Showdown in Ottawa

Thirty years, a full generation in historical terms, have gone by since Canada took charge of its constitution, removing it from the custody of the United Kingdom Parliament. No doubt the 30th anniversary of that milestone in Canadian history will bring forth a flood of writing on the significance of the event and the political struggle through which it occurred. None is likely to provide a more gripping or authoritative account than Ron Graham’s The Last Act: Pierre Trudeau, the Gang of Eight and the Fight for Canada.

Graham’s focus is on the first ministers’ meeting in November 1981, when Prime Minister Trudeau and the ten provincial premiers met for four days in Ottawa’s former railway station, converted into a government conference centre—primarily, it seemed, for constitutional jousting. It was the eleventh time Canada’s first ministers had met together over nearly six decades to debate the terms on which Canada might take charge of the Constitution. And...