Trudeau Without Glamor
WOODCOCK, GEORGE
Trudeau Without Glamor Trudeau in Power By Walter Stewart Outerbridge & Dienstfrey. 240 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by George Woodcock Editor, "Canadian Literature"; author, "Canada and the...
...In other words, American readers are offered what from the outside will look like an informative and perhaps slightly favorable introduction to the elegant swinger who governs the country on their northern border...
...government has treated Canadians with contempt on issues like the Amchitka test (which aroused almost universal disapproval in Canada) and the 10 per cent surcharge, and Trudeau has failed to counter effectively...
...he would stand up to our southern neighbors and repel them politically as Canada repelled them militarily in 1812 (despite Nixon, the one war America did not win...
...and he would evolve a political system more in keeping with the libertarian and participatory political ideals of our time...
...Moreover, they have placed this misleading label on an equally misleading dust cover: Trudeau is shown as a much younger man than he is today, wearing a white shirt and a Nixon tie, with ample hair on his now balding cranium, and with none of the locks that in 1972 modishly flow from the back of his head over his collar...
...There are indeed cases when the new legend actually lessens the impact of the original on potential readers...
...A publisher may be unable to insist on changes in the text, so he digs in his heels when discussing the name that the work he midwives shall bear in the world...
...he would solve the problem of Quebec's aspirations on a reasonable basis...
...This is one of the reasons why English and Canadian books often appear in the United States under different titles, rarely better than the original and equally rarely more appealing to American readers...
...Bitterness grows between Quebec and the rest of Canada, to the extent that now the west would gladly see the French Canadians depart from confederation, while for the first time in two generations there are serious advocates of secession in British Columbia and Alberta...
...To emphasize the contemptuous attitude Trudeau has adopted toward his constituents, he called it Shrug...
...An impressive number of academics and intellectuals were among Tru-deau's ardent early supporters, since they believed he would work for a freer and more just society...
...author, "Canada and the Canadians" Publishers, who are usually ecrivains manques, have an itch to leave their special mark on a book they bring out, and one way to do so results in the kind of haggling over titles with which most writers are depressingly familiar...
...First, nationalist feeling has been on the upsurge in Canada during the last decade...
...yet by curtailing the role of Parliament and concentrating power in a "Super Group" of political intimates, Trudeau has measurably reduced the extent of participation in political life, and his invocation of the War Measures Act during the October 1970 crisis was a flagrant defiance of civil libertarian philosophy...
...The title had a dual function: It not only expressed the seething frustration Trudeau's actions and attitudes arouse in many Canadians, it also warned the reader that this was a book with a confessed bias??an anti-Trudeau polemic...
...Walter Stewart, associate editor of Maclean's, a large-circulation, moderately nationalist Canadian monthly, wrote a book on the Prime Minister of his country...
...They can only be bewildered when they open the book and find themselves plunged into the bitter infighting that has characterized Canadian political life since Mackenzie King went to join the ghosts he consulted so assiduously during his long rule in Ottawa...
...the book under review is one of them...
...Americans should read Trudeau in Power if they wish not merely to learn about the enigmatic man who rules north of the border, but also to understand the issues and the strength of feeling that lie behind Canada's current nationalist surge...
...The other point to remember in reading Trudeau in Power is that its subject was elected to the leadership of the Liberal party in Canada, and later to the Prime Ministership of the country, largely because of the impatience among small-/ liberals with the futile period dominated by those feuding political aurochs, John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson...
...The American publishers, surely moved by a conviction??not without foundation??that Americans are massively ignorant of Canada and its problems, have eliminated the real title and substituted the vapid subtitle, which reflects none of the book's antagonistic passion...
...Finally, to many Canadians their tradition of responsible government as against Presidential command is precious...
...The U.S...
...For all his talk of a "just society," his tenure has led to steadily growing unemployment...
...As a Canadian I appreciate the contentious qualities of Walter Stewart's book, and I think I can best use the remaining space to discuss its background so that readers south of the 49th parallel may gain some idea of its full implications and possible influence...
...he would develop an independent foreign policy...
...Many Canadians are hypersensitive to American economic and cultural colonialism, and they feel Trudeau has shown a lack of decisiveness and resourcefulness in combating the menace...
...These are the grounds for the rejection of Trudeau by Canadian intellectuals...
...Two interconnected points must be understood...
...I think that on both counts they??and Walter Stewart as their able and mordant spokesman??are correct...
...the subtitle, doubtless demanded by his Canadian publisher, was Trudeau in Power...
...In practice Trudeau??who conveniently refrained from making many election promises??has failed his former admirers on all these points...
Vol. 55 • March 1972 • No. 6
