Description
Book SynopsisOn a snowy November day in 1872, the premier of Ontario is speaking in his constituency, and he tells a story - the story of his people's long struggle for liberty ...
With this vignette Paul Romney leads us onto a lost middle ground between conflicting visions of Canada's past. He reminds that both French and English Canadians once regarded Confederation as a compact of provinces and of peoples, designed to permit each partner to cultivate its own distinct society. In English Canada that original conception gave way to a nationalist myth, which alienated French Canadians by its celebration of nation-building and exaltation of federal power. English Canada's forgetting resulted in a "historic blunder" - patriation of the Canadian constitution without Quebec's consent.
How did that happen? Romney presents the politics of nineteenth-century Ontario as a confrontation between two competing myths - one of resistance to subversion, and one of resistance to oppression. The lat
