Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs, 1988

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

The Canadian Annual Review is an old and honorable series; its volumes
constitute an invaluable record of events and trends—the single best
guide to 20th-century Canada. Unfortunately, the CAR has fallen behind;
no longer does its annual volume turn up in the following year as it did
for so long. Thus the 1988 volume appeared in 1995, and subsequent
volumes will have to appear with increasing frequency if the series’
utility is not to be lost.

Worse, this volume on the great Free Trade election year of 1988 is
uncommonly dreary in tone and odd in organization. The lead article on
politics begins with the election and only then goes back to the Free
Trade Agreement. That seems curiously unrelated to the necessary
chronology. Still, there are chapters on federal–provincial relations,
foreign affairs and defence, and each of the provinces as well as a list
of important obituaries. No other single volume has this range.

The CAR may be past its glory days, in other words, but it still
matters. Its pages constitute an authoritative record, well larded with
quotes from the press, the politicians, and the experts, and no
researcher’s library can be considered complete without it.