From my personal collection. I read it in the early 90s. It was written as a series of letters to "Sam", explaining what made us Canadian. Back in ’87, Berton captured us perfectly. Quietly proud, winter-tough, politely anti-American, stitched together by hockey, wilderness, and a shared history. We had a culture. We had an identity. We knew who we were. Fast-forward to 2025 and Berton would choke on his double-double (he died in 2004). The title today might as well be "A Love Letter to a Country That No Longer Exists" Today’s Canada has no core identity, just as Trudeau bragged in 2015. We're a “post-national state.” The mosaic shattered into silos. Imported flags often fly higher than the Maple Leaf. Indigenous land claims redraw the map, and half the country thinks “Canadian identity” is a relic. Politeness survives, but it’s weaponized now. Diversity is the official religion, yet social cohesion is on life support. We’re still smugly “not American,”. Berton’s cozy, confident Canada is gone. What’s left is a fractured experiment, just praying that the next crisis doesn’t snap us in half. It all went sideways in 40 years.