A Chuckle Through Canada

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 5, 2005

Reviewed by Gerry Turcotte, head of the School of English Literatures, Philosophy and Languages at the University of Wollongong.

Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada

By Will Ferguson

Text Publishing, 342pp, $24.95

Will Ferguson may not be as well known as fellow Canadians Doug Coupland (Generation X) and William Gibson (Neuromancer), but like them he has carved a niche for himself as a social commentator who speaks eloquently as a "peripheral insider".

Ferguson made his name with a series of richly researched but irreverently turned social studies of Canada beginning with the ironically titled Why I Hate Canadians. This was followed by solo and co-authored successes such as Canadian History for Dummies and How To Be a Canadian. And lest readers think this national focus might limit his audience, it's worth pointing out that his works have been published in 24 languages and have sold millions of copies.

What makes Ferguson's work so appealing is his obvious scholarly strength, coupled with a hilarious turn of phrase (Moose "carry with them a certain dignified ugliness. They are the inbred Habsburg monarchs of the animal kingdom"). He specialises in finding historical sacred cows and skewering them, often with classic deadpan. Ferguson has been fed on a generation of Canadian comics from Jim Carrey to Dan Aykroyd, John Candy to Mike Myers. It is a style very different from Ben Elton or John Birmingham and, accordingly, the humour is more mainstream but no less revealing.

So it is with his latest work, the result, according to the back-cover blurb, of three years' exploring Canada aboard canoes, seaplanes and helicopters. As exotic as this sounds, much of the travel is by car accompanied alternatively by his brothers, niece, sister, wife and toddler, Alex. The cover jacket also tells us that this is a journey through "Canada's little-known history, landscape and people", and in a way it is. But really, it's Ferguson's refusal to accept dominant views of key events at face value that makes even the most familiar material fresh.

Ferguson begins his journey on the west coast, tracing the tortured and haphazard way that Victoria - "more British than the British" - came into being, then moves across the country, ending on the east coast at L'Anse aux Meadows, the oldest European presence in North America, where a Viking settlement was unearthed dating back to 1000AD.

Ferguson is not interested in the country's big monuments (except for the world's largest lobster, porcupine, stuffed frog), but instead in little-known or politically bland events that house significant or hilarious truths. He unpacks the complex history of the underground railroad that enabled American slaves to flee to Canada; explores the bizarre landscape of Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world; and deconstructs the self-proclaimed republic of Madawaska - which sits on the Quebec, New Brunswick and US borders - the subject of a "war" in which no shot was ever fired.

He asks glib questions about the Quebec independence movement while visiting a little-known region of the province, but manages to turn this sceptical banter into a moving glimmer of understanding about a people who feel submerged beneath a sea of Englishness.

Despite Ferguson's fearless debunking of his homeland, he is remarkably opaque about his own history, which insistently threads its way through this book. When he does touch on his own difficult past as a member of a large family abandoned by a ne'er-do-well father, one senses that the humour here is not purely stylistic but heavily self-protective.

This is a wonderful book - funny, charming and refreshing. But I came away with a curiosity about the author that I can only hope will be satisfied by future works.

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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