Visionaries: Canadian Triumphs

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University,
where he taught Canadian political history and the history of Canada’s
external relations.

I recently came across a handsome, leather-bound, coffee-table book.
Profusely illustrated with lively and informative captions, its
attractive page design invited browsing. It was a volume in the Canadian
Heritage Series, giving the history of Ontario in a dozen or so
chapters. I found it easy and interesting to read.

Visionaries: Canadian Triumphs, edited by Charles J. Humber, is volume
six in the same series. More eclectic in its contents than The Ontario
Story, it provides 125 short sketches (each one to four pages in length)
of “Canadian achievers,”—specifically, individuals who have helped
to build Canada. These include scientists, medical researchers,
academics, writers, singers, actors, teachers, and diplomats, but no
politicians (perhaps they have been remembered in another volume in the
series). The list of 33 contributors is headed by J.M.S. Careless
(history), Melbourne V. James (public relations), and Charles G. Roland
(medicine). The articles are written in a highly laudatory manner and
sometimes skate over difficult periods in the lives of their subjects.
But the textual material is sound and easy to follow. (This reviewer
particularly liked Jacques Cotnam’s vivid sketches of French-Canadian
writers Gabrielle Roy and Louis Hémon.) The volume concludes with short
accounts of the work of 27 Canadian “corporate achievers,” firms
representing various fields of industry and commerce. Curiously,
McMaster University is included in the group of companies.

Visionaries: Canadian Triumphs is not a work of critical scholarship.
It is intended to be a “browsing book,” to be enjoyed without
substantial intellectual effort, to bring the lives of important
Canadians to many who would not read a heavier treatise. In this goal,
it succeeds admirably.