One Golden Summer

After Nan’s hip surgery, Alice arranges for the two to spend the summer in “a blink-and-you-miss-it town on the north end of Kamaniskeg Lake” (22). Barry’s Bay symbolizes youth, freedom, and transformation in the novel. As Nan tells Alice multiple times throughout the novel, “Good things happen at the lake” (181), a mantra that underscores The Transformative Power of Place.

For Nan, Alice, and Charlie, Barry’s Bay is a repository of memories. Nan used to spend every summer there with her late husband and their friends. Alice and her siblings also spent a season there when Alice was 17—the summer when Alice discovered her love for photography. For Charlie, returning to Barry’s Bay is a way to remember his late father and mother.

Barry’s Bay also symbolizes reclaiming youthful passion. While in Barry’s Bay, Alice rediscovers her verve for life, reconnects with the artistic love of photography that she has as a teenager, and falls in love through childish adventures that rely on having carefree fun.

In Barry’s Bay, Alice is physically separated from reminders of her and Trevor’s former life in Toronto. She’s also distanced from her vocational challenges and her familial demands. The water, cliffs, trees, and air in Barry’s Bay offer her refreshment and