Who We are: Reflections on My Life and Canada

Elizabeth May's Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada is another book my brother lent me quite some time ago.  May wrote it just before the 2015 election, reflecting on the changes Prime Minister Stephen Harper had enacted since becoming Prime Minister, both in terms of gutting Canada's environmental protections, and in terms of politics (how particularly under him, MPs are no longer representing their constituents, but are instead reprimanded severely for not towing the party line).  May looks at her own life, at what brought her to helm the Green Party of Canada, while also examining what Canada was, and what Canada can be once again.

For the most part I enjoyed May's writing.  But I did find I got bogged down in the middle of a lot of her chapters, often from having to flip back to see either who or what organization she was talking about.  I really wish there had been a listing of people and places rather like a Shakespearean dramatis personae (I have this problem a lot with nonfiction books).  But all in all, I'm glad to have (finally) read Who We Are; it's an eye-opening book into just what exactly is happening to Canadian politics in the modern world.

Never Cry Wolf

Along with giving me some books, my brother has also lent me a few.  I decided that I should really get to reading them since I've got six right now that he'd like back at some point.  I started with Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf because my brother insisted that I read it.

Never Cry Wolf tells of Mowat's first year studying wolves in the Canadian North.  Everyone believes that wolves are killer monsters that need to be exterminated.  Mowat is sent to study them as a scientist and find out the truth, specifically of their connection to caribou (trappers are claiming wolves are destroying the herds). 

Over the course of about six months, he observes one family of wolves with the help of an Inuit friend, Ootek.  Between his observations of George, Angeline, Uncle Albert and their pups, and the insights of Ootek, Mowat quickly discovers that wolves are not remotely the monsters he has been led to believe. 

Whether fact, fiction, or somewhere in between, Never Cry Wolf is a fantastic read.