Canada: Its Land and People, 2nd ed.

Brenda Reed is the curriculum and reference services librarian at the
Queen’s University Education Library.

This appealing, well-organized, and thoughtfully written book for senior
elementary-school students is a dramatic revision of the original
edition in both presentation and content. The page layout is now much
more attractive, featuring excellently reproduced color illustrations,
clearly labeled maps, and sensibly divided text. The book focuses on
Canada’s seven geographical regions, the people who live in these
regions, and how the people and the landaffect by one another. In the
introductory chapter, the authors ask readers to consider the effect of
human activity on the environment as they read the text, noting that
“we have to think carefully about how our decisions link us to other
people and the environment.” This environmental concern is
successfully carried through in combination with an emphasis on the
significance of decision-making.

An overview chapter on Canada’s physical landscape, population
distribution, and government follows a brief introduction, which
suggests that students create a video or book to document their learning
as they work through the text. The chapters on the regions follow a
similar format that allows comparisons across regions to be made easily.
Each chapter begins with an introduction to a family living in the
region. These families have been carefully selected to cover a range of
situations and background. Other families are included in the chapters
to illustrate how people live in and use the environment around them.

The location, landscape, and climate of each region is illustrated with
many maps, appropriate and sensibly labeled photographs, and an
accessible text that is broken down into manageable and informative
sections. The involvement of people in the landscape is covered in
sections on how people produce, consume, earn a living, move around
within the region, and spend their leisure time in that region. The
up-to-date information includes statistics from the 1990s and an
examination of the effect of NAFTA on people earning a living in Canada.


The book provides geographical information in a carefully constructed
historical context and encourages students to consider issues as they
learn about the world. This is an excellent introduction to the physical
and human geography of Canada. Highly recommended.