I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Anderson about his books The Good Walk and Someone Else’s Saint, walking on the prairies, and pilgrimage. It was my good fortune that Matthew was back in Saskatchewan to mark the 10th anniversary of the walk from Wood Mountain to the Cypress Hills that forms a significant section of his book The Good Walk. Matthew is still recovering from a stroke and his ability to walk distances is still a work in progress; we had an interesting conversation about that. While we weren’t able to go on a walk together, his books give you an idea of what he’d be like as a walking companion.

Matthew Anderson holds a Gatto Chair of Christian Studies at St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki, (Canada) and is an affiliate professor at Concordia, Montreal. In addition to many academic articles and book chapters, Matthew has published six books: Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia (Pottersfield, 2025), The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails (University of Regina Press, 2024; winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award), Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul (McGill-Queens University Press, 2023); Our Home and Treaty Land: Revised and Expanded Edition (with Dr. Ray Aldred, Friesen Press, 2024); and Pairings: The Bible and Booze (Novalis, 2021), in French as Apocalypse et gin tonic (2022). Matthew has walked many pilgrimage routes internationally and has created others with Indigenous guidance and help on Treaty lands in Canada. Matthew produces the pilgrimage podcast Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase, and blogs at Something Grand and Unsettled Words.