Review
Turner’s glorious opposition to free trade during the 1988 election offered Canadians an alternative to wholesale continental integration. He lost that battle but won an enduring place in history by making the case for a more independent Canada. The leading anglophone Liberal of the late twentieth century, John Turner deserves to be remembered for more than the frustrations he encountered in the final chapter of his career. His destiny was elusive; his legacy, substantial.
– from the Introduction
Product Description
A political biography extraordinaire, Elusive Destiny reveals the inner workings of Liberal Party politics in their heyday as charted through the meteoric rise and fall of John Napier Turner. Drawing on extensive interviews, including several with John Turner himself, this engrossing work highlights Turner’s time as Minister of Justice and Finance, exposing his deep clashes with Trudeau over language rights, social spending, and Quebec. Perhaps the book’s greatest achievement is that it answers of one of the prevailing mysteries of Canadian politics: how did the Liberal Party’s star apprentice of the 1970s become its also-ran of the 1980s?
