“As I plod north in the wind, I seem to be making no headway. It’s as if I’m walking on a treadmill: my body is moving but I’m going nowhere….. One minute I seem to be immobile; the next I realise that in immobility was an illusion, that I was getting somewhere, slowly, all the time. As I’ve said, I’ve never been a patient person, but walking is trying to teach me that virtue, slowly. Sometimes I wish it would hurry up.”
If you do choose to walk a bypass, what can you expect Ken?
Ken Wilson’s singular experience of walking alongside the decidedly pedestrian-unfriendly Regina Bypass, all while situating the highway within the ongoing history of settler colonialism in southern Saskatchewan, Canada.
Through a series of ambitious and unconventional walks, he sets out to understand the arrival and significance of the new (and politically contentious) highway encircling Saskatchewan’s capital as well as the Global Transportation Hub, a sprawling warehouse park the Bypass was intended to serve. Ken offers a new perspective on these heavily travelled yet untrodden spaces in a region dominated by industrial agriculture and high-speed transportation. Reflecting on the profound transformations to the land since the arrival of settlers in the 1880s, he wonders whether it’s possible to form a connection with the land through walking—even on the gravelly edge of the freeway.
Walking Writers Salons are hour-long events in which you will get to meet a Walking Writer and learn from them how they weave writing and walking, and how they interpret their surroundings. Each Salon will include a discussion with the author, inviting questions from the audience, and may include a multiple choice quiz or other amusing challenge, in which a winner will receive a prize. We would like to thank University of Regina Press for offering two e-book editions of Walking the Bypass as giveaways.
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Reflections from the lone traveller for whom a highway was never the intended destination Walking the Bypass recounts Ken Wilson’s singular experience of walking alongside the decidedly pedestrian-unfriendly Regina Bypass, all while situating the highway within the ongoing history of settler colonialism in southern Saskatchewan. Through a series of ambitious and unconventional walks, Wilson sets out to
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