Taking Stock of 150 Years of Responsible Government in Canada ed. by F. Leslie Seidle, Louis Massicotte (review)

600 The Canadian Historical Review the CWMF (if there is one quibble with the selection of artists, it is the omission ofJohn Turnbull, the futurist painter ofaviation subjects), but the painters and the viewing public were generally happier with subjects that confirmed their preconceptions ofconflict. The next generation ofwar artists took a different view. In their work, machinery often dominated the scene, dwarfing the humans as if to verify that the age of war by technology had dawned. People did not disappear entirely from the paintings: T.R. MacDonald's Night Travellers, for example, depicts weary servicepeople in a railway carriage, while Edwin Holgate's The Dispersal Hut, contrary to the caption provided in the book, captures a group offighter pilots at rest while awaiting the call to operations. Nevertheless, in the paintings from the Second World War, people were increasingly framed or overshadowed by huge aircraft, armoured vehicles, or surrealistic ironwork. But Canvas ofWar is much more than just a book ofpictures. Using the recollections of soldiers, sailors, aviators, and civilians drawn from the Canadian War Museum's fine archival collection, it offers a clear and cogent account of Canada's two world wars. By the same token, the descriptions ofthe art programs are enlivened by wonderful comments from the artists themselves (William Nicholson, as he struggled with a portrait ofthe Canadian headquarters staff in 1918, grumbled that 'my Canadians make slow progress, it's a Hell ofa job'). This comment is not at all unrepresentative, and we can be grateful that Nicholson, and all the other war artists, persevered. As Canvas of War shows, their labours produced a remarkable record of some of the most formative events in the nation's history. JONATHAN F. VANCE University ofWestern Ontario Taking Stock of150 Years ofResponsible Government in Canada. Edited by F. LESLIE SEIDLE and LOUIS MASSICOTTE. Ottawa: Canadian Study of Parliament Group 2000. Pp. 137, $20.00 This book comprises papers from a conference marking the sesquicentenary ofresponsible government in British North America. All four are by political scientists, and all are focused on the present malaise of the system - a malaise evident in declining public participation in political parties and elections, decreasing party loyalty among voters, and the former Reform Party's adoption of policies (fixed legislative terms, citizen initiative, referendum and recall) designed to make the system more responsive to public opinion. Book Reviews 601 Rejean Pelletier documents the growing subservience of the legislature to the executive under the trammels of party discipline. His data pertain to the Quebec legislature, but his point is more general. Jennifer Smith maintains that responsible government is capable ofthrowing off party shackles in response to public opinion. She discusses two Canadian examples: John Bracken's 'non-party' administrations in Manitoba and the recent McClellan minority government in Nova Scotia. The other papers blame the present discontent on a bad fit between the political system and modem Canadian society. Peter Aucoin argues that Canadian democracy is institutionally based within parties as well as within the electoral system, but that our modem political culture sees parties as organs of the state rather than as instruments of citizen participation. This conception of party confines the citizen to what Aucoin calls political consumerism.Nowadays, consequently, 'Canadians are less inclined to identify themselves as partisans, let alone to participate in partisan politics, because to do so is to narrow their political choices. At the same time, they are more than willing to allow an incredibly small percentage oftheir fellow citizens to structure their choices.' Lisa Young relates the crisis of the system to changes in Canadian society. 'The institutions and practices that emerged to govern a scattered , predominantly agrarian population' no longer work well for 'the 30 million mainly urban, educated, affiuent Canadians adapting to postindustrial economic conditions in an interdependent global economy and society.' Deepening regional cleavages, allophone immigration and demands for gender equity have placed increasingly complex representational demands on political parties, while the exigencies ofparty solidarity contradict the legislator's formal duty to represent his constituency as a whole. The resulting system disappoints the expectations of today's better-educated and less-deferential electorate. In this book, history is pressed into the service ofpolitical...