Finding Larkspur: A Return to Village Life

Bestselling chronicler of village life Dan Needles (author of the Wingfield Farm stage plays) leads an insightful and laugh-out-loud tour through the quirks and customs of today’s Canadian small town.

Modern literature has not been kind to village life. For almost two centuries, small towns have been portrayed as backward, insular places needing to be escaped. But anthropologists tell us that the human species has spent more than 100,00 years living in villages of 100 to 150 people. This is where the oldest part of our brain, the limbic system, grew and adapted to become a very sophisticated instrument for reading other people’s emotions and figuring out how we might cooperate to find food, shelter and protection. By comparison, the frontal cortex, which helps us do our taxes, drive a car and download cat videos, is a very recent aftermarket addition, like a sunroof. And it is the village where almost half the world’s population still chooses to live.

Finding Larkspur takes a walk through the Canadian village of the twenty-first century, observing customs and traditions that endure despite the best efforts of Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. The author looks at the buildings and organizations left over from the old rural community, why they were built in the first place and how they have adapted to the modern day. The post office, the general store, the church, the school and the service club all remain standing, but they operate quite differently than they did for our ancestors. Drawing from his experience working in rural communities across Canada and in other countries, Needles reveals how a national conversation may be driven by urban voices but the national character is often very much a product of its small towns and back roads.

Dan Needles won the 2003 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for With Axe and Flask (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002) and his Wingfield Farm stage plays have appeared in theatres across Canada and the United States. His popular magazine columns have been published in Harrowsmith-Country Life, Country Guide, Small Farm Canada, In the Hills, On the Bay, Watershed and other publications. Needles was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2014 for a body of work that celebrates the people of rural Canada. He lives with his wife at Larkspur Farm near Collingwood, ON.