Glimpses into New Brunswick History

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada, Too Good to Be True: Toronto in the 1920s, and
Global Spin: Probing the Globalization Debate.

This book (the term is used loosely in this case) is a good example of a bad use of government birthday grants for aspiring authors. While it does provide “glimpses” into New Brunswick’s past, the choices and use of material and photographs are peculiarly the writer’s. She appears to have borrowed heavily from Arthur Doyle’s excellent Premiers of New Brunswick to compile her “government” chapter, but she failed to emulate that author’s logical placement and choice of photographs.

Other sections, such as “primary resources:’ tend to carry the reader briefly through the nineteenth century and then hastily conclude with a couple of “booster” comments on the way it is in 1984. The chapter she calls “Noted New Brunswickers” fails to mention K.C. Irving but includes the McCain brothers, Lord Beaverbrook, and artist Miller Brittain. Considering these selections, one wonders about the subjects this writer chose for her other “book,” Legendary Canadian Women, also from Lancelot Press.

For better glimpses of New Brunswick, pick up a tourist pamphlet.