Remaining Material

LETTERS IN CANADA: 1954 267 been written outside of Canada. There is a passage, which is, incidentally , a good example of Mr. Davies' thoughtful, relaxed style, where certain characteristics of nineteenth-century Canadian architecture are analysed:Now the peculiar quality of this picturesqueness does not lie in a superficial resemblance to the old world; it is, rather, a compound of colonialism , romanticism and sturdy defiance of taste; it is a fascinating and distinguished ugliness which is best observed in the light of Canadian November and December afternoons. This picturesqueness is not widely admired, and examples of it are continually being destroyed, without one voice being raised in their defence. But where they exist, and are appreciated , they suggest a quality which is rather that of Northern Europeof Scandinavia and pre-revolutionary Russia- than of England or the U.S.A. It is in such houses as these that the characters in the plays of Ibsen had their being; it was in this light, and against these backgrounds of stained wood and etched glass that the people of Tchekov talked away their lives. And, if the Canadian building be old enough, the perceptive eye may see faint ghosts from Pushkin and Lermontov moving through the halls. This is the architecture of a Northern people, upon which the comfort of England and the luxury of the United States have fallen short of their full effect. Most readers will recognize that Mr. Davies has isolated a peculiar quality of our culture. This novel proves, however, that we have subsequently acquired some more attractive qualities. Leaven of Malice is a synthesis of some of the best of them: it has the wit and the intellectual gaiety of our radio drama; it has the urbanity of our best scholarly prose; and it has the detached irony that several critics have discerned as the mark of our national character in its highest reaches. III. REMAINING MATERIAL J. M. S. CARELESS, A. BRADY, AND OTHERS The five sections of this final survey of the English-Canadian field are allotted respectively to: (i) BOOKS ON CANADA, THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE, reviewed by Professor Careless; (ii) SOCIAL STUDIES, reviewed by Professor Brady; (iii) Works in the HUMANITIES; (iv) MISCELLANEOUS PROSE; and (v) A Note on DRAMA. Reviews not otherwise designated are by the Editor. About the only valid generalization to be made regarding the books in this section, on CANADA, THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE, is that more of them are bound in red than in any other colour. Apart from this fact, one might note that the list includes a number of works con- 268 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY cerned with aspects of Ontario or of the North, very little on the West or Quebec, nothing on the Maritimes, and a substantial remainder that fall in no particular category. Garden Gateway to Canada, by Neil F. Morrison (Ryerson, x, 344 pp., $5.00), a history of the city of Windsor and Essex County, is a commendable piece of local historical writing: lucid and thorough, and obviously based on an intensive knowledge of the area. It is effectively illustrated, chiefly with old photographs, since the history of Windsor largely falls within the photographic period. But its principal merit lies in its author's sense of pattern. Unlike many another venture in local history, this work does not allow the multitude of small details to obscure the main lines of the community's growth. There are but two notable shortcomings: first, the absence of a largescale map of Essex, a need not adequately met by the small diagrams in the text, or by the "pictorial" map in the front end paper (which looks as if it had been taken from a cheap tourist folder) ; second, the lack of any bibliography or references. Why do Canadian authors and publishers so often detract from the permanent value of a book by this omission, on the dubious ground that a few pages of footnotes or bibliography, hidden in decent obscurity at the back, would frighten away the general reader? On the other side of Ontario, Blodwen Davies' Ottawa (McGrawHill , vi, 186 pp., $3.95) presents the story of the capital city, again...