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THE LIVING PAST OF MONTREAL
Eric McLean
Volume 22 Number 3
The Living Past of Montreal may be the ultimate in souvenir guidebooks. The size of a large postcard, it can be easily held in the hand as one compares R.D. Wilson's drawings of Old Montreal with the actual buildings, or reads Eric McLean's lucid text. Each two-page spread is devoted to one drawing. The plate is on the right, the text on the left. I have not seen the first and second editions (1964 and 1976), so I don't know what has been added or changed. We are told there are twenty new drawings, but very little else of any revisions that may have been made. Only a reviewer or someone buying the book unseen could consider this an issue, and that is about the only flaw I can find in this meticulously produced guidebook. We are, however, given the prefaces to the previous editions, and many of the drawings are dated. Even the press release is a paragon of information. A map of Old Montreal not only locates the fifty-one pictures, but also indicates the angle from which they were drawn. I must confess that my taste in architecture encompasses very little of the old city, so that Wilson's drawings invest it with a charm and cachet I have not experienced "in the flesh." Then again, it's been years since I've been there, and a lot of restoration work has been carried out. My only reservation in recommending this beautiful little coffee table book in miniature is its price tag. Grades 5 and up / Ages 10 and upMelanie Fogel is a freelance writer in Ottawa, Ontario
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