Canada's Century: Governance in a Maturing Society

David E. Smith is a professor of political science at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents and The Invisible Crown.

You cannot tell a book from its cover, as the photograph on the cover of
this collection of essays attests. It shows a man of slight build with
wiry, white hair beneath a dark beret; he is wearing a turtleneck
pullover, tweed jacket, and horn-rimmed glasses. To anyone who knows
him, this is an arresting portrait of John Meisel. For in the grey and
denim-clad world of the university, John Meisel has always been
sartorially rakish.

He was, and is, also intellectually dashing. The electoral studies, the
pieces on the party system, his interest in culture, Quebec and
communications—each was original in conception, each scholarly in
execution, each deftly presented. Because he was unlike most of his
contemporaries in range and achievement, metaphors were needed to
describe him—an academic juggler, acrobat, explorer. Forced
references, perhaps, but they convey a picture of intellectual dexterity
often lacking in these essays.

Eighteen academics present papers under five general themes:
governance, Quebec, language and multiculturalism, parties and
elections, the regulatory function, and culture and social science. None
shows the sensibility of interpretation associated with the man they
honor. Like Joseph Conrad, Meisel, though foreign-born, possesses a
greater affinity for English than most native-born speakers (15 of the
essays are in English).

There is the occasional whiff of staleness too. Most of the papers were
given at a conference in 1991 (two of the French selections were written
in 1989, before the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord). Offsetting this
handicap and appropriate to the occasion are pieces that challenge
received opinion (in one case Meisel’s own work) and follow less
familiar routes in their conception of politics. Among the liveliest are
Jane Jenson’s “The Costs of Political Elitism,” Alan Cairns’s
“The Constitutional World We Have Lost,” and Richard Schultz’s
“Paradigm Lost: Explaining the Canadian Politics of Deregulation.”
They are worthy exemplars of the Meisel canon.