Book Review: "Great Rest Stops Of Canada"

The author John Steinbeck said in 1950 while traveling through the "Great White North," "I have never seen anything so wondrous as the ESSO station in Hamilton, Ontario, Route 61." He was of course referring to the famous men's room, known far and wide to the weary traveler. Hemingway was known to frequent it and more recently Garrison Keillor who usually only gives credit to things "Minnesotan." "I must admit it compares favorably to anything I've experienced in Minneapolis." Keillor understated. "Never have I seen a mini-mart with such a wide selection of poly-styrene mugs and hyacinth car-fresheners."

It is with this in mind that the noted travelogue author J. Arthur Tiggles brings us his latest tome, "Great Rest Stops Of Canada" (Batnum Press, 550 pgs. with photos and forward by Ernest Borgnine). Starting as a travel columnist with the "Peoria Weekly Farm Report" in 1961, Tiggles has traveled extensively throughout the world and his writing is quite salient and knowledgeable while still retaining a pithy obsequiousness. His travels led him to pen the 1979 best seller "Where To Dine In Trenton" and in 1985 the even more successful "Delaware: Gateway To Orgasm," both books available from "Nunzio's House Of Publishing, LTD." "Great Rest Stops Of Canada" marks his first literary work about traveling in a country other than the United States. "I've wanted to write about other places in the world, but while visiting those places always had dysentery and couldn't concentrate." he once remarked to his close friend, the late author Truman Capote.

Tiggles brings us to all the great Canadian Rest Stops and does so in a very picturesque way. While traveling through Toronto, home of baseball's dreaded "Blue Jays" and the "Toronto Elk Steak," he stops off at the famous "Joe's Gas And Leave, Eh?" known for its wide variety of Good Humor Ice Cream and powerful 99 octane unleaded. There he meets "Ike", the old toothless codger who opened the place 60 years ago in 1947 and is still going strong at the age of 102. "Why it's called Joe's has always been a mystery, yet the establishment retains a unique, unexplainable charm.", says Tiggles, "My life has somehow been enriched by having urinated here, seeing Ike interact with customers in a curt yet strangely unfriendly manner." In Winnipeg Tiggles stops for an oil change at the world renowned "Great Moose Lube." "There has never been oil so lucid nor a bathroom so glaringly white as this." the author writes.

"Great Rest Stops Of Canada" features over five thousand reviews and is available in bookstores now. It is well worth your time, unless of course you have to go bowling.