I'm from Bouctouche, Me (review)

Over the last thirty years, Donald Savoie has established himself as one of the pre-eminent Canadian thinkers in regional economic development, public administration, and public policy, publishing over forty books.

In I'm from Bouctouche, Me, Savoie adopts a very different style of writing and reflection, one much more personal in tone. This shift was certainly intentional, as the book was published as part of McGill-Queen's Footprint Series, which aims to tell 'the life stories of individual(s) who were participants in interesting events.' One has to admit that Savoie's life fits the bill. Raised in an Acadian hamlet in New Brunswick, he went on to study at Oxford and to a charmed university career (he has directed a research institute or held a research chair for most of it) peppered by influential stints working for the federal and New Brunswick governments. He has assisted both Liberal and Conservative administrations, managing to avoid being categorized as a partisan of either. These stints have served him well, giving him privileged access to information through his personal contacts throughout public administration and in the political class. Indeed, a colleague of his in the public service suggested that he title his memoirs 'A Gumshoe in the Corridors of Power' (199). Along the way, he was active participant in many events that have marked Canada's contemporary history.

Although the book does cover Savoie's personal and family life to a point, it would best be described as his memoirs, rather than as an autobiography. The author's main goal is to insert his life's story into wider (his)stories, notably that of l'Acadie, but also of the Maritime provinces and of Canada as a whole. The book's central idea–put forward in the introduction, the first chapter (a historical retrospective), and the conclusion–is that although Acadian society remembers its roots well, it has come a long way in the last sixty years, to the point that one must talk of transformational change. Savoie, like many Acadians of the baby boom generation, considers himself lucky to have witnessed this evolution, of which he readily admits to being essentially a beneficiary. Without coyness, Savoie credits Acadian leaders from the 1930s to the 1960s (among others his uncle Calixte Savoie, Father Clément Cormier, and Premier Louis J. Robichaud) and–somewhat reluctantly–the Acadian student activists of the 1960s for having given his generation and the following ones the opportunities to lead interesting and diverse careers such as his. Canada's liberal and tolerant political framework (in general) and Pierre Trudeau's legacy (in particular) are also much lauded. In contrast, Acadian civil society's main organizations since the 1970s are presented as a 'parallel, publicly funded bureaucracy' that has largely lost its raison d'être. While Savoie justifies his dismissal of Acadian 'national' organizations for being state-kept, one senses that this rebuttal hides an ideological opposition to their insistence on collective rights. 'We [Acadians] now have the laws and institutions, the skills, the role models, and the confidence we need in order to compete. … Only as individuals can we fight the good fight in this new [globalized] world' (253).

In truth, only the first half of the book is structured around this idea of the reinvention of Acadia. In those first five chapters, Savoie gives his take on Acadie's past and its postwar transformation. Here, we have Savoie the historical witness, describing the situation of rural and urban Acadians of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as his experiences at the Université de Moncton (during the heady days of student protest, in which he played no role, a fact that he now regrets) and at the University of New Brunswick, all set against the backdrop of the province's political history. Many of the events discussed here have already been documented elsewhere, but these passages offer a...