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Product Description
Quill & Quire
The title of John Ralston Saul’s newest book, A Fair Country, sounds like a rejected Liberal Party campaign slogan, but its contents are much more combative, provocative, and stimulating than anything likely to be uttered during an election campaign. The book is divided into four parts, the fourth of which attempts to tie the first three together. However, the individual sections work better as standalone essays. In the first, “A Métis Civilization,” Saul makes a strong (if counterintuitive) case that Canadian culture owes more to its native roots than to the European settlers and their Judeo-Christian belief system. He even says the idea of multiculturalism was alive and well centuries ago among the First Nations, where communities with different languages and traditions co-operated with one another and lived side by side. In the second essay, Saul argues that if certain lawmakers and thinkers of the time had prevailed, the British North America Act’s famous phrase – “peace, order, and good government” – would have read “peace, fairness, and good government.” That simple switch, Saul contends, affected Canada’s image of itself and, in more concrete terms, created “a growing confusion as to the purpose of the state.” But Saul’s examples of this triumph of form and process over the best interests of the citizenry aren’t entirely persuasive. Saul is far more convincing – and confrontational – in the third part of the book, “The Castrati,” about how Canada’s elite have failed the country. Saul takes dead aim at business leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians for their general inaction, claiming that their unwillingness to take risks or think independently and creatively is hurting the country. Over the course of the chapter, Saul eviscerates a litany of elites who have failed the country in one way or another – Ministry of Finance economists and other bureaucrats, Air Canada CEO Robert Milton, convict Conrad Black (“he has only created one thing – one newspaper”), the RCMP, and even Ontario’s teachers for their silence in the face of the BCE sell-off. In a nation with a more vital public sphere, A Fair Country would, if nothing else, stimulate further discussion about our relationship with our elites and incite more interest in the intellectual underpinnings of the polity. But given the debased state of Canadian public discourse, the closest thing to a public reaction we can likely expect is some snarking in the right-wing press about the irony of Saul, a bestselling author and former resident of Rideau Hall, taking on the elite.
Product Description
In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous "peace, order, and good government" that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase "peace, welfare, and good government," demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.
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Most helpful customer reviews
48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshing Perspective on Canada,
By
This review is from: A Fair Country (Hardcover)
I have seen two commentaries on John Ralston Saul's "A Fair Country", both of which make me wonder whether the authors actually read the book. The first was from Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail, who claimed that Saul's book creates a romanticized myth of strength and sophistication for Canadian aboriginals, with no proof for his arguments. In fact, Saul provides plenty of proof, discussing aboriginal strength and their influence on Canadian society through 100 pages of historical references and insight.
The second review is right here on amazon.ca by "Book Reader" of Vancouver BC. Book Reader accuses Saul of glorifying Canada as morally superior while conveniently ignoring the truth of aboriginal residential schools. Not true. On page 32, Saul writes "I sense that the evil perpetrated in the residential schools -- the deadly health conditions, the banning of language and culture, the sexual degradation and physical violence, the disruption of families -- was the expression of a deep and growing Euro-Canadian anger at the refusal of the noble ancestor to reach for his full apotheosis by disappearing." This is a full and brutal acknowledgment of residential school truth. Far from glorification, Saul exposes and decries Canada's track record in dealing with aboriginals. Book Reader also claims that Saul attempts to steal aboriginal cultural identity, which is also incorrect. Saul argues that Canada's true identity has been shaped by profound influences of aboriginal society, not by a monolithic European heritage as is taught in our schools today. In other words, Saul doesn't steal aboriginal cultural identity but rather reinforces it by giving our aboriginal ancestors full credit for what is good in Canada. Book Reader is correct that much has been stolen from Canada's aboriginals, but incorrectly directs his/her vitriol at this book. I have just finished A Fair Country, and I believe Saul has discovered something important about Canadian identity, and how we can realize a fuller destiny as a nation by coming to terms with that identity and its true origins.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Unvarnished Truth,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: A Fair Country (Hardcover)
John Ralston Saul, Canada's self-declared iconclast and demythasizer, has produced another humdinger of a study to challenge Canadians to come to grips with their true potential as a nation. His advice in this book is for us to stop seeing ourselves as stereotypically passive, ordinary, and statically cultured. To prove his point, Saul does an in depth review of the so-called truth of those historical issues that seem to set the tone as to how we perceived our place in the modern world. First, the author tackles the view that we are predominately a distinct culture based on the true-and-tried principles of western democracy. While this idea may be somewhat true, accepting it has lulled us into a sense of complacency that doesn't respond well to the forces of global change. Historically, our culture heritage is founded in a history of interracial marriages that brings with it a sense of great adventure, tolerance, and enrichment. Second, Saul takes dead aim at how Canadians view the process of government. Focusing on the concept of peace, order and good government, many Canadians may have been lulled into thinking that personal security rather general well-being is the essence of their existence. A law and order approach does not, in Saul's estimation, lead to a greater realization of justice. Saul finishes off his book with a review of the historical record as to the forces of these past two centuries that have made Canada timid in its international stature. One area that comes in for attack is the prevailing belief that contemporary provinces like Ontario and Quebec develop and protect their own economies like they did back in pre-Confederation days. Canadians still tend to see ourselves as drawers of water and hewers of wood within the colonial context. The challenge for us Canadians in the 21st century is to start seeing ourselves more in terms of what we might become rather than who we think we are.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where do I begin?,
By
This review is from: A Fair Country (Hardcover)
Startling. Provocative. Depressing. Stirring. Confounding. Rage-inducing. Bewildering. Inspiring.
All of these adjectives are befitting 'A Fair Country'. And more. (In its own bizarre way, it's a love letter to the nation.) When I lived in the UK, I would often be called upon to answer the question 'So; Canadians and Americans... What's the difference?' Having been born and raised in Canada, having lived in the US, having half my family there as residents, I felt eminently qualified to provide a fairly cogent answer. After reading Saul's book, I humbly confess that I'd been wrong. Turns out I didn't really understand much at all about Canada, its history, what it means to be a Canadian...not even how it all relates to the U.S., to being 'not American'. I won't belabour the point here by rehashing what's in the tome. My copy was dog-footed to the extreme, there were so many bits that I just had to go back to, or excerpt for friends. Suffice it to say that 'A Fair Country' is by far the most important book I've read this year, and as a Canadian, one the most important ever. It's unsettled me, forced me to look at elements of Life in Canada in entirely different ways, compelled me to re-examine my perspective. (As a screenwriter, it's even given me pause to consider Canadian history as source material, no mean feat.) 'A Fair Country' should be required reading for all Canadians. The resulting dialogue might get us up off our collective apathetic arses and into action, at long last creating the nation we're capable of realizing.
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