House, Home, and Community: Progress in Housing Canadians, 1945-1986

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada and Too Good to Be True: Toronto in the 1920s.

This book of monographs by 22 different expert hands was sponsored by
the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The principal editor tells
us in a prologue that the book “will stand as the principal record of
Canada’s post-war housing experience (1945–86) well into the next
century.”

While House, Home, and Community will indeed stand as an indispensable
reference volume for anyone interested in virtually any aspect of
housing in Canada over the historical period it covers, it is neither as
engaging nor as impressive as Miron’s Housing in Postwar Canada (1988)
or Michael Doucet’s and John Weaver’s Housing the North American
City (1991). In other words, it is not the kind of volume that will
interest more general readers and equip them, relatively painlessly,
with fresh insights and information on a complicated subject. In the
end, the book may prove most significant as a testament to golden age of
national housing policy in Canada, the likes of which we will probably
not see again for some considerable time.