The Canadians

John I. Jackson was a library technician at the University of Toronto.

Its dustjacket describes this as a “remarkable book” in which “Canadians at last have an opportunity to see themselves from the unusual perspective of an outsider.” The book itself reveals a touch of schizophrenia, being in part for Canadians, and in part for outsiders, principally Americans. Malcolm, former Toronto Bureau Chief of the New York Times, is an American born of Canadian parents. This may explain the ambiguity of the point of view.

In relating personal and family history, Malcolm demonstrates a sensitivity to time, place, and people that is very attractive. He clearly cherishes the stories of his grandfather’s prairie wanderings and the remembrances of sunny summers spent in southern Ontario. But are we to believe that Sunday afternoon gatherings of aunts and uncles are uniquely Canadian?

As an adult, Malcolm travelled widely in Canada, both on assignment and recreationally with his family. He has developed a fine sense of the actual size of this country, the sparseness of its population, and the diversity of its geography, all of which he is able to communicate vividly. There can be no doubt that he has been to interesting places and done interesting things in Canada. In that the people he has met in these often remote places are far from typical, these travel tales are inevitably more about Andrew Malcolm than about Canada.

In chapters on the economy and Canada-United States relations, Malcolm draws a picture, which will be surprising to many Canadians, of aggressive Canadian businesses invading American markets in such areas as real estate and finance. He explains the historical need, in a thinly populated country of such size, for Canadians to develop such strong centralized financial institutions as the chartered banks. He then suggests that it is slightly unfair for these huge national bodies to compete in the U.S. with smaller, regionally-based institutions. He echoes American complaints about government involvement in support of Canadian business, while, to his credit, he is able to explain the historical reasons for it. The American argument seems to imply that our society, being different, is therefore wrong and unfair. Anyone observing the impact of current American economic policies on other western economies will not buy Malcolm’s argument about the impact of Canadian business on the average American.

On the large questions of whether Canadians possess the political will to persist, or what Canada will be like in twenty years, Malcolm is noncommittal. Very Canadian.

The book is a rich mine of fascinating bits of information that do help to illuminate facets of the country — for example, the fact that as much as five per cent of the Canadian population is in Florida during the winter. But the photographs, while illustrative of Malcolm’s travels, really fail to convey much of Canada.