A.F. Moritz

It seems that nothing in the Arctic is immutable; icebergs move and melt; the magnetic North Pole jumps about sixty kilometres every year and is currently heading toward Siberia; the Arctic Circle, too, is a shifting line. Early explorers saw fabulous mirages known as Fata morgana looming on the horizon and determined they were impassable mountain…

Editor’s note: Glenn Gould, Canada’s most celebrated musical son, and Dominic Amoruso, Joe Fiorito’s fictional creation in The Song Beneath the Ice, are both supreme pianists and “personalities” of the first order. What follows is not so much a narrative review as a game or puzzle in pursuit of leitmotifs that relate this biography and this novel in the mind of the common …

The year 2011 has been declared “the year of India in Canada,” offered by Delhi as an opportunity for Canadians to experience the civilizational pull of that great nation through shows by top Indian classical and contemporary artists, even rock bands. Trade shows and cultural performances will roll out from Halifax to Victoria in months to…

Gore Vidal once described Moby Dick as “a very bad masterpiece,” and most readers will understand exactly what he meant. Notwithstanding the book’s mythic grandeur, that huge chapter on “the whiteness of the whale,” for instance, has to be one of the most indigestible bits of fiction ever written. It was in the same spirit as Vidal’s observation that the LRC editorial staff planned this December’s holiday…

[To read the introduction and first fifty selections of this feature, published in our January/February 2006 issue, click here.] 51. Fifth Business (1970) by Robertson Davies Rich, wolfish, charming Boy Staunton throws a snowball with a stone in it at his pal Dunstan Ramsay on the streets of Deptford, a small Ontario…

Introduction By Margaret Atwood All comparisons are odious and lists are by nature comparisons. Therefore all lists are odious, and I for one have a lot of trouble making them up. A list called The LRC 100: Canada’s Most Important Books is a recipe for a brawl, as there will be many disagreements about what should or should not have been…