In a time of innovative approaches to Canadian history (including this fall's quirky but impressive The Museum Called Canada by Charlotte Gray, reviewed above), it's strange to encounter a history book as traditional--nay, old-fashioned--as Derek Hayes's Canada. Hayes, a geographer by training whose previous books, including the Historical Atlas of Canada, have focused on the minutiae and details of Canadian history, here embraces the grand sweep.

Putting aside the dozen pages covering precontact, Hayes examines more than 400 years of exploration, trade, conflict, and development in about 250 densely illustrated, large-printed pages. To say that the text has a perfunctory quality would be to understate the point; too often it reads like a summary of a history waiting to be written. An unrelenting succession of dates and names, Canada lacks insight into the social aspects of the chronology, not to mention any in-depth examination of the strictly historical material. Granted, there's a lot of history to be covered in relatively little space, but it could be done.

One could start by cutting the bulk of the illustrations. A successful illustrated history (and one need look no further than another Douglas & McIntyre title, Terry Reksten's Illustrated History of British Columbia) strikes a balance between art and text: each supports and reinforces the other. That balance is never found in Canada. Some of the illustrations are interesting in their own right (a photograph of the March 23, 1752, Halifax Gazette--Canada's oldest newspaper, recently repatriated from an American collection--will delight fellow text and archive geeks), but they are rarely illuminating and few seem integral to the volume as a whole.

Please don't misunderstand: this isn't a bad history. The depth of Hayes's research and knowledge is clear, the facts are in place, and the narrative is readable and straightforward. Canada: An Illustrated History will serve as a solid introduction to Canadian history. One can't shake the sense, however, that it could have been much, much more.