Here gathered together are the Montreal-set stories which made Clark Blaise famous -- such stories as ‘A Class of New Canadians’, ‘Eyes’, and ‘I’m Dreaming of Rocket Richard’ -- alongside two new and unpublished Montreal stories, ‘The Belle of Shediac’ and ‘Life Could Be a Dream (sh-boom, sh-boom)’.
‘I grew up without a home -- what was it, the south, Pittsburgh? -- and by my mid-twenties the anxiety had grown palpable. My most potent memories were southern, but the inherited memories were of my parents’ Canada, especially Montreal, where they had met and life had taken an improbable turn for both of them. But by 1966, when I moved my family to Montreal, my parents had divorced, my father was in Mexico, my mother had returned to Winnipeg, I had married a woman from India, and I didn’t know where I’d come from or where I was going. Montreal provided the answer.
‘I re-entered a world I had never made, Montreal, and determined I would become the son I might have been, and would assert authority over an experience I could and should have had, but never did. Confusion remained, but at least I would be the French and English son of befuddlement, the crown prince of Canadian identity.’