Interesting and well-written, very easy to read and not too dry. I knew nothing on the subject beforehand!

Did not read ... it was archived before I downloaded it.

How Different It Was: Canadians at the Time of Confederation by Michael J. Goodspeed is a snapshot of history. Goodspeed is a historian and novelist. In addition to a successful writing career, he has been an infantry officer and a manager in high-tech firms. He has lived and worked across Canada and on several continents.

I am not Canadain but grew up eighty miles away from the border. I have always found that I knew more about Mexican history and Mexican leaders than I did about the Canadian counterparts. Growing up, Canada was that quiet neighbor. We heard more about Margret Trudeau than Pierre Trudeau. Canada was a place they spoke English, had better beer, and better fishing. I have learned a lot about Canada since the 1970s especially its coming into its own on the world stage after World War I. Still, I knew little of how Canada became an independent nation.

Reading British accounts of the American Revolution, Britain had little claim by settlement in Canada. After the French Indian Wars, Britain was left with a large amount of land and a small population that was mostly French. The American Revolution provided settlers in the form of those loyal to the crown moving north. Much of the immigration to Canada was from the United States up until the War of 1812. President Polk and his 54' 40" campaign over the Oregon Territory was settled peacefully but lead to distrust along the border.

Canada in the 1860s is interesting in that it paralleled American history in some ways and was vastly different in others. Proximity to America did not create a carbon copy of its neighbor. Railroads did join both countries, but Canadians considered themselves British and Americans considered themselves separated. In general, Canada was much more tolerant of race and native peoples than most countries founded in expanding empires. Goodspeed goes into detail of the development of both urban and rural areas contrasting the differences between regions. Big city life had its problems like equine traffic jams. Dredging and canal work moved the center of trade in Quebec from Quebec City to Montreal.

Goodspeed shows the consolidation of territories and people to make what is today Canada. The process that started with four provinces in 1867 became recognizable as modern Canada by 1905 (Newfoundland and Nunavut joining later). Canada during the confederation period is more of a collection of histories than a single history. As difficult as growing into a new nation can be, Canda managed to join with surprisingly less violence than other countries in the West. An interesting history well worth reading.

Loved this book!! Fun interesting and informative, a must for all armchair historians!!!

How Different It Was: Canadians at the Time of Confederation is a wonderful book that focuses on the who, the why, and the how as it pertains to the Confederation in Canadian history. The book gives the reader a glimpse into Canadian confederation life.

How Different It Was focuses on how people lived, interacted, their interests, how they entertained, how they treated one another, and how animals were treated. The author does an excellent job of outlining an overview of the many peoples who came to Canada to settle, and demonstrates how it's distinctively rural life differed both from British and American models over the years. The author focuses on troubling aspects of Canadian history such as treatment of First Nation peoples, and how long it took to begin to redress the mistreatment.

I received an ARC copy from Dundurn and A J. Patrick Boyer Book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is an absolutely beautiful book! Too often, history books err on two opposing sides of the spectre. There are the history books that are so dense and so heavy that you need a dictionary, thesaurus, history professor and a crucifix by your side as you attempt to wade through the thickness. And then there are the history books that are overly simplistic, that just cover the basics that everyone already knows, and reiterates the timeline of world history. Both of these kinds of books have a time and place! But the glorious thing about How Different It Was: Canadians at the Time of Confederation
is that it examines not the what, not the when, but the who, the why, and the how.

What I mean by this is that How Different It Was focuses sublimely on how people lived, interacted, what their interests were, how they entertained themselves, how they treated one another, how they treated their animals, etc. I think books that delve into how people lived, and why they behaved as they did, are of upmost importance to our society: because they bring to life people from history, instead of hiding them behind numbers and statistics.

Here are a few super interesting facts I learned from How Different It Was: Canadians at the Time of Confederation. Did you know that it wasn’t until the American revolution that large numbers of English-speaking immigrants began to settle in Canada? Or, that shortly before 1967, Canada's entire population was only a little bigger than the entire population of London? How about that, during the American Civil War, parades were held in Saint John, NB, to celebrate Southern Confederate victories? Or, lanes and alleyways were not introduced to Canada until the 1840s? And - a personal favourite of mine - our very first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, actually introduced legislation to give women the vote, way back in 1885!

Furthermore, there are some really great pictures in How Different It Was. There are some gems that I have never seen before, and they were carefully chosen to give you a glimpse into Canadian confederation life.

In closing, How Different It Was: Canadians at the Time of Confederation is a must-read for any Canadian history buff like myself. It is informative, educational, and interesting, but moreover, it brings Canadians at the time of confederation to life, which is something every Canadian today can benefit from. As the great Cicero once said, "To know nothing about what happened before you were born is to remain a child forever."

The blurb led me to expect, in its claim of dramatic description and detail, a lot of primary source quotations from diaries, letters, and written materials of the period.

Instead this is a 200 page Wikipedia article covering the history of Canada, with emphasis on the Confederation. Considering how much is covered, it's admirably done, but the drama is left to the imagination of the viewer, as Goodspeed quotes statistics.

He does an excellent job of sketching an overview of the many peoples who came to Canada to settle, and demonstrates how it's distinctively rural life differed both from British and American models over the years. Goodspeed focuses on troubling aspects of Canadian history such as treatment of First Nation peoples, and how long it took to begin to redress this.

The part I thought most interesting was the overview of cultural and domestic life: the only model I had for Canadian cultural life of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was L.M. Montgomery's journals and books. And every aspect that Goodspeed described resonated exactly with what I'd read, right down to funeral customs, and the division of labor on farms.

I recommend this book to anyone who would like a modern view of Canadian history, and how that nation developed its distinctive combination of cultures.