Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800–2000

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.

This large, heavy book, unusual in format and incredibly comprehensive
in scope, constitutes a history of our nation from its earliest years to
its current maturity and self-confidence. Personal letters from an
extremely wide range of correspondents make up the basic text. Charlotte
Gray writes of letters having “a magic all their own,” a magic that
brings the writers alive across centuries and continents. Her choices
prove the point. In Part 1, “A Surge of Settlers, 1800–1850,”
Indian and Innu peoples roamed the unmapped land outnumbering some
350,000 people of European origin who were beginning to settle on the
Atlantic coast and the shores of the St. Lawrence River. They lived by
fishing, hunting, and farming. Furs were the major export and letters
the only way of sending information.

By mid-century, “A Nation Takes Shape, 1850–1900,” the newly
created Crown colony of Vancouver Island had been added, while vast
territories remained unexplored. This half-century would transform the
land into a united nation linked by a railroad. Letters, in Gray’s
shrewd summary of thousands, suggest that the colonists were less
radical than their Yankee neighbours, yet less conservative than their
British relatives. The “Canadian” or national sensibility was
beginning to take shape. Federal posters of “the last best west: homes
for millions” encouraged immigration.

In the first half of the 20th century, one of battles, Gray finds an
artless confidence. Examples range from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s
excitement at finding a London publisher to Canada’s distinguished
part in the Second World War (“Hitler’s War”) and the death of
William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister.
Canada was now an ascending power ready for a postwar world, while the
British Empire was in rapid decline. Part 4, “Hurtling towards the
Millennium, 1950–2000,” deals with living memories and what Gray
calls the refreshingly familiar. The emotions were similar, while the
urban society had become vastly different. Suburbs consumed farmlands
and a postwar boom brought affluence to many, while minorities such as
Native peoples and the elderly required aid. Many Canadians could afford
to travel. Some were serving overseas in NATO’s peacekeeping missions.


In scholarly fashion, this wide-ranging history (which includes
archival photographs) concludes with the sources of letters in Canadian
archives and extensive acknowledgements. Canada: A Portrait in Letters,
1800–2000 belongs in every serious library, public or private.