Carol Off

From the #1 bestselling author of At a Loss for Words, comes a passionate and sweeping examination of who we are as Canadians, where we’re going, and why Canada is becoming a beacon of hope in an age of cynicism.

Since she stepped down from CBC’s As It Happens, Carol Off has been on the road talking to Canadians about their country and listening to their questions about its future. With True Patriot Love, she's ready to offer answers, drawing on lessons from the crises of the past sixty years that have prepared Canadians to seize the current moment and become a mature country.

Off has witnessed nation-defining events during her lifetime, from the first unfurling of the Canadian flag to the explosion of cultural nationalism in the 1970s. As a journalist she covered the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement; Quebec sovereignty politics; Western alienation; the country's fraught relationship with Indigenous Peoples; and Canadian military missions around the world.

In True Patriot Love, Off takes us on a journey through that history, weaving it with personal experiences, to finally reveal, as she says, “How I learned to truly, patriotically, love this country.” She shows us that through all our efforts—imperfect as they may be—we have forged a nation out of our compassionate, caring and accommodating impulses, our desire to include and not exclude, to welcome and encompass rather than reject and demonize. Canadians aren’t saintly, Carol Off concludes, but we have mostly tried to be decent. And that is a rock worthy of building a national identity upon.