|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Looking for Textbooks? Save up to 37% on New--and up to 90% on Used
Hit the books in Amazon.ca's Textbook Store and save up to 37% on over 100,000 new textbooks shipped from and sold by Amazon.ca. For even bigger savings, get up to 90% off the list price of thousands of used listings. Learn more. |
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by John Saul
|
Dances with Dependency: Out of Poverty Through Self-Reliance |
by Ronald Wright
|
by Margaret Atwood
|
by John Saul
|
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
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.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?
 |
72% buy the item featured on this page: A Fair Country CDN$ 21.32 |
 |
15% buy A Fair CountryCDN$ 14.44 |
 |
6% buy Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation CDN$ 20.65 |
 |
4% buy Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth CDN$ 13.68 |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Most helpful customer reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Americas > Canada > First Nations
- Books > History > Canada > First Nations
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Humanities > History
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Social Sciences > Political Science > Political History
- Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Native Issues
- Books > Nonfiction > Politics > History & Theory
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
