By Michael Ignatieff
Viking Canada
211 pages, $30.00
NEW: An audio recording and slide show of Michael Ignatieff’s recent Q&A session with CEMA (Canadian Ethnic Media Association) has been added at the end of this item. Click the “more…” link below.
(Canscene)— I had the great pleasure of meeting Michael Ignatieff at a reception preceding the May 7 launch of his new book. Working the room, dressed comfortably in blazer and gray pants, he proved personable, attentive to whomever he was exchanging dialogue with and a fine public speaker.
When he addresses an audience one quality Michael Ignatieff displays in abundance is passion: not the seething ranting of an ideologue but a sustained and loving exploration and dedication to his subject.
This book is not about Michael Ignatieff the politician. It is a statement of what the author believes true patriotism is all about. Ignatieff reveals that nine years ago, the year he accepted the teaching position at Harvard he and his family spent a vacation in Canada, tracing the journey of his maternal grandfather from sea to sea.
Ignatieff, whose The Russian Album on the history of his father’s family won a Governor General’s Award and a Heinemann Prize now turns to his mother’s family, the Grants and their own steadfast passion for Canada.
Great grandfather George Monroe Grant, though a man of the cloth with a parish in Halifax, declared his love for Canada through accepting the hazardous life of an explorer. He joined with a parishioner, engineer and surveyor Sanford Fleming in a historical ocean-to-ocean journey. The goal was to establish the feasibility of a trans-Canada railway. Taking his family on that trip gives the lie to the belief that by working abroad, Ignatieff had forgotten his native land. (more…)