Life in Canada

This is history written from the inside. Thomas Conant traces his family's journey through Canada, beginning with his great-grandfather Roger Conant, a United Empire Loyalist who fled the American colonies after the Revolutionary War and settled in Upper Canada. What emerges is not merely genealogy but a living portrait of how Canada came to be: seen through the eyes of one family who helped build it. Conant writes as a native son of Ontario, and his account centers there, but he does justice to the broader Canadian experience - the customs, the struggles, the incremental work of carving civilization from wilderness. This is the kind of book that makes the past breathe: particular, personal, and populated by people who were real. It will appeal to anyone who wants to understand not just what happened in Canadian history, but what it felt like to live through it.