Canada: A Journey of Discovery

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Watercolorist and writer Michael Kluckner set out on a cross-Canada
quest to see if the Canadian landscape he imagined in his youth actually
existed: “Was this dreamscape mere make-believe? Had Canada become a
virtual country, held together only by emotions and abstractions?”
Kluckner carried his paints and sketchbooks from a Newfoundland outport,
to British Columbia fishing villages, to Yukon cabins. The resulting
portrait of Canada combines his watercolor sketches with his written
accounts of the many Canadians with whom he talked.

The task Kluckner set for himself was a formidable one. As Robert
Fulford puts it in his foreword, “Where can you find the past of a
country that wants to believe that it has no past?” Kluckner, a
stubborn man, aspires to raise the national consciousness. His pen, as
lively as his brush, captures his sense of humor, his curiosity, and his
strong love for Canada. Although it sometimes seemed, as he journeyed,
that the historian Jack Granatstein was correct about our national
amnesia, he also found cause for optimism.

The sketches, many annotated with Kluckner’s hand-written memories
and impressions, are warm and evocative, packed with people as well as
landscapes and houses. There is a bibliography and a list of heritage
organizations.

Canada: A Journey of Discovery is a national treasure that deserves a
place in homes and libraries across Canada.