Quotations for a Nation

Jami van Haaften is a professional librarian and author of An Index to
Selected Canadian Provincial Government Publications for Librarians,
Teachers and Booksellers.

Canada is the subject of this miniature collection of quotations,
intended as a contribution to the post-Meech Lake discussion of who we
are and what constitutes our collective Canadian identity.

Miller and Osborne have compiled a humorous and interesting book of
quotations, surprising in some instances because of the speaker or the
content and in other instances because of the date the comment was made.
Opinions are stated by politicians past and present, historians,
royalty, writers, singers, journalists, explorers, poets, and others of
both national and international fame. Most quotations are attributed to
an individual and dated. Each statement is preceded by a heading, some
of which are irrelevant to the quotation that follows. The two-page list
of sources does little to identify the context of an individual quote.
The personal name and keyword index is flawed because page references do
not match the pagination of the text.

This is another in the Little Red Book series, compiled to “gather
the essential wisdom of great men and women into single volumes.” More
attention to consistent identification of speakers, footnotes, and index
accuracy would improve this effort.