Canada right now.
I would move to Canada, if only they would have me. America has lost it’s way. No longer a country to look up to with approx half the country being ok with the orange ones values. Despite not needing or wanting anything from the Canadians (am retired & financially independent) am over 65 which is apparently a deal breaker. Oh Canada…
Your journey puts words to what I feel Kent, and clearly many others.
We would be better off if we could be like Canada, but that’s too socialist for half our country, the MAGA nation.
They want us and Canada to be like MAGA. Where else have we seen this before?
The Canadians on Vimy Ridge broke the Gothic Line bringing WW I and Kaiser Wilhelm to an end, trying to impose his will.
MAGA neo-Confederates and neo-nazis may have to be reminded why history won’t be kind to them, especially if they try to invade Canada and Greenland.
We need liberty, justice and equality for all, like in Canada.
Michael Moore knows Where To Invade Next.
It’s why I’m looking into dual citizenship in case I need to send my kids and grandkids.
My dad’s side of the family moved to WVA when it became a free state and fought for the Union.
I’m duty bound to staying here, where it will begin, to reclaim our nation.
I know Canadian mercenaries will join in as when they aided just over a third of the colonists who wanted independence in 1775.
Plato warned long ago about shadows of false ideas or ideologies on the wall of our mind that can hold us bound to our ruin.
Allegory of The Cave
Micaiah saw this long before, some 2,800 years ago. God will deceive us further.
The spirit that moves us will claim us.
Why didn’t King Ahab ask God’s help instead of seeking His approval to take land he believed belonged to him?
1 Kings 22
Jung saw these shadows in his dreams and ours and how we might know peace and coexistence, rather than be so misguided and possessed by personal interests.
President Washington warned of this in his farewell address.
Jesus warned about greed, false witness and not harming anyone to know Heaven and keep from being hypocrites.
Matthew 15:19; 23:1-13
Trump should read the bible he sells, or at least read our Constitution.
Who said: “Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.”
MAGA is similar to the Third Reich.
The gilded age and triumph of money has created an oligarchy that controls our lives and politics, crushing our Constitution, breaking our nation’s heart.
Cf Age of Betrayal by Jack Beatty
Robert Penn Warren told Ken Burns that the Civil War was a mirror by which we might see ourselves and our own internal conflicts.
Had he read Plato or Jung?
Knowing good from evil as prophets have said since King Solomon, can help us to be whole in ourselves, or holy.
In Kabbalah, the Star of David is symbolic of God in union with the Above and Below, representing our duality that God is trying to help us with, how we treat others.
The Golden Rule is A Golden Path, lost on MAGA Christians.
It can help us avoid succumbing to the sick Caligula Complex, doing what we want to whomever, like what this nation has done to Native Americans.
And still is, as you rightly said, Kent.
Eve was very brave, like St. Mary Magdalene, facing the wrathful powers in us:
“Where are you going slayer of men. . .conqueror of space?!”
(Gnostic Gospel of Mary)
Mary replied: “My desire has ended. . .ignorance has died.”
Jesus would love her most of all.
Jung is right: “We are the origin of all coming evil.” But the more we’re aware, we’re less likely to succumb.
Jesus prayed for deliverance to His dying day with the prayer He gave us.
Can we save ourselves?
Been drinking Moosehead since 1980, and the history it’s founded on. A dollop of CD Ltd is the cream in my coffee, conjuring memories of visits to Canada and longing to go back, even for good.
Bruce Cockburn and Neil Young bear much of the blame for my eyes wide open to Tin Soldiers, Sun Green and: “living in a stolen land.”
I am “thinkin’ bout eternity.”
It’s just until then.
Thank You Always and quite kindly Mr. Narbonne, for helping us along this Lone Dog Road.
Tu es bon homme.
Thank you for your post for many reasons. I really loved your book Road Angels! I only found/read it 3 years ago, and savored it. I hope this post helps many more folks discover it.
I am a transplant to Oregon from the intermountain west, and managed to move here 14 years after completely falling in love with the area on a family vacation just after high school. (I was happy to learn that you folks were “Clackamas County” neighbors of a sort for a few years.)
My husband I are lovers of road trips and back roads, the stories of places and people , the coast, mountains and waterways, and exploring and the big wide open spaces. We have been in some of the places and along some of the roads you write about in your Road Angels West Coast Sojourn–at least in Washington to California.
I also want to send warm greetings to our Canadian neighbors. Our hearts are with you, and we deeply appreciate your country’s strength, character, resilience, civility and welcoming hospitality. We cheer when your people and your leaders push back in these dark days.
We continue to be deeply saddened and horrified as to what this country has allowed itself to become in these past years (and accelerating in recent months).
And thank you again Kent, for your sharing your heart, your work, your writing, and your voice. I am very much looking forward to when I can go pick up my copy of Lone Dog Road at Powell’s on Hawthorne in Portland.
Ignorantly, I had long told others that Canada had treated its indigenous peoples better than America did theirs; since then, I’ve matured. One only has to open their eyes — and a few well-written books, such as yours, to realize that is simply not true; that colonization by the British (and later American) invaders encompassed not only all of North America, but all of its amassed territories the world over; millions suffered and died because of it — and continue to generationally succumb to its effect to this day.
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce attempted to seek refuge in “Grandmother’s Land,” (Canada) where Sitting Bull was; they never got there. Black Elk, among Spotted Tail’s band, wanted to go there too, as say the history books, to escape “… (the Wasichus and forced assimilation) that threatened his people and their culture.”
But there was no escape; Canada was no haven, as Sitting Bull learned. It was just more of the same, in disguise. He had no idea that for 380 years previous the indigenous peoples in the whole of eastern Canada had been wiped out from disease brought by European exploration; the indigenous had been raped, enslaved, scalped, and murdered indiscriminately; nor could he ever imagine their ancestors would steal their children from their very arms and force them into schools to do that very thing no matter what side of the border their people lived from, in the United States from 1869-1960s; in Canada 1831-1980s.
https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/
https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/residential-school-history/