Nowhere Like This Place

Tales from a Nuclear Childhood

By: Marilyn Carr

Narrated by: Marilyn Carr

Marilyn Carr’s family arrived in Deep River, Ontario, in 1960 because her dad got a job at a mysterious place called “the plant”. The quirky, isolated residence for the employees of Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories was impeccably designed by a guy named John Bland. It’s a test-tube baby of a town that sprang, fully formed, from the bush north of Algonquin Park, on the shore of the Ottawa river. Everything has already been decided, including the colors of the houses, inside and out. What could possibly go wrong?

Nowhere Like This Place is a coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the weirdness of an enclave with more PhDs per capita than anywhere else on Earth. It’s steeped in thinly veiled sexism and the searing angst of an artsy child trapped in a terrarium full of white-bread nuclear scientists and their nuclear families. Everything happens, and nothing happens, and it all works out in the end. Maybe.

Marilyn Carr is a class of 2020 MFA graduate from the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is her fourth degree, but who’s counting? (She is.) She blogs about the absurdness of everyday life at marilyncarr.com and is currently working on the next installment of her memoirs, How I Invented the Internet.

©2020 Marilyn Carr (P)2020 Marilyn Carr

Grew up in ON in 60-70's? You will love this!

If you are 55-65, and especially if you are a woman, you will feel a kinship to this story. if you are from the Ottawa Valley and words like The Swisha are part of your vocabulary your memories will suck you into the story. If you say Wha a lot you will laugh. If you are from somewhere far away you will realize that Canada has some interesting places you would never hear about in a travel magazine. Ontario is vast. Deep River is secluded in the wilderness but it has a story. I enjoyed going back to remember glimpses of childhood and teenage times, eventhough I grew up in the big city of Toronto. We summered in the Ottawa Valley, so it helps me remember.