British Journal of Canadian Studies: Along the Shore Review

Book review excerpt:

“One image lingers from those presented by M. Jane Fairburn’s eclectic and fascinating history of Toronto’s waterfront communities: a wooden sailing boat, part of the city’s industrial heritage, being publicly ‘blown up and burned’ by the owners of Sunnyside Amusement park in 1934 (p. 365). This seems striking as a clear example of what Fairburn depicts as Toronto’s awkward relationship with its own history. The functioning boat, the Lyman M. Davis, was purchased having been surpassed in use-value by steamers, for the entertainment value imagined in definitively consigning it to history. This is characterised as a moment of remembering and as enacting a wilful amnesia. It is therefore a tribute to Fairburn’s work that this moment is ably recontextualised in the troubled evolution of four key areas of Toronto’s waterfront geographies.”

The full review, by Will Smith of Lancaster University, is available in the British Journal of Canadian Studies, 29, no. 1, (2016).