Canada and the End of Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Canada and the End of Empire David Mackenzie Canada and the End of Empire. Philip Buckner, ed. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004. Pp. 334. $29.95 When did the British Empire end in Canada? This is the central question in this new collection of essays, the product of a 2001 conference at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London. In his Introduction, editor Phillip Buckner reminds us of the importance of English Canada's 'Britishness' and the role Canadians played in the evolution of the empire, and how nationalists and others have either ignored the imperial dimension in Canadian history or viewed the imperial relationship as 'a handicap that prevented Canada from reaching its potential.' The eighteen chapters collected here try to set the record straight. Not unexpectedly, no single answer to the central question is provided. Two chapters on the Suez Crisis and two more on the 1964 flag debate suggest that these were key moments but, as Buckner writes, 'there was no magic day on which all Canadians came to accept that the empire was over.' Nevertheless, he suggests that the decade between 1956 and 1967 was the 'critical period.' The first half of the book takes a traditional approach through an examination of Anglo-Canadian diplomatic and economic relations. John Hilliker and Greg Donaghy look at Anglo-Canadian relations from the Suez Crisis to 1973, José Igartua focuses on the way the Suez Crisis was perceived by Canadian newspapers, Tim Rooth, Bruce Muirhead, and Steve Koerner analyse different aspects of Anglo-Canadian trade and demonstrate how the numbers declined everywhere in the face of American and Japanese competition, Gordon Stewart looks at the end of [End Page 716] empire from an American perspective, and Buckner examines Queen Elizabeth's 1959 royal tour. A reccurring theme here is not that Canada left the empire but that the empire left Canada, with the British decolonizing and moving rapidly into a European context, acting independently of the empire in Suez and elsewhere, while the Canadians watched from the sidelines, usually unhappy and cross with the British for what they had done. In one of the most interesting chapters, Andrea Benvenuti and Stuart Ward pick up on José Igartua's phrase, the 'Other Quiet Revolution,' and argue that Britain's movement into Europe in the 1950s and 1960s created a kind of vacuum that forced English-Canadians to re-examine their own identity. The chapters in the second half of the volume are a little more eclectic. P.E. Bryden showcases Ontario's role in the constitutional debates in the 1950s and 1960s, Paul Rutherford and Allan Smith make the connection between culture and the end of empire, Marc Milner surveys the Royal Canadian Navy's search for identity from 1910 to 1968, R. Douglas Francis connects the ideas of Harold Innis and George Grant to 'empire' in a general way, Gregory Johnson and Lorraine Coops analyse the flag debate, and J.R. Miller examines how First Nations Organizations petitioned the 'Great White Mother' through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These essays differ in style and quality, and the focus of at least a couple of them wanders considerably from the central question of Canada and the end of empire. There are also a few gaps, which Buckner acknowledges in his Introduction, but acknowledgement alone cannot cover the holes. Quebec/French-Canada is largely missing and, more importantly, there are no chapters on Canada's changing immigration policy or demographics. Surely the arrival of thousands of non-British immigrants and the appearance of a large younger generation of baby boomers fed on American television and hamburgers had more to do with the end of the empire in Canada than the debate over the flag. The latter event – like others examined in this volume – can be seen more as the result than the cause of the end of empire. Clearly the empire in Canada is over, and these essays help explain why it happened. Britain's retreat from empire cut Canadians loose in an increasingly American environment and forced them to seek new ways to define themselves. But had the British remained committed to the empire, or at least the Commonwealth...

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