I have always wanted to open a review with a quote from the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; now I finally have my chance. Ahem: spring is the season “whan longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…/for to seeken straunge strondes / To ferne halwes, couthe in sundry londes.” Assuming that armchair travellers can be counted here, the late-March release date of Solo: Writers on Pilgrimage seems well timed to take advantage of our own vernal longings for the open road.

The book’s form is loosely reminiscent of Chaucer’s tales. Govier has put together 15 short travel pieces by well-known Canadian and international writers, depicting the authors’ various secular pilgrimages and offering reflections on the nature of such journeys.

As in Chaucer, the travellers – and the stories they tell us – are a mixed bunch. There are light, casual fabliaux like filmmaker Gail Singer’s “Foolish Things,” a short, witty riff on her journey to Hollywood to make Wisecracks, a documentary on female comedians. Roddy Doyle uses a similar tone in “World Cup 1989,” one soccer fan’s mini-odyssey. (Doyle’s piece is well written and has obvious thematic relevance to the subject at hand, but it may be of interest primarily to devotees of the soccer faith. As a heathen in this regard, I felt excluded by the long litanies of penalty kicks and free throws.)

Other entries are deadly serious moral tales worthy of Chaucer’s noble Knight. Nuruddin Farah’s powerful “Oases of Peace” tells of the writer’s voyage to his native Somalia in a bid to convince the ruling warlords to move the country toward peace and stability. And Joy Kogawa’s “House of Obasan” is a kind of non-fiction coda to her novel, relating the story of her chance return to the house from which she and her family were evicted prior to their internment during the Second World War.

Indeed, several of the pieces work as non-fiction footnotes to previous fictional works. In “To Beechy Island,” Margaret Atwood rehashes her short story “The Age of Lead” in her description of a cruise through Arctic waters and her on-board lectures on the quixotic nature of early Arctic exploration. It’s a witty, erudite piece, although one suspects that Atwood could knock off this kind of thing on her lunch break.

My main cavil with this enjoyable collection stems from the fact that a majority of these journeys have been undertaken for practical reasons. Atwood is giving talks – for a fee – to fellow travellers; Singer is making a movie; Farah is trying to encourage political change in his home country.

I’m glad these pieces were included – Farah’s in particular is deeply compelling. And yet, at least in my understanding, the true pilgrimage at its heart casts off all such concerns, no matter how worthy. Chaucer’s Knight doesn’t do any crusading along the road to Canterbury; his Clerk is not researching a biography on Beckett’s life and death. By taking the word pilgrimage so broadly, Govier allows a broad range of excellent material into the collection, but she leaves us with the sense that virtually any journey might be called a pilgrimage.

Ironically, Govier’s own excellent contribution to the collection reminds us that this is not the case. The author, a student of Japanese sword arts, relates her trip to Japan to visit various sites associated with Miyamoto Musashi, the great 17th-century sword fighter. There is nothing practical about Govier’s voyage or her obsession with Musashi. Indeed, the author herself acknowledges that it borders on the absurd – especially since Musashi was not a saint, but a master murderer. It’s this impracticality, this gentle madness, Govier’s piece strongly implies, that sets the true pilgrim apart from fellow travellers.