Do you want sprinkles on that?
The Atlas of Canada: Meat Maps and other Strange Cartographies
Compiled by Melissa Edwards
Arsenel Pulp Press, 2006 $24.95
The Tomahawk restaurant never had anything like this. If you are a true born and raised Vancouverite, and not too young an example of one, you’d have to remember childhood visits to the North Vancouver landmark, spent pouring over a “Maps of Canada� paper placemat while waiting out the arrival of your Big Chief Burger platter.
Those maps with their prejudicial proportioned black bears, moose, ski doo drivers, beavers and uniformed Mounties were simply kid stuff compared to this
Atlas of Canadian Place Names as compiled by
Geist, the magazine of Canadian ideas and culture
The atlas is a fascinating collection of single item themed maps which have appeared in the magazine since 1995, and typical of our own nationally distinctive obsession for defining ourselves, they include a wide range of uniquely Canadian subject matter.
There are maps devoted to places named after emotional angst, conflict, crime, haircuts, loudmouths and hockey. Also gaydom, Joe jobs, Canuck stereotypes, kinky erotica and the CBC – all real facets of life north of the 49th parallel. But beyond that, there are also maps which include only names related to kitchen and grocery bag items, such as the Meat Map (Squab Peak, Duck Mountain, Chicken Liver Channel); Kitchen Implements (Grand Forks, Lac Whisk, Nutcracker Bay, Pickle Fork Lake); Toppings (Ketchup Lake, Whipped Cream Peak, Marmalade Creek); and as would be expected in our Tim Horton’s dominated culture, a Donut map (Yum Yum Point, Dunkin, Jelly Glaze Lake, Baker’s Dozen Islands), etc.
It's an education. Did you know, for example, that our country contained such high points as Heartburn Spit, North West Territories; Pork ‘n Beans Lake, Manitoba; Bare Butt Bay, Ontario; and Cranberry Coulee, Saskatchewan? I didn’t either until I read this book. Even so, I still don’t fancy going there. Some times you just have to accept things on trust.
The only entry that seems relatively normal, as maps go, is the Beer map. Maybe because so many beers are named after towns, architectural monuments and landscape dominating geographical features in the first place. Hence, certain spots on the map such as Bowen Island, Granville Island, Kokanee Glacier, and Okanagan Centre, just seem preordained to be there.
But memorize the rest of the book's content and at your next barbecue party it should make you truly obnoxious at Trivial Pursuit games. In fact, come to think of it. There's even a map of board games.
