To Canada with Love and Some Misgivings: The Best of Bruce Hutchison

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

From the 1940s onward Bruce Hutchison was one of Canada’s best-known
journalists. A close observer of—and sometime participant
in—politics, he had the wonderful knack of being able to encapsulate
complex ideas into a few clear-headed sentences. This book, mainly
selections from his newspaper columns and some longer extracts from his
many books, presents some of his best writing—and very good it is
indeed.

Despite the quality of his work, Hutchison has not remained an icon in
journalism. He was too close to the bureaucrats and politicians, too
much a Liberal and not enough an independent observer. The
journalist-as-adviser now scarcely exists (although those such as Bill
Fox can make the jump from hack to aide to lobbyist), and Hutchison
regrettably is now merely an exemplar of the bad old days. Still, his
prose was better than almost all of today’s media stars and repays
reading.