Diplomats-in-Chief

One has to admire Patrice Dutil and his body of work about prime ministers. Over the past decade or so, he has written or edited Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies (with Roger Hall), Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden, and The Unexpected Louis St‑Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada. These are in addition to two books, edited with David MacKenzie, on the 1911 and 1917 federal elections. Dutil has now edited another readable and important contribution to prime ministerial history. This collection of scholarly essays is significant because, as Dutil notes in his introduction, no book before has been “devoted to a systematic analysis of the personal role of Canadian prime ministers in fashioning this country’s foreign policy.” That’s been the case even though, as in almost all aspects of governing, “the prime ministers of Canada have the greatest single influence on the foreign...