Finding Common Ground

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

Opposition political parties can do little during the periods they are
out of power but plot, connive, and hold conferences. The federal
Liberals, eagerly awaiting the suicide of the Mulroney government, have
had their share of plots, and they have also had their share of
conferences. This book, the record of a thinkers’ conference at
Aylmer, Quebec, in November 1991, is a piece of party propaganda, even
if most of the speakers were not necessarily Liberal and, in some cases,
were not even Canadians. The Aylmer conference was intended to
stimulate, to stir the pot, to suggest that the Grits were receptive to
new approaches. But, like all records of mixed-bag conferences, this
book, destined to be forgotten as soon as it was published, gives us
only a variety of good and bad speeches and precious few new ideas. The
most interesting address was Montreal filmmaker Peter Pearson’s on
culture, not least for his attack on the “multiculturalism garrison”
and his rhymed list of Canadian cultural figures, which covers more than
a page. Prospective Liberal candidates should be made to memorize the
list as a condition before securing a nomination.