Three Remarkable Maritimers

Alexander Craig is a freelance journalist in Lennoxville, Quebec.

This is a respectable and respectful book of biographies. The author, who teaches English at the Université de Moncton, has lived in Middle Sackville, New Brunswick, for 24 years and has written extensively on Maritime matters as well as on Canadian literature and other topics. Her husband, who teaches English at Mount Allison, contributes the illustrations to this book.

The three remarkable Maritimers — Moses Perley, Silas Rand, and William Ganong — were all, in their different ways, classic personifications of the new, open-minded mentality of nineteenth century North America. They all managed to combine to a high degree that unusual mixture of scholar and man of action.

There is a selected bibliography of nine pages, although the author has chosen to write without footnotes “for fear they might daunt many general readers and might thus tend to obscure the very facts I wished to bring to light.” So in a sense this is a missionary work. The author’s very keen to tell us about the very considerable achievements of these three largely unsung Maritime heroes — “all men of an Emersonian cast — thoughtful, individualistic, unmaterialistic, tolerant, idealistic and self-reliant....”

This book makes interesting reading. The author’s respect for these healthy, wholesome, restlessly inquiring characters is such that we get hardly any criticism of them. Instead, we get glimpses of why she idealizes them: Ganong’s studies, for instance, demonstrate his “ability to find universal significance in regional material.” For those interested in Maritime heritage, this book should prove rewarding.