Wingham is a small town located in North Huron, Ontario. It sits at the intersection of County Roads 86 and 4. County Road 86 connects to Kitchener-Waterloo to the east while County Road 4, also called Josephine Street, runs through Wingham, connecting to London, Ontario to the south. Its population is only 2,934 in 2016 census.

When I googled it in the internet, someone asked in Tripadvisor if Wingham is worthy visiting or a dead town. Only one or two replies, one says nothing really worthwhile to visit; the other says it’s not a dead town as he’s living here, but yes, nothing worth visiting except Tim Hortons J. So It’s not surprised that you never heard of this place even though you’ve been living in Ontario for a decade or longer.

But Wingham is marked on the world’s literary map for Alice Munro was born and raised here. She once told the New York Times that Wingham, to her, was “the most interesting place in the world,” and her stories are about her hometown, the Huron County and the people in it.

When she married Gerald Fremlin, her second husband, in 1976 and the couple settled on a farm outside of Clinton, which is only half an hour’s drive to Wingham. Obviously she loved the country life in western Ontario.

It was against this background that I became gripped with a curious urge to go to the land of Alice Munro and take a close look at Wingham and Clinton.