Winter

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

That archetypal Canadian season, winter, has been celebrated by more
than one Canadian writer. Unlike Doug Sadler’s Winter: A Natural
History (1990), Pierre Berton’s “take” on the scene features
people both surviving and enjoying winter.

Berton, author of 38 books, was born and raised in Dawson City, which
makes him an expert on the season. He views Canadians as a wintry people
who have a love/hate relationship with the cold.

New Brunswicker André Gallant, an internationally known travel
photographer, journeyed 33,000 miles by air and car to take the
dramatic, often stunning photos in this book. Both writer and
photographer have a personal feeling for winter; text and images are
beautifully complementary.

Berton’s reminiscences of a Dawson City childhood are matched by
Gallant’s photos of the brief, mid-day light on the facades of the
pioneer buildings. Berton’s memories of a visit to the Inuit of Pond
Inlet in 1954 are updated by a current photo essay. (The sunsets are the
same. So is the spirit of the people.) His very personal perambulations
cover Canadian history (the building of the CPR, and the maintaining of
the track), art (with snowscapes by Paul Kane, J.E.H. MacDonald, Tom
Thomson, and many others), carnivals, and the West Edmonton Mall. Winter
is a verbal and visual feast, a place to linger.