Up in Ontario

Owen Sound Sun-Times Review of Up in Ontario

From the Owen Sound Sun-Times, another review of Up in Ontairo.

(Thursday, 22 January 2004)

Read This!

Do you remember that singular summer romance? Perhaps some of the most memorable moments of your life came at the cottage or some camp chosen by your parents. Or maybe it was on spring break in Florida where a moonlight walk on the beach seemed forever. Love was young, mysterious, and urgent - until September came.

If you were unlucky enough to never experience long looks and love on a July afternoon, I’ve got just the book for you. Up in Ontario (Turnstone, $18.95) is James Sherrett’s debut novel. Sherrett, a Winnipeg-based writer, is not exactly a literary household name nor will this small-press publication sweep the nation. But, I can’t imagine a warmer read for a cold winter night.

Gill Dubois, barely in his 20s, is a guide at Smith Camps on Lake of the Woods, a place where he has lived all of his young life. On a summer day he meets 18-year old Christine Johnson, the daughter of well-off parents from Winnipeg who have arrived to spend a few idyllic weeks at the lake. “For the next two weeks, Christine watched Gilbert. From behind her sunglasses, in a beach chair beside her mother, she watched Gilbert.”

When Christine returns to the city, she and Gill promise to keep in touch. They do, fall deeper into love and two years later marry, living in a Winnipeg apartment while Christine makes her way through law school. But Gill has a vision of paradise and its name is Storm Bay, a forested shoreline on Lake of the Woods.

They sign a deed on a parcel of land, commute on summer weekends from Winnipeg and begin to build a cabin. When their son, Wade, is born, Christine begins to realize that her marriage is doomed to failure. Gilbert Dubois is not a city man. His heart lies in the wilderness. Gill’s talents are for finding fish, hunting geese, and listening to the silence of the forest.

Slowly, their lives come apart; Christine finding meaning in her work and the city; Gill making the weekend trip to Winnipeg less often. Separation is followed by divorce until all that is left is their son and memories of the summer sun on water when they were both young and in love.

The years pass as Wade returns each summer to fish and hunt with his father. And then the magic of this bittersweet novel takes over. Although many a Canadian novel has been filled with lines on the water and ducks in the air, rarely has the outdoor life been so solidly described. Sherratt (sic) doesn’t indulge himself with lyrical symbolism. Instead, his simple sentences raise the same goosebumps that are the hallmark of a Hemingway short story.

As mallards poured skyways over his head, “Wade brought his gun up in line with the drake and started to swing. The drake flared suddenly in a sharp arc and Wade stayed with him, leading him off the tip of the beak. The motion was smooth and fluid and Wade squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the gun popped him on the cheekbone as it jumped in his hands and he watched the pellets hit the drake and spin it down to the ground.”

Wade has come to terms with his parents who are friends-but-nothing-more. As he accepts his father’s need to live off the land, his mother decides to remarry. Her choice is Gary, a boorish Winnipeg businessman who, at the wedding, presses Gill to find him investment land around Lake of the Woods. It could be, Gary claims, a good deal for both of them.

“Good deal?,” Gill answers. “You have to understand, to me this is not cottage land. It’s the land I work with to make a living. Why should I want someone who doesn’t understand that to move in next door and play for twelve weekends a year? How would you like someone living in your office twelve weekends a year?”

One of the many strengths of Up in Ontario is its sense of place. Sherratt (sic) brings his reader home to the north shore of Lake of the Woods complete with its Queen City, Kenora, once called Rat Portage. His fondness for this western reach of Ontario - with its bedrock highways, laconic people, and vast stretches of water that spill down into Manitoba – is evident on every page.

A story about a solitary fishing guide, living deep in the woods could have ended up a bit of a Canadian cliché. Instead, James Sherrett has created a captivating first novel, a love story about summer romance and all the long years that follow.

Copyright Owen Sound Sun-Sentinel, 2004