Degrees of Separation: A Decade North of 60

“The tension between free-spirited off-grid living and prosaic adult responsibility runs through Alison McCreesh’s tender and loving ode to the people and landscapes of the Far North.” –Joe Sacco, Paying the Land

At age 21, Alison hitchhiked to the Yukon and spent the summer living in a tent. 10 years later, in the deep of winter and seven months pregnant, she returns. Degrees of Separation is about what happened in between.

Over the course of a decade, artist Alison McCreesh lived, worked, and travelled north of the 60th parallel. Through a combination of autobiographical stories, drawings and sketches, Degrees of Separation offers an intimate and understated glimpse of the North as Alison experienced it.

From frigid days spent killing time while stranded in the High Arctic, to the challenges of raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, it is one young woman’s personal experience of both passing through and of setting down roots.

Tinged with McCreesh’s characteristic blend of humour and humanity, Degrees of Separation is about the north and its vastness and its diversity. While the backdrop may seem foreign to many, this collection is also a universal exploration of those transformative years from young-adulthood to motherhood. It’s a graphic novel navigating themes of connection and disconnect, between the north and the south, but also between different norths and between our different selves.