The Senator

Political memoirs often fall into one of two categories. Ascendant politicians write to showcase their potential, as with Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope or Justin Trudeau’s Common Ground. More experienced or retired politicians try to cement their legacy or contextualize a controversial decision, as with Dalton McGuinty’s self-serving Making a Difference. Jack Austin, now ninety-one, tries a different tack in Unlikely Insider, which he wrote with his daughter Edie, a former editorial-page editor of the Montreal Gazette.

Austin assumes the role of key witness and participant as often as he does that of protagonist. In doing so, he spends little time on his own bona fides, instead guiding readers through a time capsule of Canadian history, informed by what and who he saw for the better part of fifty years as a lawyer, principal secretary, cabinet minister, and Liberal leader in the Senate. Befitting his “insider” status, his...