Political Memoirs

Allan Blakeney. An Honourable Calling: Political Memoirs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Illustrations. viii + 258 pp. $40.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8020-9891-7. Roy MacLaren. The Fundamental Things Apply: A Memoir. Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011. 256 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7735-3843-6. Reviewed by Greg Donaghy Published on H-Canada (May, 2011) Commissioned by Stephanie Bangarth (King's University College, UWO) For most of the second half of the twentieth rary pop culture impinged dimly on postwar con‐ century, the world, especially its Western nations, sciousness in Canada, as elsewhere. seemed locked into an immutable yet secure Cold These changes were noted, and just as often War political and economic order. Abroad, the dismissed as insignificant or misunderstood as North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the War‐ singular rather than as related phenomena. But saw Pact, as well as the United Nations and the related they were. And by the late 1960s, global‐ General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, ization had begun to lap at the edges of Canadian promised a soundly structured global system, but‐ life, eventually kick-starting a process of adjust‐ tressed at home by an unquestioned set of Keyne‐ ment that profoundly reshaped the country’s sian prescriptions about the domestic economy. economy and its political order. Two recent mem‐ Sure, there were signs of change. The political oirs--An Honourable Calling by Allan Blakeney, stirrings of postcolonial Asia and Africa, the vast the New Democratic Party (NDP) premier of migrations of rural peoples to cities and the rich Saskatchewan from 1971 to 1982, and The Funda‐ West, and the compressed horizons of contempo‐ mental Things Apply by Roy MacLaren, Liberal H-Net Reviews member of parliament and minister of interna‐ sketching their long-term evolution in tional trade in the mid-1990s--tell how two lead‐ Saskatchewan, and their circumstances in the ear‐ ing Canadians of their generation responded to ly 1970s. With lawyerly precision, Blakeney out‐ this wave of change. lines the problems encountered in justly dividing This transformation was still a long way off the soaring revenues between private industry, when Blakeney was born in Nova Scotia in 1925. the province, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s A strong whiff of nostalgia lingers about his mem‐ federal government. Blakeney’s rage at Trudeau’s oir. His cozy recollections of growing up in confiscatory measures still simmers beneath his Bridgetown and Halifax; building a small legal civil prose, a stark reminder of Western alien‐ practice in Regina, where he moved in 1950; and ation. packing the family car for winter holidays in Flor‐ Blakeney’s rage competed with his coopera‐ ida illustrate Blakeney’s relaxed and civil style. tive instincts. Persistent strains on Canada’s na‐ Ever the genial lawyer, armed with degrees tional unity were another grim product of larger, from Dalhousie and Oxford, Blakeney proved an more global forces, as historian David Meren has indispensable technocrat for a series of social recently reminded us.[1] The effort to resolve democratic governments in his adopted them preoccupied Blakeney as it did most prime Saskatchewan. As his reward, he was invited to ministers in the 1970s and 1980s. Quebec’s place join the government in 1960, when he won elec‐ in Confederation and Trudeau’s campaign to repa‐ tion in the safe seat of Regina and was appointed triate the constitution are themes of important to the cabinet as provincial treasurer. Over the chapters in the memoir. Blakeney gives a clear ac‐ following decade, Blakeney advanced steadily up count of the string of events from September 1980 the hierarchy, serving as education minister, to November 1981, when he emerged as the key health minister, and eventually leader of the op‐ player in the negotiations that led to a constitu‐ position. tional agreement without Quebec’s backing. As the memoir makes clear, there was a steely re‐ Elected premier in 1971, Blakeney came to of‐ solve at Blakeney’s core. In his view, politics is fice as the early forces of globalization began to compromise, and when Quebec Premier René sweep across rural North America, decimating the Lévesque proved incapable of it, Blakeney felt lit‐ family farm through consolidation, greater mech‐ tle compunction about pressing ahead without anization, and corporatization. The NDP promised him. a “revitalized rural Saskatchewan,” and the mem‐ oir recounts a host of imaginative policy initia‐ The same global forces that shaped Blak‐ tives designed to do just that (p. 5). Blakeney’s eney’s career buffeted MacLaren’s, but the Liberal government introduced measures to ensure sta‐ politician welcomed them all with greater gusto. ble crop prices, maintain established transporta‐ One result is a better memoir. A skilled writer, tion links, and improve rural life, but to no avail. with an eye for sharp, often cutting, descriptions “We were,” he grimly concludes, “it seems, King and amusing anecdotes, MacLaren (and his ca‐ Canute trying to hold back the tide” (p. 125). reer) swaggered across a bigger, much more in‐ ternational, stage. Confident and sympathetic Globalization had other implications for Blak‐ sketches of a drunken Dylan Thomas at a Univer‐ eney’s Saskatchewan. The province’s oil, potash, sity of British Colombia piss-up; or lovelorn poet and uranium boomed in the 1970s and 1980s, Sylvia Plath at Cambridge; or Cherie Blair, lost boosted by the era’s recurrent energy crises. In and alone at a Buckingham Palace reception, con‐ three compact, carefully reasoned chapters, An Honourable Calling tackles each industry in turn, 2 H-Net Reviews vince the reader that MacLaren’s was a life worth Fund as a “Dickensonian character on a global living. scale.”[2] But a memoir, like a poem, demands The opening chapters are among the best in more, and ought to be distilled “emotion recollect‐ the memoir. MacLaren shows great skill at weav‐ ed in tranquility.” ing his personal story into the backdrop of larger MacLaren returns to form in his fnal chap‐ events around him. We learn little of his own fam‐ ters, crafting a strong narrative of his place in ily history or childhood in Vancouver during the Canadian political life in the 1980s and 1990s. Re‐ Second World War, but are delighted by his por‐ joining the Liberal opposition in the House of trait of that city at war against the backdrop of Commons after the 1988 election, the Toronto Britain’s fading empire, a theme that reverberates politician was an influential participant in the na‐ across MacLaren’s career and several of the histo‐ tional debate over free trade with the United ries he later wrote in his spare time. The memoir States. For MacLaren, Canada’s future meant em‐ follows MacLaren through an English degree at bracing, rather than resisting, globalization, and the University of British Colombia, to graduate he had little time for those like Lloyd Axworthy or studies at Cambridge University, and then into the the “monochromatic” Shelia Copps who would Department of External Affairs in 1957. Over the stand in the way (p. 176). He takes the time to out‐ next eleven years, MacLaren was posted to In‐ line the issues at play and carefully explains his dochina, Prague, Ottawa, and New York. Along the own support for both the Canada-U.S. Free Trade way, recalling his experiences as a junior diplo‐ Agreement and trade liberalization in general, mat drafting minor cables and memos, some of while harpooning Mulroney as “endlessly evasive, which he uses to enliven his text, MacLaren skew‐ smug, duplicitous and fundamentally untrustwor‐ ers John G. Diefenbaker, honors Lester B. Pearson, thy” (p. 171). and befriends Trudeau. MacLaren’s views on the attractions of global‐ MacLaren left the foreign service in 1969, and ization in its broadest sense are more fully devel‐ moved to Toronto to join the private sector. After oped in his recollections of his role and priorities stints as a senior executive with Massey-Ferguson, as trade minister after 1993. These chapters also the farm machinery manufacturer, and Ogilvy- give him scope to recount the Liberal Party’s de‐ Mather (Canada), an advertising agency, he and bates over handling the Goods and Services Tax, two partners purchased the magazine Canadian dealing with the country’s declining fscal posi‐ Business and established a small publishing frm. tion, and managing the 1995 referendum in Que‐ This provided MacLaren the base he needed to bec. MacLaren is necessarily careful in his de‐ enter federal politics, seeking and winning the scriptions of the personalities involved, but he in‐ nomination for the Toronto riding of Etobicoke cludes shrewd assessments of John Turner and North. It also provided economic experiences, Paul Martin, as well as a generous and affection‐ only hinted at here, which determined his ap‐ ate one of his prime minister, Jean Chrétien. Ma‐ proach to globalization, fiscal, and tax policies. cLaren ended his public career as high commis‐ Much of the material on MacLaren’s political sioner to the United Kingdom. In this role he re‐ career between 1979 and 1984, when he lost his mained preoccupied with Canadian trade policy seat in Brian Mulroney’s sweep, is recycled from and the pursuit of a Canadian strategy for global‐ his diaries, published in 1986 as Honourable Men‐ ization. It was not a preoccupation that appealed tions: The Uncommon Diary of an M.P. These are to his ministers or their department. undoubtedly good and deserve rereading--he Neither An Honourable Calling nor The Fun‐ memorably describes the International Monetary damental Things Apply are triumphalist memoirs. 3 H-Net Reviews Change today is too fast and the victories too un‐ certain.

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