Adam Shoalts, Where the Falcon Flies ***

Where the Falcon Flies is a travel adventure in which Shoalts travels by canoe and foot from his home in southern Ontario to the Torngat Mountains in Arctic Quebec. As the title suggests, this is the migration route for peregrine falcons.

For the first half of the book, Shoalts canoes in developed and populated areas, across Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and up the Saint Lawrence River past Quebec City. He stashes his canoe and hikes north to Labrador City, buys another canoe and navigates the maze of lakes and rivers in northern Canada. He stops in the Torngat Mountains to see the falcon nests, then arrives at the Arctic Ocean.

There's plenty of adventure along the way, but Shoalts neglects to develop any unifying theme to make the journey feel meaningful rather than just one thing after another. He rarely mentions falcons despite their role in motivating the trip, and offers three measly pages about their Arctic home. He tosses out the kind of miscellaneous historical facts you'd find in a guidebook (about battles in the War of 1812, for example, or iron mining) but moves on quickly. His descriptions of the natural environment are competent but uninspiring.

Weather conditions on his trip were uniformly miserable. He always seemed to be paddling against the wind, getting soaked with rain, or portaging amidst clouds of mosquitoes. The one bright spot was the repeated kindness of strangers.