Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Volume 13: 1901–1910 ed. by Ramsay Cook (review)

222 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 work of Vancouver artist-photographer Jeff Wall, with film and Vancouver as Hollywood North, and with youth culture and sightseeing in Vancouver. The book lacks a concluding chapter which might have knitted together some of the recurring themes; then again, perhaps it is best to leave it as postmodern fragmentation. Delany has put together a terrific collection that is far better than the usual collection. Without exception each chapter has a myriad of ideas that almost burst from the page, all adding up to a substantial intellectual feast. (ALLAN IRVING) Ramsay Cook, general editor. Dictionary oj Canadian Biography. Volume 13: 1901-1910 University of Toronto Press. xxi, 1295. $85.00 cloth Judging from Ramsay Cook's introductory remarks, the financial constraints of the past four years have taken their toll on the staff and plans of the DeB. The volumes were scheduled to cover shorter periods in larger volumes to accommodate the growing complexities and size of the twentieth-century Canadian population. Financial constraints have necessitated the usual/downsizing and restructuring' - the mantra of the 1990s. The revised plan is to keep the volumes the traditional size (roughly six hundred entries), each covering a decade up to 1940. Preserving the mandate and goals of the project while wearing such shackles is obviously a daunting task but the 438 contributors of 648 entries have collaborated on a still very impressive volume. As usual, the biographies qualify for entry according to the date of the person's death, so the pages contain stories of people who were active in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There is a great deal of crossreferencing among the entries, and as usual, the indexing makes it very simple to move around inside this volume and across to earlier volumes. The original idea was partly to get an overview of the networks of influences in a given period, and the work of finding the interstices and intersections among the entries is really very useful in these volumes. The drawback of having to know beforehand when a person died is easily overcome by the many internal indexes, all of them easy to learn how to use. Another rationale for the chronological arrangement of the volumes was the possibility of discovering the trends, preoccupations, political and social assumptions of a particular period in Canadian history, based on the summaries of people's lives which were, in the words of the original patron of the idea, James Nicholson, 'noteworthy from all points of view.' Of course this would mean reading the whole volume and following the criss-crossing of tracks on one's own. Few readers will work up such initiative, which is why the introductions to most of the other volumes, HUMANITIES 223 which offered capsule overviews, were so engaging, if (some will no doubt argue) dubious historiographically. Cook declines to offer such an overview for reasons best known to him, but since he is presumably one of the very few contributors who has read all of the entries, he is in the unique position to offer some insights if any are to be had. It is probably asking for too much but it would be helpful to get his analysis of this wing of what he refers to as I a memory palace displaying many of the necessary elements of that public memory which shapes Canadian society .' It seems that he has had to spend some of his time raising funds - a situation so alarming that users of these volumes might consider getting organized to lobby the proper funding agencies over this state of affairs. Evaluating the comprehensiveness of the volume is impossible for any one person to do. Much may depend upon the discipline one is studying. Given the financial stringency now surrounding the project, it might be helpful to know what criteria are now being used by the research team whose task it is to select the names that will eventually be included - or more to the point those that will be cut out. From the beginning, George Brown, the first editor, acknowledged that minor figures were the most difficult ones to choose. A random, and very cursory, check in...