A history of the fight for same-sex marriage in Canada.Few issues have dominated recent Canadian politics like the legalization of same-sex marriage.As a political correspondent for The Canadian Press, Sylvain Larocque had a front-row seat for this battle in the fight for gay rights in Canada. He recounts the story here on every level, from the legal decisions to the social impact to the political reactions. He analyzes the judgments, laws, and election strategies, p...

A sly, insightful and wonderfully original book from one of Canada's most popular political analysts, Chantal Hébert, and one of Quebec's top political broadcasters, Jean Lapierre.Only the most fearless of political journalists would dare to open the old wounds of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a still-murky episode in Canadian history that continues to defy our understanding. The referendum brought one of the world's most successful democracies to the brink of the unk...

Finally, after over 30 years of hagiographies, comes a book that sets the record straight and tells us the truth about Pierre Elliott Trudeau.In this unprecedented and meticulously researched sweep of the record, Globe and Mail bestselling author Bob Plamondon challenges the conventional wisdom that Trudeau was a great prime minister. With new revelations, fresh insights, and in-depth analysis, Plamondon reveals that the man did not measure up to the myth.While no one dispu...

In this startlingly original vision of Canada, renowned thinker John Ralston Saul 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. An obstacle to our progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Cana...

Everyone knows that Wilfrid Laurier was a great prime minister, an astonishing speaker, and a survivor. But nobody has looked at him as more than a mythological figure for a very long time. André Pratte, chief editorial writer of La Presse, uncovers Laurier's full complexity amid the charged political circumstances of the early 20th century. Laurier tried to unite a country deeply divided in the wake of the First World War, grappling with the thorny questions of minority rights, m...

Where did the Right go wrong? With the departure of George W. Bush and John Howard, conservative parties in the US and Australia entered a period of turmoil. Foreign affairs, economics, the environment – all were issues to be avoided. Most profoundly, conservatives no longer seemed to have a compelling vision of the future – and arguably still don’t. How did the Right end up in this state? How might conservatism renew itself?In this illuminating essay, Waleed Aly begins by unravell...

Between the morning of Wednesday, November 4, and the morning of Thursday, November 5, 1981, a fateful drama unfolded that changed Canada forever.In one last attempt to renew the constitution with the consent of the provinces, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau met behind closed doors in Ottawa with the ten premiers. It was the culmination of more than five decades of constitutional wrangling, and has been called the most important conference since the Fathers of Confederation g...

There has never been a book about Stephen Harper, yet on June 28 he came close to being our prime minister. If Paul Martin miscalculates, Stephen Harper could be our next prime minister in months, not years.Who is this man? Everyone knows that he became leader of the Alliance Party and, against all odds, gathered in the old Conservative Party to create a force designed to win power, coming very close in 2004.Yet what are his core beliefs? To what extent does he agree with h...

With an updated preface by the author.Since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, rights have become the dominant language of the public good around the globe. Indeed, rights have become the trump card in every argument. Long-standing fights for aboriginal rights, the issue of preserving the linguistic heritage of minorities, and same-sex marriage have steered our society into a full-blown rights revolution. This revolution is not o...

Chantal Hébert’s first book is both a post-mortem of the Canadian federation that died on January 23, 2006, the night of the last federal election, as well as a brilliant examination of our changing political future, one that involves living with Quebec rather than just wooing it.On that night, award-winning political writer and broadcaster Chantal Hébert stood in a Calgary convention hall with 2,000 Alberta Conservatives, who were raucously cheering the election of ten Tory MPs fr...

To face the future, Canada needs more Canadians. But why and how many?Canada’s population has always grown slowly, when it has grown at all. That wasn’t by accident. For centuries before Confederation and a century after, colonial economic policies and an inward-facing world view isolated this country, attracting few of the people and building few of the institutions needed to sustain a sovereign nation. In fact, during most years before 1967, a greater number of p...

Pierre Trudeau was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984. Trudeau began his political career as a lawyer, intellectual, and activist in Quebec politics. In the 1960s, he entered federal politics by joining the Liberal Party of Canada. He was appointed as Lester Pearson's Parliamentary Secretary, and later became his Minister of Justice. From his base in Montreal, Trudeau took control of the Liberal Party...