Canada's Constitutional Crisis: Making Sense of It All

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Bowker, who has written before on such subjects as “free trade” and
Meech Lake, now tackles the Constitution. She writes that “the purpose
of this book is not to give answers, but to provide facts on which
people can find answers for themselves.” True, she does provide
facts—lots of them—but in 124 pages one cannot provide all of the
facts.

As an Albertan, Bowker has her own views and constitutional prejudices,
which is not a problem as long as the reader can separate fact from
viewpoint. On the other hand, she does present the reader with a great
deal of background material. Unfortunately, much of this material is
presented somewhat superficially. Readers may thus not be able to grasp
all of the facts before arriving at their own answer to the various
questions on reform.

Still, Bowker does try to inform and educate her readers on the
Constitution. This is more than one can say about many of the players in
the constitutional drama or about the journalists who cover them. This
is not a book for the student of the Constitution, but would be a useful
source for lay readers, provided they do not accept it as their sole
source of information.