Canada 150 – vestige.org

The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy

March 19, 2017August 1 Comment

The Tin Flute has been on my list for years, and I’ve collected various editions in that time, until now all of them sitting unread on shelves or in boxes, the victims of good intentions and bad moods. I had meant, well and truly meant, to read the book when I found myself laid off in 2011 and spent fifteen months unemployed, but the copy I had at the time was so fragile I didn’t believe it would survive the attempt. The copy I did manage to read, a New Canadian Library edition, fittingly perhaps, from 1967, was a gift from a former professor at the University of Waterloo. I was just as afraid for it, but it turned out to be hardier than it looked. Hugo McPherson’s introduction was not promising, and he goes out of his way to warn readers about the flaws in Hannah Josephson’s translation, but… Continue Reading →

As For Me and My House, by Sinclair Ross

February 15, 2017August 1 Comment

As For Me and My House is the only book on my Canada 150 list that I hadn’t heard of prior to making the list. Sinclair Ross, as a name, was familiar to me, but beyond the “Canadian author” tag, I had nothing to attach to it. Having now read the book, it’s unclear to me how I escaped high school without having read it. It is exactly the sort of archetypal repressive prairie novel you’d expect to see assigned in Canadian schools—I would say it’s the very model for such books, if Martha Ostenso’s excellent Wild Geese didn’t predate it by a good sixteen years. The story of the country parson and his wife being slowly ground down by the weight of the town’s hypocritical moral gaze is so common in Canadian letters it’s become one of handful of stereotypical plots that are used as shorthand for old-fashioned, unadventurous… Continue Reading →

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

January 6, 2017August Leave a Comment

That I have avoided reading this book until now, given its influence on Canadian culture is kind of remarkable. I had read Emily of New Moon for a class on early Canadian literature, but Anne herself had eluded me. Perhaps it was because of the television series. I’ve only seen a few episodes, and those few don’t exactly hold pride of place in my memory, but the show has always seemed emblematic to me of the kind of milquetoast media culture that Canada fostered for most of my youth. Anne is a Good Girl™ and today her story reads like little more than nostalgia for a kind, gentle, primly white and Calvinist Canada that never existed, and is longed for by people whose grandparents likely wouldn’t have been old enough to see it, even if it had. Most of the Canadian media I grew up with, from Air Farce and… Continue Reading →

Canada 150 Reading Project: The Final List

November 8, 2016August 1 Comment

As detailed in this post from September, in 2017 I will be reading twelve classic works of Canadian literature that I have somehow avoided reading up until now, one for every month for the year. After much consideration, and input from friends and other readers, I’ve come up with a final list. I’m going to try to read them in the order they were published, but a couple of them are still on order from my local indie bookseller, and one of those is apparently out of print until February, so that may not wind up happening. It turns out this list was pretty hard to make! I’ve read a lot of Canadian books over the years, and I’ve read the major works of most of my favourite Canadian writers. Here’s the final list, in the order I plan to read them: Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maude Montgomery… Continue Reading →

My 2017 Reading Project: Recommend Some Books

September 10, 2016August 2 Comments

Most years I engage in what I call a “reading project,” which is basically just a way to give my reading some structure. If I can’t decide what I want to read next, the project is there to point me in the right direction. Two years ago I read with gender parity in mind. Last year I wanted to see if my habits had changed after successfully adding more women writers to my reading list. This year I’m reading classics of the cyberpunk subgenre, along with whatever urban planning books I can get my hands on, especially if they are related to smart city concepts like digital infrastructure. Next year is Canada’s 150th year as a nation, so I want to do something special. I spent January 2013 through March 2016 in northern Saskatchewan helping build a high voltage power line, so this blog was neglected. Since that project ended… Continue Reading →