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568 The Canadian Historical Review conversion graduelle, sincere et authentique, fruit d'une veritable et intense quete spirituelle. Enfin, la derniere partie dresse un bilan de l'influence de Chiniquy. Lougheed voit dans son combat une lutte pour la liberte d'expression et suggere, avec une hardiesse certaine, qu'il fut un precurseur vers la democratisation des structures de l'Eglise. L'auteur releve egalement ses efforts pour developper les missions protestantes fran~aises, et, paradoxalement, sa contribution al'essor de l'ultramontanisme . Selon lui, le faste croissant des ceremonies religieuses, la promotion du culte marial et de la devotion eucharistique, de meme que le renouvellement de la discipline ecclesiastique decoulent directement de la conversion de Chiniquy. Le clerge paroissial et les eveques porterent une attention accrue a ces questions afin de contrer la propagande anticatholique de l'ex-pretre. Pour interessante qu'elle soit, l'hypothese tend, amon avis, aaccorder une importante demesuree aChiniquy et a oublier que d'autres facteurs de changement etaient al'reuvre au sein de l'Eglise catholique de l'epoque et que le renouveau de la spiritualite et de la discipline avait ete amorce des avant sa conversion au protestantisme. En depit de cette reserve et du parti pris evident dont fait preuve Richard Lougheed pour son sujet d'etude, la biographie a le merite d'eclairer certaines des actions de Chiniquy en rappelant et en expliquant tres bien le contexte de polemique entre catholiques et evangeliques du XIX" siecle. 11 est dommage que de nombreuses coquilles et une traduction approximative deparent cet ouvrage et nuisent parfois ala comprehension . CHRISTINE HUDON Universite de Sherbrooke Steamboat Connections: Montreal to Upper Canada, 1816-1843. FRANK MACKEY. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2000. Pp. 403, illus. $44·95 Steamboat Connections is not the kind of book one sees much from academic presses. According to the blurb on the dust jacket, 'in Steamboat Connections Frank Mackey shows how small steamers ran "the circuit" - down the rapids ofthe St Lawrence to Montreal and then back up to Kingston and other Great Lakes ports via the Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal.' Well, no. This route is discussed towards the end ofthe book, but the study's heart is really the complex relationships among the mostly Montreal-based American entrepreneurs who controlled much of the steam trade between Upper Canada and Montreal between the late teens and 1843. Book Reviews 569 Mackey is an independent scholar and copy editor for the Montreal Gazette. He says he was piqued by a particular incident, the capture and sinking of the steamboat Henry Brougham during the Rebellion of 1837/38. Clearly, this particular problem turned into an obsession. Mackey's account, by his own admission, is a narrative history. Largely chronological - though there is some jumping back and forth - the book's central figure is Massachusetts-born Horace Dickinson, who controlled much ofthe steam and stage traffic up the St Lawrence from Lachine until his death, from cholera, in 1832. His role is supported by a kaleidoscopic cast of characters: shipbuilders, founders, engine-makers, capitalists, forwarders, bankers, occasionally drunk captains and crewmen , politicians, patriotes, and many more. Sometimes the cast is just a little too large for comfort; opening the book at random, we find twentyfive people named on pages 114-15, and this enumeration is typical. Fortunately, Mackey writes engagingly, and the story moves forward quickly. The historian interested in steam navigation and its broader context will find this book frustrating. It is not business history, though there is a great deal of business-related material here. Nor is it a history of technology. Although we learn some information about early steamers, anyone with a curiosity about how they were built, powered, and operated will have to go elsewhere. Still, the reader will learn quite a lot of these and other matter by osmosis, though some knowledge of these broader matters will make the book more meaningful. Mackey is quite honest about his purpose: he says he is writing narrative and that's what he does, and well. The term 'exhaustive' can certainly be applied to Mackey's research. I cannot imagine that he missed anything of significance. The...

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