Lost North of the Border

...Where on earth did Malcolm pick up this nonsense...

...Now Andrew H. Malcolm, the recent New York Times bureau chief in Toronto, has published his book bearing the same name, without acknowledging its previous use by me...

...We are told nothing about the books Callaghan "plugged into the international scene," leaving us to wonder whether Malcolm has read them...

...That the Act, which only the London parliament could amend, remained Canada's virtual constitution until the country got its own constitution in 1982 was not, as Malcolm also seems to think, a sign of lingering British power...

...Indeed, one might fairly say that the "Canadians" of Malcolm's borrowed title are precisely the bold tycoons . For apart from a few sketches of individuals met on the way, he tells us little of the real citizenry, preferring to fill in with hyped-up numbers showing the vastness of the land and the small-ness of its population...

...Or recognize the unprofitabili-ty of such litigation, since the harm has already been done, and consider the volume that has been sent sailing under his colors...

...Malcolm is at his shallowest when he is dealing with the very vital arts of Canada...

...He not only admires this kind of ruthlessness but hails its appearance in Canada, whose people he somewhat condescendingly berates for their alleged former timidity...

...He is most in his element, though, in the chapter on "The Economy," where he zestfully describes the new atmosphere of Canadian business and finance, with its sharp entrepreneurs and their takeovers, mergers and raids into American territory...

...And when he does venture occasionally into a discussion of the Canadian past, he is as often as not dead wrong...

...Elsewhere he vividly describes trips made into the Canadian north...

...once they settled that issue, the British were quite happy to break the link...

...Following decades of struggle for control over their own affairs, including armed rebellions in 1837-38 (apparently unknown to Malcolm), the Canadians themselves evolved the idea of a confederal government to solve their own problems: It was at the request of the provinces that the British Parliament passed the British North America Act in 1867 establishing the Dominion of Canada...

...It is not merely my book on the country that he missed...

...He informs us, for instance, that the players of the Theatre Passe Muraille in Montreal "once transformed 10 paintings by Gabriel Dumont, a half-Indian rebel of the late 1880s, into a full-length drama.' I happen to be Gabriel Du-mont's biographer, and the thought of that tough illiterate buffalo hunter and guerrilla fighter standing before his easel and painting 10 paintings, or even one, smites me with astonishment...

...Sometimes, writing on the arts, he moves into areas of total mystification...

...That, of course, is a standard journalist's approach to a foreign society because it is the easiest one: meetings on the wing against a backdrop provided by Statistics Canada...

...From its purloined title to the end, in short, The Canadians is a work of shoddy research—and that most of all I find it hard to forgive Mr...

...This is obviously Malcolm's favorite world, and he watches it like an addicted spectator of gladiatorial contests...

...It was, rather, a consequence of the Canadians' prolonged failure to agree on how power should be shared between the federal and the provincial governments...

...He is of Canadian descent and clearly loves the land...

...I could go on citing instances of Malcolm's misinterpretations of Canada's past, but I would still have to grant that in some areas involving his personal experiences he writes with a certain florid evocativeness...

...In his last chapter he calls up very sympathetically the vanished place he knew from childhood visits to his grandparents...

...of Jack Shadbolt, Harold Town, Tony Urqu-hart, or Ivan Eyre there is not a word, let alone a description of their work...

...He asserts, for example, that "Canada had independence forced upon it in July 1867 by aBritish government," and elsewhere says "Canada was created by another foreign power for reasons of its own...

...Malcolm appears never to have heard of the important Canadian historians, like D. G. Crcighlon and W L. Morton, for lie makes no mention of them or of their works...

...His summation of Morley Callaghan is typical of the level of insight he brings to Canadian authors: "Morley Callaghan, one of the first Canadian writers to cut the colonial ties with Britain, plugged into the international scene...

...the duplication no doubt resulted from the sheer superficiality of the author's research...

...Five years ago I published a book called The Canadians', Harvard University Press brought out the American edition, and it was widely and well reviewed in the United States...

...He mentions just one painter, the highly publicized Alex Colville...

...His scanty list of references reveals the name of only one Canadian historian, J. M. S. Careless, who seems lo have been an acquaintance...

...The truth of course is far different...

...Rush to his lawyer...

...If he chose to appropriate my title, he should at least have written a book 1 could be proud of...

...After reading Malcolm's The Canadians, I have come to the conclusion that no piracy was intended...