Tough Guy: Bill Bennett and the Taking of British Columbia

Aluin Gilchrist is a Vancouver-based Canadian government civil
litigation lawyer.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, ... / The best lack all conviction while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” W.B. Yeats wrote that in 1921.

Garr is full of passionate intensity. He makes an income by writing uncomplimentary things about British Columbia politicians. Garr’s thesis is that Bill Bennett (the premier of B.C.) is “driven to outrun his father’s shadow” (p.22) and (in a quote attributed to Bill Hamilton), “When you deal with Bennett, ‘everything is measured in partisan terms’” (p. 121), perhaps because Garr would have us believe that Bennett, lacking all conviction, chose unending political confrontation for no better reason than to keep parties of the center out of B.C.

While this tale told by Garr probably corresponds to what Bennett’s enemies may recall of the facts, future historians should rely on the book only to show what one had to put up with if one ran for public office in B.C. but did not happen to share Garr’s contempt for the Socred party.

Even by the low standards of B.C. partisan politics, this is a nasty book.