Canada - Life World Library

Canada - Life World Library (1965) by Brian Moore – Time-Life International
ISBN: None
Condition: Good

Canada, 1965. A land of endless forests, enormous lakes, industrious cities, plentiful natural resources and, judging by the general tone of mid-century reference books, an almost unlimited supply of confidence about the future.

Published by Time-Life International as part of its handsome Life World Library series, Canada is a wonderfully evocative snapshot of the country at a particularly interesting moment in its history. Written by acclaimed Belfast-born novelist Brian Moore, who emigrated to Canada after the Second World War, it combines the broad sweep of a national portrait with the magnificent photography and lavish presentation for which Time-Life books of this period were known.

This is Canada before the internet, before mobile phones and before anybody felt the need to photograph their breakfast. It is a country presented through sweeping landscapes, bustling cities, industry, agriculture, culture and the lives of the people who inhabited a nation that was simultaneously very old, very young and extremely large.

As with many books from the 1960s, part of the fascination today is not simply what it tells us about Canada, but how 1965 chose to explain Canada. This was the age of serious men standing beside hydroelectric projects, enormous pieces of machinery being photographed as symbols of progress, and wilderness scenery presented with the implicit suggestion that mankind would probably get around to doing something useful with it eventually.

There are forests that appear to continue until the curvature of the Earth becomes a practical consideration, cities confidently marching into the modern age, and enough lakes to make Britain look as though it has been rather miserly with them. Canada emerges as a place of extraordinary scale: huge distances, huge resources and an understandable tendency for Canadians to regard a three-hour drive as popping down the road.

For the modern reader, the book has acquired an additional layer of charm. What was once contemporary reportage is now social history. Clothes, cars, architecture, workplaces and attitudes that would barely have warranted comment in 1965 have become little time capsules in their own right. Even the photographs of perfectly ordinary streets can now prove more interesting than some of the things the original editors presumably considered spectacular.

And unlike a modern travel guide, there is no advice about Wi-Fi, boutique hotels, artisan coffee or the best place in Toronto from which to photograph yourself pretending not to notice that you are being photographed. Instead, you get the gloriously earnest Time-Life approach: Here is Canada. It is enormous. We have researched it. Please sit down and pay attention.

Brian Moore is an especially interesting choice of author. Better remembered today as a major novelist, he spent many years living in Canada and brings the perspective of someone who arrived from elsewhere and actually made the country his home. The result is considerably more appealing than a dry geographical handbook and gives the volume an additional literary pedigree.

The physical book itself is also very much an artefact of its era. The Life World Library volumes were substantial, heavily illustrated books designed to look respectable on a shelf and to imply that their owner possessed both a serious interest in international affairs and sufficient furniture to support the entire series.

More than sixty years after publication, Canada now works on several levels at once: as a geographical introduction, a piece of Canadian social history, an example of superb mid-century illustrated publishing and an accidental record of how the prosperous post-war world imagined the decades ahead.

Obviously, Canada has changed rather a lot since 1965. This is therefore not recommended if you urgently need current information about Canadian mobile-phone coverage, immigration regulations or the opening hours of a Tim Hortons in Saskatchewan. For almost everything else—history, nostalgia, photography, vintage publishing, Canadian interest, or simply the pleasure of travelling across an entire country without leaving an armchair—it remains a fascinating book.

A particularly nice addition to a collection of vintage Time-Life, geography, travel, Canadian history or mid-century reference books. It would also make an excellent present for a Canadian, someone moving to Canada, someone who has returned from Canada, or someone who merely enjoys owning books about countries substantially larger than their own.

Condition: Good. A vintage copy with the normal signs of age and previous ownership to be expected from a book first published in 1965. Still perfectly capable of transporting its reader to Canada—although, regrettably, without providing either air miles or entry clearance.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where our books may be old, occasionally obscure and sometimes about a world that has disappeared completely, but at least none of them requires charging overnight.

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