The Promise of Canada

What does it mean to be a Canadian? What great ideas have changed our country? An award-winning writer casts her eye over 150 years of Canadian history. “

There is no master narrative for Canadian history; there are too many stories to package into a tidy-tightly scripted identity. Yet Canada exerts a sense of endless promise because over the years it has successfully managed so many competing pressures—parallel identities, layers of allegiance, rooted hostilities, overlapping loyalties...Our country owes its success not to some imagined tribal singularity but to the fact that, although its thirty-five million citizens do not look, speak or pray alike, we have learned to share this land and for the most part live in neighbourly sympathy.” —Charlotte Gray, from the Preface ofThe Promise of Canada

On the eve of Canada’s sesquicentennial it means to be Canadian. Readers already know Gray as an award-winning biographer, a writer who has celebrations comes a richly rewarding new book from acclaimed historian Charlotte Gray about what brilliantly captured significant individuals and dramatic moments in our history. Now, in The Promise of Canada, she weaves together masterful portraits of nine influential Canadians, creating an engaging history of the country over the past 150 years and arguing that Canada has constantly reimagined itself in every generation since 1867.

What do these people —from George-Étienne Cartier and Emily Carr to Tommy Douglas, Margaret Atwood and Elijah Harper—have in common? Each, according to Charlotte Gray, has left an indelible mark on our country. Deliberately avoiding a “top down” approach to our history, Gray has chosen people whose ideas have caught her imagination, ideas that over time have become part of our collective conversation. She also highlights many other Canadians, past and present, who have added to the ongoing debate over how we see ourselves.

A fresh take on our history that offers fascinating insights into how this country has matured and how—150 years after Confederation and beyond—we are still a people in progress,The Promise of Canada will inspire and challenge readers to envision the Canada they want to live in. Charlotte Gray makes history come alive as she opens doors into our past, our present and our future.