The Politics of Kim Campbell: From School Trustee to Prime Minister

Description

176 pages
Contains Photos, Bibliography
$14.95
ISBN 1-55028-413-3
DDC 971.064'7'092

Year

1993

Contributor

Reviewed by Agar Adamson

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.

Review

This book was not the reason the Conservatives lost on October 25th,
1993, but it hardly helped the Tory campaign. Dobbin, no friend of
Campbell’s, traces the latter’s political career, from her days on
the Vancouver School Board to her brief tenure as prime minister. By
1993, Campbell was still a neophyte politician, still the tough
individualist from her school-board days.

Perhaps the most useful part of the book is the section on the
marketing of Campbell and the 1993 leadership convention. As Dobbin
points out, marketing and selling are not the same thing; though
published prior to the election, this book does forewarn the reader of
Campbell’s defeat.

Now that Campbell is out of politics, it is time for a more accurate
analysis of how this “outsider” from the B.C. Social Credit Party
won the leadership of one of Canada’s oldest parties—over the
candidate whom Liberals feared most, Jean Charest—and led it to
oblivion. Dobbin’s one-sided book, like its subject, is now history,
and not great history at that.

Citation

Dobbin, Murray., “The Politics of Kim Campbell: From School Trustee to Prime Minister,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed February 12, 2025, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/13993.