Canada from Afar: The Daily Telegraph Book of Canadian Obituaries

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Until recently, newspaper death notices were terse, standard
fill-in-the-blank pieces: age, profession, cause of death, funeral
arrangements, survivors. Today, many papers feature biographical
obituaries. Both “Lives Lived” in The Globe and Mail and
“Tribute” in the Calgary Herald began in the 1990s, well after the
Canadian-owned Daily Telegraph in England had led the way in radically
altering the style of the obituary, making it “anecdotal, sharp, witty
and wise.” Life and character are assessed, but the cause of death is
not mentioned. Often, a surviving spouse is not even named. This book
reprints a selection of the last decade’s Telegraph obituaries of
Canadians: 90 men and 5 women.

The editor, an obituary writer with the Telegraph, was born in Canada
but raised and educated in England. Whether born in England, Canada, or
other countries, all of the subjects had some part in what is described
as “the Anglo-Canadian relationship.” Nearly one-third of the
obituaries’ subjects have military connections. Sometimes the
reader’s curiosity is left unsatisfied; one wonders at a passing
remark that diplomat Hugh Keenlyside “took an interest in birth
control.” One also wonders about “the archetypal English Canadian
with his ramrod-straight back and impeccable dress.” But these are
minor quibbles about a book that can be savored like an anthology of
fine short stories.