I decided to jump into Canada. I admit it never occurred to me to read about Canada until today when I was standing in front of a display window at Dearborn Heights Public Library where I was giving a presentation. They had a collection of cultural memoires on display and I thought, for some reason, I bet Canada has cultural memoires that would be just fascinating. And the jump was on.
I decided to do my research by asking another librarian to do it for me. First I tried librarians in Vancouver but they’re on strike. Next I tried Toronto Public Library and the convenient little Ask a Librarian online chat service. Here are the titles they recommended:
- Berton, Pierre. My times living with history.
- English, John. Citizen of the world: the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
- Mitchell, W.O. Who has seen the Wind.
- Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman
- Davies, Robertson. Fifth Business.
- Leacock, Stephen. Sunshine Sketches of a little town.
- Grills, Barry and Brown, Jim. Celine Dion a new day dawns.
- Gillmore, Don and PIerre Turgeon. Canada: a People’s history
- Newlands, Anne. Canadian Art: from it’s beginnings to 200
- Hill, Lawrence. Any Known blood
- Maillet, Antonine. Pelagie
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Atwood, Margaret, et al. Story of a National: Defining Moments in Our History - Stackhouse, John. Timbit Nation: a hitchiker’s view of Canada
Plum Librarian LLC 
Welcome to the wonderful world of CanLit. It is something I return to like comfort food – especially stuff from prairie writers. I’m not a huge Margaret Atwood fan – I think she’s too cranky (but lots of people like her). I’d probably trade her work for something like “Stone Angels” by Margaret Laurence.
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