\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWCanadian historians, that power belongsin the board rooms of large corporationsand not in the Prime Minister's office orthe committee rooms on Parliament hill.Malcolm's easy familiarity with recentCanadian business activity is reinforcedby a historical perspective, in which twogeneralizations predominate. The first isthe familiar one of the segmentation ofCanada. The book begins with impressiveaccounts of the regionalism decreedby a fierce and intractable geography.Whereas the United States is a riverflowing steadily and ever more powerfullyto some distant goal, Canada is aseries of ponds, some stagnant, somebursting with life, but all condemned tohopeless isolation. Insofar as they haveexternal relations, these are with Americanregions to the immediate south, andnot with sister regions in Canada. Thisseparateness is encouraged and emphasizedby the current infatuation withmulti-culturalism, by which new immigrantshave been given the status ofprivileged visitors who are urged to followtheir traditional ways.Against this pull of regionalism thenational will is powerless. In a key passageMalcolm writes: "so there is aprovincial political system representingnarrow provincial needs and priorities.And there is a federal political systemwith its different focus. The two levels'leaders meet in occasional summits, andthey routinely argue over money — howmuch is the federals' share of risinghealth insurance costs, for example. Butthere is not the constant interplay oflocal and national ideas and perspectivesthat there is all along the interconnectedpolitical career ladder in the Americansystem, even with all its own faults."From strong regionalism and a weaknational drive comes the great Canadianmalaise — a desperate search for a recognizedidentity that always eludes thesearch, a deep-seated consciousness offailure, a pessimism about the future,and a worship of and (at the same time)a righteous contempt for Americanenergy and self-confidence.There is much in this analysis that isaccurate and illuminating. But I wouldsuggest two caveats. He overemphasizesregional conflict. His four years in Canadawere an unusually bitter period ofinternal conflict. He was here duringClark's brief government, then duringthe return of Trudeau with a policy oftough nationalism, which stimulatedbitter opposition. It was a period whenregional passions were at their highest,inflamed by Trudeau's cool, nationalapproach towards the nature of the Canadianstate.My second caveat is more serious.Malcolm does not recognize the persistentstrength of Canadian national ideas.For instance, he sees the pattern ofCanadian immigration through the yearsreinforcing Canadian regionalism. Therewas, he points out, no continuous movementwestward, as there was in theUnited States, but a series of discretemovements, each with its own characteristics.He is right in his observation thatthere was no continuous surge of Westernmovement. But he ignores the movementof a homogeneous group from theMaritimes and Ontario to the West — agroup that played a disproportionatelyimportant role in establishing social andcultural priorities. In general, this groupbrought to the west ideas and attitudesderived partly from loyalist sentiments,partly from a devout protestantism. Theybelieved in the power of education inunion with sound moral principles. Theywere likely to establish a church or aliterary society before a saloon (althoughthe saloon came in good time), and theyhad a passion for education. One of themost remarkable facts about westerndevelopment was the celerity with whichuniversities were founded. The bill creat-145