[Image description: Book cover, in brown and beige with black and white accents. Text reads "A National Awakening: Robin Mathews and the Struggle for Canadian Identity. Edited by Joyce Wayne. Written by Duncan Cameron, Daniel Drache, Susan Crean, Alvin Finkel, Bill Law, Misao Dean, Errol Sharpe, Pat Smart, Sinclair Robinson, and Donald Smith.]

Come to the GCTC on Tuesday, June 25, 2024 from 6 to 8 pm to celebrate the Mosaic Press and Octopus Books launch of:

A National Awakening: Robin Mathews and the Struggle for Canadian Identity

Edited by Joyce Wayne

“Robin Mathews was a man for his times, rabble-rouser, shit disturber, provocateur, patriot, silver-tongued orator, and a fearless in-your-face public intellectual butting heads with Canada’s elites,” writes Daniel Drache, a contributor to this collection of original essays, discussing Mathews’ remarkable influence on the awakening of a distinctly Canadian identity.

For more than two decades, Mathews was a force to be reckoned with as he criss-crossed the country, often at his own expense, talking to students, professors, politicians, and artists about the need to establish and support a unique Canadian identity and politics and, what he termed, “promoting cultural literacy.” His personal charisma coupled with his boundless energy is the narrative thread of this collection: an activist and public intellectual with the compelling idea to establish a public movement to transform Canada into a culturally literate and economically sovereign nation.

Contributors to the book:

Duncan Cameron, Pat Smart, Daniel Drache, Bill Law, Susan Crean, Misao Dean, Alvin Finkel, Errol Sharpe, Sinclair Robinson and Donald Smith

JOYCE WAYNE, the editor of this collection, studied with Robin Mathews in the English Department at Carleton University during the 1970s. She went on to become the editor at Quill & Quire, Editorial Director of non-fiction at McClelland & Stewart Publishers and a professor of journalism at Sheridan College. Her novels, The Cook’s Temptation and Last Night of the World were published by Mosaic Press. Recently, she has written a series of essays published in The Literary Review of Canada including “All the Kremlin’s Men,” which was chosen for Best Canadian Essays 2021.