Where Is Here? is the result of a great idea: using the history of Canadian maps and map-making as a way of looking at some of the seminal events in the country’s history and, in a broader sense, using this snap-shot approach to illuminate some of the larger themes of Canadian life since well before there was a country called Canada.

Journalist Alan Morantz convincingly sustains his central theme, that maps, in attempting to answer the question “where are we?” for Canadians, have actually answered the more important question of “who are we?” Readers may not hold maps, the lore of their creation and their minutiae in the same esteem as Morantz, but it’s hard to resist his enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject.

He is at his best when when describing the idosyncracies of the cartographic world. Morantz examines everything from such esoteric topics as the highly advanced map-making practices of the Inuit, the conniving cartography of 19th-century Yukon mining companies who, eager to promote way-stations in B.C., conveniently omitted the competing city of Seattle, and the self-important ruminations of such philosophers as Jean Baudrillard: “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it is the map that precedes the territory.”

Any description of the history of Canadian map-making cannot ignore the advances in the technology needed to make these maps. Morantz is equally thorough and engaging here, examining advances in the technology of underwater mapping and the development of talking maps for the blind, as well as the increasing detail and precision that surveyors have given to glove-compartment road maps. Through it all, the reader is introduced to many of Canada’s map-making pioneers and innovators, adding a human side to an already entertaining story.