Synopses & Reviews
Canada, Pierre Berton tells us, is a spectacular example of how "the marriage between history and geography has created a nation like no other." In this, his forty-sixth book, he examines the essence of his country by looking at its past through the stories of twenty-five historical characters, and its geography through the lenses of more than thirty Canadian photographers.
Here is the nation in all its infinite variety, from the Yukon border to the far coast of Newfoundland, as Pierre Berton, the restless journalist, has experienced it. His selection of twenty-five men and women "who seem to me to have been shaped and influenced by the country's geography or have themselves helped to shape it," is personal and arbitrary. They range from Belinda Mulroney, the "Countess from Grand Forks," to Bob Edwards of the Calgary Eye-Opener, from Tookolito, "an Inuk in crinolines," to Berton's own Loyalist ancestors.
The extraordinary diversity of the Canadian landscape, as pictured in these ages, is matched by the tales of those who have helped create the nation. Some of the dramatis personae are schoolbook acquaintances; others may be recognizable only by name; a good many will be unknown to those who pick up this book. Their lives and careers were "changed and fashioned by the land itself; in that process each found his or her place in history."
The very structure of the land, Berton points out, "has balkanized us, making us a regional people, hived off in geographical enclaves" and that has been true since aboriginal times. One of the fascinating figures in this book is the Nootka chieftain Maquinna. He and his followers were as different from the shy
Beothuks of Newfoundland as the Scots were from the Turks. This inherent regionalism is a dilemma that has been recognized ever since statesmen and surveyors tried to hold the country together with bands of steel.
"The characters in this book," Berton writes, "are neither heroes nor heroines,
though some may have accomplished heroic feats. They are individuals who do not fit any pattern. Geography made them what they were and because of what they were, each made history. That is what this book is about."