The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are

The award-winning, bestselling author of While Canada Slept gives his view of a country wasted on Canadians.

What is national character? What makes the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, and the Chinese who they are? In this homogenized world, where globalization is a byword for a deadening sameness, why do peoples who live in the same region, use the same money, read the same books, and watch the same movies remain different from one another? As much as Canada may be seen as a copy, clone, or colony of America, we are unquestionably distinctive. It is a result of our geography, history, and politics. It comes from our demography and prosperity. Most of all, it comes from our character.

In The Unfinished Canadian, Andrew Cohen delves into our past and present in search of our defining national characteristics. He questions hoary shibboleths, soothing mythologies, and old saws with irreverence, humour, and flintiness, unencumbered by our proverbial politeness (itself a great misperception) and our suffocating political correctness. We are so much, in so many shades, and it’s time we took an honest look at ourselves. In this provocative, passionate, and elegant book, Cohen argues that our mythology, our jealousy, our complacency, our apathy, our amnesia, and our moderation are all part of the unbearable lightness of being Canadian.


From the Hardcover edition.

Another from my wandering around Toronto while checking out various Contact (i.e. Photography Month) venues. I love graffiti but am not averse to more commercial wall art. This example was found on Queen Street in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA). It is, in fact, one of the exhibits, essentially a clad wall. The piece is titled: 'What Isn't There' and, as per the description on the museum's website explains, is as follows: 'What Isn’t There (1994 – ) is an ongoing collaboration between filmmaker and photographer Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky, documenting the places where Palestinian villages once stood.' However, the artists probably had not conceived the venture as having a window in the middle. For me, it simply made the image, and its absence would, IMHO, diminish the work. As it is, including cropping the work to give more emphasis on the window, I love it. - JW This image was taken using a hand-held Nikon D5000 fited with a 550200mm VR kit lense set to 116mm, ISO200, Aperture Priority mode, f/10.0, 1/320 sec. PP was done using GIMP: slight tone curve adjustment to brighten the image and improve overall contrast somewhat, slight colour saturation adjustment to boost colours overall and some additional boost to the yellow channel only, sharpen, add border and scale to 1024 wide for posting. =============================== DSC_6587_windowskyadjbordx1024

i forgot to show the completed custom canadian creatures i made awhile back. these were made from drawings that a couple of canadian gals did. they wanted me to bring their drawings to life, so here they are ;] *sold*