Volume 27, Number 12 · July 17, 1980
Aimez-vous Canada?
By J.M. Cameron
The English Fact in Quebec
by Sheila Mcleod Arnopoulos, by Dominique Clift
McGill-Queen's University Press, 239 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Deference to Authority: The Case of Canada
by Edgar Z. Friedenberg
M.E.Sharpe, 170 pp., $8.95
The Canadians
by George Woodcock
Harvard University Press, 306 pp., $20.00
The Referendum of May 20 has directed the world's attention to Canada and has prompted questions about its political integrity. It is true that Canada may have only one nation: Quebec. One could argue that the rest of Canada, almost entirely English-speaking, is not yet in any strong sense a nation, and it may never become one. That it is not a nation is clear to anyone immersed in the tormented and increasingly tedious debates over Canadian 'identity.' These go on at many levels, especially in the press and on radio and television. Writers, painters, musicians, actors, pop stars, university professors, television personalities are most of them endlessly pressed to make pronouncements on the subject. It is thought to be a defect in English-speaking Canadians that they don't have a strong sense of national identity. Very few seem to take the existence within one country of two major cultures and two languages as the happy state of affairs it could conceivably be.
Review, 4385 words
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