Find out which book was eliminated second on Canada Reads 2026

Canada Reads 2026: daytime 2

Canada Reads 2026: daytime 1

A Canada Reads 2026 crash course

Canada Reads 2026 Trailer

On Canada Reads, five Canadian celebrities each select one book they think all Canadians should read. They debate their choices with each other over the course of four days, and vote to eliminate one book every day. The last book standing is the winner.

I'll be watching live and giving you behind-the-scenes updates all week long. 

The first day of debates starts today at 10:05 a.m. ET. Stay tuned!

Unlike typical sports books, which often follow a predictable storyline, Steve Dangle says Searching for Terry Punchout stands apart. 

“It’s sometimes charming, crude, or dry. It’s fun, accessible [and] it has heart.” 

“This book holds up a mirror for us to realize the power to change our reality for the better is ours.” 

One of Morgann Book’s critiques of A Minor Chorus, is that she found it a hard book to understand “from the get go.”

She didn’t love the lack of quotation marks, as “someone who really loves to understand the narrator.”

“When there's no quotations around that, I find myself going back and trying to figure out if they were setting the scene, or if it was in a monologue,” she said.

“It was a bit tough for me to understand the characters in the story and connect to the narrator. I found that the casual sex and erotica in the book took away from the emotional depth.”

As a quick break in the debates, the remaining panellists were just surprised by words of encouragement from their famous friends. 

For Tegan Quin, we heard from Arkells frontman Max Kerman, and for Morgann Book, her favourite audiobook narrator, Julia Whelan, had some nice things to say. 

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers got a pep-talk from actor Michael Greyeyes, and for Steve (Dangle) Glynn, hockey broadcast icon Ron MacLean shared some wisdom. 

Fun fact: both Greyeyes and MacLean have been Canada Reads champions themselves, so they really know what they’re talking about!

A Minor Chorus, defended by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, is up for debate next.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers didn’t hold back as she laid out all the reasons she voted against It’s Different This Time on Day One. 

“I feel like it's very formulaic, I feel like I'm watching a Hallmark movie — and no offense to Hallmark — but like I don't understand why every Canadian should watch a Hallmark movie, it's not cinema, it doesn't challenge us to think deeper, I didn't learn anything from it,” she said. 

“I mean it was a page-turner, it was entertaining, but I don't think it compelled me to really introspect and look deeper. I didn't learn anything from it. I felt like it did reinforce some very outdated conventional gender norms … and I feel like even though this is framed within a very contemporary feminist lens, it's still very much rooted in outdated ideas of gender and sex.”

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers loved The Cure for Drowning but found that the elements of magical realism “didn't go deep enough” and she wanted more. 

She also felt like there could have been more diverse voices in the story. 

“There is some diversity, but it's very minor, and as a person who’s not white … I felt a little bit alienated by that aspect of the story. But I don't expect every author to be able to cover every single story.”

The next round focuses on It’s Different This Time, defended by Morgann Book.

Tegan Quin says The Cure for Drowning is historical fiction with a strong undercurrent of modern romance rooted in timeless questions of identity — who we are, who the world expects us to be and how we navigate the space between the two. 

“It restores something often erased from historical fiction — queer and trans voices,” she said.

There are four rounds of debates today, each one spotlighting one of the four remaining books: The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor, Searching for Terry Punchout by Tyler Hellard, A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt and It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard.

The Cure for Drowning, defended by Tegan Quin, is up first.

According to Josh Dela Cruz, having Foe eliminated on the first day means that “everything went according to plan.”

“All the books are great, all the books are wonderful, I think that is the book that everyone should read first.”

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