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432 LETI'ERS IN CANADA: 1963 engagement, knowing that she would always be eccentric to the wheel of Somali life. She works up her material from a diary, but shapes it to explain unpretentiously how her experience changed her. (Mrs. Conger and other Vancouver writers please note.) Here too is a poetic matrix, and here too is poetry, but like her husband's reservoirs, which gather the desert rain, she gathers the desert poems and folk-tales, for the use of others. Mrs. Laurence is already one of our most impressive authors; a few years may alter that statement to "our most impressive." Like none of the foregoing is Robert F. Mirvish's Business is People (McGraw-Hili, pp. viii, 184, $4.95). The author is brother to Edwin Mirvish, the originator and mainspring of Honest Ed's, the Toronto bargain house that offends the fastidious and keeps the rest of us happy. This account is combination "business history" and guide book to successful retailing. The keys to success are given free to those who shop through the text: Fulfill a Need, Go Against the Trend, and Keep it Simple. I would suggest a fourth: Hire Honest Ed. As the narrative nearly makes clear-it is never obvious, nor is it subtle-no substitute will do. Edwin Mirvish loves his job and his city, which is now benefiting from his enthusiasm through the Royal Alex, the Poor Alex, and the art gallery, book shop, etc. in the area of central Toronto becoming known as Honestville. I hope only that he will re-examine his belief that the centre of the city is only for business and not for people; we can live where he works. (JOHN M. ROBSON) CANADIANA Four recent books in the Canadiana.field deserve attention as examples of the explOS ive public interest in Canadiana, the place of Canadian arts and applied arts in Canadian letters, and the degree to which this aspect of Canadian history can contribute to the meaning and understanding of Canadian civilization. The very range of these books from the traditional "belles lettres" style of Harry 1. Symons' Introduction to the Percy C. Band Collection Playthings of Yesterday (Ryerson, pp. x, 96, $12.50); through The Ancestral Roof (Clarke, Irwin, pp. vi, 258, $10.00; photographs by Page Toles), Marion MacRae and Anthony Adamson's urbane and popular survey of domestic architecture of early Ontario; and the factual "common man's" guide to Canadiana, In a Canadian Attic by Gerald Stevens (Ryerson, pp. xii, 260, $4.95; drawings by Jan Vanschyn- del); to the complete reference art bock, The Early Furniture of French Canada by Jean Palardy (Macmillan of Canada, pp. 404, $17.50; translated by Eric McLean), suggests the interesting and wide scope of the Canadiana field as a serious area of study. The Early Furniture of French Canada by Jean Palardy is a major book in the field of decorative arts in Canada. Significantly, perhaps, it is the first book in this field to be sponsored by the Canada Council in conjunction with a provincial government. A painter, interior decorator, film director, and collector, M. Palardy has spent over thirty years with his colleague and mentor, Marius Barbeau, exploring the province of Quebec, the nature of its people, their arts, crafts, and traditions. His monumental survey of Canadian furniture in the French tradition in North America results from ten years' extensive research on this continent as well as Europe. A brief introduction to the history of La Nouvelle France, the houses, daily lives, traditional furniture of its early settlers, and documentary sources precedes the speCific hiStory and catalogue raisonne of individual objects. The main body of the book deals with different furniture forms ranging from functional objects such as armoires, tables, and chairs to household domestic and decorative objects as spinning wheels, clocks, mirrors, and mantels. M. Palardy has selected nearly six hundred pieces from private and public collections to illustrate the forms, the high level of craftsmanship, and development of distinctive Canadian styles of furniture in the French manner from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century when pure traditional furniture ceased to exist. M. Palardy's photography...

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