My ~New~ Book - Seeds of Pine

On the way home from Peterborough today, Ross & I stopped at an antique shop. Lots of WAY cool stuff - including a $5000 desk that I am now coveting....and $600+ light fixtures that would be PERFECT in our Peterborough house.

Actually, also makes me wonder how much some of the light fixtures we DO have might be worth - there is one right inside the front door that looks like it has probably been there since the house was built in the early 1900s. It's missing a shade though - and not something you can just pick up at Home Depot.

Anyway, in addition to bunches of way cool antiques that would be PERFECT for the P. house, they also had a very nice selection of books. LOTS of Canadiana - and since I'm in Canadian Studies, now, I have a much better excuse to buy Canadiana, right? Right!

There were plenty I would have liked to buy - there was a Canadian military history that almost came home with me - but then we spotted a 1922 edition of Seeds of Pine by Janey Canuck.

Janey Canuck was the pen name of Emily Ferguson Murphy, who is one of the so-called Famous Five, "the women who carried the Persons Case to the Privy Council in England where, on October 18, 1929, the decision was handed down that women were persons qualified to become members of the Senate of Canada" (Library and Archives Canada). She was a social activist, the founder of the Federated Women's Institute for rural women, and in 1916, she became the first female police magistrate in the British Empire.

Most of what I have found out about her is focused on her activism rather than her literature - I'm looking forward to reading the book to find out why. And to assess whether this might be a potential editing project for an aspiring Canadian Studies PhD student! Will have to see what there is in the archives about her too... perhaps I shall have a look when I am in Ottawa next month. (Like I need more archive work! But seriously, I am interested)

Read more...

Survival by Margaret Atwood

Survival, by Margaret Atwood, is not a new book. It was originally published in 1972 - the edition I have been reading this week was published in 2004 by McClelland & Stewart, and includes a new introduction by Atwood.

Survival, I think, should be required reading for any student of Canadian Literature. It wasn't for me - it has been referenced several times throughout the course of my studies, and we were given a chapter of it to read for my first CanLit course - but really, the book is so important, that now that I've read it I can't imagine that I would ever teach Canadian literature and not include it on the syllabus.

I am glad I ordered it... I've actually had it sitting here for several months ...just didn't get to reading it until all of my papers and marking were done.

ANYWAY, in a comment thread somewhere that I can no longer find, we were talking about differences between US and Canadian lit... and that the US tends towards a frontier mentality - good vs evil; conquering, all that good stuff - while Canadian literature tends to focus on survival.

All of that is discussed in Atwood's Survival. Not that she takes credit for coming up with all of the concepts - she clearly states that she is, in this work, drawing on the work of Northtop Frye (the other book I bought with this one and will likely talk about sometime soon) and others.

In the 2004 Introduction, Atwood writes:

We now take it for granted that Canadian literature is an acknowledged category, but this proposition was not always self-evident. To have any excuse for being, the kind of book I had in mind had to prove several points. First, that, yes, there was a Canadian literature - such a thing did indeed exist. (This turned out to be a radical proposition, and was disputed by many when the book appeared.) Second, that this body of work was not just a feeble version of English or American, or, in the case of francophone books, of French literature, but that it had different preoccupations, which were specific to its own history and geopolitics (6).

The book provides exactly that - evidence and examples to prove that there is such a thing as Canadian literature, and highlight its differences. Each chapter builds on the original themes of survival, and especially victim/victimizer. I was particularly interested in chapters dealing with First People, women and "the paralyzed artist" - but have found every chapter interesting and relevant.

This is a highly readable and entertaining book - SUCH a relief after all of the theory and other assorted forms of academic torture I have been reading over the past year....and it really is not at all as dated as one might expect of something written more than 30 years ago. In fact, it is not at all dated.

I highly recommend Margaret Atwood's Survival for anyone interested in Canadian literature.

Read more...

Navigating Canada's Health Care

Navigating Canada’s Health Care is, as you might expect, nonfiction rather than the fiction I more often review. But it came in the box of fiction for review - doesn’t that count?

Anyway, Navigating Canada’s Health Care is written in plain, straightforward language. It was written by Michael Dector, an economist who has served as the Deputy Minister of Health in Ontario among his many other roles, and Francesca Grosso, who has been involved in heath policy and health care communication for more than 15 years and who, along with Dector, worked to establish the Health Council of Canada.

The book contains a huge amount of information, and to be honest, I have not read all of it. Rather, I jumped right through the early chapters, in which the authors provide information about having a baby in Canada (been there done that - twice), getting the best care for your child (they do that themselves now that they’re ~supposedly~ all growed up) and child safety in Canada (maybe I’ll read that if/when I ever get to spend more time with the grandbabies) …. and started my more attentive reading in The Middle Years.

Okay, so maybe I fit in the tail end of that section or into the next …but the middle years section includes the sort of helpful information that I can use. It provides advice for finding a doctor - no easy task given the shortages around here - and, once you have one, working with your health care team, and assembling your own health record. I have no doubt that that particular task would be particularly useful for me… although once I started to read it, I kind of lost interest - sounds like a fair bit of work to me! Yes, I am lazy as a matter of fact.

The most useful section of the entire book, at least for me right now, is the last one (after Managing Aging which includes altogether too many sections that apply to hubby & I) …. Navigating Care Swiftly and Safely …. that would be the one that gives guidance and advice about needing to be your own advocate - or have someone that can do that for you - and about being a squeaky wheel. I have read the whole section through once… and will probably read it again once more before I head off to my next doctor’s appointment.

Navigating Canada’s Health Care seems to be a very practical, usable guide to Canadian health care…. I will definitely be trying some of the suggestions.

Read more...