Just Causes: Notes of an Unrepentant Socialist

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

This is a collection of articles that prominent New Democrat Gerald
Caplan wrote for The Toronto Star between 1985 and 1993. Besides NDP
policies and personalities, Caplan discusses Liberals and Conservatives,
Africa and Central America, the Cold War, the Bush and Reagan
administrations, feminist and Native issues. He deplores the
distribution of wealth in Canada, the Mulroney government and its
infatuation with all things American, and Canadian Jewry’s uncritical
admiration for the Israeli government of Yitzak Shamir. He notes an
unrealistic Canadian obsession with the Soviet Union long after it had
ceased to be a serious threat, but he makes clear his displeasure with
Soviet tyranny and with Fidel Castro’s policies in Cuba.

On certain points, Caplan was prophetic. He thought that electoral
defeat would destroy the coalition of conflicting interests that Brian
Mulroney had managed to create, and that Jean Chrétien was the Liberal
most likely to lead his party back into office (a prediction made in
1986). On other occasions, he was demonstrably wrong. He predicted that
the Liberals would depose John Turner before he could lead them through
a second general election. When Chrétien did win his party’s
leadership in 1990, Caplan wondered whether it had doomed itself to
another defeat. Nor was Swedish-style neutrality as feasible for Canada
as Caplan suggests.

In a column on the Vietnam War, Caplan referred to Canada as
“America’s most reliable friend and ally.” The fact is, President
Johnson and his advisers never forgave Prime Minister Pearson for his
unsolicited advice on the war, and regarded Minister of External Affairs
Paul Martin as an unprincipled opportunist who interfered with their war
efforts.

The book, while not infallible, is easy to read, often humorous, and a
primary source on intelligent left-of-centre opinion of the era. An
index would have made it even more useful.