An Honourable Calling: Political Memoirs (review)

Allan Blakeney’s memoirs are both reminiscence and rumination. He recounts his boyhood, education, stint as secretary and legal counsel for Saskatchewan Crown corporations in the 1950s, plunge into politics in 1960, involvement in the birth of medicare, service as Saskatchewan premier (1971–82) and leader of the opposition (1982–7), and postpolitical career in academe. In addition, he offers the reflections of an elder statesman on some of the great questions of the day: Aboriginal/ non-Aboriginal relations, the role of the university in society, how to deal with the financial pressures on the healthcare system, the Supreme Court’s over-interpretation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the appropriate level of royalties to be levied on resource companies, and the future of the welfare state.

The writing style is easy, unadorned, and precise. He clothes firm conviction in gentle, moderate-sounding phraseology. When he says that a certain line of argument is ‘not promising,’ what he really means is that it is the dumbest thing he has ever heard of. Favourite locutions are ‘perhaps, perhaps not’ and ‘it may or may not be.’ But do not mistake his skeptical, analytical turn of mind for lack of mental toughness. In the wake of the 1962 doctors’ strike in Saskatchewan, the Blakeneys’ family physician, who supported medicare, was denied hospital privileges by doctors who opposed ‘socialized medicine.’ Rather than switch doctors, the Blakeneys arranged for a home birth. The medics arrived at the house with all their equipment, including an oxygen tank, in cardboard boxes, and thirty-six-year-old Anne Blakeney safely delivered a baby boy.

Reading the memoir, one is struck by the British cast of Blakeney’s Canadian national identity. He is descended on his father’s side from United Empire Loyalists, who arrived in Nova Scotia in 1782. His mother was born in the Rhondda Valley in Wales. Formative years were spent at Oxford shortly after the Second World War, where the big debate was whether the steel industry should be nationalized, as had already happened to the coal industry. When he first arrived in Saskatchewan in 1950, his mentor was George Cadbury, scion of British chocolate manufacturers. In his analysis of why Saskatchewan, unlike Alberta, took a socialist turn in the 1930s and 1940s, Blakeney calls attention to the fact that ‘a number of the early political leaders who emerged had strong roots in the United Kingdom and had no fear of either co-operatives or governments to building a new society’ (26). Blakeney himself fits this tradition. It is not surprising that two of the eight black-and-white plates, which illustrate the book, feature him in the company of a young and radiant Queen Elizabeth II.

One of the book’s disappointments is the author’s decision not to grapple intellectually with the critique of social democracy and the welfare state that has arisen in recent decades. Instead, the usual generalizations are trotted out. ‘Our challenge for the future will not primarily be to produce more goods, but rather to distribute the goods more fairly’ (250). Eric Kierans is cited several times, as though he were the authoritative arbiter on these matters. Contrast Blakeney’s traditional approach with that of Barack Obama in his recent political memoir, Audacity of Hope. Obama finds merit in what some neoconservatives have been saying. He tries to transcend the old left/right battles, acknowledging, for example, that social progress requires not only government action, but also cultural transformation, a change in values, as well as a change in policy. It is not enough to build new schools and pay teachers more. It is also necessary for parents to turn off the television, help their children with their homework, and instill values of hard work and delayed gratification.

Obama has a chapter titled ‘Values,’ where he talks about the American belief that we are born in this world free, with rights that cannot be taken away from us without just cause, and that through...