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If the prospect of discussing Canada’s equalization scheme sends you into narcoleptic despair, consider the bright enthusiasm of Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin, who, on a warm day in August 1938, eagerly sauntered into a room on Parliament Hill to talk about the nitty-gritty. The sixty-five-year-old Australian economist wasn’t put off by the dry-as-dust topic; indeed, he had sailed across the Atlantic from England solely to testify before the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations.

Giblin arrived wearing a homemade red flannel tie with his blue shirt, a collarless suit, and workboots smeared with dubbin, but nothing showed his eccentricity as clearly as his eagerness to discuss the complexities of federal governments. He was in his element that sultry day, surrounded by people who were energized by the task of making federations more equitable, to allow poor New Brunswick to operate in the same league as rich Ontario. And the four commissioners listened with...