Reviews

The Lafontaine Baldwin Lectures Volume One: The Intersection of History and Ideas

Canada is a country, Quebec pundit Alain Dubuc tells us, of losers and underdogs, of dominated peoples. It is doubtful that John Ralston Saul, noted Canadian historian and philosopher, had such a conception in mind ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: History

Whose Puck Is It, Anyway?

By Ed Arnold

If there’s one thing that sets Canadian hands wringing, one thing about which we famously diplomatic Canadians are not allowed to remain neutral, it’s the state of hockey. In a reaction against the often toxic ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Sports, Health & Self-help

Passages: Welcome Home to Canada

By Rudyard Griffiths, ed.

What binds Canada together as a country in the 21st century? In our post-modern age, shaping characteristics such as history, tradition, and the land seem to count for little. The principle trait that unites the ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

From the Japanese: A Western Journalist in the Empire of the Resigned

By Catherine Bergman

During the 1990s, journalist Caroline Bergman and her diplomat husband spent five years living in Japan. She wandered widely through what she terms “the Empire of the resigned,” and her first book, From the Japanese, ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: History

Letters to Harvelyn: From Japanese Pow Camps: A Father’s Letters to His Young Daughter During World War Ii

By Harvelyn Baird McInnis, ed.

The Canadian army suffered its first defeat of the Second World War at Hong Kong in December 1941, an event that was overshadowed by the debacle at Dieppe nine months later. The Nazis killed more ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Peacekeeper’s Teahouse

By Larry Gaudet

Larry Gaudet’s second novel is part cultural-political commentary, part academic love story. The Peacekeeper’s Teahouse is told by Elliot MacDonald, a retired UN constitutional negotiator. After years of service as a frontline spin-doctor, sanitizing coups ... Read More »

January 12, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Case of Lena S.

By David Bergen

Long before The Catcher in the Rye had been discovered by the mainstream, I got caught passing J.D. Salinger’s classic of adolescent angst to a friend in Grade 10 math class. Our twentysomething teacher confiscated ... Read More »

January 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Book of Ifs and Buts

By Rabindranath Maharaj

Rabindranath Maharaj has already published three well-received books of fiction, including The Interloper, a story collection nominated for the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book. But while this collection of eight stories and a novella ... Read More »

January 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Tiger Dreams

By Almeda Glenn Miller

Readers should be forgiven if, weeks after finishing Tiger Dreams, they mistakenly remember it as a film rather than a novel. First-time novelist Almeda Glenn Miller favours the sweep of the big screen, moving from ... Read More »

January 9, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

★ All the Men Are Sleeping

By D.R. MacDonald

D.R. MacDonald is a writer of enormous talent, skill, and, it seems, patience. Like Alistair MacLeod, he hails from Cape Breton, the setting of most of his stories. Also like MacLeod, who at 66 has ... Read More »