Landscapes and Landmarks of Canada: Real, Imagined, (Re)Viewed ed. by Maeve Conrick et al. (review)

The articles contained within this volume seek to define and re-define perceptions and meanings as gleaned from the landscapes, landmarks, and artistic expressions that inform discourses of Canadian identity/identities and collective memory. Broadly framed by Benedict Anderson's oft-invoked notion of 'imagined community', the editors build on previous scholarship in delineating the concept of landscape as an interconnected and expansive one. The articles in this collection explore varied landscapes in relation to history, politics, natural and built environments, sites of memory, and the arts.

Traversing from geographies, boundaries, and historical events of the nation, to the microcosms of roadways, cities, and monuments, and then to re/constructions of place, history, and iconography through film, music, art, and dance, the structure of the book is loosely arranged thematically into three sections. The first addresses the geographic space/s Canadians occupy, beginning with work in which the idea of Canada-as-continent is problematised, linking the earliest perceptions of the landmass to nation building. The article suggests visualising the nation as an archipelago, which is a constructive entry point for the reader into the collection, in encouraging bottom-up thinking – a crucial angle to read from when engaging with work that seeks to challenge accepted cultural norms and perceptions. The next section introduces the imagination (and re-imagination) of history, taking into account displacement, nationalism, collective memory, and the monument, reminding the reader that history too is a landscape, and one that is often shaped to suit a need at the expense of oversimplifying or even ignoring the intricacies of history. The third and largest section is concerned with the arts. This last section on the whole, is perhaps the strongest, with contributors offering nuanced views of how the arts work to disrupt and offer critical perspectives on complex social, environmental, and cultural narratives. For example, the work of contemporary Indigenous artists Lori Blondeau, Kent Monkman, and Adrian Stimson is highlighted, as is their concern in destabilising the normative grandeur of artwork by the Group of Seven.

Landscapes and Landmarks of Canada is an ambitious collection, with rich and varied subject material, but it also might have been better served by a more focused selection of articles; perhaps it could have been split into two volumes so as to better showcase each contributor's work, and therefore allow for as much depth as there is breadth. In its current iteration, the collection tends to reveal that some articles are more essential than others. Consistency in terminology should have been more carefully maintained, as First Nations, Aboriginal and Indigenous are not interchangeable terms, and each of these terms is used at different points in the book.

Overall, the articles presented in this text are a useful addition, and important to include in any critical study of perceptions and meanings of nation and identity, particularly as they continue to be re-defined, re-imagined, and re-positioned.