The night of May 2, 2011, was a time of dreams unexpectedly come true and worst nightmares finally experienced. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives achieved their majority goal with an amazing 166 seats despite winning only five in Quebec, and the Green Party elected its first member to the House of Commons. The virtual disappearance of the Bloc Québécois (it retained just four of its 49 seats) made real Jack Layton’s own fantasy of becoming leader of the Official Opposition by taking the NDP to 103…
Stephen Clarkson
Stephen Clarkson co-authored the two-volume Trudeau and Our Times in the 1990s (McClelland and Stewart, 1992, 1997) and wrote The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics (University of British Columbia Press, 2005). The third volume of his trilogy on North America since 9/11—Dependent America? How Canada and Mexico Construct U.S. Power—was published in 2011 by the University of Toronto Press.
Articles by
Stephen Clarkson
An American de Tocqueville in Canada
Why Quebec separation would really, really matter September 2002
The wide-ranging arguments about Canadian unity, or rather the prospect of its disunity, in Why Canadian Unity Matters and Why Americans Care: Democratic Pluralism at Risk deserve the closest attention in the one place where they are least likely to be given credence—Quebec. Charles Doran’s concern is the implications of secession, which he maintains would be not just disastrous for…