The Development of Political Thought in Canada

Katherine Fierlbeck, ed., The Development of Political Thought in Canada. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2005. viii + 324 pp. $39.95 paper. Appropriately enough, Katherine Fierlbeck begins the preface to this anthology with a lament that some of her students have professed complete ignorance of George Grant while at the very same time professing an interest in the themes about which Grant thought carefully and wrote informatively. Her students' reaction is symptomatic of a general gap in the understanding of Canadian science. Canada has a rich history of substantive thought. Why do we not hear more about it? In this anthology, Fierlbeck sets out to remedy the problem. She notes that Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, and Michael Ignatieff are all contemporary Canadian thinkers with international reputations, but argues that we cannot fully understand these authors or their ideas without also being aware of the and historical context in which they were formed. To that end, Fierlbeck reaches back to pre-Confederation thought in the 19th century, and presents a progression of thought through the 20th century to the new millennium. The Development of Political Thought in Canada includes ideas from diverse sources. In addition to those figures one would classify as political philosophers, Fierlbeck includes politicians and activists. Fierlbeck is more interested to present thought as action, or reaction, than to include purely academic or abstract articulations of ideas. The authors included are Lord Durham, Henri Bourassa, Nellie McClung, J. S. Woodsworth, Harold Innis, C. B. Macpherson, Lester B. Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Kari Levitt, George Woodcock, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, George Grant, Gad Horowitz, Rene Levesque, Charles Taylor, James Tully, Will Kymlicka, and Michael Ignatieff. Conspicuous by their absence from the book, however, are Aboriginal thinkers. Fierlbeck explicitly grapples with and expresses regret over the exclusion of Aboriginal thought from this work. It remains regrettable. Fierlbeck presents the selections chronologically, divided into three waves. The first wave is pre-Second World War thought, the second is the 1950s-1970s, and the third wave is the 1980s to the present. Fierlbeck claims that the historical presentation of Canadian thought dovetails nicely with a thematic understanding. Nevertheless, a truly thematic presentation might have been more striking, placing the selections from, say, Durham and Bourassa next to those from Trudeau, Taylor and Kymlicka. It bears emphasizing that such a jarring juxtaposition is not what Fierlbeck is aiming at, however. It is clear that for Fierlbeck, the development of thought in Canada is about more than ideas. …

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