Ron Graham

The year was 1972, the month was April, and I was in Oxford to attend a weekend symposium on leftist politics organized by a group of Canadian graduate students at the university. Having just crawled across the finish line of my own postgraduate degree, I was at the start of a summer-long hitchhike around Britain and in no mood to sit incarcerated in an overheated room while a dozen of my compatriots lectured one another about nationalizing the…

It is an unfortunate fashion among book editors these days to encourage their non-fiction authors to showcase the most dramatic material first. The intent is to hook the reader into reading more, as if having paid for the book weren’t incentive enough. But the result is more like throwing us into the deep end to flap around in ignorance and irritation about what the hell is going…

One evening late in summer 1963, a high school friend took me to visit an older acquaintance of his, already a student at McGill. I don’t really remember either one, but I do have a strong recollection of a small, dark, untidy apartment on University Street —  it seemed so sophisticated that I was both intimidated and enchanted — and of the songs coming from the record player: “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War,” “I Shall Be Free.” They were sung by a…

Brooke Jeffrey has written a solid account of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1984 to 2008. Smoothly narrated, rich with detail and objective in tone, Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984–2008 is a worthy addition to the shelf of Canadian politics. Present-day academics and future historians will be grateful for the wealth of material that Jeffrey has woven together from almost six dozen…

Most Canadians know Michael Ignatieff as an expatriate who returned home trailing clouds of glory as a journalist, novelist, essayist and Harvard professor. They know him as a smart, articulate and high-minded rookie. Best of all, they know he is not Stephen Harper, Stéphane Dion or Bob Rae. Beyond that, they do not know much. This…