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Shield Country
By Jamie Bastedo
Arctic Institute of North America
Calgary, AB. 271 pp. $20.
ISBN 0-919034-79-9
Review by MICHAEL PEAKE --
Che-Mun Editor
Canoelit Home Page
This book dropped from the sky out of nowhere. Though first published in 1994, I had never heard of it. But standing on the dock of Air Tindi in Yellowknife awaiting to take off into the barrens for 50 days, I ran into the author, Jamie Bastedo. We chatted for a while and he mentioned the book and I promptly bought a copy with the last scraps of paper money I would use for two months - and took the book along.
Shield Country is a very hip text book. It tells the story about the formation and the forces that shaped and formed the Canadian shield, that precious and wonderful chunk of planet Earth.
Bastedo takes the reader on an evolutionary tour in the shaping of the planet and the shield in particular. The book is packed with photos that illustrate his points. He moves quickly and interestingly though the geology lesson and on to more recent historical accounts. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of this book is that it is most definitely not written in the Chamber of Commerce style so common to many books about the booming times in northern towns.
The book is divided into three parts; The Making of a Landscape, Today's Landscape and Tomorrow's Landscape. He covers all areas of consideration to the natural landscape, the majority of which lately are man-caused. Bastedo's journey takes us from the primordial ooze to the ozone hole and he does it with an style that's easy to read yet packed with information.
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