Fresh snow and good books are essential to a great Canadian holiday, along with delusions that we will make the most of both. Truth be told, we Canadians like to look at snow and books more than we indulge in them.
Resolving to do better on both fronts, I spent much of the year-end holiday nestled in a cabin near Collingwood, Ont., alternating the hours between snowshoeing and a preposterous plan to finish six books. I've completed two, and am digging my way through two more.
From the completed list, I'd strongly recommend Mary Janigan's Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark, a thorough and dispassionate reconstruction of the federal-provincial battles of the early 20th century over control of natural resources. Mary, a long-time friend and former editorial writer at The Globe, does a masterful job explaining the economic and social tensions in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in their early years as provinces, and how they eventually convinced Mackenzie King to cede control over natural resources. We can only wonder what would have become of Canada had Ottawa maintained its initial rights through the 20th century boom in oil and gas production.
Moving further back in time, I was inspired and dismayed by The Purchase, Linda Spalding's novel about Quaker settlers coming to grips with slavery in 19th century Virginia. Spalding, a Toronto writer and wife of Michael Ondaatje, recently won the Governor-General's prize for literature for the book. The moral dilemmas of an American family, told subtly from a Canadian point of view, cannot be lost on us today as we watch our beloved neighbours wrestle anew with their constitutional rights.
On the same theme, and very much the same struggles, I find myself enthralled with Doris Kearns Goodwin's epic tale of Civil War politics. Team of Rivals is the story of Lincoln and his Republican contemporaries - rivals who took on the Democrats and the South to eventually end slavery. The 2005 book is the basis for the film Lincoln (which I saw before picking up the book, now in paperback). As well as a dramatic and heartbreaking journey through the mid-century struggle to redefine the "human" in human rights, it's an excellent management book, exploring how the humble yet clever Lincoln managed the great and small differences around him. We can only hope the current president, another lawyer from Illinois, has revisited his reading of the book.
I've all but finished Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton, his third-person autobiography that details his years in hiding, under an Iranian fatwa. It's an important story, and like so much of Rushdie, needs a good edit. A third shorter would have been just fine.
Still to go ... Will Ferguson's 419 (latest winner of the Scotiabank Giller prize) and an advance copy of my colleague Carolyn Abraham's The Juggler's Children, a search through genetics for her own family history.
If you missed Carolyn's mind-boggling Our Time to Lead series on genetics: The DNA Dilemma, please visit our hub to read the main pieces.
Video pick
Another way to enjoy Canadian winter is tobogganing, and as The Globe video team shows, it's not just for kids.