In 1993, a group of five Kingston women–T. Anne Archer, Mary Cavanagh, Elizabeth Greene, Tara Kainer, Janice Kirk–began to compile ananthology about Canada at the point where one millennium becomes another. As the newly-formed Foxglove Collective, they solicited manuscripts that reflected origins (how the past shapes the present), life at the end of this century, and projections past the year 2000. They envisioned a book that wove together established, emerging, and previously unpublished voices from the Yukon to the Maritimes: that book is On the Threshold: Writing Toward the Year 2000.

No millennium library would be complete without a copy of this timely and unique collection of literary musings by some of the nation’s best. A wonderful weave of poetry and prose, this anthology reflects on moments both private and public, personal and political, which have formed the crucible for life in the twenty-first century as we know it. Tasked with commenting both on the century that lay behind and the century that beckons, each author fashioned a piece exemplary of the crises, successes and transformations inherent in an arc spanning more than a hundred years of nation-building and social upheaval. Whether unabashedly optimistic or unapologetically critical, these writers make their peace with the past while invoking the future.