Atmospheres Apollinaire is remarkable not only because it is something new in Canada; it is an extraordinary act of imaginative immersion in a personality and his times. It offers us historic figures who are made convincing as characters, and yet at the same time it presents a background of such authenticity that cultural historians are unlikely to find fault. The difference between Atmospheres Apollinaire and a straight biography is really that between a good painted portrait and a photograph. Both are likenesses, but the painting shows the controlled nuances of colour and especially of texture of which the camera is incapable. Atmospheres Apollinaire projects the elusive feeling of life, as well as the actual events, in a long past era.