Myrna Kostash: In Search of the Next Canada

Myrna Kostash might not be a part of the under-35 generation in Canada, but she definitely learned a lot about this slice of life when she wrote The Next Canada (McClelland & Stewart; hardcover; 320 pp.; $34.99; ISBN 0-7710-4561-1). The award-winning author went in search of ideas about the kind of Canada young adults imagine for themselves. She spoke with many young Canadians from all walks of life and regions of the country about a variety of issues: gender equality, sexuality, the workplace, politics, the arts and other compelling and contemporary subjects. The results are as diverse as the group of people to whom she spoke, but the overwhelming conclusion is that the younger generation continues to believe in Canada as a country and community.

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Paula: What interested you particularly in the lives of 25-35 year olds to decide to write a book about their feelings and beliefs?

Myrna: I had become convinced, as a "Sixties" person, that the Canada that had made me a passionate Canadian no longer existed, and so I feared that the "next Canada" would be utterly without Canadian identity. I mean, think about it: from my point of view the next generation had grown up with Free Trade, non-stop hype about globalization and the Net, governments that kept complaining about spending money, and school curricula that never got around to teaching basic Canadian geography! How as a person supposed to become a Canadian in that kind of world? So, with that question, I went out and talked to people to see if qwhat I feared were true.

Paula: How did you find the people to interview?

Myrna: I clipped newspapers and magazines fanatically, watching for names of people in the 25-35 age group who were saying or doing or thinking something that seemed interesting to me. I was thinking about them strategically - in the sense that I knew I wanted to talk to people aabout their workplaces, their money, their ethnicity, their sexual identity, their politics, their art, their patriotism. And so I also went to specific places looking for them: to a fishing community in Nova Scotia, a MP's office in Vancouver, a health clinic in Winnipeg, an art gallery in Toronto, and so on. Also, I counted on friends passing along names. I even ended up interviewing one woman who had been in an earlier book of mine - No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls - when she had been 16; one young man whose father had been interviewed for my second book way back in 1980, Long Way From Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada;

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