New Brunswick by Michael Collie (review)

422 LETTERS IN CANADA Michael Collie, New Brunswick. Macmillan, :148, $:10.95 This book is a new item in The Traveller's Canada, a travel series about the Canadian provinces. In searching for a writer for such a book, a publisher must be torn between a desire to find someone who by long residence knows the province intimately and a desire to find someone who can look at it freshly through the eyes of an outsider. Macmillan's have apparently compromised, with not altogether happy results. Professor Collie did spend some years in New Brunswick, as a member of the faculty of Mount Allison University: the result is a very sympathetic and informative account of that southeastern area of New Brunswick, but a much less satisfactory account of its other areas. Several pages are devoted to Mount Allison University, but the University of New Brunswick and Universite de Moncton are only referred to in passing. In the section on Saint John, the fine new Saint John campus of UNB is not even mentioned, and in the section on Fredericton the classic dignity of UNB'S Old Arts Building is completely omitted from the list of fine old buildings in that city. Such a bias might be understood and forgiven, but unfortunately this treatment of the universities is symptomatic of the uneven treatment accorded to other aspects of the province. The lovely old frame houses to be found in such places as St Stephen, St Andrew's, Stanley, Woodstock, and Grand Falls are scarcely mentioned; there is nothing about the sandy beaches on the Fundy coast near Pocologan and St George; the islands of Grand Manan, Deer Island, and Campobello are dismissed in a sentence or two; no real sense is conveyed of the distinctive features of Acadian life and culture. In addition, there are a number of errors of fact in the book. It is not true that the population of New Brunswick is decreasing (p xiii); the French-speaking population is not 45 per cent but rather about 34 per cent of the total (p xx); the public consumption of wine and other alcoholic beverages is not illegal in New Brunswick (pp 29, 90); the author of the pamphlet on Dorchester is not Lloyd Macham but Lloyd Machum; the Dorchester Chemical Park no longer exists (p 97) ; the scrapyard in Fredericton is Satter's, not Sutter's (p :139). It is a pity that the book is not better balanced and more accurate, for at his best Professor Collie writes very well indeed. The section on the Dorchester area is comprehensive, atmospherically evocative, and well researched; there is a fine description of Minister's Island, just off the coast from St Andrew's; and throughout Mr Collie maintains a nice balance of friendly appreciation and cool detachment. There are signs that the book has been put together rather hastily, in segments written at intervals over several years; if he had taken a full sabbatical year and devoted it all to the writing of this book he might well have produced a minor masterpiece. (DESMOND PACEY) ...