The Bruce Report

Robert Stanfield’s Canada: Perspectives of the Best Prime Minister We Never Had

By Richard Clippingdale, $39.95 (pb)

ISBN #978-1-55339-218-7, 124 pp.

McGill-Queen’s University Press, June 2008

Over his long, distinguished career, Robert Stanfield had refused many tributes: among them, a seat in the Senate, ambassadorial assignments, Crown corporation chairs, private sector directorships, and an Order of Canada. So, when a messenger from Ottawa came calling in 2002, the year before his death, asking him to accept the title of “Right Honourable”, his response was predictable (and predictably polite): Would the emissary mind, terribly, if he respectfully declined?

That emissary was Hugh Segal, conservative strategist and sitting senator, and – as he recounts in the forward of Richard Clippingdale’s superbly researched and cogently written book about Stanfield’s invaluable contributions to political culture in Canada – he did, indeed, mind. “I simply said that I knew of no Canadian who would not rejoice at his elevation because of all that was good and decent in our country that he had come to represent both as Premier of Nova Scotia and Leader of the Opposition,” Segal writes about the encounter.

“Well,” the eminence grise of the Red Tory tradition reportedly replied, “I never like to let people down. Tell the Prime Minister that I would be delighted and grateful. . .Now, I’m sure you have more important duties than sitting around with me.”

This is the Robert Stanfield that Clippindale, a former Director of Canadian Studies at Carleton University, captures in his slim, honest volume: a man far less interested in the perks and privileges of power, than in the standards of public service that, he believed, girded the Canadian character. Though his political achievements were impressive – as national Progressive Conservative leader, he restored the popularity of Diefenbaker’s fractured Tories, and came within two seats of defeating the Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal juggernaut in the 1972 federal election – his legacy is more lasting and pervasive.

A champion of Quebec’s distinctive place in Confederation, a proponent of constructive internationalism, and a frequent advocate of political moderation – particularly in times of crisis – he was the nation’s most influential architect of centrism. As Clippingdale writes, “What distinguished him was the quality of his disinterested dedication to the public good and to his country’s harmony and future prospects. He adorned not only the political world, but also the much broader fields of national reconciliation and opportunity.”

If, at times, the book lacks verve in the story-telling, it does not suffer from historical incoherence. It is, in the end, a worthy addition to the literature on a singularly great Canadian.

The Peaceful Revolution: 250 Years of Democracy in Nova Scotia

By John Boileau, $24.95 (pb)

ISBN #978-1-55109-680-3, 226 pp.

Nimbus Publishing Limited, September 2008

With a dedication that conjures the revolutionary rhetoric of Tom Paine, one might be led astray by author John Boileau’s declaration that his book is for “all Nova Scotians who fought for our rights and freedoms in the long struggle for parliamentary democracy, both at home and abroad.”

In fact, this work – assiduously researched and beautifully written – makes the opposite point: that democracy in North America was obtained through fiat and manoeuvre, and only later defended by force and military action. In Nova Scotia, at least, the former prevailed without need for the latter. “The story of how the small, isolated, and relatively unimportant colony was the first to achieve two of the major developments in parliamentary democracy in Canada – representative government and responsible government – is one of which every Nova Scotia and Canadian should be aware and proud,” Boileau writes.

And so we should. Well. . .sort of.

In meticulous detail, the author – who is, among other things, a retired Canadian army colonel – recounts the story of Aboriginal-Franco-Anglo attempts to “represent” and be “responsible” for a dizzying array of ordinary people and vested interests. Still, you can’t help wondering whether the impetus for all of this was not so much high principle, as it was low cunning.

Says Boileau: “When 19 members of the first elected House of Assembly in Nova Scotia – and in what later became Canada – met for the first time on October 2, 1758, in a humble wooden building at the corner of Argyle and Buckingham streets in Halifax, they had achieved their immediate short-term goal. From then on, the population of the small colony would have a direct voice in the administration of their affairs. . .Perversely, men completely detached from the local situation in Nova Scotia – men who lived on the other side of the vast and dangerous North Atlantic Ocean and who had never set foot in the colony – were more interested in furthering the cause of democratic institutions than members of the local establishment.”

Why? Because the Lords of the English Boards of Trade reckoned, correctly, that freer trade would make them richer than they had ever imagined. Democracy, as they configured it, was a mere handmaiden for achieving their broader economic interests.

This fine, little book is masterfully rendered and exquisitely illustrated. And though is exhibits, in places, too much love of subject and topic, it remains, nonetheless, the best account of democracy’s underpinnings in a very long time.