Road Work: Theorizing the Road Trip Narrative in Anglophone, Quebecois and Indigenous Literatures in Canada

As the title of J. Edward Chamberlin's book, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? suggests, you must fill a physical landscape with a history on that land in order to make it yours. Geography describes the land, and history peoples it, just as memories connect you to place. This is why road trips are such a feature of Anglophone, Quebecois and Indigenous writing in Canada, allowing the travelers to claim, at least symbolically, the land they cover. It is the intersection between history and geography that makes the trip so significant, and nourishes a sense of place, or reveals the lack of it. Examining the road trips undertaken therefore tells us much about the specific interests of the three general groups at the centre of this study. Their desire, and in some cases obligation to travel, the traveling companions and destinations they choose, and the histories they create on the land they are covering are indicative of their particular sense of place and nationhood within the country.