The Penguin History of Canada

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Only a senior scholar with a prolific track record could have written
this book. It begins with a fascinating prehistory of early humanity in
Africa and the migration across Eurasia and Beringia (the land that
connects Siberia to Alaska). Unlike many earlier works, it gives full
credit to the First Nations for their unwitting role in assisting the
Europeanization of Canada, and it carries the story to 9/11 and its
aftermath. Bothwell’s knowledge of contemporary Europe and the United
States, both of which affected developments in Canada, is superb. For
anyone seeking a one-volume history of Canada, this is undoubtedly the
one to buy.

The book has other merits. It describes the Scottish role in Canadian
development and does not dismiss the mother country as “England.”
Cultural (especially religious) history receives considerable attention,
alongside economic, military, and political. It includes the most
important information from Bothwell’s earlier books. Bothwell realizes
that not everything of significance happened in Quebec City, Montreal,
Toronto, Ottawa, or Vancouver.

Yet, as Bothwell has devoted his career to 20th-century topics, not
surprisingly the book’s greatest strength comes later rather than
sooner. He dismisses the duration of Norse Greenland as “brief”
(although it lasted for centuries), and gives Labrador’s 16th-century
Basques only a passing mention. Some have speculated that trade between
Bristol and Greenland contributed to Cabot’s “discovery” of
Newfoundland in 1497, and that the presence of fierce Basques near the
mouth of the St. Lawrence might have been a factor that delayed French
colonization by generations. However, there is no hint of either idea
here.

French Canadians may not appreciate the omissions of Dollard des
Ormeaux and Madeleine de Verchиres. Bothwell confuses Fort
Michilimackinac with Fort Mackinac and does not mention the garrison at
Fort St. Joseph (now a Northern Ontario tourist attraction), which
captured it early in the War of 1812. Perhaps like Canada itself,
Canadian history has become so vast that no one person should attempt to
manage it alone.