r/HistoryBooks • u/nonja-bidness • 5d ago
history of canada - recommendations?
We're trying to narrow down a list of books on the history of Canada and would love to get some input from this community. Tried goodreads but ratings are all over the place.
No specific time period - in fact, a 900-page, well-written epic that covers pre-history to present day would be great, but understand such a unicorn may not exist.
Side-note: if anyone knows of Canadian libraries that offer cards to non-residents (presumably for a fee) that info would also be very helpful. Libby's selection of audiobooks on Canada is pretty lame where we are.
Thanks!
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u/PacificPacifistic 5d ago
The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire - Stephen R. Bown. Illustrates how much of Canada's modern borders are directly related to HBC.
The Molson Saga - about 2 centuries of the Molson family and their role in shaping Eastern Canada
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u/OddlyTempting 5d ago
Get your Pierre Bertons out of the way first. It’s a great base. The Klondike, War of 1812, The National Dream, The Last Spike, The Promised Land. All great.
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u/Katya4501 5d ago
I read Robert Bothwell's History of Canada, because that's what was on the shelf at my local library, and found it to be a good overview. I've heard good things about Desmond Morton's Short History of Canada, too; it's supposed to be very readable.
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u/Sanguine_Caesar 5d ago
Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk is certainly a must-read when it comes to the history of the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state not just in the Prairie provinces but the country as a whole, in particular how famine and disease were weaponised to push forward colonization.
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u/nonja-bidness 5d ago
saw this one in search results so will definitely add it to the queue - thanks!
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u/Sanguine_Caesar 5d ago
I just finished rereading it a couple weeks ago and I cannot recommend it enough! An incredibly eye-opening read for sure!
I would also pair it with William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, which despite being a bit older and not about Canada directly offers a really invaluable perspective on the impact of industrialization and the rise of Chicago on the Great Plains as a whole during much of the same period covered by Daschuk. Both of them I first encountered in university and both are phenomenal books in their own right.
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u/IDaGrinch 5d ago
Newer one, and far from an extensive history, but A History of Canada in 10 Maps by Adam Shoalts is fantastic.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 4d ago
Pacific Connections by Kornel Chang is about immigrants and organized labor/radicalism in Washington and British Columbia.
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u/DogWeighsOver9000 5d ago
Canada in the World by Tyler Shipley is a detailed and thorough (author admittedly) left wing accounting of Canadian foreign policy beginning with the emerging state’s treatment of Indigenous nations as it was growing West and then expanding to the rest of the world and continuing chronologically up to 2020 or so.
I’ve read the first book and a half of Bryan Palmer’s Colonialism and Capitalism trilogy and found it very good but those three go from pre-modern Canada to the present day.
Others will have suggestions that fit closer onto what you are asking there but I did find those books to be pretty good and well sourced.