It’s not exactly elbows-up in a sleeper berth or the dining car, but from each according to his ability, as our prime minister certainly did not say. Yet with George Grant, Pierre Berton and Richard Gwyn in my mobile library, it is a propitious time to think about the Canadian project. My copy of Lament for a Nation belonged to the late Hugh Segal, so memories of eminent Canadians are company along the rails.