Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

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Do we feel superior about our inferiority complex? Are we too self-depreciating to admit we are self-righteous about not being self-righteous? Such soul searching is the psychological glue that holds together the great mass of contradictions known as Canada.

      MacGregor joins a long list of writers dedicated to identifying the true nature of Canada. Defining our country, he says, has become a cottage industry. MacGregor’s kick at the can draws on his long career as a journalist which has taken him to every province and territory, to large cities and rural crossroads, to hearings for political commissions, and to the funeral for a hockey hero. He dredges up memories of many less-than-boast-worthy events from our past, reviews much of our recent political activity (from Meech Lake to the sponsorship scandal) and endlessly searches for input from the humble, average folk.

      His conclusion?  Canada has two themes: landscape and hockey. The “central personality of the Canadian is landscape,” he asserts, and he proceeds to show us that vastness—from the Newfoundland cliffs hanging over the North Atlantic, through the big sky of Saskatchewan, to the endless Arctic stretches where environmental change is now becoming apparent. He looks at diverse issues, including the third-world conditions in which our Aboriginal populations live, Canada-U.S. border tensions, multiculturalism, racism, Newfoundland’s discontent, Western alienation, the death of small towns, and the urban-rural split. Although 80 percent of Canadians now live in urban areas, psychologically our strongest connection is to the land. As we struggle to make sense of the country—“a confusing behemoth”—and the changes that have come to it, Canadians see landscape as both anchor and unifying principle.

      And there’s hockey, of course. Hockey, MacGregor says, is “the dance of life,” Canada’s national theatre, a national symbol, a Canadian paradigm, and “the true religion of Canada.”

      MacGregor is a stylist, smoothly blending quotes from previous writers in search of the Canadian identity with references to his own journalism assignments. With near-lyrical expression and keen observation, he attempts to give Canada a face, to document its resourcefulness and contradictions, and to “be a witness for his times.” The result is at times passionate and always insightful.