Canada 150: Neepawa

While I was on leg one of my cross-Canada road trip, I made a small detour to Neepawa, Manitoba. It wasn’t a long detour — certainly not as long as my first detour to the Bulkley Valley. But seeing as Neepawa is not on the Trans-Canada Highway, it was, technically, out of the way.

I remember it being a spur-of-the-moment decision. While studying the road map, I turned to my sister (who had by this time joined me on my cross-Canada road trip) and I said, “Hey, let’s stop in Neepawa!”

Why Neepawa?

Neepawa is the birthplace of Margaret Laurence, the much-lauded Canadian author. Back in the day, her novel The Stone Angel was required reading in most Canadian high school English classes. That novel put the fictional town of Manawaka on the literary map of Canada. And Manawaka was inspired by the town of Neepawa.

Our quick stop in Neepawa proved to be one of the highlights of that road trip. We didn’t know this until we got there, but the small town is an oasis in the middle of the Canadian prairie, filled with big, old leafy trees and big, old lovely houses. One of those houses, the one in which Margaret Laurence grew up, is now a small museum, which we made a point of visiting.

We also made our way to the cemetery where Laurence is buried and where the original stone angel stands. The statue is part of the headstone for John Andrew Davidson, a Manitoba politician who died in 1903. It has no wings, but apparently it was called an angel by the residents of Neepawa long before Margaret Laurence wrote her novel.

And here she is.