I’ve never thought of myself as much as a travel writer. As my first book may indicate, when it comes to nonfiction, I considered myself more of a memoirist. I looked inward for inspiration. But as I got older and found mining myself for writing material less  interesting, I became drawn to the people and places around me—often directly around me—as sources of great interest. I wrote a poem about Joseph Gould, who founded my hometown of Uxbridge, Ontario, and…