Unsettled

The cover of Peter H. Russell’s new book prominently features a map of Canada, but make no mistake: Russell’s position as author is in fact more akin to the experienced guide than the cartographer, and he is quite open about what he is working to guide us toward. Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests is designed to be a corrective to his Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People? That earlier book—which was first written in 1990 and has gone through three subsequent editions, the most recent published in 2004—presented readers with an odyssey of a very different kind. As the original’s subtitle suggests, that voyage presumed its destination (i.e., the formation of a singular sovereign people) and so lent itself to a view aimed at ultimately unifying the numerous nations (both settler and Indigenous) whose historic lands are in the territory now known as Canada. This unifying project has, as Russell observes, been...