Bookworm, no. 154
Rose Hendrie reviews Adrian Raeside’s “The Canada Handbook.” Ted Fraser on Whit Fraser’s “From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall.” Inside the July/August issue.
The Canada Handbook
Adrian Raeside
Harbour Publishing
128 pages, softcover and ebook
Nothing says Canada like a beaver decked out in a Mountie uniform, holding a hockey stick in one paw and a mug of frothy beer (garnished with a mini Maple Leaf flag, naturally) in the other. According to Adrian Raeside, this is how the world sees us. The author and cartoonist originally hails from New Zealand but has been a proud Canuck since 1983. The Canada Handbook is his tongue-in-cheek illustrated guide to the good, slightly bad, and bizarre in the nation he calls home.
With colourful illustrations, Raeside offers a brief national history, insights into customs, and numerous little jabs—including an angry beaver flipping the bird—at a certain orange leader down south. Raeside argues that this state (not the fifty-first) has always been great. You may be aware that basketball and insulin came out of the country, but did you know paint rollers, sports bras, and the international classification system for congenital heart disease did too? As for any threats of invasion, Raeside provides further tips: Set the wildlife on them. Or Montreal drivers. If all else fails, the True North strong and free does possess chemical weapons: “the contents of junior hockey gear bags!”
Yes, the cartoons here spend plenty of time cozying up to stereotypes—even if readers are supposed to be laughing with them, not at them. Yes, the “eh”-saying populace is depicted as turbo-apologizing, Tim Hortons–swilling, perpetual nice guys. And yes, these comic panels are about as diverse as an NHL lineup. But the whole project harks back to a more innocent time. Sometimes a little chuckle over a man assessing the depth of his winter tire treads—to which the wheel responds, “I feel I have a role in an existential society, in that I am part of the freedom movement”—is just what the beaver ordered.
—Rose Hendrie
From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall: Stories of Canada
Whit Fraser
Douglas & McIntyre
232 pages, softcover and ebook
In From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall, Whit Fraser looks back over fifty years as a CBC journalist, chair of the Canadian Polar Commission, executive director of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and, finally, viceregal consort to our first Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon. Having previously written a memoir about living and working in the North as well as a historical mystery set in Nunavut, Fraser pairs a reporter’s thoroughness with literary chops. “I believe the Ice Curtain melted before the Iron Curtain was lifted,” he quips about the underrated role Arctic nations played in ending the Cold War. Another passage describes the wind on a frigid day as “blowing a thousand tiny rivers of twisting, drifting snow across the pavement.”
Fraser got his start at the CBC in 1967 as a radio announcer in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit). Since then, he’s banked decades’ worth of behind-the-scenes intrigue and tricks of the trade. He writes of eating cold pizza in the back of a small plane while being flown to his next story, of newsroom banter, and of scenes that were never broadcast. Unshackled from the public broadcaster’s policy to “say only what I had observed, rather than what I believed,” he is now free to give the inside scoop. He indulges the odd grudge—he hasn’t forgiven the overzealous Mounties at Cree protests at Alberta’s Lubicon Lake in the late 1980s, for instance—but Fraser is gracious to his friends, sources, and former colleagues.
The memoir is at its best when Fraser discusses his family, his passions (hockey and hunting, among others), and, in a different register, reconciliation. Many chapters are filled with frustration over the treatment of Indigenous people, while still offering hope for a better future. He praises “the remarkable work” of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which served to “awaken all of us.” Ultimately, he writes, “It’s a big world that’s sometimes beautifully connected.” With stories from Merigomish, Nova Scotia, to Yellowknife and beyond, Fraser highlights those bonds.
—Ted Fraser
Remembering David Cayley
The author and CBC Radio producer David Cayley died at his home on June 10. Many readers will remember Cayley’s brave and prescient essay about public policy and COVID-19, “The Prognosis,” from our October 2020 issue. Those who don’t will find in it a fierce intelligence and enduring humanity.
Inside the July/August Issue
“It’s as if some people forgot how to behave in public and others never learned. Then there are those who simply do not care. All the while, data plans have increased in gigabytes and dropped in dollars. There’s no monetary reason to be stingy with one’s reels or FaceTime, even on the subway, where connectivity improves by the week.” First things first: a note from Kyle Wyatt.
Danielle Douez reads Nadja Lubiw-Hazard’s incisive debut short story collection.
“I want to be absolutely clear: I am in no way averse to a crop of new fans. I adore the bandwagon with my whole heart.” Stacey May Fowles considers the sports curmudgeon.
And much more!