Canada—Our History: An Album Through Time

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Canada—Our History is an album of well-chosen historical photographs
on fine glossy paper. It will enrich the study of history and could
brighten a coffee table.

Rick Archbold has written or cowritten 18 nonfiction books, including
Hindenberg: An Illustrated History (1994), Robert Bateman: Natural
Worlds (1996), and Ghostliners: Exploring the World’s Greatest Lost
Ships (1998). Canada—Our History has a chatty, anecdotal text that
grounds our history in personal experience. Archbold, who had “fun”
writing it, tells the story through the eyes of fictional children who
were there. (The book could have been subtitled “What Kids Saw as the
Country Grew.”) Each one narrates a piece of Canadian history as it
might have been experienced by a young person between the ages of 10 and
17. (For “The Day the World Ended,” Archbold invented the uncle and
nephew who tell the story.) Altogether Archbold plays 15 different
roles, pretending to be 15 different children who lived in Canada at 15
different times, and it is a brilliant narrative strategy.

Christopher Moore’s brief but lively introduction compares history to
old photographs. The viewer instinctively finds himself asking the
question “What were they thinking?” Moore is a seasoned and
scholarly historian but here he gets down on his knees to play with his
young readers. Canada—Our History is an unusual history book and a
valuable rsource for teens and preteens. Every library should have a
copy of this book. Highly recommended.