Canadian Disasters

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Quite literally a catalogue of horrors, this collection of mini-accounts of famous Canadian disasters runs the gamut from fire to flood, from the extinction of the Beothuks of Newfoundland to the icy death of the Ocean Ranger, from the Frank Slide to the Halifax Explosion. Simply told, without embellishment that would in any case add little to such stark tales of death and destruction, each of the 28 brief, almost journalistic accounts is a mere few pages in length. Some have a news photograph or two as illustration. Apart from the odd careless error in editing (e.g., Granada instead of the correct spelling Grenada in the Hurricane Hazel story), this slim paperback is both readable and informative. Not indexed, but it does include a list of suggested Further Readings.