Map Quest

The Canadian Hockey Atlas by Stephen Cole

(Doubleday Canada)

Summary: Stephen Cole surveys 94 cities and towns, where we meet more than 1,000 players and visit hundreds of teams and tournaments. The book packs in nostalgia, stats, anecdotes and ephemera.

The artwork: It’s like a bad-hair day at the dentist’s office. Mullets, scruffy playoff beards and gap-toothed smiles stand out among hundreds of fascinating archival photos.

Best destination: Plaster Rock, N.B., where every February since 2002, 48 four-man teams square off at the World Pond Hockey Championships on nearby Lake Roulston.

Worst destination: Prince Albert, Sask. during the depression-era childhood of future Hockey Hall of Famer Johnny Bower. Money was so tight, kids used frozen road apples — that’s right, horse dung — for hockey pucks. It wasn’t so bad, recalls the legendary goalie, “as long as you brush your teeth afterwards.”

Most obscure fact: Dapper Don Cherry’s mother was a tailor.

Lessons about international relations: The hockey player is Canada’s greatest export. The Stanley Cup may not have been home since Montreal’s win in 1993, but Cole shows us that it’s still Canadians who are winning the cup — even if they are dressed in American jerseys.

Lessons about Canadian identity: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When Mother Nature gives your country six months of ice and snow each year, play hockey.

The Geist Atlas of Canada: Meat Maps and other Strange Cartographies, compiled by Melissa Edwards

(Arsenal Pulp Press)

Summary: The pomo pranksters at Geist magazine turn the country into a quirky trivia session, drawing conceptual routes between disparate locales using themes based on place names. The Meat Map of Canada, for example, directs us to places such as Rump Cove, Nfld., Burgerville, Ont. and Pate Lake, NWT.

The artwork: With names perched on pin-like lines, Canada becomes a cross between an acupuncture patient and a laboratory dissection victim in these deflatingly humorous maps. Perhaps the most troubling case is the Angst Map of Canada, in which the country resembles a green, spoorish lump in a Petri dish, offering such disconsolate nomenclature as Lac de L’Ennui, Que.; Why Island, Ont.; and Suicide Hill, Man.

Best destination: Hump Island, NU, from The Erotic Map of Canada.

Worst destination: Brown Passage, B.C., from The Impolite Map of Canada.

Most obscure facts: Appendix B on page 113 informs us that residents of Digby, N.S. are “Digbonians,” people in La Tuque, Que. are “Latuquois,” residents in Jellyby, Ont. are “Jellybites,” denizens of Sandy Hook, Man. are “Sandy Hookers” and those from Surrey, B.C. are “Surrealists.”

Lessons about international relations: Imitation is the best form of flattery. The Global Map of Canada includes Little Canada, Minnesota, US; Cañada De Gomez, Argentina; and Canada Bay, Sydney, Australia.

Lessons about Canadian identity: What kind of people would name a place Haircut Lake (The Canadian Map of Haircuts), Garbage Island (The Cheap Map of Canada) or Pain Killer Bay (The Menstrual Map of Canada)? Canada can be a weird place, but it gets a lot weirder when viewed through the Geist kaleidoscope.

The Wine Atlas of Canada by Tony Aspler

(Random House Canada)

Summary: Radio broadcaster and former Toronto Star wine columnist Aspler takes us inside hundreds of Canadian wineries to meet the owners, winemakers and their award-winning libations.

The artwork: Rudimentary maps look like abstract details from Roy Lichtenstein’s Benday dot paintings. Roads are indicated, but it’s best to have a Perly’s map book on hand. Luscious photos of verdant, loamy vales and vineyards will tempt even teetotalers to make a trip.

Best destination: If one must choose, Pelee Island in Lake Erie seems a great spot. Canada’s most southerly inhabited locale (it’s on the same latitude as Rome) was home to our first commercial winery, built in 1866.

Worst destination: Canadian wine law dictates that grapes for ice wine cannot be picked until the mercury drops to -8˚C, and stays there. Picking is done before sunrise. Brrrrrrr! Better have some mulled wine brewing.

Most obscure fact: Climate affects more than grapes. Chemical analysis shows that Canadian oak, used for wine barrels, contains boosted compounds that give wine its vanilla note. Let’s hope this doesn’t lead to a new wine-cooler flavour: Vanilla Ice.

Lessons about international relations: Enjoying your wine these days? Thank Brian Mulroney. His 1988 Free Trade Agreement eliminated protection of the truly awful wines then being produced in Canada. Vintners, now on a level playing field with international competition, ripped up their Concord grape vines and began planting European varieties. Today, Canadian wines — especially ice wines — are recognized as some of the best in the world.

Lessons about Canadian identity: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the territories: Mr. Aspler and his oenophiles have little use for your chilly climes. If you’re producing any wine in those locales, you won’t find it in this book. Otherwise, the nation is ripe for quaffing.

This Is My Country, What’s Yours?: A Literary Atlas of Canada by Noah Richler

(McClelland & Stewart)

Summary: Does the Son of Mordecai claim ownership of the entire nation with that title? The astute know it is simply metaphorical. This is but one man’s vision, as refracted through interviews with dozens of authors. “The Atlas is intended as a cultural portrait of the country,” Richler says.

The artwork: Antoine de Saint Exupery + Ben Wicks = the playful line drawings of Newfoundland novelist Michael Winter.

Best destination: “Somewhere.” It’s Richler’s term for when we finally generate enough gossip about ourselves to distract us from navel gazing, and thus no longer need books like this one.

Worst destination: “Nowhere.” Borrowed from the name of an actual road (Road to Nowhere) in Nunavut, this is Richler’s metaphorical moniker for our myth-challenged nation, a place with few universal stories and thus a weak identity.

Most obscure fact: Nowhere is somewhere. Richler explains: “Time passes, history accumulates. The work a writer does wrests Nowhere onto the Map. Nowhere as Off the Map and Utopian Opportunity becomes Nowhere in Particular and, finally, Somewhere — Nowhere as an Address with Virtues.” Got it? Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Lessons about international relations: To Americans, “Canada is the vaguely threatening country where cold winds, power cuts, mad cow disease, terrorists, weed smokers, liberals, and homosexual marriages originate.” To the rest of the world, well, as Richler reminds us, Jorge Luis Borges once said, Canada is “so far away that it hardly exists.”

Lessons about Canadian identity: We might be hopelessly lost.