A literary magazine released a list of the 100 most important Canadian books yesterday -- and confirmed stereotypes of Canada as a land of wonks obsessed with politics and national identity, yet gave only the briefest nod to hockey.
The Literary Review of Canada's list includes no less than six reports by royal commissions, the Geological Survey of Canada of 1863, Pierre Trudeau's 1968 title Federalism and the French Canadians and Margaret Atwood's Survival, which analyzed recurring themes in Canadian literature.
It also includes more obvious favourites such as Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. It features that quintessentially Canadian title Report of the Canadian Royal Commission on Health Services from 1964, but only one book about hockey, Howie Meeker's Hockey Basics, an instruction manual from 1973.
The list is chronological and begins with Jacques Cartier's Account of the Second Voyage of Navigation of 1535 and 1536, the first text to call the land Canada. It ends with Dark Age Ahead, a book about the decline of cities written by urban philosopher Jane Jacobs and published last year. The government documents range from Lord Durham's 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America, in which he infamously dismissed French Canadian culture, to the final report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism from 1967-69. The list also includes drama (Michel Tremblay's Les belle-soeurs), poetry (Leonard Cohen's T he Spice-Box of Earth and Dennis Lee's collection of children's verses Alligator Pie) as well as 33 novels such as Timothy Findley's The Wars and Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine.
"We didn't want a great books list," LRC editor Bronwyn Drainie said. "That's a mug's game: your great book is someone else's piece of trash. We thought important and influential -- you can't quite measure but you can at least pull out evidence [to support your choice.]
The point was to pick books that shaped the national psyche rather than judging literary merit, she explained, adding that the list, which includes 11 French-language titles, did not attempt a comprehensive overview of Quebec books.
Ms. Drainie and her colleagues at the magazine chose the 100 titles from a list of about 300 submitted by dozens of the magazine's contributors and readers. The most popular book -- it got about 10 nominations -- was Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, the galvanizing 1965 work in which George Grant described a country being erased by continentalism. The second-most-nominated was Anne of Green Gables. Four writers appear twice: Ms. Atwood, Mr. Richler, the economist H.A. Innis and the literary critic Northrop Frye.
The magazine plans to publish the defences of the various titles written by their nominees in future issues, but the list is sure to be hotly contested. In its neglect of the theme of hockey, it has passed over Roch Carrier's much loved children's story The Hockey Sweater, about a Quebec boy traumatized when Eaton's sends him a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. While the list includes many celebrated Canadian novels, such as W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind, Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel, Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries, Wayson Choy's The Jade Peony and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (the one novel set entirely outside Canada), it somehow missed any title by Michael Ondaatje.
Ms. Drainie explained that her colleagues' heated debate as to whether to include The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion wound up in a draw.
"James Joyce never won the Nobel," she said. "[Ondaatje]is the most important Canadian writer who never made it on to the list of the most important Canadian books."
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, THE 100 MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS IN CANADIAN HISTORY
Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI (Account of the Second Voyage of the Navigation of 1535 and 1536) (1545) Jacques Cartier
A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay, to the Northern Ocean (1795) Samuel Hearne
Wacousta; or The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas (1832) John Richardson
Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839) Lord Durham
Roughing It in the Bush, or Life in Canada (1852) Susanna Moodie
Geological Survey of Canada: Report of Progress from Its Commencement to 1863 (1863)
Canada and the Canadian Question (1891) Goldwin Smith
Wild Animals I Have Known and 200 Drawings (1898) Ernest Thompson Seton
The Poems of Archibald Lampman (1900) Archibald Lampman
The Imperialist (1904) Sara Jeannette Duncan
Anne of Green Gables (1908) Lucy Maud Montgomery
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) Stephen Leacock
Flint and Feather (1912) E. Pauline Johnson
Maria Chapdelaine (1914) Louis Hémon
Jalna (1927) Mazo de la Roche
The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (1930) H. A. Innis
Such Is My Beloved (1934) Morley Callaghan
The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760-1850 (1937) Donald Creighton
Menaud, maître-draveur (Boss of the River) (1937) Félix-Antoine Savard
As For Me and My House (1941) Sinclair Ross
Two Solitudes (1945) Hugh MacLennan
Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute) (1945) Gabrielle Roy
Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Facts Relating to and the Circumstances Surrounding the Communication by Public Officials and Other Persons in Positions of Trust of Secret and Confidential Information to Agents of a Foreign Power (1946) Kellock-Taschereau Commission
Who Has Seen the Wind (1947) W. O. Mitchell
Les Plouffe (The Plouffe Family) (1948) Roger Lemelin
Refus Global (Complete Refusal) (1948) Paul-Émile Borduas
Empire and Communications (1950) H. A. Innis
Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 1949-1951 (1951) Massey Commission
People of the Deer (1952) Farley Mowat
So Little for the Mind (1953) Hilda Neatby
John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician (1952) and The Old Chieftain (1955) Donald Creighton
Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) Bernard Lonergan
Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957) Northrop Frye
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) Mordecai Richler
The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) Leonard Cohen
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) Marshall McLuhan
Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1963) Peter C. Newman
Report of the Canada Royal Commission on Health Services (1964) Hall Commission
The Stone Angel (1964) Margaret Laurence
In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of András Vajda (1965) Stephen Vizinczey
Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965) George Grant
Prochain épisode (Next Episode) (1965) Hubert Aquin
The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (1965) John A. Porter
Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (A Season in the Life of Emmanuel) (1965) Marie-Claire Blais
Combat Journal for Place d'Armes: A Personal Narrative (1967) Scott Symons
The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967) George Ryga
Final Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1967-69) Laurendeau-Dunton Commission
Les belles-soeurs (1968) Michel Tremblay
Federalism and the French Canadians (1968) Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Nègres blancs d'Amérique (White Niggers of America) (1968) Pierre Vallières
Fifth Business (1970) Robertson Davies
Gentlemen, Players and Politicians (1970) Dalton Camp
Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada (1970) Kari Levitt
The Blacks in Canada: A History (1971) Robin Winks
The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (1971) Northrop Frye
Lives of Girls and Women (1971) Alice Munro
Paul Kane's Frontier (1971) J. Russell Harper
Red Lights on the Prairies (1971) James H. Gray
La Sagouine (1971) Antonine Maillet
The Last Spike (1972) Pierre Berton
Leaving Home (1972) David French
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) Margaret Atwood
Howie Meeker's Hockey Basics (1973) Howie Meeker
The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) Rudy Wiebe
Ten Lost Years: 1929-1939 (1973) Barry Broadfoot
Alligator Pie (1974) Dennis Lee
The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad (1974) Charles Ritchie
Bear (1976) Marian Engel
A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King (1976) C. P. Stacey
Duplessis (1976) Conrad Black
A New Athens (1977) Hugh Hood
The Wars (1977) Timothy Findley
Obasan (1981) Joy Kogawa
None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (1982) Irving Abella and Harold Troper
Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (1982) Charles Taylor
Banting: A Biography (1984) Michael Bliss
Neuromancer (1984) William Gibson
The Canadian Encyclopedia (1985)
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) Margaret Atwood
Report on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (1985) Macdonald Commission
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989) Modris Eksteins
Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) Mordecai Richler
Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989) Tomson Highway
Trudeau and Our Times: The Heroic Delusion (1990) and The Magnificent Obsession (1990) Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall
The Malaise of Modernity (1991) Charles Taylor
Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (1993) Michael Ignatieff
Green Grass, Running Water (1993) Thomas King
The Stone Diaries (1993) Carol Shields
A Fine Balance (1995) Rohinton Mistry
The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation (1995) Charles Hill
The Jade Peony (1995) Wayson Choy
Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (1995) Richard Gwyn
The Unconscious Civilization (1995) John Ralston Saul
Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism (1996) J. L. Granatstein
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1998) Wayne Johnston
A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (1999) John Milloy
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999) Naomi Klein
Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History (2000) Erna Paris
Fire and Ice (2003) Michael Adams
Dark Age Ahead (2004) Jane Jacobs