Cover Collage: Oh Canada

Happy early Canada Day, everyone! While we’re pretty much patriotic all the time since our books are #CanLit through and through, we thought we’d push things up a notch to celebrate the birth of our nation. This ‘Oh Canada’ edition of Cover Collage features pretty much everything you (and your international friends) would expect to see when thinking about Canada–snow, hockey, a canoe, and more. Sadly we didn’t have a book cover with a Tim Hortons on it but maybe that’s an idea for one of our publishers for next year.

Spring is in the air with the cover of This House is Condemned. If anyone has been near High Park in Toronto during cherry blossom season, they will know Canadians love to get outside as soon as there is a hint of spring and something pretty to look at. This book of essays and writings lets you explore life lived at the edge of Lake Ontario.The cover of All the Voices Cry makes me want to scream “cannonball!” as I run off the dock at the cottage. Petersen’s collection of stories is rooted in landscape but features characters that are seeking escape only to be brought up hard by reality.It looks like it’s almost harvest time on the prairies on the cover of Stolen. In a tale of theft, love, and madness on the outer edges of Saskatoon, Stolen is the complex and honest tale of Rowan Friesen, small-time drug dealer and thief.This view will be familiar to pretty much every Canadian from coast-to-coast-to-coast. In this travel story, we follow McGonigle, an Irishwoman who comes to Canada to spend a winter snowboarding in the Kootenay region of BC. Infused with an Irish take on Canadiana, McGonigle leaves it all behind to follow the snow.Hockey is as Canadian as it gets and this collection of poetry follows the twenty-season career of goalie Terry Sawchuk. With photographs mirroring the text in some cases, Night Work depicts key moments in Sawchuk’s career, from his exploits to his agonies.Kellough’s jazz-infused poems reference Canadian history and politics, historical figures, and the ideas of belonging, dislocation, and national identity all from an African-Canadian perspective.The oil sands are a very contentious topic in Canada, and around the world. In Battler’s debut collection of poetry, she shines a light on the absurdity and pervasiveness of the language used to talk about the oil sands, incorporating texts from oil companies and other found materials.The RCMP have become a world-wide symbol for Canada. Unfortunately it’s not always a symbol representing the best of Canada. In this memoir, Janet Merlo, one of the first female RCMP officers to publicly allege sexual harassment and gender discrimination while serving, recalls how her love of policing was soured by her experiences.In this collection of poems, Diane Guichon uses the iconic Canadian image of the birch bark canoe to explore the plurality of Canadian identity and to speak of the underlying traits that make us universally human.The mighty salmon. While the salmon may not be as recognizably “Canadian” as say the moose or beaver, the cover of Dead Salmon Dialectics is very evocative of Canadiana. The poetry itself draws on scientific studies of salmon recycling in perhumid rainforests from the perspective of a young biologist.I’m sure people outside of Canada would believe this is the most Canadian book that could ever exist. Through his personal experiences, Haigh shares with readers just about any and all the information you could ever want or need to know about one of our most iconic creatures.We didn’t want to go too cliché and just show you a bunch of beavers so here’s a deer. The Porcupinity of the Stars looks at the joys and vargaries of perception. Subtle humour, solemn delight, compassion, and invention, the signature trademarks of Barwin’s work, are all on display here.