Halifax: The First 250 Years by Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland (review)

Book Reviews 7n pact theory against efforts to impose constitutional change from without. The lacuna illustrates what may be the book's greatest weakness: incompetent treatment ofconstitutional topics. The compact theory ofConfederation is barely mentioned and never analyzed. A garbled note on the constitiltional amendment of1951 will baffle the uninformed. Ofthe Supreme Court's inept decision on Patriation in 1981, we read: 'We know today that neither Quebec nor any other province had the right ofveto.' Such naive positivism would make even the most ahistorical of constitutional lawyers wince. Here it is the more ironic because Patriation is so central to the book's topic ofconflicting collective memories. Arguably, the whole bungle depended on the hegemony of the nationbuilding idea of Confederation in the English-Canadian collective memory. Anglophones had long forgotten the historical rationale for the compact theory of Confederation and the corollary provincial right of veto, while francophones remembered only a self-referential version that made no sense to English minds. Constitutional matters apart, though, this book is an ingenious approach to a vitally important topic. As Rocher writes, some may wish to deny the reality of 'two founding peoples,' but the relations between francophones and anglophones remain the central axis of Canadian history. As I Recall is well designed to focus our minds on that intractable reality and its causes. PAUL ROMNEY Baltimore, Maryland Halifax: The First 250 Years. JUDITH FINGARD, JANET GUILDFORD, and DAVID SUTHERLAND. Halifax: Formac Publishing 1999· Pp. 192, illus. $29.95 This is a fine, popular addition to a growing library on the port city of Halifax. The authors, all Halifax-based academics, are able communicators and guides for a general audience. The style and pace of the book are lively, and often entertaining as well as informative. Moreover, while the three separately written sections (each by one ofthe authors) are not seamless, they are remarkably compatible. The scholarship is authoritative and for the most part unobtrusive. In the introduction, however, the authors follow the academic vice of setting up a straw man and then bringing him down to prove their prowess. Here, the choice fell on the distinguished earlier fiction writer, Thomas Raddall, who, although he used sophisticated archival methods and knew the city's and the province's. social historywell, never laid claim to being a professional historian. Raddall wrote a popular history of Halifax in 1949, at the time ofits bicentennial, the first such chronicle 712 The Canadian Historical Review since the late nineteenth century. He wrote well, ifunderstandably in an imperial context, and it's still worth reading. This new account brings together the riches and freshness of recent professional approaches to Canadian history. The city comes alive with new perspectives - a community much richer in texture than a poor British colonial garrison. Halifax: The First 250 Years explores the city's complex nature: its jewelled setting and its mosaic ofpeoples, including Blacks and Natives, who have seldom been recognized before. The dark side of poverty and a port city's pathology are clearly recognized, while we meet an able cadre of socially responsible women who pushed well beyond prohibition and suffragism in their pursuit of progressive reforms. The city's remarkable commercial and industrial invention and expansion late in the nineteenth century are well outlined, as is the period after the Second World War when a coalition ofcity boosters and well-meaning, if sometimes head-strong, reformers pursued urban renewal and social inclusivism with mixed results. The community's varied cultural, ethnic, and athletic life is ably portrayed in accounts of the musical, theatrical, sporting, and leisured activities that reflected its · social diversity. Apart from a few typos in the text, a thin index, and the publisher's unhappy gaffe ofmis-spelling the city's name on the book's spine, this is also a fine piece ofbook production. It is sturdy and lavishly illustrated worth its price for that alone. The notes accompanying the many striking photos and reproductions of early sketches, paintings, and artifacts are also full of rich material and insights. This is sound academic history brought to life for the general reader. ALAN WILSON Hubbards, NS Mount Saint Vincent University: A Vision Unfolding, 1873...