THOROUGH AND PAINSTAKING In its detail, Lisa Gilad`s The Northern Route: An Ethnography of Refugee Experience (Institute of Social and Economic Research, 369 pages, $20.00 paper), charts the movement of refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Latin America, Iran, and Eastern Europe to Canada. The "northern route` refers to the passage through Gander, Newfoundland, a point of common disembarkation. Gilad says she hopes that, by exposing readers to refugee experiences, her study will help to produce a compassionate Canadian public. Frequent excerpts from interviews allow the participants to speak in their own voice and make their plight felt. Gilad is a scholar engage - she organized a refugee sponsorship group - and a good critic of Canadian and American refugee policy. While not new, her observation that historically these countries have favoured persons fleeing communism over those fleeing right-wing governments is significant and true. Her argument that since the new refugee system was implemented "the double standard appears to have subsided" is not entirely convincing, but she is surely right to say that refugee procedures are "designed to promote national interests above all else." And she points out some of the distinctions within the refugee category: Eastern Europeans who return to their countries may face prison; Salvadorans face torture and death. Less attractive are Gilad`s occasional high-school textbook tone, unnecessary length, and statement of the obvious. Concision would have made her important material more appealing.