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The past may be a foreign country for most of us, the place where they do things differently, but it's a writer's natural home, the source of memory, meaning and--above all--stories. Much of the last decade's best Canadian fiction, from Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" to Wayne Johnston's "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams," has burrowed deep into history, personal and political, national and global. In "Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen," theatre critic Kate Taylor, born in France and raised in Ottawa, creates a moving meditation on Parisian and Toronto history. But nothing plays with history like Michel Basilires' stunning debut novel "Black Bird," a wildly inventive and darkly funny take on the October Crisis.

The article reports on the views of Canadian professor of English Nick Mount regarding the growth of Canadian literature beginning in the 1960s. It discusses the number of new Canadian authors and publishers, and the conditions that allowed the increase in leisure time to read and economic support of literature.

Canada is a dangerous place in the collective memory of Turin. Stylized Mohawk warriors loom menacingly over the front windows of the northern Italian city's 300-year-old Palazzo Carignano. Formed in solid brick, they represent the vivid recollections of Turinese soldiers who fought in New France's 17th-century Iroquois wars. Plus ça change. For the 50-odd Canadian writers, publishers, public servants and journalists who went to Italy in mid-May to see Canada honoured at Turin's annual international book fair. Every year for the past decade, a local committee in the Italian town of Castel Goffredo has picked a country, named five of its books and rounded up 135 copies of each. Then the citizens start reading; at summer's end they award the Acerbi prize. But nothing beats Ottawa's seed money, which has been astonishingly successful for a modest cost. About $50,000 a year has fostered a network of Canadian studies departments at seven Italian universities. There are now dozens of academics interested in the country, according to University of Milan professor Luigi Bruti Liberati.Over the past decade Canadian literature has been celebrated and welcomed with open arms around the world.

Offers the author's opinion of the arts and culture in Canada. How Canadians love summer festivals, where they give culture attention; Ideas that more winter festivals would give them culture in the non-summer months; The formality of dressing for the theater or symphony; Lack of serious arts in the summer; Idea that Canadian literature and Canada's film industry are dull; How Canadians do not know what culture is available to them year-round.