This is amazing stuff:
The book chronicles the creation of Voyageur, a remarkable guitar that was inspired by the near-separation of Canada as a result of a close referendum in Quebec. Taylor crisscrossed the country, collecting artefacts to build a guitar from, from the national (former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s canoe paddle) to the local (the handle from the oyster shucking knife of a champion MÃkmaq shucker); from the wonderful (a piece of a spruce tree held sacred by the Haida) to the tragic (a piece of the Westfahl, Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children). It combines everything from a piece of a hockey-stick from the most famous hockey game ever played (Canada vs. USSR, 1972) to a piece of Newfoundland’s floating X-ray clinic, established to treat the post WWII TB epidemic.
