Canada and the End of Empire

Canada and the End of Empire, ed. Phillip Buckner (Vancouver: U. of British Columbia P., 2005; pp. 328. $85; pb. $29.95). This collection comprises eighteen papers by twenty scholars, all but one from a conference at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Most focus on the quarter-century following the Second World War for, as John Darwin points out, there is no precise date for the end of empire and we should concentrate on the ebbing of British power. A central theme is the rapid collapse of illusion before reality. John Hilliker and Greg Donaghy point out that Canada's relations with Britain remained remarkably amiable until 1956, while in José Iguarta's survey of press coverage of Suez, one newspaper could attribute Prime Minister St Laurent's policy only to ‘the stored-up hatred of a lifetime’ (p. 59). Phillip Buckner wonders how anyone (his teenage self included) could have believed in the ‘Canadianisation’ of a visiting Queen. Taking a longer view, Gordon Stewart illustrates how Ottawa's Commonwealth priorities subtly suited American aspirations to continental hegemony. Three papers dealing with trade issues will be of interest to students of the British economy. Tim Rooth analyses Diefenbaker's inconvenient proposal to divert Canadian trade towards Britain, while Bruce Muirhead on the larger canvas and Steve Koerner on the motor industry explore the decline of UK exports. Six papers deal with the favourite Canadian topic of identity. Andrea Benvenuti and Stuart Ward highlight the rapid decline of British symbolism in the public landscape around 1960. Conversely, George Richardson uses the school curriculum to argue that obsession with Britain impeded the emergence of a distinct national persona. Paul Rutherford weaves the two strands together in an examination of the influence of British models in public culture projects, so that Canadian theatre became noted for its Shakespeare and its Shaw festivals. Allan Smith argues that the sudden collapse of British links left high culture open to rapid Americanisation, while R.D. Francis points out that even George Grant, who in 1945 had seen Commonwealth partnership as vital to the country's existence, was by 1963 lamenting the failure of Canadian nationhood, not deploring the disappearance of its imperial matrix. Marc Milner asks whether the Navy was more Royal than Canadian. Three papers deal with specific internal issues. P.E. Bryden examines Ontario's strategies for protecting provincial autonomy once the imperial referee had vanished. Two papers deal with the 1964 Flag debate, which Gregory Johnson sees as ‘the last gasp of empire’ (p. 247). Lorraine Coops measures its impact upon the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire: in 1972, the organisation became the ‘IODE’, the initials standing for nothing at all. If there was an empire, was Canada still part of it? As late as 1981, J.R. Miller reminds us, aboriginal people tried to lobby the Queen whom Canadians had so loudly cheered twenty-two years earlier. In an engaging preface, Buckner recalls his boyhood memory of the conquest of Everest, ‘a great imperial achievement, in which in some ill-defined way Canada shared’ (p. 6). As a collection of papers probing an intriguing vagueness, this volume achieves an unusually high standard.

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