McLean's books of stories about small-town Canada are not just funny, they are also revealing, and sometimes even touching. His style is perhaps most akin to that of the late Eric Nicol. But, most Canadians know him, perhaps, not so much from his books as from his Vinyl Café show on CBC Radio Two on Saturdays at 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. and on Sundays at 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. To be honest, I can't stand the show because McLean has a whiny kind of voice that runs along a very monotone scale that gets on my nerves. I prefer to read his stories, where they seem much funnier, yet he is popular because he takes his shows across Canada to many small towns, where he records them before a live audience.

There is one of his shows, however, that I do like and listened to when I came across it by accident a couple of times as repeats, when I turned on my radio on Saturdays and forget that the 10 o'clock slot is that of the Vinyl Café's. This show is his telling of his version of 'History of Canada'. Now CBC Records has come out with a CD that offers not only the very funny history in which he starts in prehistoric times and in which BC stands not for Before Christ but for 'Before Céline (Dion)'. It's, of course, a highly inaccurate history, but it touches a collective nerve, and also the funny bone. The History of Canada is accompanied by a score created by composer Cameron Wilson. He draws on all sorts of sources to make this a most apt score for such a history of this nation.

The CD also contains his 'I remember Wayne', which in Canada means, of course, only one man, Wayne Gretzky. Not being a hockey fan, I couldn't quite relate to it, yet found it amusing. Wilson again wrote the score. The composer is also a violinist and is currently a member of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and the CBC Radio Orchestra. It is the latter orchestra, under the direction of Mario Bernardi, which performed the very apt music for both pieces. The concert featuring both stories was recorded on April 23, 2006 at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.

This is definitely a suitable choice for a Christmas gift for anyone you know who has a great sense of humor. It is on my must-give list.