True Patriot Love:
Reporting from the Frontlines of Canadian Sovereignty
Random House Canada, Fall 2026
From the #1 bestselling author of At a Loss for Words, comes a passionate and sweeping examination of who we are as Canadians, where we’re going, and why Canada is becoming a beacon of hope in an age of cynicism.
“Passionate and powerful, Carol Off ponders what - if anything - it means to be Canada…Who do we want to be? she asks. And do we have the wits, heart, and determination to be that?”
R.H. Thomson“Personal, propulsive and deeply researched, Carol Off’s True Patriot Love is a timely reminder that Canadian identify - though fractured, fraught and forever contested - matters, and will only endure if we fight for it.”
Richard Warnica“As Carol Off points out of all-too-many accounts of Canada, ‘the truth’ is sacrificed by historians because it ‘gets in the way of a good story.’ In True Patriot Love, the truth of this country and all of its complicated, inconvenient and discomforting details is thankfully and thoughtfully laid bare with intricate research, rich humour and stubborn affection. As a result, Off tells Canada’s most vital story of all: how it is maturing, taking responsibility, and moving out on its own for the first time”
Niigan SinclairSince she stepped down from CBC’s As It Happens, Carol Off has been on the road talking to Canadians about their country and listening to their questions about its future. With True Patriot Love, she's ready to offer answers, drawing on lessons from the crises of the past sixty years that have prepared Canadians to seize the current moment and become a mature country.
Off has witnessed nation-defining events during her lifetime, from the first unfurling of the Canadian flag to the explosion of cultural nationalism in the 1970s. As a journalist she covered the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement; Quebec sovereignty politics; Western alienation; the country's fraught relationship with Indigenous Peoples; and Canadian military missions around the world.
In True Patriot Love, Off takes us on a journey through that history, weaving it with personal experiences, to finally reveal, as she says, “How I learned to truly, patriotically, love this country.” She shows us that through all our efforts—imperfect as they may be—we have forged a nation out of our compassionate, caring and accommodating impulses, our desire to include and not exclude, to welcome and encompass rather than reject and demonize. Canadians aren’t saintly, Carol Off concludes, but we have mostly tried to be decent. And that is a rock worthy of building a national identity upon.
“After decades of hosting and narrating Canada’s national conversation, Carol Off is the perfect guide to the new patriotism that has emerged in response to Donald Trump’s threats to our sovereignty. But True Patriot Love is more than a work of journalism; it’s a call to arms that asks every Canadian to stay vigilant in defence of what we are—and what we aren’t.”
Mark MacKinnon“Patriotism isn’t nationalism. It’s a commitment to an idea, not an identity. And few Canadians have Carol Off’s unerring sense for the complex evolution of the idea of Canada. With deeply personal stories drawn from her travels here and abroad, and from her career as one of our most renowned journalists, she traces the arc of this idea—sometimes fragmented and divisive, but other times coherent, unifying, and just—over the last six decades. A vital guide to the grown-up patriotism we’ll need to defend and strengthen Canada in an increasingly brutal world..”
Thomas Homer-Dixon“Too often, stories about a country that are told in times of strife end up being slick and superficial — pretty, nationalistic snapshots that crack under the slightest pressure. True Patriot Love isn’t that. Carol masterfully weaves a personal telling of the story of Canada in the same way one might speak about family. She recognizes that Canada is imperfect. At times, it’s been awful and cruel. In some moments it’s made us swell with pride. In others, it’s made us scream in frustration or recoil in shame. But it’s our shared story, our home on Indigenous land. This book made me feel more Canadian than ever because it gave me permission to acknowledge Canada as it truly is. It allowed me the hope to imagine what it could become. In the face of a bully threatening to rip that future away, True Patriot Love is exactly the kind of juice Canadians need.”
Rachel GIlmore