Description

pp 536, “In Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800-2000, popular historian Charlotte Gray uses 217 well-chosen letters to provide a wonderful and intimate introduction to the last two centuries of Canadian history in the words of the people who experienced it for themselves. Letters of all kinds, from intensely private notes to public dispatches, help Gray to paint a richly detailed canvass of a nation. She divides her book into four parts of 50 years each: “A Surge of Settlers”; “A Nation Takes Shape”; “A Half Century of Battles”; and “Hurtling Towards the Millennium.” The third section is much longer than the others for the simple reason that the wars and upsets of the first half of the 20th century kept loved ones apart, or as Gray describes it: “loved ones were frequently separated and wrote to one another as families struggled to maintain ties and morale.” Those who delight in real correspondence–as opposed to emails and text messages–will enjoy this book not only for its panorama of Canadian history, but also for the sense of intimacy that connects the reader to the letter-writers and the past.”