|
Drawing
on their skills as master storytellers, the contributors to this
collection offer wonderfully imaginative accounts of what it's
like to make history. Margaret Atwood casts her eye back to 1759
and brilliantly captures the journal entries of a frightened French
woman, trapped in Québec City as the English forces attack.
In "The First of July," David Macfarlane's youthful
narrator loses himself in the papers of an elderly neighbour,
and through the records of her past, experiences the heartbreaking,
stunting loss of war. In Thomas King's hilarious story, "Where
the Borg Are," a young boy named Milton Friendlybear offers
a Star Trekkian reinterpretation of the Indian Act, linking its
significance to the fate of the universe. And revisiting an occasion
of huge national pride, Michelle Berry tells the story of a four-year-old
girl caught up in the excitement of the 1972 Summit Series, hopeful
that the passion of hockey will hold her crumbling family together.
Each
of these magical stories is further brought to life by an accompanying
visual narrative. Vividly illustrating the joy, sorrow, anger
and passion of more than two centuries of our history, here are
fifty unforgettable images: the Belgian Queen, a seductive reminder
that the Klondike of Roch Carrier's story was anything but a purely
masculine domain; Kurt Meyer, the SS officer who represented evil
in the childhood of John Ralston Saul and of many other children
whose fathers landed on Juno beach in June 1944; and Viola Desmond
at the Hi-Hat Club, whose glamour and elegance contrasted starkly
with the small-minded racism so powerfully chronicled by Dionne
Brand.
With
a preface by Rudyard Griffiths, executive director of The Dominion
Institute, and introduced by distinguished historian Christopher
Moore, Story of a Nation is a moving celebration of Canada's
extraordinary history and our exceptional writers.
CONTRIBUTORS
Margaret Atwood
Michelle Berry
Dionne Brand
Roch Carrier
Timothy Findley
Thomas King
David Macfarlane
Antonine Maillet
Alberto Manguel
Hal Niedzviecki
John Ralston Saul
Michael Turner
Preface
by Rudyard Griffiths, The Dominion Institute
Introduction by Christopher Moore
Visit
Story of a Nation online
|