Book Review: The Nuclear North: Histories of Canada in the Atomic Age
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211043935 |
| Author | Andrew Richter |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
The final four chapters mostly leaves the CYC/CJC behind and examine two case
studies in Cape Breton and Tanzania. In Cape Breton, Tom Kent, president of the Cape
Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO), a federal regional development agency,
took the corporation away from its previous approach of luring in new manufacturing
industries through government support. Instead, he looked to revitalize both the
steadfastly rural and failing industrial economies of Cape Breton. In Tanzania, Ca-
nadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) participants inspired by Julius Nyerere’s
“African socialism”and villagizationmovement helped reorient the organization’sfocus
away from technicalassistance and towarddevelopment. Though rhetoricallyinspired by
radical and leftist ideologies, in the end, Langford assesses CUSO’s efforts as largely
fitting into an international development consensus that became entrenched during the
1970s. Again,he sees both DEVCO and CUSO as ultimatelyonly remedial efforts unable
to truly address the fundamental inequalities created by global capitalism.
The case study approach offers obvious challenges to historical writing, yet
Langford does an admirable job of threading the needle with his major themes—
politics, poverty, and democracy—and deftly weaving them throughout the chapters
to show how the movement for development manifested in different contexts. While the
chapters on DEVCO, a top–down, regional development agency, fit the most uneasily
alongside others more focused on community development, the underlying emphasis
on poverty helps tie the book together. What was harder for Langford to overcome in
this framework was the overwhelming amount of detail needed to tell each stor y, with
dozens of names, places, and acronyms, particularly in the early chapters, affecting the
flow of the writing. Though this detail reflects an exceptional body of research,
stripping it down might have improved the book’s readability.
Langford writes that international development was a “poor substitute for politics”
(271). Though he is speaking specifically of CUSO’s presence in Tanzania, this phrase
is a distillation of Langford’s most important insight into the development project of
this era. Though never overcoming the global capitalist framework at fault for the root
causes of inequality (an indeed, what has?), to the extent that all these various and
diverse efforts made any difference at all, they occurred when, either by accident or
design, local communities seized the moment to mobilize political action and gov-
ernment resources to their aid. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada is an im-
portant, and will certainly be an enduring, contribution to the history of the
development project within Canada.
Susan Colbourn and Timothy Andrews Sayle, eds
The Nuclear North: Histories of Canada in the Atomic Age.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020. 266 pp. $32.95 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-77486-398-8
Reviewed by: Andrew Richter (arichter@uwindsor.ca), University of Windsor, Canada
488 International Journal 76(3)
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