Canada since x945 is the first serious, scholarly, comprehensive study of the thirty-five yeai•s since the outbreak of peace. Even if it were not an excellent book, which it is, it would nevertheless be a very welcome one. Compared to scholars in other countries. Canadians have been characteristically slow in taking up the challenge of writing reliable contemporary history. Having left the field to journalists and autobiographers, historians have no one to blame but themselves for the disarray and superficiality that characterizes our understanding of the recent past. Bothwell, Drummond, and English bring order and clarity to this disarray in a skilful and usually convincing fashion. And despite the constraints of a book of this scale they are rarely superficial. Though the writing style and outlook is fairly uniform, it is a safe guess that Drummond had responsibility for economics. Since so much of recent history is economics, or at least political economy, it is one of the many strengths of Canada since •945 that a highly respected economist should guide us through the mysteries of micro and macro. Only occasionally, as in the chapter on demography, will the reader have the uncomfortable feeling that he has entered a slightly condescending introductory economics lecture. Not everyone, even market economists, will agree with all of the judgments, but all will be impressed with the lucidity of the account.

Prime ministers, the central figures in parliamentary government and the leaders of political parties, fill dominant roles in Canada's political history. Their importance is recognized in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada by the space devoted to them. Each political leader is presented by a notable Canadian scholar who, following the rigorous standards of research, writing, and critical judgement set by the DCB/DBC, has brought life and understanding to the careers of the individuals who have served in Canada's pre-eminent political office. Canada's Prime Ministers brings these well-written biographies together for the first time in order to provide readers with an opportunity to reflect on the striking variety of personalities who have succeeded in climbing the summit of Canada's public life and the different challenges they faced in their determination to stay there. What insights into the workings of our public life do the biographies of these fifteen leaders provide? Did these very different men have anything in common that determined their success? The DCB/DBC biographies make it clear that although there is no standard mould that shapes Canadian prime ministers, prime ministerial success depends on both .character and circumstance. The biographies suggest that one of the only commonalities between the prime ministers was an unstable mixture of personal ambition and a sense of obligation toward their country and their political party. Pragmatism in making policy and in devising strategies of survival, rather than principle or ideology, often seems the guiding determinant in the success of Canada's federal political leaders. For a Canadian prime minister there is usually no higher ground than the claim to be the defender of national unity against threats of disruption and disintegration. In addition to these themes, the DCB/DBC's fifteen biographies of Canada's prime ministers is also an important historical reference tool, providing details about personal lives, sketches of close associates, a narrative of major events, and an assessment of accomplishments and failures set against the backdrop of economic and demographic growth, the social crisis of depressions, and the impact of world events. Together, they recreate the political and social panorama stretching from the campaign for confederation in 1867 to the struggle to entrench the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the new Constitution of 1982. Told through the lives of Canada's leading politicians this is a remarkable, engrossing, documented account of modern Canadian history.

Identity – national, regional, gender, class, and ethnic – has dominated much of Canadian historical writing over the past century. In recent decades, the ‘limited identities’ hypothesis has played a major role in the flowering of social history whose dominance is now being called into question by proponents of a renewed ‘national’ approach. In this debate, one fundamental issue is being largely ignored: the easy assumption that identities, limited or national, are essential rather than contingent. Moreover, it is too often forgotten that identities are multiple rather than single. As always, in historical studies, the context is crucial. Abstract: Ľidentite – nationale, regionale, sexuelle, sociale et ethnique – a ete un theme dominant dans la plupart de ce qu’on a ecrit sur ľhistoire canadienne durant le siecle dernier. Au cours des dernieres decennies, ľhypothese de ľ « identite limitee » a joue un role majeur dans ľepanouissement de ľhistoire sociale dont la predominance est actuellement remise en question par les adeptes ďune nouvelle approche « nationale ». Il y a cependant au coeur du debat une question fondamentale qui reste en grande partie ignoree: c’est la simple supposition que ľidentite, qu’elle soit limitee ou nationale, est essentielle plutot qu’accidentelle. On oublie en outre trop frequemment que ľidentite a plus souvent de multiples facettes qu’une seule. Comme c’est toujours le cas dans les etudes historiques, le contexte est un element crucial.

BERCUSON, David J. et Barry COOPER, Derailed: the Betrayal of the National Dream (Toronto, Key Porter Books, 1994), 213 p. 19,95 $. An article from journal Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (Volume 49, Number 1, été 1995, pp. 3-154), on Érudit.

which shaped his response to Upper Canada in the • 83os came from Scotland, Kent, and the Argentine. In his wider discussion of the impact of Canadian precedent on the British empire, Winks does not always clearly distinguish between myth and reality. He finds 'instructive vidence for the relevance of the Durham Report... in the history of modern East and Central Africa' (5o). Certainly there were scattered references toDurham in reports and tomes. Lord Hailey in his massive AJS-ican Survey of •938 made a single reference to Durham, citing a bland statement that it was important o solve land questions. Aside from the point that Hailey misquoted Durham and applied a dictum about Upper Canadian settlement to a discussion f African traditional tenures, the substantive point would seem to be that Halley's book runs to over •6oo pages. His single reference is at best fleeting evidence for a myth, and it is over-selling to claim that Africanists must study Canadian history as such to understand ecoIonization. Precedent is a matter of convenience, not of precept. The idea of dominion status, undefined but with allusion to Canada, was certainly useful in settling the Irish question in •9•x but surely some other precedent would have been dragged out had there been no Canada. Irish leaders were especially fertile in analogy, from Griffith's belief in the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy to De Valera's astonishing appeals to the relationship between the United States and Cuba. Winks suggests that the fact that Ceylon became independent in • 948 without being styled a 'dominion' owes something to the dropping of that archaism from Canada's title in • 947. Ceylon's pre-independence onstitution was partly modelled on the London County Council: must Sri Lanka's historians also immerse themselves in the principles of British local government? It was not that 'Britain chose to apply' precedents from Canada (58), but that analogies from many quarters were dragged out to put a brave face on policy changes. The Canadian experience was a quarry, not an oracle's grotto. When South Africa's Merriman wished to learn whether colonial federations were ineffi-

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FRIEDLAND, Martin L., The Case of Valentine Shortis. A True Story of Crime and Politics in Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1986. xi-324 p. 24,95 $. Un article de la revue Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (Volume 41, numéro 3, hiver 1988, p. 335-498) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

'IS THERE ANOTHER LIFE?' was the title that Goldwin Smith, almost inevitably, gave to a lengthy chapter in his Guesses at the Riddle of Existence. • His answer recognized that he, like many Victorian intellectuals, was unable to respond with an easy, automatic affirmative. But even if he was unable to patch together, from his substantial theological knowledge, a convincing demonstration of immortality, Smith knew that the yearning for such reassurance remained strong. Indeed it was so strong, he had written twenty years earlier, that in 'the twilight caused by the temporary eclipse of faith, physical or semi-physical superstitions are apt to abound. '2 Though spiritualism found no place in Goldwin Smith's quest for a rational religion, it is hardly surprising that Dr Maurice Bucke, who had little faith in arid rationalism, had a more sympathetic viewpoint. For Canada's leading psychiatrist 'telepathy and clairvoyance' were signs of the gradual evolution of'nascent faculties.' 'I place in the same class,' he told an audience at St Mary's Town Hall where he opened an