This trip inspired him to write the short story “Big Two-Hearted River,” in which the protagonist escapes the horrors of the war he participates in by traveling to the province. It was then that a family friend offered him a job in Toronto, so he started as a freelance editor and foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star Weekly. After a few months, he returned to Michigan and later moved to Chicago, Illinois. He settled with friends and, at the same time, wrote articles for the Toronto Star. He also worked as editor of the monthly “Co-operative Commonwealth” magazine, where he met novelist Sherwood Anderson (“Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life”).
