Breaking the Ties

The University of British Columbia Press has celebrated the new year 2005 with the production of a collection of essays entitled Canada and the End of Empire, edited by a senior Canadian historian, Phillip Buckner. Throughout most of the period since the 1950s, that title would have been considered a commonplace: empires have been the stuff of fulmination for the agitated left, or doze-inducers for others. But with the turn of the new 21st century, empires are in fashion again, and some prominent Canadians, such as Charles Krauthammer or Michael Ignatieff, have been quick to march to the beat of a brand-new imperial drum emanating from Washington and other points south. Some of these Canadians have actually left the country for the empire, while David Frum flits easily back and forth across the frontier. Others, so far, have confined their emanations to the National Post and related organs of enlightenment. But the song is much the same, whether the singer...