Canada: Tomorrow's Giant, Reissue

Published 15 years after his Governor General's award-winning The Unknown Country, Bruce Hutchison's Canada: Tomorrow's Giant is a vivid portrait of the nation on the verge of the 1960s. Finding Canada changed "outwardly in many places beyond recognition and inwardly everywhere," Hutchison invites readers to join him in a "casual, disordered tour across the nation and some of its wilderness" to discover the new Canada. The result is a portrait of a country in the making that still resonates today.Canada: Tomorrow's Giant, like its predecessor The Unknown Country, was awarded the Governor General's Award for creative nonfiction. The Wynford edition includes a new introduction by Vaughn Palmer, one of Canada's foremost political journalists and a winner of the Bruce Hutchison Award. Palmer's introduction puts both the book and Hutchison's career in historical context for modern readers.

Table of Contents:
Vaughn Palmer: Introduction to the Wynford Edition Canadians 1: The Misty Island Landsmen by the Sea 2: The Kingdom of Joe Howe Land and People 3: The Toy Continent Green Flames 4: The Land of Peter Emberley When Sap is Flowing 5: The Lost Peasant Summer's Madmen 6: The Fortress Wood and Fire 7: The Homeland Men without Names 8: The Cliff Northern Bouquet 9: The Shield Golden Days 10: The Hub Cowboy from Holland 11: The Big Farm Whistle in the Hills 12: The Big Dreamers Cold 13: The Long Day Final Nocturne 14: The Trail's End Dead Giant 15: The Big Trees Index

About the Author :
Bruce Hutchison (1901-1992) was one of Canada's foremost journalists. His career spanned most of the 20th century and he was the recipient of many honours, including three Governor General's Awards for his works of nonfiction. Born in Prescott, Ontario, he was taken to British Columbia as an infant and grew up in Victoria. He became a high-school journalist for the Victoria Times in 1918 and a political reporter in Ottawa in 1925; he returned to the Times, also reporting on the provincial legislature for the Vancouver Province. He was an editorial writer and columnist for the Vancouver Sun (1938), assistant editor on the Winnipeg Free Press (1944-50), and then returned to the Victoria Times, where he served as editor from 1950 to 1963, establishing his reputation as a leading political journalist and commentator. In 1963 he became editorial director of the Vancouver Sun and in 1979 editor emeritus; he wrote a weekly column for the Sun until his death. In addition to his newspaper work, Hutchison wrote dozens of pulp stories in the 1920s, a novel, and even a film script, 'Park Avenue Logger', which was produced in Hollywood. By the end of his career he had won three National Newspaper Awards, three Governor General's Awards, the Royal Society of Arts Award for Journalism, and the Bowater Prize. He received the inaugural Royal Society of Arts Award for Distinguished Journalism in the Commonwealth (1961), was placed on the Maclean's Honour Roll (1989), and received the City of Victoria Prize (1990), and the Jack Webster Foundation First Lifetime Achievement Award (1991). In nearly seventy-five years of political reporting, spanning the careers of ten prime ministers, Hutchison developed friendships with political personalities that ranged from Louis St Laurent and Lester Pearson to Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. His writings on Canada and its political figures were characterized by the confidential vignette, but he was criticized for partisan loyalty to the Liberal party - a charge he always denied. His best-known book, The unknown country: Canada and her people (1943) - which won a Governor General's Award, and is still in print after several revised editions - is a delightful panorama of Canada, containing vivid descriptions of place and personality, with short lyrical vignettes between chapters. Hutchison also dealt successfully with the larger movements of politics and economics. His novel The hollow men (1944), the story of a newspaper correspondent disillusioned by world war, combines subtle political satire with sympathy for wilderness life. Hutchison's other titles include The Fraser (1950) in the Rivers of America series; The Incredible Canadian: A Candid Portrait of Mackenzie King, His Works, His Times, and His Nation (1952; Govenor General's Award); Canada's Lonely Neighbour (1954); The Struggle for the Border (1955); Canada: Tomorrow's Giant (1957; Governor General's Award), and Mr. Prime Minister 1867-1964 (1964), which was condensed as Macdonald to Pearson: The Prime Ministers of Canada (1967). Hutchison also wrote Western Window (1967), a collection of essays, as well as the text for Canada: A Year of the Land (1967), a lavish picturebook on Canada produced by the National Film Board. At the age of eighty Hutchison published Uncle Percy's Wonderful Town (1981), a dozen fictional and nostalgic accounts of life in Emerald Vale, B.C., a town with the features of Merrit, Cranbrook, and Nelson in British Columbia. While short on emotional range, these stories - narrated by a fourteen-year-old boy - evoke a vanished time and place. A Life in the Country (1988) is both a memoir and a meditation on country life. Hutchison's autobiography, The Far Side of the Street (1976), expressed a highly personal view of the growth of his generation, and reaffirmed his vision of a modern and responsible Canada. - Geoff Hancock, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature.

Review :
"This entertaining narrative is a pleasure to read...this book is more than a period piece, more than a travelogue. It is a searching, beautifully rendered meditation on Canada's past and future...this is Canadiana at its best." --Winnipeg Free Press