The Road to Appledore: Or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place

Acclaimed author Tom Wayman’s account of his shift from urban to rural.

The recent pandemic accelerated an existing trend among urban Canadians to move to the country. Yet to quote from a 2022 Globe and Mail article, “People from cities don’t always realize what they’re getting into.”

For anyone setting out in that direction, or dreaming of doing so, Tom Wayman’s The Road to Appledore: Or How How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place is rewarding reading. The book follows Wayman from Vancouver to southeastern BC’s Slocan Valley, deep in the Selkirk Mountains, and presents with his characteristic humour and philosophical insight his ensuing major shifts of perspective and knowledge. Mishaps, misadventures and moments of delight and wonder abound in Wayman’s prose reflections on his decades of living immersed in nature and the contemporary rural—from having to deal with a bear cub in his kitchen, to engaging in a vigilante action to protect a community water system, to the quiet satisfaction of growing his own food and flowers.

Wayman depicts the rural southwest of Canada in intimate detail, transporting readers alongside him.

“There is a broad sweep to Wayman that someone has not unjustly compared to Walt Whitman. He is vigorous, protean in fancy, and more self-critical than most poets of his highly productive kind. Facility is his temptation, but it has rarely led him away from true feeling.”