Historic Canada

Les Harding is author of The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail Sketches
in Canadian Exploration.

Historic Canada is just the thing to stick in your glove compartment as you travel across Canada — that is, if you have a glove compartment with a thyroid condition. Historic Canada is a coffeetable book. it contains about 100 pages of very good colour photographs taken in every province and territory. Some of Canada’s finest photographers are represented here, including the well-known John de Visser. Dozens of historic prints are also included, and they almost outshine the photographs. The reproduction quality of photos and prints is high. Captions are generally included alongside the illustration.

Accompanying the pictures are a few pages of text by Kildare Dobbs on the history of Canada and its regions. Marjorie Harris supplies about 300 short blurbs on historic sites, parks, and buildings, not all of which are illustrated. I doubt if anyone will bother to read the text a second time. Just look at the pictures and enjoy them.