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In this book, Will Ferguson (one of my favourite Canadian authors) takes a mostly-humorous, somewhat-serious look at what it means to be Canadian. Far from being a boring political study, he draws personal anecdotes and other strange stories, in an attempt to examine his own attachment or connection to 'Canada' and 'Canadianness'.

Before continuing with my review, however, I feel obliged to mention, in the interests of full disclosure, that I read this book on the plane to, and immediately after arriving in, Japan, while Will Ferguson wrote this book pretty much immediately following his return to Canada after many years of living and teaching in Japan. That is to say, there might just be some weird alignment of the stars which caused me to enjoy this book. Or it is simply a good book. I still haven't figured out which.

Though he makes many sweeping generalizations about the whole mess we like to call 'Canada', I found him to be, more often that not, fairly on the mark. Through his political musings and wanderings, Ferguson attempts to pin down why Canadians are what they are (what makes us tick) and also what personally keeps him going as a Canadian. In particular, I had a hearty laugh at his exposure of the Canadian Dream (success without risk) and the three Great Themes (keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear).

Sometimes funny, often tongue-in-cheek, while it doesn't provide as many belly laughs as the other books I have read by him, I'd recommend this if you're into books about Us. ( )

There are two things that I really like: being entertained, and learning new stuff. So being entertained while learning is really the best! And lucky me, that's what this book delivered. Not all of it was educational, not all of it was funny, and I didn't always agree with his politics, but overall, it was a really fun read.

I had heard about this book but wasn't particularly interested in it. Until I saw it in the university bookstore--this term it's one of the texts for a Canadian Studies course--and after browsing through it I couldn't resist it's call. A caveat: I'm not sure it would hold much allure to someone who didn't already know a bit about Canadian culture; the audience is obviously people who have spent time in Canada. But for this Canadian, I not only had a laugh, but learned a little about our history (YES! We do have an interesting one!), and about other areas of this huge country (geographically speaking only, as the author points out). ( )