Review: Canada: While Canada Slept
| Author | Robert Bothwell |
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200305800211 |
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
political
emotion.
Canadians worried
about
the
us,
but
throughout
this
period Canada must
have
worried
and
angered
Washington
just
as
much,
if
from
a
different
optical
angle.
And
yet,
as
indicated
in
Donaghy's
title, the
responses
to
each
other
were
always
controlled
and
never allowed
to
get
out
of
hand.
In
the
particular context
of
Vietnam,
Donaghy
has
done
service
in
quoting
extensively
from
Pearson's
Temple
University
speech
in
the
spring
of
1965
-
the
so-called
bombing
pause
speech
that,
over
the
years,
has
become
seriously
distorted
into
a
kind
of
Canadian
David
delivering
an
oratorical
rebuke
to an
American
Goliath.
The
angst-
generating
passage
in
the
speech
was
devoted more
to
diplomatic
tech-
nique
than
to
a
grand declamatory
denunciation
of
American policy,
as
many
now
see
it.
All
in
all,
this
chapter
-
in
which
Donaghy
rightly
includes material
on the
evolution
of
Canadian
thinking
about
China
-
should
provide
a
solid
and
accurate
basis
for
students
of
internation-
al
politics
to
come
to
terms
with
this
dimension
of
Canadian
policy
through
the
mid-'sixties
and
beyond.
Transitional
and
turbulent
the
Pearson
half-decade
certainly
was.
And
yet,
as
Donaghy's
presentation
unfolds,
the echoing
footfalls
of
the past often
have
a
curiously
contemporary
ring. It remains
for
oth-
ers
to
provide
a
wider
scholarly
context
for
this
remarkable half-decade
-
what
preceded
it
and
what
came
after
-
to
grasp
its
impact
in
shap-
ing
the
character
of
Canada,
then
and
now.
But,
in
the
meantime,
Donaghy's
work
makes
a
solid
contribution
to
our understanding
of
a
range
of
significant
and difficult
problems,
some
of
which
remain
obstinately
with
us.
Best
of
all,
it
is,
in
its
clarity
of
thought
and
expres-
sion,
an
easy
and
rewarding
read,
even
for
those
who
lived
through this
period
and helped work
some
of
the
pumps.
W
Thomas
Delworth/Ottawa
WHILE
CANADA
SLEPT
How
we
lost
our
place
in
the
world
Andrew
Cohen
Toronto: McClelland
&
Stewart,
2003,
220pp,
$32.00,
ISBN
0-7710-
2275-1
Andrew
Cohen
has
written
an
extended
essay
on
the
condition
of
Canadian
foreign
policy
at
the beginning
of
the
twentieth century,
and
420
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL Spring
2003
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