Canada: Pathways to the Present

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.

Originally published almost 15 years ago as a simple text for
prospective immigrants and for foreign students, John Saywell’s
much-revised volume is a brief, well-illustrated, and colorful
introduction to Canadian history and life that deserves continued
distribution abroad and to be read at home. Canadian history in the
schools of this country is almost as dead as the dodo, and anything that
puts the past into readers’ hands—and in a fashion that they will
enjoy—deserves praise. Saywell divides the Canadian world into
digestible chunks: history, the economy, the world, the lawmakers,
federal-provincial relations, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and
prime ministers. There are tart comments, the obligatory sweeping
judgments necessary in any brief volume, and more than enough superb
cartoons to convey to anyone, foreigner or Canadian, just what it is
that makes this country tick.