We’ll save the cow money and go, my mother said. We weren’t farmers, but we kept two cows whose milk was worth cash. For years this money was faithfully stowed in an account marked “E,” along with the baby bonus cheques. (Our mother ignored this Canadian endowment because we were anti-confederate.) Then, one Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1963, my brothers and I were summoned to a dining-room table cluttered with pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Crown jewels and the masterpieces of the Louvre. There were postcards of great cathedrals, Venetian gondolas and paths that meandered along the Rhine and the Arno. There was a globe, and foreign dictionaries and a weighty book of “Ancient and Modern Marvels.” The time had come for our marathon trek through Europe. I was ten, and hated it already.

There was no ambiguity in my mother’s vision. A young widow and three kids—we would be fearless voya