Read Your Way Across Canada

Canada is a nation of stories and storytellers—from St. John’s harbour to the islands of Haida Gwaii, from our populous southern border to the land above the treeline. Project Bookmark Canada exists to mark our stories in our spaces, by placing fiction and poetry in the exact Canadian locations where literary scenes are set. 

What do you see when you visit a Bookmark? Up to 500 words from a story or poem on a poster-sized plaque that you read while standing in the characters’ footsteps. 

Project Bookmark Canada is the only national, site-specific literary exhibit in the world. It’s a one-of-a-kind Canadian innovation—a nation-wide trail of our country’s literature, so that you can read your way across Canada.

A Great Canadian Legacy

Project Bookmark Canada gratefully accepts undesignated gifts and designated gifts.

Undesignated contributions are vital to create the organizational infrastructure to support this great big, country-wide initiative. Make a gift today to blaze Canada’s literary trail.

Designated gifts are directly used to build the Bookmarks.

Either way, when you make a gift to Project Bookmark Canada, you’re joining an inspired group of readers and trailblazers who are building a legacy for all Canadians.

Project Bookmark Canada is a nationally registered charitable organization, CRA #82725 7569 RR0001. 

Charitable tax receipts are issued for all donations of $50 or more.

In 2018 and 2019 Project Bookmark Canada will unveil four bilingual Bookmarks that feature writing by acclaimed authors Jean Little, Michel Tremblay, Danny Schur with Rick Chafe, and Gregory Scofield, in Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg and Batoche. Your contribution will help us create immersive exhibits for these Bookmarks commemorating historic events across Canada.

Read more about our anniversary Bookmarks, made possible in part by the Government of Canada with financial assistance from the Commemorate Canada Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage. 

Toronto LAKESHORE, Ontario

Love Enough, by Dionne Brand

Thank you for helping us build a new Bookmark for Toronto for Love Enough, marking a passage set on the Lakeshore in South Parkdale, installed on December 8, 2019.

A recipient of the Order of Canada, Brand is one of this nation’s most accomplished contemporary writers. 

“From our acclaimed poet and novelist: a gem of a novel that sizzles about love — between lovers, between friends, and for the places we live in — and pays homage to each moment of experience.”
~ Love Enough Publisher, Vintage Canada

Jean Little’s novel, If I Die Before I Wake, tells the story of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl who lives in Toronto. Fiona Macgregor details her daily life in diary entries that chronicle both the flu outbreak and its impact on her family, and a time of great change in social attitudes and customs.

This special Bookmark is the first in an Commemorate Canada Anniversary Series and marks the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Flu Pandemic in Canada. The bilingual plaques were previewed on December 10, 2018 at an event generously hosted by the Yorkville Library, with President Elect Hughena Matheson and Board member Susan Lightstone welcoming author Jean Little and her sister, Patricia, to the Library. A class of children, the same age as the character Fiona in the novel, also attended from Jesse Ketchum School. Publisher Scholastic Canada gave each student a book of their own to take home!

Jean Little herself attended the Jesse Ketchum School, and warmly answered the children’s many questions about growing up in Toronto one hundred years ago during a war and the nation’s first pandemic. The passage, in French and English, depicts a scene from Fiona’s diary at the location on Collier Street where it is set.

The installation of the Jean Little Bookmark at the foot of the historical Collier Street is scheduled for warmer temperatures this Spring! Project Bookmark Canada is grateful to the City of Toronto Transportation Department, to the Department of Canadian Heritage Commemorate Canada Program and individual donors for their support of this plaque.

A Bookmark on the CanLit Trail marking a nationally significant anniversary in Canadian history.

On September 28, 2019, Rosemary Griebel’s poem will be unveiled as Alberta’s first Bookmark on the Canadian Literary Trail, at Loft 112, 8th Avenue SE, a literary and creative hub in the East Village. “Walking with Walt Whitman Through Calgary’s Eastside on a Winter Day” is published in Griebel’s poetry collection Yes (Frontenac House, 2011).

“When we first heard about Project Bookmark Canada and the Ondaatje Bookmark, and its work of commemorating locations where literary works are set, we were excited by the idea. Canadian landscapes, cities, and towns truly are the stuff of great literature.  Project Bookmark makes that point by physically marking the places that have touched the hearts and imaginations of writers and readers.” 

~ Glasswaters Foundation