Ideas of North

Christine Hughes is a policy analyst at the Ontario Native Affairs
Secretariat.

Ideas of North fills an important niche for enthusiasts of Canadian arts
and culture. Individual chapters provide overviews of Canadian
achievement in the fields of mass media, literature, theatre, music,
film, visual arts, dance, and arenas of culture (i.e., performance
centres, museums, and festivals). They also include some introductory
comments on current trends and future directions. The bulk of each
chapter comprises a wealth of information for the reader about names and
dates, useful addresses and telephone numbers, lists of awards, notes on
festivals and special events, and suggestions for reading, viewing, and
listening. Sidebars are used to highlight interesting bits of
information, such the Art Gallery of Ontario’s top 10 best-attended
exhibitions, the 25 essential Canadian novels, and the 12 least-boring
examples of modern Canadian architecture.

In an introductory chapter, Henighan, who also wrote The Presumption of
Culture (1996), reflects on developments that affected Canadian arts and
culture in the 1990s. Most of the subsequent chapters, focus on the
specific fields of artistic endeavor, provide information on a
province-by-province basis. (It would be worth consulting this book when
planning a vacation in Canada to ensure that interesting cultural
attractions are not overlooked.) Ideas of North is liberally illustrated
with black-and-white photographs and contains a detailed appendix
listing Canadian artistic and cultural organizations and awards.