This multi-authored text, edited by Dr. Quentin Rae-Grant, an eminent Canadian academic child psychiatrist and administrator, covers 50 years of psychiatry in Canada from 1951 to 2001. The intent of the book is ambitious, but it never quite meets its objectives. Each chapter is quite cursory, intending to be inclusive of events and people rather than delving into depth about particular events, people or achievements that might have been dealt with in greater depth and placed in historical and international perspective. As with any multi-authored text, the contributions seem uneven and not well integrated. Moreover, the book reads like a summary of a larger text, and one is disappointed forearmed with the knowledge that no larger, more in-depth volume exists.
A historical review serves the purpose of not only informing about the past, but also placing the present and the future in perspective. There is no attempt to critically evaluate the current status of psychiatry in Canada and its role in the world by examining the events of the past. This lack of synthesis means that this book will be mostly of interest to those who participated in the events described and who will have the luxury of nostalgia and recollection as they read. It will appeal particularly to members of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and perhaps members of academic departments of psychiatry where the events of the past 50 years are better chronicled. As a historical text, it will have limited value. It is a chronicle of events, rather than a detailed discussion of the major and important events of the past 50 years, and lacks a greater and more intensive description of those particular leaders who shaped them.