House of Ontario

"Beneath the deadly dull history of Ontario lies a myriad of fascinating, but little-known stories. Did you know:

• Sir John A. Macdonald was born in an Ontario town, not in Scotland?
• Karl Marx was once a visitor to Toronto?
• The famous poet W.B. Yeats graced the town of Captainstone, Ontario, with a visit in 1933?
• There was an active volcano in Ontario in 1886?

"The book is accompanied by an important caveat: All of these stories are fictitious.

"’The book is rather hard to characterize,’ said MacGillivary, a professor at the University of Waterloo. ’It doesn’t fit into any particular genre. It is best described as a "myth imitation." What I am doing here is inventing myths about the history of Ontario, where the facts are almost entirely false but the emotions are real.’

"The book, a humorous romp through the history of Ontario, distills the character of Ontario out of the approximately 120 short vignettes taken, supposedly, from local histories and reminiscences, all of which are fictitious."

- Anne Marie Goetz, Whig-Standard Staff Writer