Tom Thomson's Shack

What is the relationship between a city, its suburbs, and the rural land around it?

In the 150 short pieces in Tom Thomson's Shack, Harold Rhenisch explores this question in economic prose redolent with subtleties. From his native Okanagan to his home on the Cariboo plateau, his musings are interwoven with a book tour to Toronto. On its outskirts, in Kleinburg, he discovers Group of Seven member Tom Thomson's studio, crucible of Canada -- to his surprise, as real as the valley a short distance from his home that he knows as the Centre of the Universe.

Side trips to the stagnating mining town of Hedley, the totem poles of Kispiox, the retirement villas and golf courses of Kelowna, shape and refine the author's quest. Toronto, the inescapable electronic grid-city, ceaselessly colonizes the land with images of the land. In its wake, how can farming as Rhenisch's Okanagan forebears know it, a fight to the death with God, prevail? Amazingly, the author's unsparing inquiry tunnels through paradox to emerge beyond the city-country dichotomy, in the light of a new apprehension of ourselves as Canadians, whether city or country dwellers.

A rich and rigorous meditation on identity, language, work and life, Tom Thomson's Shack is a vital successor to the celebrated Out of the Interior.

Harold Rhenisch is the author of the best-selling Out of the Interior: The Lost Country, an interpretative account of life in the Okanagan, as well as eight collections of poetry. He grew up near Keremeos, BC, and makes his home in 108 Mile House.