Book Review

In 1908 Canada commemorated the tercentenary of the founding of Quebec and, in anticipation of 1909, the 150th anniversary of the battle of the Plains of Abraham. It was the Dominion's first major pageant, an extraordinary two-week celebration with patriotic eloquence, historical spectacles, galas, and other events that enlisted artists, publicists, royal visitors, and naval fleets. The weeks of celebration culminated in the inauguration of Canada's first national park, the National Battlefields Park. Exploiting a rich trove assembled from far and wide, H. V. Nelles cites official literature, newspaper reports, private diaries, and keepsakes and reproduces photographs and artwork to illustrate how the Quebec pageant reflected the temper of Canada on the eve of World War I. The historian's lively, evocative narrative, often reminiscent of John Prebble's style, lends a dramatic framework to the presentation. The Art of Nation-Building benefits from recent French-language scholarship, in particular Jean Provencher's "The Park of Memories" in The Plains of Abraham: The Search for the Ideal, edited by Jacques Mathieu and Eugen Kedl (1993). Nelles's contribution should be seen as an expansion rather than a replacement of Provencher's work. He produces a wealth of details and primary sources to show how the organization and progress of the commemorative pageant illustrated the symbolic and political manifestations of Canada's myth of "Two Founding Nations."

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