Pearson: The Unlikely Gladiator ed. by Norman Hillmer (review)

732 The Canadian Historical Review into concern over the protection of Canadian culture in the face of creeping Americanization, nor was it predicated on any solid economic reasoning. According to Azzi, Gordon's conviction of the necessity of limiting foreign investment in Canada was both personal and profound, but nothing more. More seriously, that profound conviction did not lead to any fundamental change in the way Canadians dealt with foreign investment: Gordon was largely out of step with the intellectual current ofthe time. Although his activity on royal commissions, as minister of finance, and in cabinet had a major influence on a small number of people, in the grand scheme ofthings economic nationalism never really took root. English-Canadian nationalism may have flourished in these years, but it was a more broadly based form of nationalism than either Gordon or Azzi considered. By focusing on one component ofGordon's thinking, and arguing that that central idea was not particularly wellthought through, Azzi ends up diminishing the man he intends to celebrate as one of the architects of late-twentieth-century Canadian nationalism. The author has tried hard to find something new to say about Gordon, and has focused on a fraction of the man's accomplishments and an infinitesimal moment in the history of the development of the Canadian state. As a result, one comes away from the book with an unfairly diminished impression of Gordon's legacy. P.E. BRYDEN Mount Allison University Pearson: The Unlikely Gladiator. Edited by NORMAN HILLMER. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1999. Pp. 214. $29.95 Hannah Arendt has taught us that success is not the measure of all things when it comes to making historical judgments. While instances of such measuring are found in this collection of essays, the overall contribution is the light cast upon Canada, its institutions and people, as revealed through the leadership and legacy of Lester Pearson. The volume contains nineteen essays, written by academics, journalists, and leading· contemporaries of Pearson, which focus helpfully on the somewhat ignored years ofhis prime ministership. On Pearson's leadership, the writers reach a pretty clear consensus. They found a prime minister who was unable to take command and make clear-cut choices, one who effectively allowed the government's domestic agenda to be driven by an inner circle ofministers and senior officials including Walter Gordon, Tom Kent, Maurice Lamontagne, A.W. Johnson, and Gordon Robertson. These individuals, rather than Book Reviews 733 their leader, must be credited with an agenda whose twin goals were social change and cooperative federalism. The results were indeed impressive: universal health insurance, the Canada Assistance Plan, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Canada Student Loan Plan, provincial equalization, and public sector unionization . Not even in foreign policy, his metier, did Pearson provide much direction as prime minister - beyond determining that the critical Canada-US relationship should proceed basically undisturbed. The internationalist vision that had shaped his much-celebrated work as foreign minister, his real success as a leader, found expression in the 1960s in only minimalist international activities for Canada, such as peacekeeping in Cyprus and mediation over Rhodesia. In most matters of policy, Pearson was reluctant to take the lead because he was uncomfortable with the prospect ofhaving to confront or disagree with his senior colleagues. Still, according to these essays, Pearson's legacy is substantial. Such has been the impact of Pierre Trudeau on Canadian public life that it is now forgotten that there were some political ideas, approaches, and truths that were articulated, iffrom a less rarefied intellectual plane, by Lester Pearson. It was Pearson who reminded Canadians that they were connected to and undeniably had obligations in the external world. Implicit in Pearson's conception ofthe world was the notion that it had an order, or a fabric, which was capable of being strengthened. Canadians , having experienced serious strains in their own social fabric during two world wars and the Great Depression, had a particularly informed contribution to make in such strengthening. Denis Stairs sets out liberalism's position that the institutions and attitudes that constitute order are created largely by acts of human choice and will. But...