Imagining Canada: A Century of Photographs Preserved by The New York Times
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by William Morasutti
Doubleday Canada, Toronto, 2012.
240 pp., illus., $45 hardcover
For a nation that often defines itself first and foremost as “not American,” William Morassutti’s Imagining Canada: A Century of Photographs Preserved by The New York Times at first comes across as a bit jarring. Reading his opening essay — in which he writes at length about Canada’s desire to be noticed and appreciated by Americans — I kept thinking to myself, “Enough about the United States, what about Canada? What about us?"
But then, this is no typical coffee table book of Canadian images. It’s Canada as seen through the photography department of the New York Times, a collection filled with starkly beautiful Canadian landscape shots and pics of celebrity Canucks such as Christopher Plummer, Mary Pickford, and Mordecai Richler.
The photos in the book are part of a 24,000–image collection purchased in 2009 by Canadian businessman Christopher Bratty, co–founder of Toro magazine. The book came about as a response to the positive reaction Toro received after first publishing random images from the collection on its website and then following that with a 2010 exhibit of selected images, titled Red.
The photos are accompanied by essays by nine prominent Canadians, including historian–authors Tim Cook and Charlotte Gray and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. I enjoyed all of the essays, particularly that of Shawn A-In-Chut Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. His chapter, which examines images of Aboriginals in the fur trade, or attending residential schools, is a searing indictment of both the presentation and treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada.
The book has only one chapter that’s a clunker, and it’s not the fault of the writer. “A Tough and Beautiful Game,” by award–winning sports writer Stephen Brunt, is actually a thoughtful essay on Canada’s national sport: hockey. Trouble is, most of the images used to illustrate it are of American teams, specifically New York’s NHL Teams, the Rangers and the Islanders. Photos of these teams are certainly to be expected in a New York Times photo archive, but they seem glaringly out of place in a book titled Imagining Canada.
In the end, though, the point isn’t necessarily whether this is an award–winning book — it’s that someone cared enough to rescue these amazing images from their manila–folder purgatory. At a time with traditional archives are slashing their budgets , and few dollars are available for digitizing the millions of photos out there languishing in obscurity, it’s heartening to hear that there are individuals who still see the value of our visual heritage.
— Mark Collin Reid (Read bio)
Mark Collin Reid is the Editor-in-Chief of Canada's History.