bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, pp. 31–32
Peter Towe on: “The 49th Paradox:
Canada in North America”, by Richard
Gwyn.
t was with considerable reluctance that I agreed to comment on Richard Gwyn’s new book, The 49th Paradox: Canada in North America. Having spent almost 15 years over more than three decades at the Embassy in Washington, I have grown weary of reading semi-accurate and often impressionistic accounts of the Canada-U.S. relationship, particularly those by writers who have spent little or no time in the United States. We Canadians are all instant experts on Canada-U.S. relations. Fortunately only a handful of us have the time or the ability to write books on the subject.
Mr. Gwyn’s book is, however, different; written in a style often astoundingly elegant, he attempts to place Canada not only in America, as the title suggests, but in the contemporary world. His political philosophy, exposed with great confidence, while at times contradictory is nevertheless thought-provoking. But one puts the book down not only with no burning desire to pick it up again but with only a vague perception of the message the author intended to convey. Reading it is somewhat akin to feasting on a magnificent Chinese dinner: after all the delights, one is still hungry for more substantial fare.
Accuracy is not necessarily a virtue for a political theorist or novelist, but it is a useful characteristic for a careful chronicler. One is inclined to wonder whether Gwyn’s research was largely confined to the library, or whether it included discussions with former Ambassadors Charles Ritchie, Ed Ritchie and Jake Warren, or with those who served in Washington under other eminent Ambassadors such as Lester Pearson, Hume Wrong, Norman Robertson, Arnold Heeney (who served as Ambassador on two separate occasions) and Marcel Cadieux. To describe Allan Gotlieb as “beyond any doubt … Canada’s most effective representative in Washington” since we opened a mission there in 1927 is to reflect a view shared by many contemporary Canadians. Certainly no Canadian journalist of the day would have been so rapturous about the accomplishments of that great Canadian Hume Wrong who, I can recall, refused even to have his picture taken with a visiting Canadian actress solely, if you please, on the grounds that he considered himself a government official temporarily absent from a post in Ottawa.
In dealing with the bitter subject of acid rain (which he claims quite incorrectly never to have been raised at the presidential level by Prime Minister Trudeau), Gwyn extols the undoubted effectiveness of lobbyists quietly hired by our Washington Embassy in the pre-Gotlieb era to assist in promoting Canadian interests but ignores totally the tremendous contribution — acknowledged by Americans and Canadians alike — of George Rejhon, who assisted former Ontario Premier William Davis in the continuing Canadian crusade.
The Embassy’s congressional relations program, to which Gwyn correctly ascribes a special importance, has of course evolved over the years and has responded to the ebbs and flows in the real division of power between the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government. While after the Carter years, with the popularity of President Reagan, control of the nation’s agenda seems to have swung more toward the White House, no Canadian Embassy in Washington could ever have ignored the importance of the legislative branch. My first exposure was as a young officer at a dinner hosted by the then Ambassador Hume Wrong and attended by such influential members of the United States Senate as Sen. Fulbright and Sen. Connolly; Wrong’s task then was to help convince responsible legislators of Canada’s legitimate interest in the formulation of U.S. international political and economic policies of direct importance to us.
And so it has been through the years. In my own tenure as Ambassador, a Congressional Relations Section was established to better coordinate the Embassy’s efforts, and local professional assistance was sought under a program administered by a full-time staff. While this group was not always successful, without it, as Gwyn’s own Toronto Star editorialized in 1981, “relations between Canada and the United States might conceivably have been even worse”
In sum, while in my view Gwyn’s latest book does not measure up to the somewhat higher standards he set for himself in earlier efforts, The 49th Paradox is well worth borrowing.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, pp. 31–32. Read the rest of this issue →
