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“Der Pilger (The Pilgrim)” reviews The Good Walk

Gotta love those Germans…

When my friend Traugott Roser contacted me to let me know he’d written a review of The Good Walk, for the magazine Der Pilger (The Pilgrim), I was overjoyed!

My hopelessly naive generalizations about Germans include that…

All Germans are fit and athletic and they LOVE walking and pilgrimages. So they’ll eat up The Good Walk. The book that really ignited the contemporary rise of the Camino was Hape Kerkeling’s fun and incredibly popular I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago, first published in German and a sensation there.,

All Germans idealize the North American “West” and North American landscapes. Germany is a crowded country that has lost so much of its own “wildness” but still maintains a strong national mythology of origins around it. And yet …

All Germans are aware of and sensitive to Indigenous sovereignty and concerns, and …

All Germans love to read, and as a bonus, as truly civilized people are multilingual and can often read English books like mine, unlike most anglophones and folks like me, who struggle with anything more than simple tourist directions auf deutsch…

SO. After all these expectations, how did the review turn out?

Thanks to Google translate, you can read on for yourself….

The Review

p. 43 New Pilgrim Perspectives:

“A devout Muslim embarks on the Way of St. James, and a Canadian professor and long-time pilgrim follows the trail of spiritual wandering in the vastness of the Midwest. Two inspiring book recommendations from Protestant pastor and passionate pilgrim Traugott Roser.“

“The Search for a Lost Home (Die Suche nach einem verlorenen Zuhause)“

“Matthew Anderson, Professor of New Testament at Concordia University in Montreal, is an experienced pilgrim who has also led his Canadian students through Spain, France, England, and Norway and has made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker on pilgrimage. After many trips to Europe, he wonders whether pilgrimage is also possible in North America and what pilgrimage might mean there. In his new book, “The Good Walk – Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails,” he tells a compelling story of humanity’s age-old paths through the prairie of the Middle West. It is an account of a painful yet healing search for home: “Pilgrimage together with others—in the broadest sense understood as spiritually motivated hiking—is a way of searching for a lost home.” Anderson is a descendant of settlers who farmed…

(P. 45) and built small towns on the supposedly deserted plains of Saskatchewan (see photo above), and [the region once called] the Northwest Territories. Since 2015, Anderson and his wife Sara have been traveling the trails once used by traders, settler treks, and the Northwest Mounted Police, a paramilitary force commissioned by the Canadian government. But Anderson not only gets close to the story of his own family, descendants of white European immigrants, but also of the people who lived there before and were deprived of their land through sham treaties, displacement, and targeted extermination.

Pilgrimage: intercultural and interfaith

Anderson is accompanied on his journey by various companions, including Don Bolen, the Catholic Archbishop of the Diocese of Regina. Descendants of the First Nations, the Lakota, the Nakota, and the Nehyawak (Cree) accompany them or host them, as do descendants of settlers and the Métis, descendants of European-Indigenous marriages, who historically mediated between cultures as fur traders and are now considered an independent nation.

Anderson sees his hikes through the vast landscapes as pilgrimages to places whose history has been partly forgotten, partly erased. This also changes the landscape and its perception itself: through narratives and archaeological evidence, places of living memory emerge.

The places create new relationships and deepen old ones. In this way, the pilgrims come into contact with the spiritual world, [sometimes] with the elders and wise men of the Indigenous peoples, [sometimes] with their own family history, and [always] with nature. Through Christian and Indigenous rituals, the pilgrimage becomes an intercultural and religiously unifying experience. At the same time, it is a painful journey that ties in with the tradition of penitential pilgrimage: The extermination of the North American bison took place in the vastness of the prairie. This deprived the Indigenous people of their livelihood, and thousands starved to death while faced with the government’s deliberate inaction. It is equally painful when the pilgrims encounter survivors from the church-run boarding schools (of both Catholics and Protestants):

On behalf of state authorities, children were taken from their families and  Nations and placed in Christian schools. Only in recent years did the public learn of the graves of thousands of nameless children who did not survive the ordeal.

Reward for Physical and Mental Effort

The paths across the prairie demand physical and mental effort from the pilgrims, but they also reward them: through community, forgiveness, and understanding. Matthew Anderson ultimately even succeeds in finding peace for his deceased parents and for his sister, who died very young. The pilgrim’s path is a good path, and with the project Anderson describes, a new, very unique pilgrimage tradition begins in Canada.

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage on the Way of St. James in a new and more profound way: as a consciously religious experience, as a path to encounter God, and as a path to reconciliation.”

Dr. Roser’s Own Pilgrim Book

I wouldn’t be much of a friend, if at this point I didn’t mention that Traugott has published his own pilgrim book. It’s in German, titled Hola! bei Kilometer 410: Mit Allen Sinnen auf dem Jakobsweg (Hola! At kilometre 410 with all senses on the Camino de Santiago).

I wonder if a rather free, but still good, translation might be: “Hola! Fully aware and alive at kilometre 410 of the Camino de Santiago.” It’d be great to see this valuable book out for the English-language reader as well! (By the way, the other book he reviewed with mine in the above article sounds fascinating).

Traugott does all kinds of interesting teaching and research, including (like me) teaching Bible and Film classes. He is also an ethicist who teaches about ethics in healthcare and palliative care.

Thanks, Traugott, for the great review. Buen Camino! Looking forward to walking with you some day soon!

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stroke-recovery

Five Month Strokeaversary: “I Got My License!”

“Dad, can I borrow the car tonight? I promise I’ll fill ‘er up.”

After my stroke, I was required by law to take my driver’s tests (written and practical) again, as a “one-armed driver.” I went in to Access Nova Scotia for an oral exam on road rules and safety, a road signs quiz, and a 45-minute road test. My jovial inquisitor was Teresa. At the end of it all, I officially got to keep my driver’s license.

Yayyy!!! I feel SO thankful.

The Driving Exam

It seems fitting that my 90-min driving exam took place almost five months to the day from my stroke back in September. I was supposed to take it a week ago. But I hurt my unaffected right arm last week overworking it (trying to rake snow off our solar panels, I think, or maybe it was that time I carried in all the groceries at once). It took a week for my “driving arm” to recover enough to turn a corner without grimacing.

Was I nervous? Of course! It will be – unbelievably to me – 50 years this June since I passed my first driver’s test in Regina, Saskatchewan (the above grouchy photo was taken a year or two after that time….I’ve since learned to smile!). The very professional and friendly Teresa here in Antigonish was all smiles when we got back to the provincial office. “Look at that,” she said, holding out her clipboard. “I barely wrote a thing. Sometimes I have to fill these sheets! You got just enough points deducted to prove you’re human.” I know one of the two things I got docked for was not signalling when I left a roundabout, but it was because I couldn’t safely take my right hand off the wheel to get all the way over to the turn signal while making that sharp a turnoff.

Appointments, Appointments, Appointments

Since Sara and I live in the country, not having a driver’s license would have meant a major life change. These days I’m teaching two days a week at Saint Francis Xavier University, 17 km down the highway. (Last week’s midterm exam for Bible and Film pictured above!) A normal week also means driving in two mornings for the Nova Scotia Cardio rehab program “Hearts in Motion” at the StFX Amelia Saputo Centre gym, where I and a dozen other heart patients get sessions on exercise and diet and 75 minutes on the treadmills, stationary bikes, and (for me) elliptical machines. I usually bump into one or two of my students, which is nice. Twice a week I also head back to the stroke rehab centre at the hospital, now as an outpatient. There I do 30 minutes of physio and 45 minutes of occupational therapy. Then there are all the appointments for blood tests, stress tests, reassessments, and consults, most here, but some coming up in Halifax.

I remember the old folks always complaining about how busy they were with appointments. Preoccupied juggling multiple part-time jobs and kids, I remember thinking: that’s hardly something to keep a body busy. Boy was I was wrong! I’ve needed to post myself a schedule just to keep all my rendezvous’ straight and out of conflict with my teaching times. I’ve also apparently joined that group of people who have to remember to take multiple pills daily, counting them out carefully every evening.

Me and My Big PFO

A big date for me comes up the end of this month in Halifax: my initial cardiac procedure pre-appointment. In case you missed my earlier mention of this: apparently I have a “PFO,” a hole between the upper chambers of the heart. This hole exists in newborns, but in almost all people closes in very early infancy. In a small percentage of us, that hole never closes. A PFO can allow a clot from the leg to pass directly to the brain rather than being shunted safely to the lungs for “processing.”

No one seems to know for sure if this is what happened to me. But it may have been. Something poetic about the fact I have a hole in my heart.

At my pre-appointment they’ll confirm whether I’m a candidate to have that hole closed with an arthroscopic procedure involving magnetized rubber washers. Of course I’d like that procedure asap. I don’t want another stroke (although I’m grateful for the meds that have finally brought my blood pressure down from the mountaintops)! But I know I’m fortunate to be seen so quickly about this. For now, on the doctor’s advice I’m not flying or taking long drives. A trip to Montreal to see the kids, or speaking at Gathering of Pilgrims 2025 in Vancouver as planned, are out.

Refuse the Plateau!

The book “Stronger After Stroke” that was sent to me by Greg and Ingrid Gust says that a good rule for stroke survivors is to refuse to accept the idea of “a plateau” limiting their recovery. So that’s what I’m doing. And amazingly, I have yet to see a plateau. Every single day, I see slight but noticeable improvements. For instance, I typed this sentence using the three fingers of my left hand….not easy, nor graceful, but a start.

I sometimes feel disappointed for still having a pronounced limp when I walk (my arm and leg spasticity, or tightness, becomes much worse when I’m cold). Then Sara reminds me that I’m also walking through snow, and up and down multiple flights of stairs at the gym and the university (holding the railing). So there’s that.

The physios at the hospital filmed me walking. “This isn’t for us,” they said. “This is for you, so you can see how far you’ve come.” Sara came into our living room last week to find me lying on the floor. I’d been trying to squat the way I used to pre-stroke. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I tipped over,” I said, not moving. “Do you need help getting up?” she asked gently. “No.” Sometimes, flat on your back, you just gotta laugh.

My proudest news is that for the first time I can actually make a couple of chords on my guitar… WITHOUT always using my right hand to “arrange” my left fingers. Before Christmas I couldn’t even keep my left hand on the guitar without it sliding off under its own weight. Now, the feeling of very slowly moving my left fingers into an A or D chord (the easiest) is pure joy. A stroke-specialist in Halifax I met with over Zoom said to keep at the guitar daily. That seems to be the key: my daily routines, using my left hand as much as possible, even though it takes so much more time (you’d chuckle to see me spending three minutes trying to fish a spoon out of the cutlery drawer for my tea – do you remember Tim Conway’s SOOOOO-slow routines from the Carol Burnett show?).

Book Launch!

One of the best parts of being at least partly back in the routine is getting back to my writing. With my colleague Barry from the History Department who also happens to run the Antigonish Heritage Museum where I was first invited to give the talk that ended up ballooning into my new book, we’ve set a date for the launch — fittingly at the museum! “Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia” launches there on Thursday April 24th, at 7 pm. I’ll tell the story of the book and do a reading or two, some of the local walkers will attend (I hope), and fingers are crossed for some fine local music! Two days later, Sat April 26th, I’ll be in New Brunswick for the Greater Moncton Riverview Dieppe Book Fair from 10 am to 3 pm. The book is already getting some nice attention, with a planned CBC Radio (All in a Weekend) interview. It’s only in pre-sales, but it’s already listed as #15 in Amazon Canada’s “hot-sellers” in its category (see below). But please don’t buy it there … pre-order it through your local bookstore instead! 🇨🇦

Taking Time for Warm Stanfields and for Berry Blossoms

Like everyone else, I’m having a hard time not doom-scrolling and feeling anxious these days because of the news. But my stroke recovery books – and my common sense – tell me that what’s best for my condition is to maintain a hopeful and constructive attitude, and allow my self-discipline and anxiety to be tempered by humour and forgiveness (good advice for us all). So I’m going to be lining up some post-stroke, retirement-adjacent therapy. I’ll try to dial down the work and dial up the creative writing a bit more all the time. And even on my lower sodium, fat and sugar regime, there’s some room for the occasional self-indulgence, such as these 100% Quebec-made “Berry Blossoms.”

As you might be able to tell from this photo of the moon rise over our neighbours’ place, it’s been cold here in Pomquet – and the cold affects me more since my stroke. So it’s also been great to discover that the “Stanfields” long johns of my youth is now a full clothing line, made since before Canada was even a country, just down the road in Truro Nova Scotia. I bought myself a sleeping shirt and Sara a tee-shirt for Valentine’s. These days, I think we can all agree with the logo.

If by chance you’re thinking of saying goodbye to Facebook at some point, please consider subscribing to this blog as a way of staying in touch. Thank you for following me along on this pilgrimage through stroke, and may the support you’ve given me return to you in a thousand ways. Courage and health to you, from our home to yours!

Categories
stroke-recovery

4-month Strokeaversary: Back to the Future

Back to Work

As I got out of the passenger seat with my backpack, and teetered through the snowstorm, slightly off balance, to teach my first class in over four months at Saint Francis Xavier University, Sara rolled down the window and looked proudly yet worriedly on. I went a few steps, then stopped and glanced back. “It’s like being in grade one!” I shouted. She laughed. “That’s what I was thinking!”

That first class, and those in weeks since, have gone well, all things considered, four months after a major stroke. I have over 50 lovely students for RELS 210 Bible and Film. I do find I have to stop speaking sometimes to swallow and to catch my breath, problems I never had before. And I’m exhausted at the end of the 75 minutes. When I go to leave the amphitheatre through the doors located at the top/back, I need to look for which side has a handrail to the right. But I find I can stand for almost the whole lecture. Kudos to the current chair of our department, Dr. Robert Kennedy, for suggesting that for the first part of term at least, I do half of my teaching online to save energy.

I was privileged last week to be invited by Katie Murphy, a member of StFX’s rugby team who’s been in several of my classes, to attend the Academic All-Canadian Awards breakfast as her one guest. Each Academic All-Canadian is a student athlete who maintains an average over 80% while excelling at their sport. They get to invite one favourite prof to the breakfast. Sara had the honour of being invited too, by another scholar-athlete, Myro Zastavnyy, who plays soccer. He got the highest mark in her New Testament class last term. All went fine, but a trip back and forth to a buffet table with breakfast in hand presents challenges I’ve never had to deal with before. Katie was a great help. She quipped, “once a server, always a server,” as she carried her own breakfast and some of mine back to our table.

Back to Mobility

Recently, I took my first solo drive in four months. As the kind clerk from the Nova Scotia Motor Vehicle Division assured me: “since your medical has come in all clear, there’s no reason you can’t drive right now. Just be sure to take the test again.” I have to retake both my written and road tests before the end of February, or my license will be suspended.

Off I went. It felt great – and a little scary – to be back motoring out in the big wild world all on my own like that. My first independent excursion since September. I took advantage of my first solo trip to head all the way to town to buy a pair of pull-on winter boots. I can now do up zippers fairly consistently (thanks to my friend Ken Wilson‘s gift of zipper pulls). But tying shoes? I managed to do one lace for Sara’s father’s 90th in Moncton. But it took me over five minutes, tired me right out, and even then it was loose. Pull-on boots for now.

I love two things about the photo of my prayer below from Winston Parks’s big birthday. One is that the Mayor of Moncton, Dawn Arnold, is behind me. Sara has admired her for decades, and tagged her in the facebook invitation. It was a privilege to have her there. The other is that two different members of my family, my son Daniel and my sister-in-law Barbara, when they saw the photo on the right, instantly celebrated the fact that I was holding my remarks in my left hand.

Back to the Hospital (as an outpatient)

Twice a week I drive myself to St. Martha’s Hospital. There I spend a half-hour under Jay’s watchful eye: walking on my heels, walking backwards, side-stepping, and doing high leg-lift marching that reminds me of what we used to do in high-school sports practise.

I still don’t have the left-foot strength to walk consistently on my toes, nor is my “normal” gait that smooth. But I’m getting better every week. After physio, my new Rehabilitation Assistant, Janna, takes over and guides me through 45 minutes of hand and finger exercises. I’m VERY fortunate to still be receiving this level of care! (Please, for my sake and yours, never vote for a party that has designs to privatise healthcare any more than some provinces already are!)

Back Home

This weekend, for the first time, I ventured across our driveway to spent an hour “working out” (I use that term gently) in our crowded insulated shed. Before Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law cleared space and set up the recumbent bicycle and the treadmill (from Sara’s parents’ recent move to an apartment) for me. It was great to listen to a podcast and just get my legs going. There have been both mice and a resident squirrel inside that space in the last year. We cleaned it thoroughly last summer and employed many mouse-proofing tactics, but while I pedalled I kept my eye out just in case.

I have a full home physio routine which includes wrist exercises, doing leg lifts and arm raises, and giving my left hand the “TENS” treatment of low-level electrical current at least 30 minutes a day. I can now sometimes pick up pennies off a table with my left hand and drop them into a pill bottle, arm extended. Although I still have to use my right hand to guide my left, I can now make clearer chords on my guitar. You should see me wipe a counter! It’s a messy business. A big part of my home-work is using my left hand as much as possible to do daily tasks. I think it’s funny that as spastic as I am, Sara still trusts me to wash the crystal (and so close to the cast iron).

In some ways, it’s my expectations that are now changing. Rather than being surprised (and overjoyed) simply to be able to move my arm and hand again at all, these days more and more I find myself reaching for something, say a bar of soap, with my left hand without thinking. Then I’m surprised (and slightly disappointed) when my arm won’t extend that far, or my arm won’t straighten or fingers won’t open enough to grab it. My left hand looks and acts rather like one of those arcade claw machines, like in the movie Toy Story.

On my new low-sodium regime, I allow myself to buy these salted veggie-stix on one condition: I’m only allowed to eat them with my left hand!

I can finally, sometimes, extend my arm straight forward in a “cheers” motion. But I would never be able to hold a heavy pint of German beer in that position! I’m lifting a three pound weight for bicep curls and doing tricep work with a stretch band. Laughably light loads, but a start!

And now that I’m home, I’m noticing some more subtle stroke effects. My eyesight isn’t quite as good as before the stroke. My taste buds continue to be “off” especially around sugars and bread products (that might be the COVID I caught in hospital). And my hearing is slightly, but noticeably, worse…not so much in terms of volume, but when trying to distinguish “t”s, “d”s and the like. I keep reminding myself of how fortunate I am, and how much more damage the stroke might have done. I can use both arms for a hug. That’s worth a lot! And cooking can be the most fun home therapy of all (photo below from my youngest – Gabe’s – visit with us over Christmas, which was a joy). I’m glad that Sara didn’t mind that all my (few) presents for her were from the hospital gift shop!

Back to Writing

All fall in the hospital, it was hard to concentrate on my research project on Jerome with my fatigue, frequent interruptions, and (most welcome!) intensive rehab regime. It was Sara’s suggestion that I use some of my isolation time to get back into writing smaller things, like poetry. I came up with a small collection, which I’m submitting to a provincial competition this week. I can’t share it here (since it must be “unpublished work”), but please keep your fingers crossed for me.

I also turned around the copy-edited proofs for Someone Elses’ Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia, due out in Spring 2025.

My big question mark is typing. If I can figure out a less sensitive keyboard for practise, I’d like to try typing while including my curly-fingered left hand, just to keep those left muscle memories alive. That’s on the to-do list. I sometimes use dictation, but that isn’t the way I am most comfortable composing and the results end up different!

Back to Gratitude

I’m still SO humbled for the ways I was supported all through my time in hospital by so many of you. Thank you! I get rushes of gratitude when I see the cards or when someone contacts me to check on how I’m doing. The postal strike gave us a kind of unexpected blessing, in that here we are in January and I’m still getting cards that were hibernating during the strike. Special recent thanks to Nadine and Phil for the so-very thoughtful box of individually wrapped and labelled goodies, and to George Greenia, who made it an Advent discipline last fall to mail us a steady stream of fun little cards of support, only to have them stack up with Canada Post and arrive all at once this week! Those of you who know George know that in addition to his kind heart he has a cheeky sense of humour. I’ll leave you with one of his mailings as an example!

I was also touched when our friend Amanda texted Sara the week after I got home, to ask, “When is Matthew’s weekly stroke report coming out? Mom and I look forward to it every Sunday.” What a miracle, to write one’s experiences and hopes into the ether, and have them land in the hearts of others.