The Changing of the Guard: How the Liberals Fell from Grace and the Tories Rose to Power

W.M. Dobell was Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, London.

The dust cover of The Changing of the Guard informs the reader that Norman Snider is a weekly columnist for The Globe and Mail. His journalism, according to the blurb, has also appeared in Toronto Life, Quest, Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Weekend, and Saturday Night. The first pages of the book explain that the idea for the book arose as an extension of a suggestion from the editor of Quest Magazine, and that parts of it have appeared in Quest and The Globe and Mail.

The title refers to the replacement of the federal Liberal government in Ottawa by that of the Progressive Conservatives. The time frame covered is January 1983 to September 1984 — from Joe Clark’s resignation from the Progressive Conservative leadership to Brian Mulroney’s victory over John Turner. There is a two-page epilogue showing a very disenchanted author, who in nine chapters had shown no obvious partisan bias, turning bitterly against the new government.

Snider’s bent seems to be for human interest stories rather than political reporting. There appears to be no information conveyed that was not previously common knowledge, unless it is the statement that, for a few days after the July 1984 party leaders’ television debate, the commentators had judged the contest a draw. Snider does not indicate whether he is referring to the English or the French debate nor which commentators he is quoting, but if any commentator offered that opinion to Snider in the days after either debate, he would certainly wish his professional judgment to be protected by anonymity.

There is a place for impressionistic report in the columns of the daily papers. What value, other than a pecuniary one, there is in re-stacking old files in book form is questionable. Presumably the intended readers are the sort of people who like re-reading Allan Fotheringham or Larry Zolf. Since there is no index and the table of contents is composed of code-words, the book has to be read, scanned, or ignored.