Colourful Canada [antikvár]

IT has been said that he who would describe Canada must use for his pen a mountain crag and for ink the waters of the Arctic Sea. It is, I suppose, a way of saying that only a fool would attempt to, that a wise man, given the choice, would prefer to spend his time chasing shooting stars with a butterfly net. We are fortunate here. We have no need to even try to portray in words that shaggy half-continent which, lying sprawled between three oceans, is the subject of this book.We have photography. That is the wonder of it. Photography in colour. That is the glory. We need not bend a mountain top, or rile the waters of a northern sea, in a futile attempt to capture in the space of a few lines of printed prose, a word picture of the second biggest country in the world.To say that Canada comprises nearly 4,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface is to say nothing that is important. To say that Canada has within her borders over half of the world's supply of fresh water is not to impress a man who knows that to survive he needs the stuff only by the cup full. No picture of a nation is conveyed. But point a camera at a sea-swept coast. Point a camera lens at Newfoundland. The shutter clicks. The deed is done. The very warp and woof of Canada's newest province, of England's oldest colony, though it be still a world away is spread before your eyes.If this book does nothing else it proves, I think, that Canada is hke nothing else on earth so much as a beautiful woman. Canada is many things to many men. And yet she is always herself. To the native born she is mother. The immigrant takes her to wife. To others, the American tourist, the European sportsman, the foreign industrialist, she is a lovely mistress, to be enjoyed, to be left, to be visited again. She is all things to all men and all men are at home with her.Thumb through the pages ahead and you'll see what I mean. Stop, for instance, where those lovely pictures of Québec are shown. Centuries have come and gone since the ancestors of the Québécois came out of Normandy and Brittany in France to make their homes along the banks of the St Lawrence. Yet what man coming out of Normandy or Brittany today would, on coming to Québec, think himself in a foreign land? There is a Norman house. There is a Breton bake oven. There is a church he might well have left yesterday on the shores of La Manche, as the French call the English Channel. This is France, yet this is Canada.It may be that your name is MacDonald, or MacArthur, or McHugh. If it is you might stop your page-thumbing at those parts of the book which show Nova Scotia, which the erudite will tell you means New Scotland, or Prince Edward Island, where the Gaelic is still spoken, and where the men of the land still thrill to the skirl of the pipes. Hold your