Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol. III: Innovation and Adaptation, 1968–1984, by John Hilliker, Mary Halloran, and Greg Donaghy

AuthorKim Richard Nossal
Published date01 June 2018
Date01 June 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0020702018782979
Subject MatterBook Reviews
is just about the best modern source about Canada’s role in that crisis. A cynic
might suggest that the book demonstrates how Canada acted as a cat’s paw for the
USA. But in fact, it was the other way around.
John Hilliker, Mary Halloran, and Greg Donaghy
Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol. III: Innovation and Adaptation, 1968–1984
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017, 606 pp. $56.25 (cloth)
ISBN 978-4875-0224-9
Reviewed by: Kim Richard Nossal (nossalk@queensu.ca), Centre for International and
Defence Policy, Queen’s University, Canada.
The period from 1968 to 1984 was a critical one for Canada’s international policies.
When Pierre Elliott Trudeau became prime minister in 1968, he moved quickly to
introduce major shifts in foreign and defence policy, purposely reorienting Canada
in new directions in global af‌fairs. Sixteen years later—including a brief period in
opposition—the foreign policy environment looked very dif‌ferent. By the time
Trudeau decided to retire in February 1984, a renewed Cold War had erupted
following the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979; by the fall
of 1983, East–West relations were, as the prime minister himself put it, in parlous
shape, prompting him to launch a ‘‘peace initiative’’ that came just as broader
changes in both the Soviet Union and the United States would transform great-
power relations. In North America, the failure of the ef‌forts of the Trudeau govern-
ment to grapple with increasing US protectionism would set the stage for a radical
rethink of Canada’s economic relationship with the USA.
This era—which includes the brief Progressive Conservative government under
Joe Clark between June 1979 and February 1980—is the focus of this latest volume
in the history of the Department of External Af‌fairs, written by the professional
historians in the department’s Historical Section. John Hilliker, the section’s long-
serving head, once again took the lead in what is now a trilogy. In the f‌irst volume,
published in 1990, Hilliker examined the f‌irst four decades of the Department of
External Af‌fairs. In 1995, he teamed up with Donald Barry, a political scientist, in a
second volume that explored the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Canadian foreign policy from
1945 to 1968. In this third volume, Hilliker, who retired in 2003 from what had by
then become the Department of Foreign Af‌fairs and International Trade, is joined
by Mary Halloran, a historian in the Historical Section, and Greg Donaghy,
Hilliker’s successor as head of the section.
Like the previous two volumes, this is a work by accomplished historians who
are always concerned with bringing their era to life—in a way that adds signif‌i-
cantly to the substantial corpus of historical work on the foreign policy of Trudeau
pe
`re by other historians such as Robert Bothwell, J. L. Granatstein, and especially
John English. Hilliker, Halloran, and Donaghy do this very successfully, providing
the reader with surveys of a wide range of foreign policy issues nicely illustrated
with well-selected quotations from the historical record. As a result, this volume
328 International Journal 73(2)

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