The Canadians: Biographies of a Nation, Volumes 1, 2, and 3

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.

Hefty in size, substantial in content, and lively in style, this book
presents the life stories of some 60 Canadians, including painter Tom
Thomson, Mohawk “princess” Pauline Johnson, William (“Bible
Bill”) Aberhart, journalist and editor ‘Ma” Murray, industrialist
Samuel Cunard (“The Man Who Invented the Atlantic”), Toronto scholar
Northrop Frye, and the fraudulent environmentalist Grey Owl. The
notables even include the racehorse Northern Dancer, billed as “Little
Horse, Big Heart.”

Patrick Watson was the commissioning editor for History Television’s
The Canadians: Biographies of a Nation. He is also creative director of
the Historical Foundation, a former CBC chairman, and a bestselling
author. In his foreword, he refers to his “superb collaborators,”
namely Patricia Phillips and Hugh Graham. Graham is credited with
writing much of the third volume.

Painter Tom Thomson is introduced as the man whose life and work in
Algonquin Provincial Park would affect the way Canadians see their own
country. In the summer of 1917, Thomson’s body was found floating in
Canoe Lake. His feet were trussed in a fishing line and there was a
wound on his head. Weirdly, the coroner called the death a drowning. In
this mini-biography, Watson moves easily back and forth over Thomson’s
childhood and the evidence regarding his mysterious death. He concludes
that the painter “helped us to see our land with new eyes.”

University of Toronto Professor Northrop Frye seems a more difficult
subject to bring to life, but Watson, working from Frye’s notebooks
and letters to his wife, has uncovered what he calls “a passionate,
lyrical, playful (and sometimes wittily obscene) spirit.” Frye once
wrote that “no biographer could possibly have taken the smallest
interest in me.” Watson roundly refutes this damning remark in a
lively biographical sketch that ends with Frye’s more considered
judgment: “I had genius.”

This biographical treasure chest will give anyone so sufficiently
uninformed as to think of Canadians as dull the surprise of his or her
life.