Which Reminds Me: A Memoir

James G. Snell is an associate professor of history at the University of
Guelph, the author of In the Shadow of the Law: Divorce in Canada,
1900-1939.

Mitchell Sharp played a significant role in the political life of this
country from 1942 to the present. He was an important civil servant in
the Department of Finance and the Department of Trade and Commerce until
1958. There he worked with such influential civil servants as W.
Clifford Clark and such powerful politicians as C.D. Howe. Sharp was a
member of the mandarinate, rising to the position of deputy minister.

After a brief sojourn in private business during the Diefenbaker years,
Sharp was one of several ex-civil servants who returned to Ottawa and
joined the Liberal government of Lester Pearson in 1964. Sharp
immediately joined the cabinet, initially as Minister of Trade and
Commerce (he later held such central portfolios as Finance and External
Affairs), before ending his parliamentary career as House leader. Since
his retirement from electoral politics in 1978, Sharp has been involved
in a number of political activities, most notably as co-chair of the
federal Task Force on Conflict of Interest. He used the knowledge gained
from working on this task force to screen candidates for the new
Chrétien cabinet in 1993.

His considerable political experience puts Sharp in an enviable
position to discuss the character and content of federal politics in
this country over the last half century. Unfortunately, in these memoirs
he avoids many opportunities for introspection and analysis. The reader
is given a superficial overview of the various problems that challenged
Sharp over the years, but is told little about the processes that shaped
the problems or about their solutions.