At Home in Canada

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

To be at home in Canada you don’t necessarily have to live in a house.
Home can be an apartment, a strip of beach, a carriage barn, a converted
gas station, a cottage in Georgian Bay, a cattle ranch in Alberta. Or it
can be Rideau Hall. The message of this book seems to be that a home is
wherever people choose to put their energy.

Text and photography work as partners in presenting this made-in-Canada
definition of home. Both are professional and quite smooth. Neither are
outstanding. The work presents 23 homes; for each there’s a short
essay on the physical surroundings and lifestyle and from six to 12
color photos. This is not a book on architecture or interior decorating.
The majority of the photos are of activities (bicycling, canoeing,
fishing, dancing, hair brushing, painting) or of objects (food,
collectibles, paintings, carriages, bathtubs); living spaces are
included but have only a supporting role. Are the authors saying that it
is activity and objects that make a home, more so than a structure?

A few homes of well-known Canadians (Mordecai Richler, Alex Colville,
Trisha Romance) are among those selected. There’s a coast-to-coast
sweep, with homes included from each major geographical region of the
country. In an effort not to exclude anyone’s definition of home (or
of Canada), the selection features a monastery, a home on a First
Nations reserve, a Victorian home, a modern home, country homes, and
city homes. Ethnic and religious diversity have not been overlooked.
Artists receive generous representation.

It is always interesting to peek into someone else’s home, to see
what color they painted the banister or what sort of curtains they put
in the spare bedroom. It’s fun to find similarities to your own
experience, and it is entertaining to consider homes very different from
your own. On a very basic level, this tapestry of homes is a good start
on a definition of Canada. It is a pleasant coffee-table book, and a
good basis for many intense discussions on the nature of a home.