Pathfinders: Canadian Tributes

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s.

Is this the future of Canadian publishing? This handsome volume, the
fourth in the Canada Heirloom Series, presents brief, well-illustrated
biographies of a substantial number of notable Canadians on fine-quality
paper. Then, for almost 100 pages, it offers us sketches of “Canadian
Corporate Achievers,” presumably the companies that paid in cash or in
volumes purchased for the right to have their stories told in laudatory
and completely uncritical prose. The biographees range from scientists
like Hans Selye to timber baron H.R. Macmillan, from Hollywood actors to
Northrop Frye. The prose in the biographies is upbeat, the facts
correct. The corporate sponsors range from moving firms to chemical
companies, from distillers to donut shops. The prose that describes them
is upbeat, the facts put through a public-relations manipulation.

Who buys such a book? Who reads it? Why? What does this say about
publishers and corporations?