Review: Canada: Pirouette
| Author | M.J. Tucker |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209104600119 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS/CANADA
201
prime minister
coming
to
grips
with
the
challenge
of
directing
Cana-
da's
foreign
policy.
Peter
C.
Dobell/Parliamentary
Centre,
Ottawa
PIROUETTE
Pierre
Trudeau
and
Canadian
foreign
policy
J.L.
Granatstein,
Robert
Bothwell
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press,
1990, xiv,
477PP,
$35.00
Pirouette,
sadly,
is
the
final
volume
to
be commissioned
by
the
Canadian
Institute of
International
Affairs
for
its
useful
and
objective
series,
Canada
in
World
Affairs.
However,
historians Jack
Granatstein
and
Bob
Bothwell
have
written
an
eloquent
finale.
The
previous
volumes,
in
covering
Canada's
external
relations
from
the
pre-
1939
years
to
the
early
1970s,
made
no
pretence
of
being
definitive,
and
Granatstein
and
Bothwell
wisely
acknowledge
in
their
introduction
that
the
last
word
on
'Trudeauvian'
foreign
policy
must
await
the
judgment
of
history
and
more
complete
access
to
archival
material.
But
in
encom-
passing
and
attempting
to
interpret
a
sixteen-year span
of
post-i1945
Canadian foreign
policy,
Pirouette
is
a
far
more
ambitious
undertaking
than
the
other
volumes
in
the
series.
It
is
as
a
consequence
perhaps
the
most
compelling and
certainly
the
most provocative,
raising
at
least
implicitly
more
questions
than
can
yet be
answered
about
Canada's
foreign
policy
under
the
enigmatic
Pierre
Elliott
Trudeau.
Pirouette
is
solid
history. In
preparing
for
it,
Granatstein
and
Both-
well
culled
much
of
the
secondary
literature,
interviewed
widely
on
three
continents, and
were
granted
privileged
access to
departmental
files
and
private
papers.
The
foreign
policy
agenda
of
the
Trudeau
era
is
thus
well
covered,
from
the
controversial
foreign
and
defence
policy
reviews
of
the
late
196os
to
the
prime
minister's
equally
controversial
'last
hurrah'
-
the
peace
initiative
of
1983-4.
But
Pirouette
is
mainly
a
study
in
the Canadian
foreign
policy
process,
and
what
emerges
from
it
as
an
underlying
theme
is
discord.
With
the exception
of
the
perhaps
inevitable
and
growing
number
of irritants
in
the Canadian-American
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