Bestselling chronicler of village life Dan Needles (author of the Wingfield Farm stage plays) leads an insightful and laugh-out-loud tour through the quirks and customs of today’s Canadian small town

Modern literature has not been kind to village life. For almost two centuries, small towns have been portrayed as backward, insular places needing to be escaped. But anthropologists tell us that the human species has spent more than 100,00 years living in villages of 100 to 150 people. This is where the oldest part of our brain, the limbic system, grew and adapted to become a very sophisticated instrument for reading other people’s emotions and figuring out how we might cooperate to find food, shelter and protection. By comparison, the frontal cortex, which helps us do our taxes, drive a car and download cat videos, is a very recent aftermarket addition, like a sunroof. And it is the village where almost half the world’s population still chooses to live.

A Guide to Country Living takes a walk through the Canadian village of the twenty-first century, observing customs and traditions that endure despite the best efforts of Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. The author looks at the buildings and organizations left over from the old rural community, why they were built in the first place and how they have adapted to the modern day. The post office, the general store, the church, the school and the service club all remain standing, but they operate quite differently than they did for our ancestors. Drawing from his experience working in rural communities across Canada and in other countries, Dan reveals how a national conversation may be driven by urban voices but the national character is often very much a product of its small towns and back roads.

DAN NEEDLES is the creator of the popular Wingfield Farm plays, full-length stage comedies that have filled theatres across Canada and the United States for more than 3,000 performances since 1984. Wingfield’s Inferno, the sixth in the series of plays starring Rod Beattie, opens at the Stratford Festival in 2005. A 21-part CBC television series, based on the first four plays, aired in 2001. In 2003, With Axe & Flask, a history of fictional Persephone Township, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour. A regular columnist for Harrowsmith-Country Life and Country Guide, Dan Needles lives with his wife, Heath, and their four children on a small farm near Collingwood, Ontario.

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