The Books of My Life: A Little History of Canada

 

What a delight it was to read A Little History of Canada by H.V. Nelles (Toronto: Oxford University Press, third edition, 2017). Nelles packs a lot of essential and important information about the history of Canada into the short compass of 274 pages (excluding index) and he does it well.

Nelles organises his petite history of Canada around the theme of change. Change from an indigenous “Canada” to a French Canada. Change from a French Canada to a British Canada. Change from an British Canada to a dominion of Britain. Change from a dominion to a fully self-governing nation-state with its own constitution if still living in the shadow of yet another empire, that of the elephant south of the border, this time in the shadow of the United States instead of Great Britain. 

A final chapter, “Another Opening” explores the changes afoot in this self governing Canada: tensions between francophone Canada and anglophone Canada, tensions caused by the increasingly multicultural nature of Canada thanks to immigration particularly from Asia after the mid-1960s, tensions between indigenous Canada and the rest of Canada, tensions between rural Canada and urban Canada, tensions between central Canada and prairie Canada, tensions between male Canada and female Canada, and tensions between those with their heads in the sand about climate change and those that see the reality in front of their eyes (a perspective more minority, it sometimes seems).

Nelles brief book concentrates on the economic aspects of Canadian history, the political aspects of Canadian history, and the demographic aspects of Canadian history. The geographical aspects of the history of Canada are briefly touched on. The cultural aspects of Canadian history are little touched on beyond the mention of the rise of symphony orchestras, museums, and other cultural institutions in Canadian cities. There is, for example, no mention of Lucy Maud Montgomery, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, or Alice Munro, the first Canadian to win a Nobel Prize for literature (I am not counting Saul Bellow as he has always seemed more American and Canadian to me), and that is an unfortunate Achilles heel of the book.

One imagines that if Nelles were to revise A Little History of Canada today he would certainly want to explore the impact the election of Donald Trump to the United States presidency has had not only on relations between the US and Canada but the impact it has had on Canada itself. The current prime minister of Canada, the bank bureaucrat Mark Carney, was certainly aided by Trump in his and the Liberal Party's election victory and in the wake of the political, economic, and cultural tsunami that is Trump, he has tried to move Canada closer economically and perhaps even political more toward Europe. I certainly would not be upset if Canada became the first North American nation to join the European Union in some shape or form. 

Despite the limited attention to Canadian culture in A Little History of Canada the book remains an excellent guide to the economic, political, and demographic history of what is today Canada. It is certainly one of the best short histories of Canada (and any other nation) I have read.