Good Books of Canadian History

Speaker

If any of our Canadian members came across good books regarding your country's history I'd appreciate a few suggestions.

Klorgnum

I've never read any of his books, but Pierre Berton is generally considered the historian of Canada.

SwashbucklerXX

Will Ferguson's Bastards and Boneheads is an informative and entertaining look at Canada's prime ministers.

Decius

Another Will Ferguson book, in that they asked him to write it, is Canadian History for Dummies. It's fairly in depth, and an entertaining read on what can be a dry subject. He also manages to balance out a lot of the highly debated (read: Aboriginal issues, English v French) parts of our history.

Richard M. Nixon

Klorgnum wrote: »

I've never read any of his books, but Pierre Berton is generally considered the historian of Canada.

I will second this. If you can find a copy of The Last Spike; The National Dream, pick it up. It's two volumes abridged into one and it's a much easier read than The Last Spike and National Dream on their own. It's the history of rail in early Canada but it gives a good idea of what a lot of the early days of Confederation were like as well as a good look at the Prime Ministers of the times.

If you're after Prime Ministers, the first 3/4 of Egotists and Autocrats is pretty good but once it gets to Trudeau (and into the author's actual life experience instead of him working from historical documents) it gets really opinion-y, not as well written and rather partisan.

My first major foray into Canadian history was through Peter C. Newman's trilogy about the Hudson's Bay Company which effectively was Canada for about 200 years. It's pretty tough going for parts of it (the business stuff is pretty dry) but there is a lot of stuff taken from the journals of fur traders and similar. The books are Company of Adventurers, Caesars of the Wilderness and Merchant Princes (the first two are better but the third actually deals with The Bay since Confederation. I'm not sure which part of Canadian history you're after).