For Better or For Worse: Canada and the United States to the 1990s

D.M.L. Farr is a professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Two well-known historians of Canada’s external policies, J.L.
Granatstein of York University and Norman Hillmer of Carleton
University, have written a lively historical overview of Canada’s
relations with the United States. The emphasis in their account is on
diplomatic and political factors, although commercial and military
aspects of the relationship are also brought out. Less attention is
given to social and cultural interaction and to what political
scientists call “transnational links”: the vast array of
nongovernmental dealings across an open border. Half the book describes
the years up to the end of World War II, presumably representing
Hillmer’s contribution. Here the approach is assured and balanced,
even if the treatment has to be rushed. Only 34 pages are devoted to the
years 1860 through 1903, an allocation that produces very much a
“once-over-lightly” survey. Thereafter, the writing settles down to
a less frenzied pace. The second half of the book treats the last 45
years, a period to which Granatstein has devoted much research and
writing. Here, as expected, the judgments are definite and the style
vigorous.

The authors have no axes to grind in their analysis of the functioning
of the relationship. They are eminently realistic in bringing out the
contradictions and ambiguities in the love-hate co-existence between
Canada and the United States. They dispute the view—put forward first
by Frank Underhill and then, more crudely, by George Grant—that in the
years after 1939 Canada passed from membership in the British Empire to
a satellite place in the American empire. Instead they show how Canada
has played its hand skillfully over the years, standing up to the larger
power in a relationship that is frequently strained but always
interdependent. “Sometimes [Canadians] have won, sometimes not; often
there has been a compromise that everyone (or in a few cases no one)
could live with.” For better or for worse, Canada and the United
States, in J.B. Brebner’s classic phrase, are the “Siamese twins of
North America who cannot separate and live.” Not an exciting but a
very defensible conclusion.

For Better or for Worse is illustrated with a number of well-chosen
contemporary cartoons and photographs. There are two maps showing the
evolution of the boundary and defence co-operation critical during and
after World War II. There is a 10-page critical bibliography, which is,
however, not as helpful as it might have been. For example, it does not
distinguish titles that have been reprinted and are available, often in
paperback editions. In a work intended for the general reader and the
university student, the failure to provide this help to further reading
is surprising. Sometimes the bibliography gives dates of original
publication, sometimes dates of revisions. The reading list requires
some tinkering if it is to match the standard of the remainder of this
excellent introduction to a large and important subject. Let us hope
than an early second edition will allow the authors to undertake this
revision.