'An Insider's Guide to Canada's Capital' - Book Review

An Insider's Guide to Canada's Capital
by "Wingd"
2017
Baico Publishing, 271 pages

This glossy hardcover book sounds like a travel guide - that's what I took it to be when I was looking for a guide to the city of Ottawa. But that's not what it is: it's meant as a paean to the city more than a guide. Let's start with the authorship: it's listed as being written by Wingd, whose website ( https://www.wingd.ca/ ) says "Wingd is an award-winning digital agency with the intent to revolutionize with intelligent digitization methods." It's full of large, glossy photos of places in and around the city, each carefully attributed to the photographer - but without mention of where they were taken, leaving you guessing. A third of the book is given over to photos and stories of various young residents of the city, aren't they wonderful? The resulting book is useless to visitors, and not even large enough to qualify as a "coffee table book" that might appeal to residents to show off and/or admire their hometown. One of the prettiest and most useless books I've ever encountered.