Canadians have relatively few binding national myths, but one of the most pervasive and enduring is the conviction that the country is doomed. In 1965 George Grant passionately defended Canadian identity by asking fundamental questions about the meaning and future of Canada's political existence. In Lament for a Nation he argued that Canada – immense andunderpopulated, defined in part by the border, history, and culture it shares with the United States, and torn by conflicting loyalties to Britain, Quebec, and America – had ceased to exist as a sovereign state.

1. George Grant Lament For A Nation Pdf To Word Online
2. George Grant Lament For A Nation Pdf To Word Free

George Grant Lament For A Nation Pdf To Word Online

Lament for a Nation became the seminal work in Canadian political thought and Grant became known as the father of Canadian nationalism. This edition includes a major introduction by Andrew Potter that explores Grant's arguments in the context of changes in ethnic diversity, free trade, globalization, post-modernism, and 9/11. Potter discusses the shifting uses of the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' and closes with a look at the current state of Canadian nationalism.

. 1 The government of Stephen Harper created a controversy over their handling of the bicentennial comm11 In spite of recent attempts to retroactively assign a nationalist reading to the War of 1812, the earliest formal attempts at nation-building begin with the confederation process, the status of Dominion in 1867 and the national railway, which was an integral part of the whole process. The new nationalist project was dubbed the “national policy” by John A. This policy was structured around the imperial preference and a West-East trade route across Canada and then across the Atlantic. It placed the “national” project within the strict limits of development within the British Empire. This policy was already structured as a means of resistance to American annexation, though this second geopolitical reality had not yet reached the level of influence it would gain in the 20 th century. Macdonald was followed by a subsequent influential Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, elected in 1896.

In spite of the change in partisan control in Parliament and the Cabinet, and in spite of Laurier’s more acute desire for self-government for Canada, there was a basic continuity. What is particularly striking about the early nationalist project, whether led by the Conservative Party leader Macdonald or the Liberal Party’s Laurier, is to see how closely it fits the Marxist model of nationalism as a project meeting the needs of capitalist accumulation. The central government played the role of a company expanding its activities by developing resource extraction, and actively looking for labour to achieve its economic development objectives.

George Grant Lament For A Nation Pdf To Word Free

In particular, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, Canada, Inc. Needed to attract immigrant farmers willing to go west and develop cash crops for export.