Congratulations to Marlis Butcher for having visited every National Park in Canada! That is an amazing accomplishment and I very much enjoyed reading about it.

I really liked how the book is organized by region, with an entry for every National Park. It makes it easy to reference if you just want to read about a specific park or region, though it does make some sections a little bit tedious. I honestly had no idea how many national parks Canada has in the north of the country. It makes sense because many of the parks are dedicated to the preservation of wildlife and wildlife habitat. Many of the parks are difficult to access and in some cases, Marlis is one of a very limited number of visitors. A lot of the parks aren’t set up for tourism and Marlis brings a keen sense of adventure to every park she visits, many of which are not for the faint of heart!

I loved reading about these remote parks because each one was very much its own unique expedition for Marlis, with lots to write about it terms of gear, itinerary, terrain, wildlife, and activities. The many smaller parks of the provinces do start to blend together after a while though. Because of size and accessibility, her trips to many of these parks were shorter, leaving less of interest to write about, so I did find some of these sections a bit slow, but still enjoyed the opportunity to learn about every park.

Marlis is a good writer, she’s not a great writer, but I don’t expect her to be. The idea of this memoir is to share about her unique experience in our park system, so I never expected this to be a literary masterpiece and she does a good job. I would definitely recommend this to nature lovers and really enjoyed the experience of visiting every park in Canada through Marlis’ eyes!