Anyone interested in what it means to be Canadian, growing up in Canada, or the products of everyday life, should check out this beautifully illustrated book by Douglas Coupland.
Souvenir of Canada is evenly split between images and essays, documenting life in Canada. The images range from pictures or paintings of interiors and landscapes, to (and more immediately interesting to me) carefully staged collections of various Canadian products. Many are immediately recognizable to my Ontario eyes: Beehive corn syrup. Ookpiks. Tabletop hockey. He is clearly interested in the iconic, and some objects I had completely taken for granted he reveals are indeed uniquely Canadian. I know readers who are older than me will recognize even more of these products and stories, but every carefully crafted image encourages you to look closely. And, strangely enough, the breadth of subjects means that even the odd stereotypically craggy Canadian Shield wilderness water tree picture can be viewed with a new freshness and appreciation that I thought the Group of Seven had beaten out of me. I think that’s what I like about this book- while nostagia is part of the fun, he never relies too heavily on the expected.
Coupland intersperses these images with his own personal essays, impressionistic pieces in which he uses objects to spark real or imagined meditations on growing up, his parents, Canadian culture and society. These essays are often quite playful and humourous - I’m making it sound much heavier than actually is. Nonetheless, we get a sense of just how tenuous a thing Canadian nationality is. A national ideal like bilingualism becomes what it really is to most people: cereal boxes with French and English labels (Coupland places these in his cupboard French side out, to remind him what country he is in). Can objects actually bind us together more than ideals? Like smell’s seductive ability to startle us with long dormant memories, these images are powerful.
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