BOOKWORM
A COMPANY AND A COUNTRY
The Company, Stephen R. Bown, Anchor Canada, $24.95. The Hudson’s Bay Company was founded 350 years ago. Its early history is also the origin story of modern Canada.
Stephen Bown begins when it all began, 1670. The Company started out small, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with Indigenous inhabitants of subarctic Canada.
Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Yet for most of its existence the Company seldom directly employed more than five hundred workers.
Desi readers cannot miss the historical parallel with the East India Company that initially came to India to trade for spices and ended up creating the British Raj in the subcontinent.
The modus operandi was the same.
Countless generations of the Iroquois and the Metis and French-Canadian voyageurs and others formed the backbone of The Company’s operations.
The interior of North America in the 1670s was bewildering and unknown, and it was decades before the Company began to appreciate the political and cultural complexity of its trading monopoly.
Bown’s narrative is a page turner. The arrival of the French in 1780s, the Anglo-French rivalry, the coming of Governor George Simpson and ruthless play of dominance...Bown is an expert storyteller.
A required reading for anyone who seeks an understanding of Canada today.
How can we know where we are headed unless we remember how we got here in the first place?
QUINTESSENTIALLY CANADIAN
Planet Canada by John Stackhouse, Random House, $35. A leading thinker on Canada’s place in the world contends that our country’s greatest untapped resource may be the three million Canadians who don’t live here.
Entrepreneurs, educators, humanitarians, and surgeons, lawyers, miners... an entire province’s worth of Canadian citizens live and work outside Canada, exporting Canadian values, acting as ambassadors for Canada. But it’s a resource that we are not optimizing, writes John Stackhouse in Planet Canada.
He introduces us to Sean Mannion, owner of the backpack on display at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
Mannion travelled the world as a whitewater guide in the 80s, finding that people everywhere loved Canadians.
Delving into what it means to be Canadians today – is the soft power we once were now seen as a nation of affable backpackers? – Stackhouse shares the stories of countless Canadians.
Among them:
Stephen Toope, vice-chancellor of University of Cambridge, the first foreigner in 800 years appointed to the post.
George Woodcock, author, who describes Canada as a “hybrid nation in which it is difficult to determine what is distinctly Canadian, until one realizes that the synthesis, after all, is the point of originality.”
Shona Brown, who paved the way for “a steady stream of Canadians who are today all over Silicon Valley” including Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and Deepak Khandelwal.
Hyphenated Canadians and dual citizens make an appearance, too – Kamal Sidhu, the first Miss India-Canada, and Ruby Bhatia, another pageant winner who found success in India.
Stackhouse also writes about Nisha Pahuja, but a typo mis-identifies the documentary-maker as male.
There are priceless insights on quintessential “Canadian qualities” including this one from Martina Stawski, a Pickering, Ontario teacher, who became a YouTube star in South Korea and Japan.
“We’re quite open to other cultures. We don’t think of things as weird. If people say take your shoes off at the door, we take our shoes off at the door.”
POWERFUL WORDS
Words of Change by Anik Khan, Spruce Books, $16.95. Anik Khan is a hip-hop artiste whose TEDx talk Finding Your Mustard Oil explores the positive effects of spotlighting niche cultures.
One of his songs, Damn, it feels good to be an immigrant, ended up on a billboard in Times Square.
In Words of Change, he describes the world through the eyes of immigrants.
Sundar Pichai: “Immigration has contributed immensely to America’s economic success, making it a global leader in tech, and also Google the company it is today.”
Yo-Yo-Ma: “A country is not a hotel, and it’s not full... In culture, we seek truth and understanding... In culture we build bridges, not walls.”
These are voices of immigrants from all over the world who seek to make new lives in the US, UK and Canada. The specifics may vary from country to country, the emotional landscapes are universal.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: “My children have had other birthplaces and... shall strike their roots in unaccustomed earth.”
Don’t we all come with the same dreams, aspirations and hopes for our children?
Ani Sanyal: “Immigrant parents want us to believe that success is entirely dependent on ‘hard skills’ – a degree, a job, etc. The reality is, it’s also based on our ability to manifest and attract what we want. These skills are worthy as well. There is no success without imagination.”
Anik Khan does a cheeky nod to this sentiment in his acknowledgments.
“Aren’t y’all glad I started rapping now? lol. Whoever thought a kid from a village would be dedicating his first book to his parents in America?”
We should all be so lucky.
DAYS OF OUR LIVES
All The Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy, Simon & Schuster, $22.99. In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman.
As he navigates the loss, Myshkin – whose grandfather gave him the pet name after the epileptic prince in The Idiot by Dostoevsky – observes the different ways in which his family deals with the reality.
His grandfather talks as though it is the most normal thing, mothers leave all the time. Did a certain event take place before she left, or after?
His father, who also takes off to explore life as an ascetic, returns and behaves as though she never existed.
As an adult, Myshkin is afraid to read a packet delivered to him that he is certain contains old letters from his mother because the past he has shaped for himself fits well enough now, he doesn’t want to change it for a new version.
When he does read the letters she sent to a friend, he meets a woman who wrote, “There was bird inside me beating its wings. I had to tear my chest open and let it free. It makes me bleed. It hurts beyond words.”
Who wonders if this is how partings happen. “No word, no preparation, it is over and you didn’t even know it.”
The narrative is nuanced and finely detailed, not all sad, all the way. Parts like the one about Myshkin’s envy of his grandfather’s adventures as a teenager make one laugh out loud.
In this weaving together of history and story, Anuradha Roy presents a cast that includes Rabindranath Tagore; Akhtari bai who sings Ae mohabbat tere anjaam pe; and Maitreyi Devi, among others. The storied Sundar Nursery in Delhi makes an appearance, too.
The lyrical translation of Tagore’s Akash bhora surjo taara is a treat.
NEVER APART
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota, Knopf Canada, $34. Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and he’s been hailed as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
In China Room, he weaves together the stories of a woman and a man separated by more than half a century but united by blood. Inspired in part by the author’s family history.
PROUDLY CANADIAN
Innovation Nation by David Johnston and Tom Jenkins, Tundra, $16.99. Many of us can point to insulin – or the Blackberry – and NASA’s Canadarm when asked to name Canadian inventions. But did you know that the light bulb, electric radio and dump trucks are also Canadian inventions? Or that the universal declaration of human rights was written by a Canadian? Or that the humble garbage bags and the new biodegradable ones were also created by Canadians? A great way to teach young readers how Canadian innovators made the world smarter, smaller, kinder, safer, healthier, wealthier and happier.
TEEN REVIEW
By DAKSH GULATI
Steelheart (The Reckoners, #1) by Brandon Sanderson, Penguin Random House, $15.99.
Steelheart is a story about revenge. Reckoners are trying to save the country of Newcago by killing all the epics. David lost his parents because of the epics and despises them for taking over. Steelheart’s goal is to rule over Newcago but she ends up making war against the citizens that aren’t epics. These characters have opposite desires for how they want to help the citizens of Newcago.
Many side characters show up to spice up the story. David could be struggling and on the verge of death, but someone saves him somehow. Even though this book is about revenge, there are also parts where characters are nice to each other and want to save/protect each other.
I like how the author created a new city and made the story interesting from the start. David might seem weak, but he learns to survive while there are many strong epics around the city. He starts showing his real character traits in the middle, like being brave by going into combat without hesitating, and being smart by finding a good team to be with, knowing his way around the city/epics, and knowing what to do in a tight situation.
I would recommend this book to people that love side characters and many plot twists.
• Daksh Gulati is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.