True North, Down South

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Product Details

Publisher: True North Press
Release Date: September 20, 2022
Formats: Paperback, Ebook, Audiobook
ISBN: PB: 979-8-9858836-0-2; EB: 979-8-9858836-1-9
Trim: 6 x 9
Page Count: 240

 

Tales of a Professional Canadian in America

David Wayne Stewart

Using a Canadian émigré lens, David Wayne Stewart’s essay collection, True North, Down South, entertains and educates readers about immigrant and national identity, cultural misunderstandings, and belonging in the modern world.

Stewart’s Canadian identity was contested by Quebec separatists when he was a child, then again in his adult life as an immigrant to the United States. Along the way, he found himself homesick in the U.S., opening an immigration law clinic in North Carolina before he was thrust unexpectedly into a role as a “professional Canadian.”

In engaging and compelling prose, True North, Down South tells twenty-eight insightful and sometimes humorous personal stories of growing up in Canada and carving out an adult life in the United States. Stewart details spending his childhood in an asbestos mining town in 1970s Quebec, coming of age in Montreal, establishing roots in the United States, and promoting Canadian-American relations in Silicon Valley. Charming and approachable, this collection leaves readers with a deeper awareness of what it feels like to be an outsider, a homesick immigrant, and a bridge-builder for two nations more culturally distinct than they appear.

About the Author

David Wayne Stewart is a “professional Canadian” in California, helping Canadian tech clusters connect into the Bay Area ecosystem. He is a former “chairmoose” of the Digital Moose Lounge, an association of Canadians in Silicon Valley, and the Advisory Board chair of Canadian Studies at UC Berkeley. His essays have received awards in San Francisco’s Soul-Making Keats literary competition and have appeared in Potato Soup Journal, Bewildering Stories, and The Quiet Reader.

Visit the author’s website at truenorthdownsouth.com

Reviews

“Rich with insights, humor, and wisdom, True North, Down South gently draws readers across borders of language, culture, politics, and technology. With a genial, gregarious empathy, David Wayne Stewart becomes a deft guide around a continent uneasily shared by diverse Canadians and Americans. A pleasure to read, like a day spent with a new best friend, True North, Down South gradually percolates a deeper wisdom about our very human dilemmas.” —Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies

“For any wandering Canadian, this open-hearted account of one expat’s experience in America will be excellent company. But what enlarges and deepens David Wayne Stewart’s memoir is the extended dive he takes into how we carry where we’re from. Cutting through familiar tropes about Canada and the U.S. or the allure of simple nostalgia, he probes the ways a home country continues to shape us over decades, and how these patterns can become even more complex with time, affecting our closest relationships and showing up in our children in unexpected ways. As the fifteenth-century proverb says, ‘It weven ill not out of the fleshe, that’s bred in the bone.’” —Julie Bruck, Canadian-American poet and Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Monkey Ranch

“As a fellow Canadian expat, I found reading David Wayne Stewart’s collection of memoir essays to be one of my most enjoyable activities this year. True North, Down South wrestles with many facets of Canadian culture and identity, from his childhood in Quebec’s Eastern Townships to expatriatism in Silicon Valley. In tones ranging from joyful to reflective, Stewart manages to showcase Canada’s many dualities, hilarities, and challenges that distinguish the Canadian people and society from its southern neighbors. In many ways, this book was like looking into a mirror, and reading it has reenergized my own quest for a better understanding of being Canadian. A true gem.” —Christina Keppie, director of the Center of Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University

“An exceedingly intelligent series of recollections related in light, lucid prose.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“From coming-of-age experiences to leaving the next generation with the mindset and tools for better understanding Canadian and American connections and disparities, David Wayne Stewart provides far more than a memoir here.”
—Midwest Book Review

“David Wayne Stewart’s experiences with and explorations of national identity, especially those personal and professional vignettes situated in the United States, provide a singularly valuable lens into what being Canadian means. This timely collection of entertaining, informative, and heartfelt stories conveys a compelling intimacy so often missing from academic treatments. True North, Down South reverberates with energy and passion for Canada. An absorbing read!”
—Christopher Kirkey, director of the Center for the Study of Canada and Institute on Québec Studies at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh and editor of The Construction of Canadian Identity from Abroad

“As a fellow Canadian living in the U.S., I connected so much with many of David Wayne Stewart’s revelations about expat living. This high quality writing with interesting storytelling was engaging and emotion-filled and taught me a lot about the recent history of Canada that occurred before my time or during my childhood.” —Jocelyn Watkinson, children’s book writer and author of The Three Canadian Pigs: A Hockey Story

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