Colombo's Last Words: The Dying Words of Eminent Canadians

Sam Coghlan was Deputy Director and Senior Consultant of the Thames Ontario Library Service Board, Southwestern Ontario.

At first glance, Last Words appears to offer little substance; the book is laid out with one quotation and bibliographical note per page. The brevity of the utterances makes it a book with more spaces than print.

The quotations are of statements made by Canadians or by non-Canadians associated with this land either as they were dying or briefly before their death. Colombo reveals this in the preface but fails to describe any criteria governing selection. One is left believing that this collection represents everything he could find, especially since many speakers are quite obscure. He also leaves unclear just how close to the speaker’s death a statement must have been made in order to be considered to be “dying words.”

The quotations themselves vary in quality and interest as much as do the types of human personality. Few supply any insight into the psychology of dying or the possibilities of any sort of hereafter. Many are absolutely inane. What does evolve through the volume is a sense of the varieties of personalities in Canadian history about whom one knows too little. The biographical comments may pique an interest in a person or an historical incident and the quotation often adds a humanizing element. The figure becomes less a personage and more a person.

For reference use, the table of contents provides a list of persons quoted. No index is available to offer access according to subject or geographical region which the speakers might be said to represent. This lack does not matter, though, as the substance of the quotations is generally mundane.

Peter Whalley’s illustrations show whimsical humour. Their mood well represents the book, which seems to have been done in a lighter frame of mind than one would expect from a volume intended primarily to assist scholars. However, it serves Colombo’s intended audience well — the Canadian curious about what other Canadians have had to say in extremis.