Alberta's Local Governments and Their Politics

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

Professor Masson and the University of Alberta Press are to be commended for the writing and publication of this work. Municipal politics is one of the most important aspects of the study of politics in Canada, yet far too few books have been published on this subject.

In his work, Masson, who is a member of the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, touches on all of the crucial issues currently facing local government in Canada. It is unfortunate, however, that, as an American-trained academic, he periodically falls into the habit of comparing his Alberta findings with those in the United States. He frequently uses American descriptions and American examples at the expense of Canadian ones. This is in many respects an unfortunate situation, and it does somewhat hinder the effectiveness of this book. Even though Alberta is perhaps the most American of Canadian provinces, and has been since the days of Henry Wise Wood, it is unfortunate that Masson has used so many American examples in this book.

His chapters on elections and parties, as well as those on interest groups, are both illuminating and informative.

One might have expected that he would be more critical of the twin problems of amalgamation and (particularly) annexation than he is, and that he might have spent some time in proposing a form of the metropolitan-federal system of government for Calgary and Edmonton. His final chapter, on the future of local government in Alberta, is provocative, and it illustrates the great difficulty anyone has in predicting the economic and political future in this province, which is so dependent upon the world price of oil, natural gas, and wheat.

The book is well indexed and contains a very useful bibliography.

In short, this book is a very useful addition to the literature on politics and administration in Canadian municipalities. It undoubtedly will become the “bench mark” for all future works on local government in Alberta and possibly in other Canadian provinces.