Alice Munro and small-town Ontario

Alice Munro is considered one of Canada's most important writers in the 20th century. She is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Award for fiction, and has penned numerous bestsellers. Born and raised in rural Ontario, the majority of her stories are set in and around the region she was born, Whingham. In one review, her writing is said "both to invite and sustain reading within a realist tradition." Many feel that her characters and plot are very true and real to what life in small town Ontario is like.
Her published books, rather than novels, are mostly collections of short stories that span different time frames and characters. One of her stories, A Wilderness Station, is based on her family's own history. It examines a Scottish pioneer family in the 1850s and the hardships they experienced. The main character, Annie, was sent to become a homesteader in Huron County, and the story tells of her relations with her husband and the community, an experience similar to that of genuine Scottish pioneers. The character of Annie also emphasizes the wilderness as being an important factor in daily life; being out in the wild evokes in her feelings of safety, despite the fact that it is there that her husband is killed. This story exemplifies themes common in Canadian literature, most notably, the British colonial tradition of Canadian homesteading that the story is based upon, as well as the mythic nature of the North.
Douglas Coupland, another Canadian writer, might argue that this is quintessential CanLit: it is government encouraged literature, set in the North, with beautiful descriptions of the scenery, or else about the immigrant experience. It does not go beyond the boundaries that CanLit has set out, and it does well because of it. Many authors such as Coupland feel as if to be considered CanLit, you cannot leave these traditional barriers; in essence, that despite being a Canadian author, you are not actually considered one.
Munro is also considered one of Canada's few cultural exports. Along with Margaret Atwood, she is one of the few authors that make an impact within the United States. Munro has gone on record saying that she will soon retire, worrisome to many because as one of the few Canadian voices south of the border, Canadian cultural influences will be greatly, and sadly, diminished.
Munro has not only made an impact with her books at home and in the United States, but her stories have also been made into movies, most recently Away From Her. Based on the story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, from her collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, which tells the tale of a married couple dealing with the decline of their relationship; the wife, Fiona, suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. Nature is a central theme again in this short story. Fiona and her husband, Grant, have moved into their cottage after retirement, in an attempt to help her remember their past; Grant tries to get her to remember one of the many hikes they would once embark upon. The movie adaptation did well critically and introduced Munro to a wider audience.