His Pride, Our Fall: Recovering from the Trudeau Revolution

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa and the editor of Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

The rationale for His Pride, Our Fall is found in a line encapsulating
Pierre Trudeau’s legacy: “[T]he condition of the country at the time
of his departure [was] divided, fractious, litigious and debt-ridden.”
This book offers a diagnosis of how Canada came to be in this unhappy
state and prescribes the medicine that must be taken to restore the
country to health. The remedies are those of the National Citizens’
Coalition (for which the author was an editor): shrink the reach of
government, reduce public expenditure, balance the budget, restore the
familiar European-British component to immigration, move away from
bilingualism and multiculturalism, diminish the emphasis on the Charter
of Rights and Freedoms, and restore the supremacy of Parliament over the
judiciary in lawmaking. It is a conservative agenda, forcefully set
forth in this book.

Of course the argument depends on a selective accumulation of evidence.
His Pride, Our Fall casts a wide net, assembling illustrations to
buttress its points from Great Britain, Europe, and the United States.
There is also political, social, and legal theory to add an extra
dimension.

The reader may agree or disagree with the analysis and the
prescription. Whatever the individual verdict, here is an eloquent
statement of the contemporary conservative position, framed in the
Canadian context. Regardless of what one thinks of the conservative
agenda, one must admit that it is resonating throughout Canadian
politics from coast to coast and influencing public policy in Ottawa and
in the provinces. For this reason alone, Kenneth McDonald’s short
treatise is timely.