Tragedy in the Commons (Alison Loat & Michael MacMillan)

Strength of Conviction (Tom Mulcair)

Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (Tom Wolfe)

All I Know Now (Carrie Hope Fletcher)

Released on April 23rd 2015, All I Know Now: Wonderings and Reflections On Growing up Gracefully is the first book by British YouTuber and actress Carrie Hope Fletcher. Although she prefers to think of herself as primarily an actress, Fletcher has amassed more than half a million followers on her YouTube channel "ItsWayPastMyBedTime." 

While many books released by YouTubers take the form of memoirs, All I Know Now is more of a guide or advice book for her teenage viewers. Fletcher organizes her book like a play, with an Overture, eight acts, a finale, and a curtain call. Each "Act" deals with different subject matter. She deals with everything from making to friend, to internet etiquette ("Internetiquette"), sex, relationships and life goals.

Underneath the dust jacket, the front board of the book shows the definition of hopeful,
 a quality Fletcher strives to embody 

Although I am slightly older than the target audience for All I Know Now, and although I would have enjoyed a few more personal anecdotes, Fletcher has written a solid book. There's nothing groundbreaking in the life advice that she presents to her readers, but the advice she offers is sound and, I expect, helpful for her teenage readers and YouTube viewers. 

Fletcher's note to readers on the front fly-leaf of the dust jacket

Value Village Book Finds

A new Value Village second hand shop went in not far from my home about a month ago, so I rode the bus out today and browsed their book section. I found seven books, including an Everyman's Library and few vintage New Canadian Library paperbacks.

My favourite find today was this expo67 guide book. It only cost me $1.50. I've been fascinated with the Montreal 1967 World Exposition since I was 15. I'm happy to be able to add it to my collection of expo67 and Canadian centennial memorabilia. 

I found two New Canadian Library editions. I already own Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches if a Little Town in another edition, but since I collect these vintage NCL editions, I was pleased to pick it up.  

I also found an NCL edition of Anna Brownell Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, a work which I was introduced to while taking a class in early Canadian literature last summer. 

Additionally, I picked up the Coles Notes for Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes, a Canadian classic which I've loved since high school. I don't really need the Coles Notes, but they're a neat collectors item for my Canadian Lit. collection. 

I was pleased to come across A Military History of Canada by Desmond Morton, a book which I've heard good things about. The synopsis indicates that it questions that idea of Canada as a peacekeeping nation. With our current involvements in the war against ISIS and in the Ukraine, I think this is a very timely book for me to read. 

Last of all, I picked up this 1950 Everyman's Library edition of Peer Gynt by Isben. 

Pierre Vallières' "White Niggers of America"

While the title of Pierre Vallières' book--part memoir and part political treaties--is  quite obviously offensive today, at the time of its publication in 1968 Vallières meant to illustrate what he saw as a striking parallel between the experience of the Québécois and African Americans. Whether or not his parallel goes too far is up to the reader to decide. While I understand Vallières point, personally, I think his comparison takes things a little bit too far. 

Pierre Vallières, a Québécois journalist, writer and intellectual, was arrested by American police on the request of the Canadian government while picketing outside the United Nations in New York in 1966. While awaiting deportation to Canada to face what he described as trumped-up murder charge related to his involvement with the FLQ, Vallières hastily penned this book. After serving as his own defense in court, he was sentenced to life in prison. Vallières considered himself a political prisoner, and criticized the court for convicting him of murder based on his political activities and opinions. 

In his book, Vallières explains that French-Canadians were--in many cases--forcibly brought over to Canada by the French government, where they were mistreated by first the ruling class, then the Church, and the Anglo-Canadians and Americans. He chronicles how French-Canadians were paid less, denied economic opportunities and treated as a source of cheap labour-- treated like "slaves." 

Vallières draws on his own childhood growing up in the slums of Montreal in the 1940s and 50s with no running water, no sewage system, and poor educational opportunities. Driven by the desire to escape a meaningless and oppressive life in which he could only ever hope to be satisfied with "half a loaf," he pursued his education and focused on his writing, while trying to reconcile himself with the Church and with his own nation--Quebec. 

Vallières concluded that the only answer for Quebec was a Marxist one. The only path which would allow the Québécois to be free was, in Vallières' view, a path of "radical changes in the relations of production" which could only happen through revolution. By necessity, the revolution would need to be a violent one, and would need to be organized; it would not simply happen on its own. 

For Pierre Vallières the FLQ was "the armed avant-garde of the exploited classes of Quebec." He saw Quebec as one piece or front of a global revolutionary movement. Quebec was, to use his words, the avenue through which he had chosen "to pursue the struggle against imperialism."  

As a piece of Canadian political history, this book is a gem. Not only does it shed light on one of the many perspectives which drove the separatist movement after the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, but it also provides a unique look at the FLQ and at the application of Marxist theory in the Canadian political sphere. 

Reading Again

Over the past month I haven't had a whole lot of time to read or to write about anything not related to my classes. Now that I've handed in my last final paper and written most of my exams, I can finally dig into the pile of books I've been anxiously anticipating and hopefully post on here more frequently.

I started this blog almost exactly two years ago at the end of my first year of university. I wanted to make sure that I was absorbing what I read and thinking about it as well. Two years later, that's still what I want to do. The major difference between two years ago and now--apart from my ever evolving taste in reading material--is that now, unlike then, someone occasionally reads my posts.

To kick off my return to leisure reading, I thought I'd share a couple of the books I've bought over the past two or three months. Even when I'm not reading, I'm buying.

To start, I'll share my most recent buy, The Battle of London: Trudeau, Thatcher, and the Fight for Canada's Constitution by Frederic Bastien. When I pre-ordered the new Dean Brody CD that comes out April 21st (go check out his music!) I threw this in to get free shipping. Canadian Constitutional law and history have fascinated me for a long time, but until recently my reading and exploration have been fragmented. 

Next, I have Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. This was mandatory reading in my grade 12 English class back in high school. I hated it at the time, but it's been a few years and for whatever reason it keeps coming back to me. I will always be grateful to my high school English teachers for introducing me to Canadian Lit. I think it's time for a re-read. I couldn't resist the Penguin Modern Classics edition. 

Finally, I picked up Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author who has quickly become one of my favourites. It should be a fascinating and perhaps challenging read as there don't appear to be any chapter or even paragraph breaks anywhere within the text. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Gerald Martin)

It took me nearly two full weeks to get through this biography. It clocks in at just over 650 pages, but the last hundred, approximately, are notes and indexes. It's not as hefty as it looks at first glance, but Gerald Martin doesn't skip details. He traces Marquez's life from before he was born, to the years he spent in Europe, to Mexico and Cuba, right up into the 2000s. Martin tracks and theorizes the literary influences and writing process for every one of Marquez's published novels, from One Hundred Years of Solitude, to Memories of my Melancholy Whores. 

Gerald Martin shows us Marquez as not only a Latin-American  Nobel prize winning writer, but also as a reader of Hemingway, a world traveler, a friend of Fidel Castro, and a man of political conviction. As I read, I couldn't help but romanticize Marquez. He lived in Paris. He wrote journal articles from behind the iron curtain. He ventured into the politics of revolution and war. How can I not see a Romantic figure? 

At the same time, I got the sense that if I had known him, I wouldn't have liked him. I can't argue with his politics, or with his writing--which is unlike anything else I've ever read. It's Martin's version of Marquez, a somewhat arrogant writer who took pleasure in playing with the media, who seemed to want to divorce himself from nostalgia, that I don't like. Then again, maybe I would have liked him. Who can say? A biography is only a representation--a single perception--of a person. 

When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing (Stephen Henighan)

When Words Deny the World is a 2002 publication containing essays about Canadian writing, as Stephen Henighan saw it at the turn of the century. Much of the collection laments the decline of quality Canadian writing, and writing culture, which Henighan believes was caused--in part-- by globalization and free trade agreements like NAFTA.

He points out that Canadian writing had become-- by the late 90s and early 2000s-- Toronto-centric. In one biting essay he claims that shoddy writers are published more easily than talented Prairie writers, for instance, for the simple reason that they live in Toronto and share than city's social scene and point of view.

He morns the demise of small publishing houses, and criticizes the larger (often) American owned publishing companies, as well as the media, for turning Canadian writing into a commercialized industry rather than a cultural art. 

While I can understand the validity of his Toronto-centric argument, it isn't necessarily true today. I'm not the most up-to-date Canadian lit. reader, but I have noticed wonderful writing and successful writers coming out of, not only Toronto, but elsewhere in Canada. One of my favourite literary magazines, The Fiddlehead, is published New Brunswick. I can imagine that technology has, in the last thirteen years, changed the ability of writers to connect with publishers from their own corners of the country. 

I do understand his grief regarding small publishing houses. In fact, I can't really think of any novel I've read by a Canadian author that was published by a small house. The Canadian books on my shelves mostly bare the names of Doubleday, Penguin Canada and New Canadian Library. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I love the editions and many of the books that these companies release. I do think, however, that small publishers do have a necessary place. Penguin Canada and the other big publishers are more likely to publish the authors they already know and more likely to avoid taking chances with 'controversial subject matter.' 

The point that struck me the most in Henighan's essays was his frustration over setting. There is an unwritten rule in the movie and TV industry that things must not seem too Canadian. If a TV show or movie is ever to reach an international, or an American audience, it must not be set in Canada. Apparently, Canada is boring, or not universal enough. Yes, TV shows like Flashpoint have been successful, even though they broke this rule, but the majority of Canadians working in TV and the movie industry seem to be very careful to set their work in either a well known American city, or a nondescript American setting.

I've noticed the same trend in music. I always feel a little bit disappointed when a Canadian singer, instead of making references to Canada in their songs, mentions American landmarks. As a Canadian, I often find myself wishing for a little something of our own. 

The same is true of our writers. Canadian writers rarely set their novels in Canada these days. We may read Canadian novels set in America, and Canadian novels set in India, or Afghanistan (and I'm not saying these aren't wonderful and works of art in their own right), but only once in a while do we find a contemporary bestselling Canadian book set in Canada. In the back of the minds of Canadian writers is, according to Henighan, the fear that we may make our novel "too Canadian." If a novel is too Canadian, then publishers will not want it because they believe that American and international audiences won't want it.  

I think I've gone on long enough about this book. As a final note, I will say that thirteen years after publication the issues that Henighan brought up in this work are still relevant. We have Canadian writers and Canadian classics, but will the Canadian setting and Canadian identities ever be established in a permanent way, as legitimate topics to write about for mass audiences? I'm sure authors like Hugh Macleenan once thought they had achieved this, but the modernist era is over, and, as Henighan feared in 2002, we seem to have lost a little ground. 

In My Mailbox Today: "Art of Rhetoric" (Aristotle)

I couldn't resist ordering this beautiful little Aristotle edition.

Square Dancing in the Ice Age (Abbie Hoffman)

Square Dancing in the Ice Age shows the more serious side of Abbie Hoffman. While books like Revolution for the Hell of It and Steal this Book are humorous, satirical and--for lack of a better word--whimsical with their treatment of politics, this book portrays an older, more seasoned and more serious Hoffman.

It includes more than 25 essays and articles written by Hoffman while he was underground (as a fugitive) and after he turned himself in. He makes it very clear in his introduction and throughout the book that he regrets nothing about his political activities during the 60s and 70s. He does not consider himself one of those radicals who learned his lesson, reconciled with society and settled down. In fact, the final essay shows Hoffman, once again, in an activist role. This time, as an environmental activist concerned with a project on the St. Lawrence. 

When Hoffman went underground  in 1974, after being accused(falsely?) of conspiring to distribute cocaine, he did not find a quiet corner to hide in. Instead, after setting himself up with a false identity (he had many in his years underground), he took risks and helped sustain himself by writing. 

One of my favourite articles in this collection is "Inside the FBI." Hoffman literally walked into the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington DC, where the FBI has its headquarters, and took a tour. He actually published the article afterwards. What caught my interest was not only the sheer insanity of Abbie's act, but the tone of the article. It's a thoughtful and extremely well framed critique of the FBI as an institution. 

Another favourite was "Cold War Language: An Editorial Reply." If I hadn't of realized it before, this article would have shown me just how well-educated and well-read Hoffman was. The article is, in its essence, a study of rhetoric. The first lines are as follows: "Language shapes our environment. It is impossible to have thoughts without words. This well established fact seems to be completely ignored by reporters and broadcasters who claim to be 'objective' while using heavily loaded language"(p.195). Hoffman had to have read Saussure. 

A few of the article are light hearted as well. There is one "Mexico: Less Money, More Fun" which presents itself as a travel article, and one titled "The Great Gourmet Rip-Off" detailing Hoffman's travels in France where he pretended to be a writer for Playboy, thereby securing himself free meals by some of the country's best chefs. "Television's God Show" and "In Search of Lock Ness Nellie: A Fable" are also great, light, but deep articles.

(As a side note. I found a used library discard copy of this book online and paid about $10 for it including the shipping). 

In My Mailbox Today: To America With Love: Letters from the Underground

Abbie Hoffman fascinates me. His politics are not my politics. Yet, in a way, I admire him. His books capture my imagination and inspire me. Hoffman, an American activist and so called "Yippie," specialized in street theatre (sometimes called guerrilla theatre) in the 1960s and 70s. In 1974, after getting busted for drugs, Hoffman went underground to avoid jail time.

I discovered Abbie Hoffman's work about a year and a half ago when I read Revolution for the Hell of It. I followed it up a few months later with Steal This Book and, shortly after, The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman. I'm currently waiting for another book, Square Dancing in the Ice Age to arrive. 

Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures (John Granger)

Harry Potter's Bookshelf is an unauthorized study of literary influences in the Harry Potter books.  The author, John Granger, has published a number of other books on Harry Potter. 

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I picked up Harry Potter's Bookshelf. What I got was a crash-course in select areas of English literature--enough material to fill an entire English course crammed into about 300 pages. 

Granger bases his analysis on  Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye's, iconological school. In the introduction, Granger explains that he will look at "the surface," "the moral," "the allegorical" and "the anagogical or spiritual"(xv). 

In the remainder of the book, Granger ties the Harry Potter series to the genres of the detective story, the schoolboy story (think Enid Blythe), the gothic, Jane Austen and post-modernism. He identifies links to The Canterbury Tales,  the Bible, Charles Dickens, alchemy, and much more, all while utilizing Frye's iconological framework.  

Although I enjoyed this book immensely, I found "the anagogical" aspect of Granger's analysis a little too abstract, like listening to an English prof. pull at tiny details to build a theory that may or may not be true, or have been intended by the author. 

However, I don't outright disagree with any of Granger's arguments and analysis. Reading, after-all, is intertextuality.  The interpretation of a text falls on the reader and every reader will experience and interpret a text differently based on the other texts (books/ideas) that they have engaged with and experienced in the past. 

Harry Potter's Bookshelf takes analysis of the Harry Potter series to a whole new level, but its clearly written, not for the average reader, but for those who study English. I wouldn't, however, discourage anyone with an interest in Harry Potter from giving this book a try. 

My Salinger Year (Joanna Rakoff)

First off, sorry for the glare on the picture. Library bindings don't tend to photograph well. Second, I really enjoyed My Salinger Year. I don't often read brand new books, but this 2014 memoir sounded too interesting to pass up.*

In 1997, Joanna Rakoff was fresh out of University with a degree in literature, a mountain of debt, and few job prospects. Perhaps one of the reasons this book is so popular now, is because 1997 could just as easily be 2014. Newly graduated students with masters degrees have mountains of debt and no job prospects. The same uncertain feeling that Rakoff experienced in 1997, is still felt by young people starting out into the world on their own now. 

In 1997, Rakoff was lucky. She scored a job as an assistant at the literary agency who represented J.D. Salinger, the author of Catcher in the Rye, a book I'm slightly embarrassed to admit I have never read. I suppose that's okay, because when Rakoff began working at the literary agency, she too had very little experience with J.D Salinger's writing. 

Earning about $18 000 a year, a salary her father thought was too little even back in 1997, Rakoff lived in a tiny chilly apartment with her boyfriend. While trying to sort out her personal life, and assist her boyfriend with his own writing, she secretly worked on her own writing.  

Rakoff is also the author of the novel A Fortunate Age. 

(If you feel inclined to, you can check out Joanna Rakoff's personal website here: 

http://www.joannarakoff.com/) 

*My arts writing prof. from this past semester says I shouldn't use "interesting" to describe anything because it is an insincere word. I don't care. I'm not insincere. For me, "interesting" is the highest of complements. 

Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin

Published in 2013, Fragile Empire by Ben Judah is a journalistic portrayal of post-soviet Russia. Judah focuses on President Putin, and frames the book around the perception that he has fallen out of favour and his days in power are numbered.

Looking at this book now, in November of 2014, I can't help but wonder if Judah would write this book differently now. Putin may have gone through a rough political patch, but his popularity in Russia is still very high. As other writers have noted, Putin will continue to enjoy popularity because there is no one with equivalent popularity or power to replace him.

I started Fragile Empire in September and have been reading it chapter by chapter since then. My Contemporary Russian Politics Professor assigned the book as mandatory reading. I found it refreshing and light, compared to the other more academic articles I also read in the course.

While I enjoyed the book, it's already out of date. So much has happened in the past year (Russia, Ukraine, Crimea etc.) which isn't mentioned. If you're going to pick up this book, it's best to do so in collaboration with some more up to date works,

Scotchman's Return and other Essays (Hugh MacLennan)

Ever since I read Two Solitudes for an independent English assignment in my last year of high school, I've loved Hugh MacLennan. While exploring Old Goat books, a bookshop that was new to me, I came across Scotchman's Return and other Essays. Normally, I would consider $15 too much to pay for a used book that I had never read, but I bought it anyway. Maybe I bought it because I'd scoured the shop and found nothing else which stuck out to me--it is so disappointing to go out intending to buy a book and come home empty handed--or maybe I just liked the golden-green cover and the feel of the pages. The 1960 publication date and that old book smell was also appealing.

I loved reading this book. It's light, personal and satisfying. MacLennan touches on everything from Canadian cuisine, the classical tradition is education, tennis, roses and the difficulty that Canadian authors who set their writing in Canada faced during the early and middle half of the 20th century.

This is a book that anyone can appreciate, but only a reader familiar with Canada can understand completely. Unfortunately, this book is out of print, so if you look for it you'll have to buy used.

I'm also quite pleased with the bookmark Old Goat Books gave me. I can never have enough bookmarks.

The Underground Storyteller (Alex Day)

I ordered The Underground Storyteller from the UK a few weeks ago and it--my first inter-continental book order--arrived on Wednesday. The author, Alex Day, is a British YouTuber. I would, however, like to put aside that part of his identity, as well as any controversy regarding his personal life, and focus solely on The Underground Storyteller as a piece of literature. 

Published this year, Day's book recounts the highlights of his travels on the London subway, or "The Tube" as he refers to it. After discovering the oldest rail line in the UK had been dismantled, Day set out to visit every station and ride every line of the London Underground. 

Writing in a colloquial, conversational style, Day combines history, personal stories, folklore, and humour, creating a narrative which rambles along like a couple of old friends in a coffee shop. 

I liked this book, not because it offered me any amazing insights, but because it was fun to read. The book is part memoir, part travel guide and part history book; the successful co-existence of these genres is rare. I did, however, find myself raising a critical eyebrow at the opening line: "People interested in the Tube largely fall into three categories: student photographers, old people and me." Apart from being a cliche lead, I feel it is an over-generalization and I'm not sure what he means by "me." Does Day mean writers? riders? Does he mean to set himself apart, personally, as a unique category? Luckily, I never judge an entire book by its first line, or even its first page. 

Despite a weak start, the writing quality improves within the first few chapters. Day, by the end of the book, reveals himself as a skilled writer. Transitions between chapters and stories are seamless.  Every story he tells--personal or otherwise-- is attached to the main frame perfectly. Nothing is awkward or seemingly out of place. The Underground Storyteller is an excellent first book. I look forward to seeing more work from him in the future. 

The Berkeley Rebellion And Beyond (Wolin & Schaar)

I wish I had a more attractive picture of this book to offer you, but library bindings pulled from the stacks of  university libraries are never that elegant. The Berkeley Rebellion And Beyond is a collection of essays published in 1970. The authors focus, at the start of the book, on the student strikes and protests at Berkeley University during the mid to late 1960s. They analyse the student movement from a time and place very much still within the movement. Yet, their analysis contains much clarity. The later essays in the book move more towards student rebellion, the probability (or lack of probability) of revolution and the purpose of the educational system as a whole. 

The authors notice that much of the tension on campuses has its roots in--not only the current political events of the time--but a crisis of purpose. The university, as an institution, was no longer primarily a place to receive knowledge, but rather a place to create knowledge for the rest of society. I came across this line, which I really like because it speaks to the tension between what businesses, corporations and governments want from universities and what students and scholars have understood, traditionally, university to be for: "The bureaucratic search for understanding does not begin in wonder, but in the reduction of the world to the ordinary and the manageable."

Students did not want institutions to behave as manageable bureaucratic structures to produce the right studies and technology for the right businesses and government departments. Instead, they wanted institutions that served students. The Berkeley rebellion was about student power, as much as it was about Vietnam or the vacant lot of land community members had turned into a park. 

Interestingly, the key issues in this collection of essays have not died. Sure, in North America students are no longer being clubbed, gassed and shot by police for protesting, but the question of what the university is for still remains. Do universities exist to aid governmental and corporation research? Are universities factories for future professionals? Are students there to learn about themselves and begin to construct the kind of society and space they see themselves living in someday? Do they exist  for the sole purpose of building human capital? 

Students have, at least from my point of view, as little influence on their own campuses now as they did back in 1966 or 1968. 

Campuses are not designed for intellectual growth, they are designed for knowledge production. Corporations and governments lay down their money and wait for the results and technologies that will benefit them to materialize. Young people enter institutions and become tools of production. Business women and men, engineers, and accountants are mass produced. Students have as little power today to prevent their universities from forming alliances with arms companies or Israeli institutions as they did in the 1960s to prevent military propaganda and police brutality on their campuses. 

I wish I could tell interested readers to go out an purchase a copy of this book, but the best I can suggest is to scour the second-hand online book shops. As far as I can tell, The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond has not been reprinted since its original production in 1970, which is a shame. This book should really be reprinted. 

Common Ground (Justin Trudeau)

Reading a political memoir is like a holiday for the mind. I can easily step away from denser texts and the complexities of everyday life, to a single story. Memoirs and biographies give me the kind of relaxation that other readers might receive from a crime thriller or a YA novel. 

I loved this book. I respect Justin Trudeau even more than I did before I read it. Please don't jump to conclusions however. I won't be voting Liberal in 2015 election--or any election for that matter. I respect Justin Trudeau's politics, but I don't necessarily agree with or support some of his policies. 

I sympathize with the difficulties Trudeau faced growing up. I hadn't realized that Margaret Trudeau suffered from mental illness. I can only imagine how hard it must have been growing up in the spotlight and then going through his parents' divorce. 

Trudeau starts the book with his childhood, not because he wants to write biographically, but because his political development begins, necessarily, with his father and the people, ideas and events he experienced growing up in a political family. 

Common Ground is not a book about Trudeau's life for its own sake, it is a book about Trudeau's politics. As such, it is a piece of propaganda--if you will--to promote the figure of Trudeau. It's no coincidence that this book was released approximately one year before the prospective date of the next Federal election. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying this is a negative thing. In fact, as a political tool, the book is fantastic. It's a legitimate avenue for Trudeau to inform and perhaps gather new supporters. The final portion focuses on Trudeau's election as leader of the Liberal party and outlines his philosophy behind gaining support as well as his ideas for the direction of the party. 

Whether you're a Liberal supporter or not, Common Ground is worth the read, if only for the sake of understanding more about one of the more prominent figures on the federal political scene  

Sex and the Single Prime Minister: or how pierre elliott trudeau seduced canada with the lights on (Michael Cowley)

I ordered Sex and Single Prime Minister, a book of photographs of Trudeau accompanied by funny captions, from an online used book dealer out of Quebec. It arrived in the mail today. Other than being a little worn around the edges, my copy of this 1968 book is in really good shape. I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a few images from this amusing little piece of Canadiana.