General

Logrolling in our time

I know it’s becoming a bit of a refrain around here, but apologies for the light blogging, even taking the usual summer lassitude into consideration. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve been preoccupied with the latest issue of the LRC. What, you don’t subscribe to the LRC?

Look at what you’re missing. Joe Heath leads off with an essay on what caused last fall’s financial crisis, while Jack Mitchell takes one for the team and reviews not one, not two, … but FIVE books about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. It’s a lovely read, trust me. There’s the usual LRC stuff, e.g. poems <small> which I don’t read </small>, and a review of the new Alice Munro, which I don’t care for. But you might.

Anyway, the most interesting review in the issue is buried at the back — a critical look at John Ibbitson’s new pamphlet on Canada and/in North America, by Les Horswill. It’s a fun and challenging read, because Horswill pushes Ibbitson to places that he doesn’t dare go, but which — deep down — I suspect he [Ibbitson] wants to. The whole thing raises anew a discussion that’s been very quiet since 9/11, viz. the place of Canada in North America and whether our future is indeed continental. Here’s the money quote from Horswill:

In this light, the border is not merely a menace to Canada. It stands as a hindrance to the full expression of North America’s two pre-eminent cultural achievments: transcontinental federalism and the freedom of people to change their minds, their work, and where they live.

Funny, if someone like Horswill had written this ten years ago it would have been on the front page of the National Post.

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