Two Halifax/Dartmouth based authors writing about Crohn’s Disease, depression, trips to the medical clinic, and a trip across Canada.

Gutsy: living my best life with Crohn’s Disease & ulcerative colitis by Heather Fegan (Nimbus Publishing)

Gutsy was a double-nominee at this year’s Nova Scotia Book Awards.

Until reading this book, I had no idea how debilitating Crohn’s Disease could be. Heather has been in and out of hospitals since the age of fourteen. She’s had medical appointments and infusions up the yin yan ever since, which, at this point, is about 26 years later. If you, or anyone you know, has digestion issues, read this book. If you don’t have it, or don’t know anyone who does, read this book. It’s a good reminder to be kind, because you never know what someone else is going through.

This is primarily an account of Heather’s experience with Crohn’s and how she has navigated it while living life to the fullest. It also includes good information about the disease itself, including research into causes and treatments, treatment options and insurance coverage, diet and nutrition, and mental health support. Because Crohn’s is invisible, it can be isolating. Happily for Heather, she has the support of her parents, siblings, and life partner as she navigates this ever-changing condition.

“In 2023, approximately 322,600 Canadians–an estimated 1 in 121–are living with IBD [Inflammatory Bowel Disease]. That estimate includes nearly 12,000 people in Nova Scotia.”

“Nova Scotia has the highest prevalence rate per one hundred thousand people of IBD in the country and, given that Canada has one of the highest rates of reported IBD in the world, this means Nova Scotia, where I’m from, has among the highest prevalence of Crohn’s and colitis anywhere.”

Hell of A Ride by Martin Bauman (Pottersfield Press)

I have so much admiration for writers who can make their travel memoir into so much more than travel. I often go into them wondering what I’m going to get. I want to know where they went, but I also want to know why, and who they met, and some cool information about the places, and a reflection of what it all means.

Martin Bauman does all this in spades. And it’s clear he’s a writer – not just a traveler with a story to tell. Hell of a Ride was a page-turner for me.

(It was also the winner of the 2023 [6th annual] Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction.)

Martin Bauman has struggled with depression most of his life, as has his father. His cousin died by suicide when Martin was only thirteen. At the age of twenty-three, Martin decided he wanted to do something to help; he rode his bike across Canada with the hope of raising money and awareness for mental illness, as well as to encourage more conversation, especially for men. Even as he was doing it, he had doubts about his abilities as a cyclist as well as an advocate for the cause.

“I was, in most respects of cycling, wildly unprepared. I had trained on an exercise bike my parents stashed in the basement and seldom used. The seat post wobbled like a toy boat on a wave. The resistance was shot, too. I might as well have pedalled on the flattest roads on the calmest day on the lowest gear. The route across the country called for hundred-kilometre days and more. The most I’d trained was forty. And that was in southern Ontario, where the nearest “mountain” was a former landfill.”

Bauman writes about a few of his cross-Canada heroes, like Terry Fox, Rick Hansen, and Clara Hughes. He also mentions lesser know cross-country adventurists, like Beryl Stott (the first woman to run across Canada – 1983) and John Gillis (on a “bet and a dare,” the first to walk across the country – 1906).

Bauman writes about the countryside, the places he stops to sleep, the people he meets along the way. He writes about his past, his family, his struggle with depression, his abuse, loneliness, acceptance and growth. He writes about the abundance of lakes and wildlife. He writes about the generosity of strangers and the power of human connection.

“From the start of my plan to ride across Canada, I had dreaded Ontario. It was too long, too familiar, too chocked and clogged with cars and bugs and people… The distance felt like a death sentence, the punishment meted out in mosquito bites and saddles sores. It was the deer flies that got me. They returned for blood in the last lengths of Manitoba, as if my flesh was a highway toll I had neglected to pay.”

“I have, at times, imagined my father and me as two islands. One bigger and older and seasoned; one smaller one made in its image. We circled around our words as if to speak them truly was too difficult, liable to let slip emotions that couldn’t be controlled. Ironic for a linguist who worked in words and a son who wrote them by the thousand.”

“There was wildlife everywhere. Unseen, but there. Black bears and moose and Canada lynx. I imagined them all as I rode through the woods, watching this strange and neon-sashed invader. How different it was, I thought, to be on a bicycle instead of in a car. I could hear the branches bristle, the snap of a twig underfoot. Even the smallest things felt wilder, it seemed: a blade of grass, a patch of moss more real, more alive.”

“It was quiet away from the TCH [Trans Canada Highway]; I could feel my life expectancy rising. No more brushes with RAV4s. No close encounters with eighteen-wheelers. Just the hush of tall grass and the murmur of leaves. The salt tang of sweat on the tongue. The clear whistle of a white-throated sparrow.”

Bookish coincidence: Outside of Springhill Nova Scotia, Bauman stays with Allison Watson, whose book I read and reviewed back in 2020 (Transplanted ),and a veteran of a cross-Canada bike trip herself.