Canada: A People’s History Series

The top non-fiction bestseller of fall 2000 was the authoritative and beautiful Canada: A People’s History, Volume One. For fall 2001, M&S is proud to present the equally stunning and comprehensive second volume of this landmark work.

This fall, on consecutive Sunday evenings starting on September 30, the CBC will broadcast eight new episodes from its spectacular – and spectacularly successful – series Canada: A People’s History.

Volume Two opens with the rebellion over property and language rights for the French-speaking Métis in Manitoba, led by the charismatic and troubled Louis Riel – a key event in our history and one that haunts us to this day. It closes with the less bloody but no less traumatic confrontation between the Mohawk and the army at Oka, Quebec, in 1990.

Between these two harrowing events lie more than a hundred years of astonishing change and development in Canada. In those years Canadians have fought in two world wars, struggled through long, savage Depression years, adjusted to the post-war world, and peaceably accommodated themselves to wave after wave of immigrants arriving from around the globe. The political changes have been no less striking, with the eruption of nationalism in Quebec, women’s long fight for equal rights, and the creation of Canadians’ most cherished social service: universal health care.

Even more than was possible in Volume One, this well-researched book tells the major events of the twentieth century as a story of people: the famous and occasionally flamboyant politicians and public figures are here, but the book’s strength lies in the stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

The tremendous popularity and the impeccable historical accuracy of both the first year of the television series and the first volume of the book, surprised and delighted historians and reviewers alike. The second year of the series and the second volume of the book are both now poised to rocket to even greater success in 2001.

How can we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we are coming from? This question applies as much to nations as it does to travellers, and it rings especially loudly in the ears of Canadians. Canada: A People’s History doesn’t tell us where we are going, but it shows us where we have come from
This richly illustrated book, the first of two volumes, tells the epic story of Canada from its earliest days to the arrival of the industrial age in the 1870s. Here is the story of the people who created this vast nation. The courageous explorers who tracked the vast wilderness; the adventurous settlers, many of them exiles from their homelands; the native peoples, crucial allies in the Europeans’ wars for possession of this land; the visionary politicians, and the shortsighted ones; but most of all the ordinary people who rose to the extraordinary challenge of building Canada. These people are all given voice here, their stories blending with accounts of the major events of the day.

This is the story of Canada for the new millennium, one that draws on solid scholarship and presents the human drama and excitement of days gone by, one that makes past times memorable.