Now we’re looking good. A couple of years ago, a page turned in Canadian popular history. In retrospect, we can see that CBC Television’s Canada: A People’s History and Douglas Coupland’s Souvenir Of Canada books were the start of something new.These were public hits that weren’t created by the nation’s favourite historians, Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat, who by the millennium had aquired something of a taken-for-granted quality, like the books in Dad’s study.

Mowat and Berton – as significant as Wayne and Schuster, and sometimes as funny – were our first generation of accessible chroniclers. Their highly readable bestsellers felt hewn from the wilderness of Hudson’s Bay ledgers and migrating caribou herds. But as important as their work was – is – it is not the last word. Today we want a more resonant picture of our forebears: what were their private lives like? Which class did they belong to, which gender, which race – and what does that say about them?

The new histories are also about pictures. The new wave of popular historians were weaned on images of all kinds. As a consequence, a fresh market has opened up. People who haven’t the inclination to digest black and white print will willingly linger over black and white print coupled with a ravishing layout and vivid, intimate photography.

All of this is very good news for a certain hitherto staid pile of history located at the end of Sussex Drive in Ottawa. In order to get to Rideau Hall you continue beyond number 24 and pass through an imposing main gate, and then down a sweeping driveway that ends in a splash of trillium beds to your right and an imposing stretch of parkland on your left. When the flag is flying, it indicates that the GG is in residence.

In the pre-Adrienne Clarkson days the place wasn’t really worth visiting, so few people knew or cared about it. Government House was not only badly decorated but had no sense of destiny, no sense of how it could represent the development of a nation. Even the gardens were dated – like so many other aspects of the place, they were desperately seeking European approval.

One of the many achievements of this heady, handsome volume is that it makes perfectly clear that Rideau Hall has been rescued – that it has become “at once a lived-in house, a gallery of arts and crafts and a museum of Canadian history, [and] it is also, as Vincent Massey put it, ‘An instrument for Canada.’” It took our Adrienne to see that the place had good bones.

Canada’s House is a comprehensive cultural and historical account of the Governor General’s residence. Stuffed with mouth-watering photographs and assembled with a palpable sense of pride, it pulls off the difficult trick of being both good-looking and scholastically impressive. The book is divided into three sections, each written beautifully and authoritatively by experts in the field: Margaret MacMillan on architecture, Anne L. Desjardins on food, cooking, and wine, and Marjorie Harris on horticulture. There is also commentary by Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson and consort John Ralston Saul, both of whom are writers and who bring polish to the business of discussing crown and country.

The Governor General knows her strengths: “As the political role of the office of the Governor General has diminished, its importance to the Canadian nation has grown, especially as a champion of culture; fine art; folk art; writing and publishing; and the performing arts in all their guises.”

Much of the book focuses on Rideau Hall’s function as a gallery of Canadian splendours past and present. Contemporary art is in the house, as well as traditional landscapes, portraiture, furniture, and textiles. Everything tells a story, and everything, from the chandeliers to the crown-stamped dinner plates, works for a living. All in all, the sheer amount of allure on display in this book is mesmerising – there are enough gleaming staircases, hushed ballrooms, sun-dappled rockeries, and accounts of historical feasts to cause your average lifestyle channel to bite the carpet in envy.

Our jewel in the crown: who knew? Until now, Canadians certainly didn’t. In its elegant way, Canada’s House aims to demonstrate that this classiest of Canadian institutions really wants your company, and your participation. Virtually every page makes it clear that Rideau Hall can and should be experienced in person. Rideau Hall’s open-doors philosophy is grounded in the book’s style, which treats the reader as a valued guest. No mere coffee table bonbon, Canada’s House is, in fact, an invitation to the nation – it’s the kind of history that gets us where we live.