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This
is history in the making, in the fragile moment before it is rendered
into an official version, its heroes and villains into two-dimensional
puppets. In their letters, those who have been actors in Canada’s
defining junctures, along with those who have lived through and
been affected by them, offer us familiar historical moments from
exciting new perspectives and in frank, intimate, and often unexpected
words.
Readers will see themselves in this book -- whether the connection
is through a letter they might have written themselves, or a letter
dating from their mother’s childhoods. And letters penned in the
first decades of the nineteenth century, though written in unfamiliar
words, will touch the reader with the immediacy and timelessness
of the emotions they express -- loneliness, excitement, determination,
and pride.
In Canada: A Portrait in Letters, renowned biographer and
popular historian Charlotte Gray weaves together more than two
hundred letters written by Canadians, both famous and ordinary.
These priceless documents are accompanied by a visual narrative
of one hundred illustrations, including maps, sketches, and photographs.
Adding her own notes and commentary, Gray creates a captivating
portrait of a country, rich in diversity and hope, once a backwater
of the British Empire, that has matured to take its place among
the world’s cultural and economic leaders.
Letters from: Norman Bethune • Sir Robert Borden • Emily
Carr • Sir Winston Churchill • Robertson Davies • John Diefenbaker
• Glenn Gould • Grey Owl • W.L. Mackenzie King • Pierre Laporte
• Margaret Laurence • Sir Wilfrid Laurier • Sir John A. MacDonald
• Marshall McLuhan • L.M. Montgomery • Susanna Moodie • Farley
Mowat • Emily Murphy • Lester B. Pearson • Louis Riel • Tom Thomson
• Catharine Parr Traill
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Charlotte Gray was born and educated in England. Her first biography,
Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King
(1997) was a national bestseller, won the Edna Staebler award
for creative non-fiction, and was shortlisted for the Governor
General’s Award. Her second work, Sisters in the Wilderness:
The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill (1999)
won the CBA Libris Award for the year’s best non-fiction book.
Gray’s latest work, the bestselling Flint & Feather: The
Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (2002)
was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust of Canada Biography Prize.
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