Back Roads

ISBN 13: 978-1-897126-21-9
216 pages, paperback
March 2008

Non-Fiction

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about this book

After collapsing from stress in a posh Vancouver restaurant, Ted Ferguson decides to abandon his workaholic lifestyle and move his family to the secluded back roads of northern Alberta, where electricity and indoor plumbing are a luxury and surviving another winter is a blessing. With his wife and young son in tow, Ted rebuilds his life surrounded by a close-knit community while encountering, among other unique characters, a vengeful dentist, a barefoot farmer living in a hillside dugout, and a store clerk who could very well be Canada's most dedicated gossip. Humorous and insightful, this fish-out-of-water tale captures a radically different lifestyle that many urbanites dream about but will never gather the courage to attempt themselves. Back Roads speaks to the survivalist in all of us while displaying one man's resolve to reconnect with his family, the essence of life, and himself.

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"Ferguson's writing style resembles Stuart MacLean's, Garrison Keillor's and Bill Bryson's, only without the rampant whimsy found among those chroniclers of the human condition. ... It is in writers such as Perrin, and now Ferguson, where you get the occasional touch of Thoreau and Annie Dillard." —Alberta Views

“Stubborn pride, neighbours who know more than you ever will, and animals and land that take your heart; Ted Ferguson brings the back road to life. An ‘almost local’ on my own back road for 32 years, I grimaced and laughed my way through this close-to-the-bone work of creative non-fiction.”
—Rita Moir, author of Buffalo Jump, winner of the 2000 BC Book Award for Non-Fiction 

reader's guide

Into the back roads
Ted Ferguson on why he wrote Back Roads

Every so often, someone asks me where I get my ideas. I usually say they come from a brief item in a newspaper or magazine, or from an intriguing story I chanced upon while doing archival research for an unrelated project. For Back Roads, however, the inspiration came to me from a stranger in a very unlikely place—it came from a university student I met at a former French hill station in central Vietnam.

I was nearing the end of a three-week trip to Vietnam when a Dalat University student sat down beside me on a lakeside bench. He said he wanted to practice his English because he was hoping to migrate to the Canadian Prairies someday (“So much big spaces,” he enthused.) When I mentioned my time spent in northern Alberta, he said I should write a book about my experiences.

Oddly enough, the thought never occurred to me. I was heavily involved with other writing projects, such as freelance articles and, at the time the student and I crossed paths, a book about Cuba and the fascinating family my wife and I befriended there (this would later become Blue Cuban Nights, published by a British company, Summersdale, in 2002). While walking back to my Dalat hotel room after my conversation with the student, I decided that Back Roads could very well be a worthwhile venture. Blue Cuban Nights had involved travelling in dilapidated cars and public buses to conduct extensive interviews. By comparison, I thought an Alberta book would be a piece of cake. All I had to do was sit at a computer and mine my memory. Six months work, at most.

As it turned out, it took me 18 months to complete the book. I found it easier to write about other people than about myself, especially since I loathe coming off as either insufferably humble and saintly or unbearably self-centred. Another problem I faced was having such an abundance of material—I often wrote snippets of the story only to trash them in favour of what I concluded to be, rightly or wrongly, better stories. Among these discarded passages was an account of the night my wife and I saw a strange light hovering over our field; however, even though this didn’t make the final cut, I still smile when I remember the ten-year-old boy visiting our home, who looked up at the sky and declared the light an alien spaceship, shouting, “Please, take my sister!”

Living in the bush achieved the result I wanted upon leaving Vancouver. I strengthened my relationship with my wife and son and, in the process, reaffirmed a long-standing belief that a lifestyle change is something to be embraced, not feared. Enriching experiences are infinitely more important than an enriched bank account.