840 Paul Theroux's Great Canadian Road Trip; Korean Nunchi

Travel with Rick Steves

Paul Theroux recounts his cross-Canada road trip from Newfoundland to Vancouver, exploring the country's cultural identity, diversity, and political

Key takeaways

• Canada's identity is shaped by survival in the north, not westward expansion like the U.S.
• Multiculturalism is actively encouraged in Canada; people are invited to maintain their heritage.

Main topics

• Canadian national identity
• Cross-country road travel

Notable quotes

"You go to a place because it's different."

"The Canadian aim is good government. Not the pursuit of happiness."

Conclusion

Paul Theroux's journey reveals Canada as a deeply distinct nation rooted in resilience,

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) In case anyone tells you that Canadians are really just the same as Americans, just used to colder weather, author Paul Theroux wants to point something out. Canada Speaker 4 (0:10) is different, and you go to a place because it's different. Speaker 5 (0:13) Coming up, Paul Theroux shares what he found and who he met on a cross-country road trip from Newfoundland to the Pacific. Speaker 4 (0:20) Great roads, friendly people, lots of stories. To me, it was heaven. Speaker 5 (0:25) Take a lesson from Korea, occupied by foreign powers so many times. they had to develop a sixth sense in how to read a room. Speaker 6 (0:33) Because of these constant sort of outsiders taking over, Koreans had to develop nunchi in order to survive. Speaker 5 (0:41) Yoon Hee Hong explains the Korean art of observation that can help you at home, at work, and in your travels. It's Korean nunchi and an epic Canadian road trip in the hour ahead on Travel with Rick Steves. Speaker 5 (1:00) His curiosity about people and places, especially the ones that are overlooked, has motivated what Paul Theroux has been writing about since 1967. He joins us in a moment on Travel with Rick Steves to tell us about his just-concluded great Canadian cross-country road trip. And later in the hour, Euni Hong reveals how a Korean type of nonverbal situational awareness, what they call nunchi, can be a valuable aid for reading the room in our international travels. Speaker 5 (1:29) As many have learned, looking into your family history can take you on some remarkable adventures. Author Paul Theroux drove to Quebec to learn where his grandfather and earlier generations in his family came from. It was the start of a cross-Canada road trip where he encountered fascinating people and perspectives that he documents in his latest book. It's called True North, On the Road in Canada. Paul Theroux joins us now from his home on Cape Cod to share what he found that makes Canada a nation that the world admires and that so many Americans recognize as the cool but quiet neighbor upstairs. Paul, welcome back to Travel with Rick Steves. Speaker 4 (2:09) It's great to talk to you again, Rick. You're always in my mind because you're a traveler. People think I travel a lot. I don't travel as much as you do, so God bless you. Well, we both found our niche, Speaker 5 (2:19) and I think we both enjoy it, and that's a beautiful thing, isn't it? Speaker 4 (2:22) Yeah, it is. Yeah. So in Speaker 5 (2:24) your book, it seems like you had something to get off your chest in the first pages. Let's talk about that. You opened with a critique of modern travel writing. Speaker 4 (2:35) Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I keep reading it in the newspaper, people saying having sumptuous meals in poor countries. You know, the idea that you're having a gourmet experience in a place where people are starving or very hungry. And then the way people write about it. So the prologue of my book is about the strangeness of the travel experience and how different travel books are. I'm trying to avoid writing a conventional travel book, just gushing about everything. So it's not a gushing book. Speaker 5 (3:07) You know, I have to remind my staff that we're not a shill for the tourist industry. It's sort of the default for a lot of travel writers is to rave about something. But I like to turn the volume down and take the superlatives away and be candid. You know, everything doesn't have to be great. It is what it is. You Speaker 4 (3:24) know, this is my 12th travel book. And if anyone read the first, my first one was The Great Railway Bazaar. But over the years, I've learned that in travel, the thing that matters most is hearing people's stories, maybe making a friend of them, but also listening, not talking. not thinking that you're the focus of attention. It's not about you. I used to see it as a kind of autobiography. I don't see it that way anymore. Although, obviously, I'm the person traveling. But you travel to listen, to watch, to listen. And I found in Canada, you know, traveling in your own language is really amazing because you sit down and you Speaker 5 (4:07) have Speaker 4 (4:07) language in common. Speaker 5 (4:09) I know that when I'm in Ireland, it is really... a boon for me because I can, all the little chatter in the background adds to my understanding. And I kept thinking as I was reading through your book, you were soaking up conversations. It was a TransCanada collection of conversations. And you understood all of them. And it must have just been a field day for you as a travel writer. Speaker 4 (4:33) Yes, it was. And for several specific reasons. One is my family comes from Canada. My ancestors went to Canada. 330 years ago, 1693 they went. But also, what makes people talkative? Crises. Crises. When something goes wrong, a very bad storm, a war, economic downturn, people become talkative, like-minded, and they express themselves. And so the first event in Canada was the trucker protests that I went about six years ago. That was a very important thing because it galvanized the country. I mean, the truckers shut the country down. And then the other, which was fortunate for me, but tough for a lot of other people, was when the president said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state. Well, OK, you could have a lot of different views about that. But the Canadians were insulted and talkative and they all had an opinion. So normally, you know, you need to draw people out. Well, they were more than willing to express their feelings. They also. It made them unified and for a country where patriotism doesn't come naturally to Canadians. But they became very patriotic, flag-waving and talkative. And they had a lot to say. So I was traveling in a period when U.S. and Canadian relations were at a very, very low point. And every time I said I'm an American, they had something to tell me. And also you talk about... The same language, but culturally, Canadians are quite distinct people, and the culture is quite distinct. You know, one great difference in Canada is that Canadians are extremely well-informed about the United States. They know about our politics. They know about our culture, our music. They're great consumers of our cultural life, and Americans know next to nothing about Canada. Right. Speaker 5 (6:31) Well, let's talk about that for a minute, because a lot of Americans just think, oh. It's Speaker 4 (6:37) a Speaker 5 (6:37) white Christian child of the British Empire just like us. They can just join us and be the 51st state. But that is such a naive perspective from south of the border. And when you get to know Canadians and when you get to know a little bit about Canada, they're wired differently. They don't have the Western movement. They have the survival in the north. It's a fascinating kind of... for somebody who wants to psychoanalyze why Canada would never be a 51st state. What did you come away with in that trying to imagine Canadians being Americans? Speaker 4 (7:14) Well, you mentioned that, and when we say they, you'd have to distinguish, you know, one in five Canadians was born outside of Canada. So one great difference between Canada and the United States is that Canada doesn't... naturally assimilate people, what they tend to do, in fact, it's a policy, is they say, you come from South India, you celebrate Diwali and you worship the elephant god Ganesh, go on, keep worshipping. And then Sikhs, for example, Sikhs in Canada, of whom there are a great number, are encouraged to remain Sikhs, to have their own gurdwaras. So, The stereotype of a Canadian is a man or woman in a flannel shirt with a wool hat in a snowstorm. But actually, that's far from the truth. I mean, these ethno-bubbles are not because the government is indifferent to them. The Canadian government actually encourages people to pursue their own ethnic and cultural enthusiasm, whereas we insist that people Americanize. Also, the aim, I mean... We're encouraged to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's not a goal in Canada. The Canadian aim is good government. Good government and, you know, not the pursuit of happiness. Speaker 5 (8:40) Good government, meaning being able to work together and compromise and find a middle ground. Speaker 4 (8:45) Yeah, yeah, yeah, to be well governed. I Speaker 5 (8:47) think Speaker 4 (8:47) that's something that we could... But Speaker 5 (8:49) your happiness Speaker 4 (8:49) isn't part of it. Speaker 5 (8:50) This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with Paul Theroux, and he's telling us about his cross-Canada road trip. And his new book is called True North, On the Road in Canada. You can find links to Paul's other travel books on his website. That's paultheroux.com. And that's spelled T-H-E-R-O-U-X. Paul, let's get into the actual itinerary. The word TransCanada came up a lot in your book. It seemed like it was more than just the name of a highway. And you went from Maine all the way to the Peace Arch in Vancouver and British Columbia. Give us just a kind of an overview before we dig into some of the details. Where did you go and how much time did you spend doing this and when was it? Speaker 4 (9:31) My ancestral home is a place called Yamaska, which is maybe an hour and a half from Montreal, southeast. So I made repeated trips in different seasons to my ancestral home where a lot of Theroux people still live. I mean, the family's still there, which is very unusual. When you travel, normally you're traveling among strangers. I was traveling among family members. So I went up there a number of times and then I went farther afield. So you use the word TransCanada. That's an interesting word because you think of TransCanada Highway as a big, you know, like a four lane highway that goes coast to coast. That's not the case. A lot of the TransCanada is a little country road where people are riding bikes or walking their dogs. So my ambition was to go from coast to coast. So I drove up through Maine, Nova Scotia. and took the ferry to Newfoundland. So I went up and down Newfoundland, took some time off, and then I traveled basically onward to Vancouver when the election was taking place. Speaker 5 (10:32) And you came away writing that Canada seems to me in many respects like a vast archipelago. I thought that was a real good observation. What did you mean by that? Speaker 4 (10:43) As you know, Canada has a very small population, 42 million. That's the population of... California. So where is this population of 42 million in a country that is bigger than China? They're on little islands, not actual islands, but island-like places. Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, way up in Corner Brook in Newfoundland. So the archipelago is these little populous islands. And then in between, there's little, of course, there are settlements all over Canada. But that 42 million people is very widely distributed. but concentrated in specific places. The other thing which is amazing to me, visually, is when you're traveling across the prairie in a car. There's nothing. It's like a sea. Like you're traveling in an ocean. The grass is flattened by the wind. And you look in the distance and you see what looks like the ramparts of an island. It happens to be a city. It's probably Winnipeg or Edmonton or whatever. But you look across the prairie and you see the tall buildings of what looks like a castle or an island. I think it's just wonderful. It's wonderful if you're in a car. A road trip in Canada is like nothing else. Great roads. Friendly people, lots of stories. To me, it was heaven. Speaker 5 (12:08) And a road trip with the Paul Theroux approach to connecting with people. I love it. There's a bit in your book where you talk about your focus. And I'm just going to, there's three dimensions to this. It's a multiple choice question. What do you prefer on the road to connect with a circus or a cathedral? Speaker 4 (12:26) Well, I'd take the circus any day. Speaker 5 (12:28) And then a cafe or a public monument? Give me the cafe, a cup of coffee and... some people nearby. And then the third one, the third one is a fiesta or a museum. Speaker 4 (12:40) Well, I'd take the fiesta, unless if it's Berlin and the museum is full of Rembrandts, I think I might take the museum. Speaker 5 (13:01) He's one of our best-known American travel writers with the distinction of once having his books banned by the apartheid government of South Africa. Paul Theroux has written more than 50 novels, short stories, and works of nonfiction that take us on train adventures across Asia and Africa, hiking the coast of England, and road-tripping the hinterlands of Dixie and Mexico, and now Canada. There's more on what he discovered from Newfoundland to British Columbia in just a minute on Travel with Rick Steves. Speaker 5 (13:30) Chronicling more than a half-century's worth of travels, Paul Theroux's latest work takes us along on a sweeping personal journey across Canada. Paul's road trip took him to uncover his family history in Quebec and to experience Canada's cities and farmscapes and meet fellow writers,