This book gives an excellent sense of the flavour and lifestyles of a long dead version of Canada. It hints at the potential that this great nation once had, and illuminates some of the places where it has gone so needlessly wrong. Pierre Berton himself is somewhat of the protagonist in this autobiographical saga of hard-work, hard conditions, hard living, and finally hard loving. In the end he doesn't really save the world but he does contribute positively, and he gets the girl.

He grows up in Dawson (City), Yukon, which during his youth is experiencing rapid population decline. One thing this novel will teach you is that if you grow up in a certain fashion, everything that you experience seems "normal." In the north, endless winters, high salaries and high inflation are all integral parts of life. Berton's family seems fairly sane in most respects up until he hits puberty and his dad prescribes daily cold showers. There is a lot in here about young Berton rambling about in nature and about the affable and intimate community that you'll find in the north. People always say "hi" to each other on the streets.

The book moves on to his experiences in university where he gets drunk all the time and gets good grades (if I remember correctly) and then on into his experiences training (all he ever did was train ;) ) for WWII. I like his writing about the army and what he went through. In a way the incompetence and wastefulness of the bureaucracy of the Canadian armed forces reminds me of Catch-22. Despite never setting foot on the battlefield Berton undergoes course after course of endless training as an officer. It's interesting to note that he actually wanted to go over there and fight.

The third aspect of the book that is rather charming is his courtship of his wife. Things start off kind of slow but you can tell he had genuine affection for her.