Canada and the United States Ambivalent Allies

9780820324036

0820324035

"On the eve of the 1993 Canadian federal election which returned the Liberal Party to office after nine years in the political wilderness, Jean Chretien, the future Prime Minister, was asked what his goals would be. He listed three: Not having to invite the I.M.F. in to restore the country's finances, to keep a deeply fractious country from falling apart, and to maintain Canada's independence from the United States....Canadian historians John Herd Thompson and Stephen J. Randall focus their study on the last of Jean Chretien's priorities, maintaining Canada's distance from the U.S., a project which, in the larger historical view adopted throughout their informative and entertaining book, has always been Canada's number one priority....There is an old newsroom maxim that 'No one cares about Canadian politics.' But Randall and Thompson disregard it and recount with considerable verve the saga of Canadian-American relations over more than two centuries."