Ninety years ago, Lytton Strachey scandalized British society with his book Eminent Victorians, in which he disparaged the accomplishments and exaggerated the failings of four highly respected Victorians. It was an immediate bestseller, of course. In Eminent Canadians, John Fraser helps himself to Strachey’s title and to his innovative form – the journalistic profile – and goes one better by doubling the number of worthies under the magnifying glass. But his purpose is not the same as Strachey’s. Fraser wants, as he puts it, to “redeem the dismissed and humanize the demonized.” By telling stories about them, and about the Canada they live or lived in.