ABSTRACT

This book attempts to depict, in part, the life of a community. North Americans may know its external features well, for some community like it is to be seen in and around almost any great city on this continent, from New York to San Francisco, from Halifax to Vancouver. In infinite variety, yet with an eternal sameness, it flashes on the movie screen, in one of those neat comedies about the upper middle class family which Hollywood delights to repeat again and again as nurture for the American Dream. It fills the pages of glossy magazines devoted to the current best in architecture, house decoration, food, dress and social behaviour. The innumerable service occupations bred of an urban culture will think anxiously about people in such a community in terms of what 'they' will buy or use this year. Any authority in the field of art, literature, or science probably at some time has had, or will have, its name on a lecture itinerary. A teacher will consider it a privilege to serve in its schools. For those thousands of North Americans who struggle to translate the promise of America into a concrete reality for themselves, and, even more important, for their children, it is in some sense a Mecca.