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younG AnGsT

Teen angst didn’t originate in Canada, but official young-adult angst did. In his novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), the Canadian author Douglas Coupland describes the detached, undefined, culturally destitute group of people born between 1960 and 1965. The book hit a nerve and went to the top of the bestseller lists. The titular term was later appropriated by a younger group, leaving the real Gen-Xers undefined yet again.

The AnGsT mAp of CAnAdAPlumbing the Depths

mT. misery, nl: William Epps Cormack, an explorer, named this mountain after spending an “unpleasant night” there during a snowstorm on October 16, 1822. Cormack made two expeditions to Newfoundland, during which he collected information about the Beothuk First Nation, which was wiped out by European settlers. In 1827 Cormack founded the Beothuk Institution, an organization that tried—and failed—to locate survivors. The last-known Beothuk, a woman named Shanawdithit who worked as a maid in St. John’s, died of tuberculosis in 1829. Cormack later took her skull to the Royal College of Physicians in London, England, where it stayed until it was destroyed during the Blitz in World War II.

deAThdeAler islAnd, on: Part of the Thousand Islands chain (see Number 1 Map, p. 24, and Map of Toppings, p. 32) that Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen named after British gunboats operating on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. The subgroup called the Lake Fleet Islands includes Axeman Island, Endymion Island, Dumfounder Island, and Bloodletter Island.

burden Cove, nb : There was once a small village on this cove that was reputed to have suffered a long string of set-backs, including a mayor who drowned in Mactaquac Lake. The village no longer exists, but its original schoolhouse is still on display at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

suiCide hill, mb: Named for the treacherous road that leads to its peak. The location—or one named for it—is immortalized in Miriam Toews’ 2004 novel A Complicated Kindness. Nomi, the 16-year-old protagonist, hangs out on Suicide Hill to escape the confines of a small, strict, no-fun Mennonite town in Manitoba.

desTruCTion bAy, yT: A settlement (population: about 50) on the western shore of Kluane Lake. One local story says it was named for a Klondike-era storm that smashed all the boats in the harbour and drowned a group of prospec-tors, but the actual namesake storm occurred during World War II and destroyed a set of military barracks.

off The mAp

Bay d’Espoir, NL, is a pretty inlet that didn’t make it onto the Angst Map because its name means “bay of hope.” It was originally called Baie d’Esprit, or “spirit bay,” and Eng-lish settlers later pronounced and mapped it as Bay Despair. Newfoundland changed it to Bay d’Espoir, but everyone con-tinues to say “Bay Despair.”

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