Kanata

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By D'Arcy Jenish This is an ideal work for the airport bookstore - a snappily written, fast-paced piece of historical fiction that would make an enjoyable read for the Japanese tourist, the American business traveller or, dare I say it, the politician who happens to be "just visiting" and needs to bone up on his Canadian history. It is a book set in the West and based on the life of Michael Mountain Horse, a high-school teacher born to a Blackfoot mother and a British immigrant father, and the great-great-grandson of the famous fur trader, explorer and mapmaker David Thompson. Mountain Horse is a sort of Canadian Everyman who has history flowing through his veins, and Gillmor taps those veins to depict the scale and grandeur of Canada's past. He supplements the narrative of Mountain Horse's life with sketches and profiles of an impressive array of historical figures, including Thompson, Sir John A. Macdonald, Louis Riel, Guy Weadick (founder of the Calgary Stampede), Mackenzie King and Norman Bethune, to name a few. Through Mountain Horse, the reader goes off to the First World War, gets a taste of postwar Paris (though we don't meet Hemingway, Fitzgerald or Morley Callaghan), winds up in Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties and returns to Canada just in time to get whacked by the Great Depression. And that only gets you through about half the book. To squeeze all this into 400-odd pages is an ambitious undertaking. It takes a skilled hand to blend all those personalities and events into a workable book. Gillmor has created some finely rendered scenes, some engaging characters and some witty dialogue. It may all work for the person who is on the fly and looking for a point-and-shoot version of Canada's past. Enjoy!