Best Canadian Essays 2021

by Bruce Whiteman (Editor)

The thirteenth installment of Canada's annual volume of essays showcases diverse nonfiction writing from across the country.

“The exceptional essay,” writes editor Bruce Whiteman, “derives from a passionate feeling, love and anger being perhaps its upper and lower limits, coexisting with a desire for truth, and it aims for the radiance of what is.” In the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Essays, Whiteman’s selections seek truth in all the places it may be found, from walks in brambled woods and ancient cities to memories of childhoods that shape a life; to analyses of artifacts both legislative and cultural that advance equality long overdue; to reports from the field that articulate the poetry of the present, the invisibility of the poor, the social contours and consuming mental contagions of the ongoing pandemic. Drawn from leading magazines and journals published in 2020, the fifteen essays gathered here brilliantly illuminate what is.

Featuring work by:

Neil Besner
Catherine Bush
Yvonne Blomer
Jenna Butler
Elizabeth Dauphinee
Eva-Lynn Jagoe
Mark Kingwell
Frances Koziar
Hilary Morgan V. Leathem
Stephanie Nolen
Kevin Patterson
Soraya Roberts
Ian Waddell
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Joyce Wayne
Rob Winger

Genres: Canada, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2021

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of this collection was not memorable at all to me, I'm sorry to say.
Standout essay: Tick Tock. It's about ticks.

[Laurie Siblock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I've read volumes of the Best American Essays, I'm new to the Best Canadian Essays series. So, this was my first one. Not only did it live up to the caliber of the Best American Essays series, but I was delighted by the purely Canadian content. Because of this, the essays were so relatable.

The 2021 series, edited by Bruce Whiteman, covers a wide scope of subject matter bookended by essays about the pandemic ("Anatomy of a Pandemic" and "To Coronavirus, C"). That structure seems, well, fitting for yet another year that we were bunkered in our homes waiting out the COVID virus to run its course—we didn't know then just how long that might take. The essays in between the first and last cover vast territory from the impact of climate change on the Arctic and the Inuit communities living there ("Upirngasaq (Arctic Spring)") to the growing threat of the sometimes deadly tick, also due to climactic changes that allow them to thrive in greater numbers this far north on the continent ("Tick Tock"). Who knew that an essay on ticks could be so captivating?

Frances Koziar's essay "The Meaning of Poor" was a real eye-opener to the realities of people living below the poverty line and the seeming inability of most of us to even care.

Elizabeth Dauphinee's "The Medium of the Archive" was perhaps one of my favourite essays in the collection precisely because she cared so much. Her care extended to the family that previously had lived in the fixer-upper Victorian home she purchased, whose lives are revealed through the objects the house gives up or "begin[s] gathering...back to itself." It's a beautifully written contemplation on memory and the role of objects in keeping our individual and collective memories alive.

I'm already looking forward to the 2022 issue of Best Canadian Essays and will be watching out for back copies.

[Christopher Nilssen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to buy this book for a journalism class I took two years ago. I do not remember reading any of it for the class. It sat in my Kindle alongside a handful of other academic textbooks just waiting for me to either delete or read them, with the fates heavily favoring the latter. Fortunately, I decided to undertake this great project of re-literacy and once Bradbury told me to read an essay a night the book became important.

I found many of the essays presented here to be distasteful. It is important to recognize that this is a personal reaction that speaks only to a mostly political response on my behalf and does not reflect the quality of writing. For sure, these are all well written essays. I would have harsh words for any editor that dared title a book Best anything and include substandard prose. But too many of these works read like expanded tweets: heavily laden with political agenda and reactionary stances to topics like global warming, the pandemic, and feminism. I read them all with as open a mind as I was able to muster, and I believe the only thing I learned was that it is possible to write thousands of words that will find their way into a Best anthology on the merit of little more than a strident opinion and a handful of sources.

I have become much more selective of my nightly essay reading. I now look to ones with historical precedent. I do not think it is enough to trust an editor’s opinion on what the Best constitutes. It is far better, and more valuable to a reader’s brain, to trust the passage of time.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I enjoyed this volume far more than the same year’s Best American anthology of essays; I’m not sure what to attribute that to. This is only the second year I’ve read that collection and the first year I’ve read this Best Canadian series. It might simply be the case that Best American’s guest editor for the year had different tastes than me. It might also be those decades of listening to CBC Radio which still have an effect on me more than a decade after moving from Canada to the United States. As always, some essays struck me better than others, but with one possible exception, their quality showed through to me and I enjoyed reading this collection.

[Donna B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome, thought-provoking essays. Loved it.