Lament for Canadian-American Relations?

several points, but he does not deal specifically with this story. Joseph Gold, "Our Feeling Exactly: the Writing of Alice Munro," in Miller, ed., The Art ofAlice Munro, p. 10, suggests the parallel. Carrington sees "The Wild SwansatCoole"and "Leda and theSwan" astheprimaryanaloguesbut, especially in light of Blodgett's discussion (58-60) of Bobby Sheriffs pirouetteat theend ofLives, I would see"AmongSchoolChildren"as in someways thebetter match. Thepointofall this - beyond display of erudition and proving the postmodem notion thattextsare madeofothertexts - is thatMunro isclearly a much more literary writerthan shehas traditionally been seen. In thesame fashion, see Lorraine M. York, "The Rival Bards: AliceMunro'sLives ofGirlsand Women and Victorian Poetry," Canadian Literature, No. 112 (Spring 1987}, pp. 21116 . All ofthese lines ofenquiry - including Cather - warrant further scholarly investigation. ROBERT THACKER St. Lawrence University Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 26, No. 2 (Eri /<)<)/Summer) La.mentfor CanadianAmerican Relations? AMERICA'SAlLIANCESAND CANADIANAMERICANRELATIONS . Ed. L. McKinsey andK.R. Nossal. Toronto: SummerhillPress, I988. vii + 223 pp. FRIENDS SO DIFFERENT: ESSAYS ON CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE I980s. Ed. L. Lamont and J.D. Edmonds. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, I989. xxi + 318pp. SEENFROMTHESOUTH. Ed. P.K. Kresl. Provo: D.M. Kennedy Center for InternationalStudies , Brigham Young University, 1989. xii+ 226pp. RETREAT FROM GOVERNANCE: CANADA AND THE CONTINENTALINTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE. H. T. Wilson. Ottawa: VoyageurPublishing, 1989. 167pp. NEGOTIATING FREER TRADE: THE UNITED KINGDOM, THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND THE TRADE AGREEMENTS OF I938. J.M. Drummond and N. Hillmer. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, I989. x + 197pp. NORTHAMERICANCUL1VRES: VALVES AND INSTITUTIONS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES. S.M. Lipset. Orono: Borderlands Monograph Series, 1989. v + 50pp. CANADAASABORDERLANDSSOCIEIY. R. Gibbins. Orono: BorderlandsMonograph Series, I989. v + 17pp. CANADIAN-AMERICANPUBUCPOUCY: CANADA-U.S. RELATIONSINTHEBUSH ERA. J. T. Jockel. Orono: University of Maine Press, I990. 28pp. Some twenty-five years ago, in 1966, I began to teach a seminar in CanadianAmerican relations at Queen's University. I was energized by the course material, the enthusiasm and the senseofcommitmenton the part ofso many ofmy students. Thestudy ofCanadian-American relations was, among other things, an opportunity to come to grips with the evolving Canadian senseofnation169 aJity. Contemporary Canadian nationalism obviously shaped my approach to the studyof Canadian-American relations and also attracted the interest ofa myriad of unusually gifted Queen's undergraduates. It seemed so easy in the late 1960s to impose a straightforward "Whig" organizational framework on the historical material covered in theclass - a framework which gaveshape and substance to an emergingcontemporary sense of Canadian identity. My class and I loved to read George Grant's Lament for a Nation, regarding itas ringing clarioncall for all ofus to try to preserve the Canadian nation - despite the odds. "Our hope," Grant had eloquentlyargued, "lay in the bel.iefthaton the northern halfofthis continentwecould build a community which had a stronger sense of the common good and of publk order than was possible under the individualism of the American capitalist dream." We remembered the few positive things in Grant and eagerly forgot his doomy predictionsabout the imminent destruction of Canada by the insidious ethos ofAmerican liberal individualism and consumerism. At the core of what had quickly become our collective neo-Canadian nationalism was a powerful critique of almost all things Americanas well as an understandabledesire to exaggerate the uniqueness ofthe Canadian experience. I stressed in my class the fact that Canada had "rejected" the American Revolution and all that it represented; it had turned back American military imperialism during the Warof1812 and had shown little interest injoiningthe UnitedStates in 1837 and 1838 and during the Fenian raids. In 1867, Canadian "peace, orderand good government" had easily defeated the forces of American republican "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; and despite the Liberal Party's enthusiasm for reciprocity, Canadian good sense had prevailed in the federal electionsof 1891 and 1911 and throughout the long political night of W.L. Mackenzie King. The strong anti-American bias of my reading ofthe Canadian-Americanpast was strengthened by my growing conviction that the United States, in the late 1960s, was no longera"City ora Hill" but rather a"Hell on Earth." Vietnam, the Black problem, urban chaos, the assassinations of the Kennedy 170 brothers and Martin Luther King had convinced me that the Loyalists and their descendants were indeed right in their condemnation ofthe violence which seemed to be so endemic in American society. Raymond Souster captured best for me the intenseanimas ofthe anti-Americanism that seemed to fuel the new Canadian nationalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s: America You seem to bedying America moving across the forty-ninth parallel each day a stronger death laden stench; wafting inshore from offthe Great Lakes the same unmistakable stink ... America you're sitting on your own rumbling volcano ... America phoney as a Hollywood cowboy mainstreet, laughable as Rockefeller with his ten-cent pieces, vulgar as a Las Vegas night club ... America America there is really nothing left to do now but die with a certain gracefulness Butthe UnitedStates refused todie despite its "rumbling volcano." And as that country rebounded from the horrors of Vietnam, especially in the post-Carterperiod, Canada began to experiencea profoundly disturbing identity crisis as Quebec threatened to leave Confederation and the West bitterly complained about its second-class status in a nation dominated by Central Canada. Bythe late 1980s, I found that my students were no longer really interested in CanadianAmerican relations. Most of them found Grant's Lamentfor a Nation to be both too pessimistic and totally irrelevant. My own reading ofthehistorical past, moreover, was beingcontradicted by Canadian political and economic realities. The Mulroney electoral victory in 1988 seemed todelivera death blow to my interpretation of the CanadianAmerican relationship and to my own enthusiasm for the topic. For me Grant had Revue d'etudes canadiennes been right after all andhis Lament becamemy lament. During the 1989/90 academic year I decided to leave the areas of CanadianAmerican relations. I had lost faith in my nation and in my interpretation of the past. The publication offive new books about Canadian-American relations and also three pamphlets has temporarily drawn me back to the field. After reading these eight works, however, it will be even more difficult the next time to persuade me to return. Why? It is largely because of the almost total Jack of scholarly rigour, literary grace and sophisticated analysis to be found in most of these books and articles. Only three, in my view, are worth buyingand reading; and allofthese are short pamphlets - Seymour Martin Lipset's fifty-page North American Cultures: Values and Institutions in Canada and the United States, Roger Gibbins's seventeenpage Canada AsA Borderlands Society, and J.T. Jockel's slim monograph CanadianAmerican Public Policy: Canada-U.S. Relations in the Bush Era. The three edited volumes of essays, L. Lamont and J.D. Edmonds, Friends So Different; P.K. Kresl, Seenfrom the South; and L. McKinseyand K.R. Nossal, Americas Alliances and Canadian-American Relations add little, ifanything, to existingscholarship. Thereis probably nothing as stale as old news except forembarrassing, stalearticlesdealing with the Canadian-American relationship. These three books certainly underscore this point. Recent developments in Quebec and the Gulf War make rather redundant the argumentsand analyses put forward by such authors as Charles Doran, Joseph Jockel, P.K. Kresl, John Carroll, Annette Fox, Allan Gottlieb, J.D. Edmonds, William Diebold, Laurence S. Eagleburger, Gene Lyons, Douglas Ross, and David Leighton-Brown. Not only are most of the articles tired neoconservativejustifications for the status quo but they are written in prose that is almost impossible to pick up when once dropped. H.T. Wilson'sRetreatFrom Governance is an anti-Mulroney diatribe, full ofbitterantiTory invective but lacking in sophisticated analysis and literary style. The book is dedicated "To the memory ofGeorge Grant." Alas, Wilson's bookadds little to Lamentfor a Nation or to Grant's memory. Joumal ofCanadian Studies I.M. Drummond and N. Hillmer have written the only scholarly book to be reviewed . Their Negotiating Freer Trade: The UnitedKingdom, the United States, Canada and the Trade Agreements of1938 is a dull and overlydetaileddescriptiveanalysis ofthe diplomatic negotiations that Jed to the 1938 Trade Agreements. They have done their research in a myriad ofarchives; they have mastered the secondary literature. They have written a bookaimed at the specialist. There is little that is new about the CanadianAmerican relationship in their book, but the richly textured detail adds an important dimension to the story. Lipset'sNorth American Cultures isa very briefsummary of his 337-page Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions ofthe UnitedStatesandCanada published in 1990. Thecentral argumentofthe Lipsetpamphlet "is that Canada has beena more class-aware, elitist, law-abiding, statist, collectivelyoriented , and particularistic (group-oriented) society than the United States, and these fundamental distinctions stem in large part from thedefiningevent that gavebirth to both countries, the American Revolution, and from the diverseecologies flowing from the division of British North America" (2). Though Lipset may not emphasizesufficiently regional differences, and even though he may not have a firm graspofreligious issues, this pamphlet is required reading for anyone interested in Canadian-American relations broadly defined. Theissues raised are onesof primary importance. Gibbins's Canada As A Borderlands Society is a nicely crafted short essay - a think-piece - nothing moreand nothing less. Gibbins makes someperceptivecomparisons between Canada and the United States and agrees with the wise Donald Smiley's assessment of free trade: "Because Canada is essentially a political community rather than an ethnic, cultural or religious one, free trade with the United States will fundamentally compromise Canadian distinctiveness and Canadian nationhood" (14). Jockel's Canadian-American Public Policy is basically academic journalism. It convincingly shows that the Free Trade Agreementdid not resolve"the most contentious of all bilateral trade problems arising 171 from subsidies, countervailing duties and anti-dumping provisions" (24-25). Despite these problems looming on the horizon, Jockel is nevertheless optimistic about the Bush-Mulroney agenda. It is painfully obvious that the years around the Free Trade Agreement have not resulted in an explosion of creative and stimulating work dealing with CanadianAmerican relations. In fact, the growing integration of Canada into the "American Empire" has apparently discouragedserious and distinguished scholarly work in the field - leaving the field wide open for those who seem to spend so much time attending con172 Five million Canadians cannot read or write well enough to function in today's soc:ie~ Every Canadian has a fundamental right to literacy. You can help. Read to your children. Write to your memberof parliament. Become a literacy volunteer. Make a donation. ferences on Canadian-American relations and speaking to one another - using the same tired and well-known arguments. CanadianAmerican scholars will not, it is clear, enter a new "Golden Age" until another wave of anti-Americanism sweeps over a generation ofhistorians, political scientistsand creative writers. For the evidence is very persuasive that there is in Canada intellectual life, a symbiotic relationship between a deep suspicionofthings Americanand an efflorenceof stimulating work dealing with the CanadianAmerican relationship. G.A.RAWLYK Queen's University For more information, contact: Canadian Give the Gift of Literacy l'oundation 35 Spadina Road Toronto, Ont. M5R 2S9 Tel: (416) 975·9366 Fax: (416) 975-1839 The book and periodical indu<1ry o( Canada supports lhe Canadian Gi_., the Gift of Lileracy Foundation. • Southam Literacy Suivey 1987. Revue d'etudes canadiennes ...