SOURCE: "The Real Mr. Canada," in Canadian Literature, No. 108, Spring, 1986, pp. 68-79.

In the following essay, Irvine discusses Berton's development of a "Canadian approach to the confidence game tradition that so dominates the folklore and culture of the United States."

Early in July of 1985, Pierre Berton staged a game of "To Tell the Truth" at an apparently typical press party. The mystery guests were three women in masks; the panelists, Canadian historian William Kilbourn, Dinah Christie, and Berton himself. The object of the game was to discover which of the three women was Lisa Kroniuk, the author of Masquerade: Fifteen Variations on a Theme of Sexual Fantasy. The novel bears on the back cover a description of the author: "Lisa Kroniuk emigrated to Canada several years ago and now lives in the West. A single mother, she has one daughter, Lara. This is her second novel; an earlier...