Political Lives and Biographical Approaches

voking the breakup of Canada, but rather it was the chronic refusalofEnglish Canada to accommodate what should have been its natural ally; moreover, this refusal was being expressed concurrently with the irremediable alignment of our political cultu re with American neo-liberalism. It is thus that its"totalitarianism" ofrights and individual liberties contributed to the coming apart of a country, the existence of which had its origin in a contract between two peoples - a pact founded essentially, but not exclusively, on the conciliation and the reciprocal enrichment of two established political cultures which were far from being foreign one to the other, as the authors would have us believe. It is thus that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Liberties - the ultimate denialof 1774, 1791, 1840, and 1867 - which a quite impressive proportion of Anglo Canada has come to regard as a"founding act," is faulted in that it excludes, in the full and literal sense of the word, one of the two endorsers of the original pact. And if the Charter is indeed a "founding act" Bercuson and Cooper's book confim1s onceand for all that, despite the fact that it was imposed by a Quebecer, the document gave birth - before our authors - to a "Canada without Quebec." Which would suggest that there may well be, in effect, an urgency for Quebec to leave Canada, but not becauseQuebec is perverting Canadian political culture. To the contrary, one might reply to Bercuson and Cooper that Quebec should steer clear of what they call ROC (Rest ofCanada) precisely because the political culture of what now calls itself Canada is, in fact, not very Canadian at all. ThusQuebec, the place in time and space where the original fusion of the two grand political traditions (French and English) constituting the essenceofthe Canadian political culture took place, would find itself to have become the last bastion ofthis same political culture. Perhaps we shall witness the resolution ofthe quintessential Canadian quandary where, after all, it began. We may in fact see Quebecers descending into the streets to claim for themselves what has been, and will be, a Canadian Quebec - "le .Canada aux Quebecois." 170 As for Anglo-Canadians, a cloud is gathering on the horizon, the native peoples question - or "how to get rid of a founding people by replacing it with another" - and that challenge risks perturbing somewhat the purity of the democratic liberalism so sacred to our authors. It will indeed be interesting to see how 'Canada without Quebec' confronts this new distinct society, reputed to be more distinct than all the others. To borrow (in the style of the authors) the analogy of the married couple, perhaps English Canada will succeed in "remaking its life'', a little like those men who, after having failed in their first marriage, undertake to found a new family with a partner who often turns out to be more demanding than the first. After all, it is not because one love has died that a new, and this time lasting, love cannot be reborn in the arms ofanother - at least that is what the American way would have us believe. JOSEE LEGAULT Universite du QuebecaMontreal (translated by Gary Caldwell, IQRC) Political Lives and Biographical Approaches ALVIN: A BIOGRAPHYOFTHEHONOURABLE ALVIN HAMILTON, P.C. Patrick Kyba. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, I989. pp. xviii, 390. THE OUTSIDER: THE LIFE OF PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU. Michel Vastel. Toronto: Macmillan, 1990. pp. vi, 266. JIMMY GARDINER: RELENTLESS LIBERAL. Norman Ward and David Smith. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1990. pp. xi, 389. DIEFENBAKER FOR THE DEFENCE. Garrett Wilson and Kevin Wilson. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1988. pp. xvi, 286. Canadian biography, as much as any of the contemporary literary arts, is presently subject to rapid and radical changes of Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 26. No. 3 (A111011111e 1991 Fall) theoretical and methodological style and idiom. Long ago, biographies ceased to be exercises in hagiography. The boundaries between documentary and fictional writing are no longer sacrosanct so that Heather Robertson can write novels about Mackenzie King, parts ofwhich are based upon archival sources, and Michael Ondaatje can compose inventive poetry about an historical desperado called Billy the Kid. Experiments with the very format of...