For those who have inscribed in their hearts Gad Horowitz’s cry to the Lord that Canada should continue to exist “to preserve the possibility of building, in this country, a society which is better than the Great Society [to the south],” University of Calgary historian R. Douglas Francis has arrived as Gabriel with The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History. This is the sort of scholarly book that anglophone Canadian nationalists—they still exist—ardently ask for in their prayers: a substantive academic identification and declaration of philosophical thought and insight that is truly and, if they cross their fingers and wish very hard, uniquely Canadian, shaped by the geography, history and culture of the top half of the North American continent.
Francis, never a historian of housemaid’s knee in Belleville, looks for the rhythms, cadences and voice of the whole country. He has written an acclaimed biography of University of Toronto...
Michael Valpy is a journalist and author. Through a long career at The Globe and Mail, he served as foreign correspondent, national political columnist, member of the editorial board, and deputy managing editor before leaving to teach in 2010.
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