Amazon.ca
Clever, original, and certainly unique, Charlotte Gray's
The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder is the ultimate guide to Canada's rich material culture. Gray, author of the celebrated biographies
Sisters in the Wilderness and
Flint and Feather, guides her readers, or rather visitors, on a tour of an overwhelming virtual collection of the artifacts of Canadian history, from the prehistoric Albertosaurus to the cutting-edge technology of the Ballard Hydrogen Fuel Cell. The book's design is inventive and appealing, but the diverse nature of the vast collection of images is what makes it an instant Canadian classic. Great works of art like Benjamin West's magisterial painting "The Death of Wolfe" are made to share space with trivia, like Sir John A.'s doodles. Works of stunning beauty and creative genius like the Haida totem pole get their due, but then so do such mundane items as a bag of dried peas from Frobisher's third and final voyage to the Arctic. The objects and images chosen by the book's design team reflect a celebration of our greatest accomplishments. Gray's commentaries are full of insight and interest, exactly what we have come to expect from one of our leading popular historians. You could visit every museum in the country, or you could buy this book.
--William Newbigging
Review
"The illustrations and photographs are wonderful, evoking a startling wealth of places and objects that could never grace a real museum...
The Museum Called Canada is a magnificent undertaking splendidly executed. Canadians can now have their own national museum on their coffee table.”
—John Wilson,
Quill & Quire starred review
“Try to imagine the perfect museum with all the best artifacts of all the best museums in Canada.”
—
Times Colonist (Victoria)
“
The Museum Called Canada is an ingeniously designed, thoroughly researched book that doesn’t overwhelm, even at 700-plus pages. Gray’s mini-essays are warm and human, never drifting into windy abstraction.”
—
Saturday Night“
The Museum Called Canada is certainly one of the best-looking books produced in the country’s publishing history. Aside from the gorgeously photographed images worthy of Vogue magazine and their accompanying short, easily digestible texts reading like the smart sidebars of academis texts, the museum conceit infuses the book with a chic that is self-conscious without being annoying.”
—
The Globe and Mail
