The Book of Love Letters: Canadian Kinship, Friendship, and Romance

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Paul and Audrey Grescoe compiled this unusual collection largely by
exploring public archives across Canada and by appealing to Canadians on
television to send them letters from family archives. Some intriguing
personalities such as a prima ballerina and a bank robber were
approached directly. The letters range from 1786 to the present era.
After a short introduction, which warns readers that some letters can be
shocking, the letters are grouped under five headings: New Romance,
Friendship, Mature Love, Family Love, and Love and War. There is a
bibliography, an index, and many black-and-white photographs.

The Grescoes are thorough. Starting from the conviction that such
correspondence might help to define the collective national character as
well as being highly entertaining, they studied letters written over the
past two centuries and concluded cheerfully that Canadians “can be
impassioned, theatrical, and sometimes downright sexy.” The Book of
Love Letters is the third and final volume of a trilogy that began with
The Book of Letters: 150 Years of Private Canadian Correspondence and
The Book of War Letters: 100 Years of Private Canadian Correspondence.
While indicating that this is their last book on the subject, the
Grescoes urge Canadians to save copies of their most interesting letters
and to share them with one another and even with the wider world. They
note that such correspondence has helped historians to create
“human-scale portraits of the nation’s past.” Sound advice.

In their three-year quest for love letters, the Grescoes “came up
dry” with only two groups: hockey players and gay couples.

Audrey Grescoe is a freelance journalist and magazine editor. Paul
Grescoe has contributed to many Canadian magazines, and has written
detective novels and biographies of business tycoons. The Book of Love
Letters makes good bedside reading, and reveals new facets of the
Canadian character.