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Ottawa: the Capital of Canada by Shirley E. Woods, Jr. (review)

Only a bold historian would dare to review this book. Erik Spicer, once commissioned to write the book for Doubleday's Romance of Canadian Cities Series, lauds this 'long-needed, flowing narrative history of Ottawa' (vii) and hands out the gratuitous observation that 'One can be accurate without being academic. One is more likely to be readable without academic pretensions' (viii). After the fine writing of Canadian historians in the past decade or so, it surprised me to encounter this unwarranted observation. Yet it is true that Shirley Woods avoids being an academic. The book has no footnotes, not even when quoting sources for a full page. John Taylor and Peter Gillis, two splendid academic historians working on Ottawa and living in Ottawa, are not consulted. Even HarryJ. Walker's Carleton Saga is unacknowledged. Naturally, in these circumstances, the professional historian needs to praise the work as much as possible. The work is comparatively free of typographical errors, the factual detail is reliable, and the layout and design are quite attractive. But this is not the 'definitive history' the publishers claim it to be. Shirley Woods writes firmly in the booster tradition. The only negative note relates to the Shiner Wars, before •85o, but even this is seen as laying the base for harmonious race relations to the present. From that point on, the city becomes ever more successful.