Between the Covers with Michael Ignatieff.

Michael Ignatieff comments on the subject of twisting media reviews to promote paperback sales of his latest book, True Patriot Love: "I'll take the blame from what's between the covers, not for the cover blurbs."

Since Ignatieff is currently on his book tour let's look between the covers at some of those errors along with a few other things that seem to have been forgotten since the books initial release.



In Canada, empathy has to encompass 33 million people, with competing and conflicting myths of origin, spread across four time zones,, in five distinct economic regions,...

Canada has 6 time zones not 4, but I am not an acclaimed intellectual and author so what do know.


Ignatieff wrote about his great-grandfather giving an interview to the Victoria “Times Colonist” in 1872. There was a Daily Colonist in those days, and a little later a Victoria Times, but there was no Times Colonist for another century as the two papers were merged in 1980. (source)

Not a big error but when you have Google..........


George knew his father was a liberal, both small L and big L, who sometimes voted for the socialist CCF from sheer exasperation.

Cool; except for the little detail that the CCF (precursor of the NDP) was founded in 1932 and didn’t contest a federal election until the autumn of 1935, some months after William Grant’s death which makes the entire comment nothing but fiction, but if it nets a couple of votes, why not a little fiction.


"as Canadians, we cheer for the same football teams as Americans."

Americans cheer for the CFL? You can read about this here and see how our friend Evan Soloman helps Ignatieff out of a bind only to have Ignatieff step into it again when he says "I've watched it (the CFL) all my life." while not explaining how he did so while spending 20 years living in England where the CFL is not available on the 'telly'.



And while the following is not an error factually, it deserves being brought up again to show what Ignatieff will use for political gain.

To imagine it as a citizen is to imagine it as a resident of Yellow Quill reservation in Saskatchewan would have had to imagine it, this Canada where two half-naked children died in a snow-covered field in the sub-Arctic darkness because their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it, and all you can hope is that death was as mercilessly quick as the cold can make it. What does a resident of Yellow Quill imagine, what do we Canadians imagine our country to be, the morning we learn that children have perished in this way? It is surely more than just a tragic story of one family. It is a story about us.

A story about us? There is a lot I could say about that but others have said it better, so here is Mark Steyn's take and another view from our good friends at The Politic.

The man is truly shameless.


That is it for between the covers with Michael Ignatieff, as always I recommend you shower up ASAP and have a good Sunday.

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Some excerpts from other reviews:

"As an exploration of patriotism, it offers up clichés about modern Canada but little more.True Patriot Love is a well-written disappointment." link

Intellectual Slight of hand. "Canadian patriotism, it seems, is a bunch of infrastructure projects, a better government and enough hot air to open the Northwest Passage." "This isn’t Pierre Trudeau. It isn’t even Lester Pearson. It’s John Turner."


From CS in the comments; King Lear Gate! Too funny, but more of the same from Iffy.

A man of many talents, Ignatieff displays his prowess at the gym.

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