Don Gillmor, author of four children’s books and winner of four National Magazine Awards, uses the stock feature of much biography – the secrecy/disclosure dynamic – as the start for exploring his ancestral past. The revelation comes early in the book when he learns from his dying grandmother that she was born out of wedlock, and that her scandalous birth was the reason for her family’s move from the Shetland Isles to Manitoba.

What follows is a mixture of memoir, travelogue, history, and immigration story. Gillmor describes his impressions of his grandmother during his childhood and adolescence in Winnipeg. Years later he travels to Scotland, where, besides his search for family roots, he has a run-in with a Glasgow lout, talks with unpleasant English tourists, and visits some family landmarks. These details of contemporary mores and historical conflicts provide the context for his own past and present.

With his account of his forebears’ journey to Canada and the hardships of their settlement in Manitoba, he moves into territory already familiar from many published accounts of the Depression and the great Winnipeg flood of 1950. He concludes with his own westward move to Alberta and his youthful adventures working in the oil-patch.

Such a mix of genres and blending of the personal and particular with the broad scope of history can be highly effective. There are many potentially interesting alignments here, such as the contrast between the Glaswegian lager-lout and Gillmor’s younger self. But here, the disjointed parts of the story don’t blend together.

There is an interesting contrast between two architects, Glasgwegian Rennie Mackintosh, spurned a century ago but now reclaimed by his birthplace and acclaimed internationally, and Thomas Mawson, whose plans to make Calgary into a beautifully designed city came to nothing when the 1914 oil boom failed. Unfortunately, Mawson’s unrealized vision for Calgary could serve as a metaphor for Gillmor’s book. There are all the elements here for a brilliant memoir – rich material, interesting characters, and an imaginative plan. But the sum of the parts is disappointingly short of memorable.