the Canadas, 1815-1873, by
tanley B, Ryerson; Progress
sooks, Toronto; $8.50 (cloth),

73 (paperback), 477 pages.

ae

M's federal election.
It ae. More than that, of course,
will quite safe to predict that it
ae be illuminating’ the thinking
a Nadians about their country
qetiter Messrs. Trudeau and
field have had their brief

Tur upon the stage.
Biss. the point needs to be em-
now. Fe that this is a book for
a te or there is too widespread
lon Ndency to imagine that as
rai one thinks one under-
as the immediate political
fos °S, history can be left to pro-
sim Ors and students. This is

Ply not true.
apr large part of the failure to
tomy ciate the importance of his-
too arises out: of the way his-
as been presented to us aS
collection of seemingly un-
bi facts and dates, as a re-
- actj a Only of the ideas and
Ons of individuals.

Aewey Ryerson is not such a
. oe He brings to his pains-
Siene, Study of the facts the
nal Ce of Marxism, which
is = sense out of history. In
Senge LoBue he defines the es-
histo of the Marxist view of
man oe It is the action of hu-
ings that determines the

This work of history is about

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course of history. Yet this his-
tory is more than the simple
arithmetical sum of billions of
individual biographies. It is in
the context of an evolving social
existence that individual deci-
sions, initiatives, mistakes,
achievements, occur and in
varying degree are meaningful.”
It is this approach which
Ryerson uses to demolish the
anti-nationalism of Pierre Elliot
Trudeau — our new ‘swinging
prime minister which have made
him so popular with the English-
speaking Canadian establish-
ment, and so suspect by SO
many of his French-Canadian
compatriots.
For Trudeau: “The very idea
of Nation-State is absurd. eee:
The principle of nationalities
has brought the world two cen-
turies of wars and revolution,
but not a single definite solu-
tion.”
Ryerson replies: “Not | the
principle of nationalities,’ but
capitalist development and the
rise of the bourgeoisie are the
reasons for the wars and revolu-
tions of the post-feudal era,
while the 20th century emer-
gence of monopoly-capitalist im-
perialism has brought with it a
dual process: nationalism being
exploited by the ultra-right and
fascism, and tidal counter-move-
ments of national colonial revolt
and socialist revolution. So long
as imperialism engenders na-

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Confederation
and the Roots of Contlict in
? the Canadas, 1815-1873

STANLEY B. RYERSON

canada’ “crisis of Confederation” has until now been probed
ebated almost exclusively in ter ; ;
Nal conflict. But what Shout SOCIAL STRUCTURE in psticn
oe: National tensions and inequalities? Stanley Ryerson in ©"
| SSYAL UNION invites us to consider a radical reinterpretation
Gnada’s history; he examines the connection
CIAL and the NATIONAL—between the origins ©
S$ society” and the patterns of colonialism in our ex
°W early capitalist industrialism and the rise
Ry of Canadian businessmen set their imprin
tablished in 1867; and how the institution of wage labor,

ms of cultural and consti-

between the
f a “busi-
perience.
to power of a
t on the State
the

ae ion of “masters and men,” has affected the struggles for

‘€Pendence and national self-determination —
°ng the questions dealt with in a stu
©n the origins and nature of the con

these are
dy that sheds fresh
temporary Canadian

PAPERBACK: $3.75—CLOTHBOUND: $8.50
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7

te i ee ke

luality of excitement —
Marks Ryerson’s new book

tional oppression, the ‘principle
of nationality’ will have the
validity of an assertion of demo-
cratic, community rights.”

Trudeau’s outright rejection
of the validity of that assertion
is the guarantee that his prime
ministership will indeed fail to
produce “a single definite solu-
tion” to the problems of Canada.

Nor will such solutions come
from Stanfield’s manoeuvrings
for compromises “at the top”
with his Quebec Tory counter-
part Daniel Johnson — so remi-
niscent of the deals concocted
by those famous Fathers of Con-
federation—MacDonald and Car-
tier — which, as Ryerson de-
scribes, brought about the Un-
equal Union of 1867.

It is this relevance of the past
to the present that is so striking
a feature of this book.

The period covered includes
the democratic revolution of
1837, “the driving forces of
which were insufficiently mature
to secure victory.” We read of
the consequences for all our his-
tory of the defeat of 1837 which
nevertheless could not prevent
far-reaching change: “The transi-
tion from an economy dominat-
ed by the old, mercantile-land-
owner, ‘Family Compact’ ruling
group to that of the new fndus-
trial-railroad oligarchy is the
main content of the bourgeois
revolution in British North
America. It is a revolution ef-
fected ‘from above,’ the armed
popular struggles having met
defeat. (In this one respect, it
bears some distant, similarity to
the German experience of 1848-
71.) But as the experience of
the 1840’s showed, mass popu-
lar pressure was needed to se-
cure the main measures of re-
form: in the first place ‘respon-
sible government’.”

It is the story of “mass popu-
lar pressure” which brings to
Ryerson’s book a quality of ex-
citement that makes it so much
more readable than most his-
tories. Through its pages march
the people—the workers in their
early struggles; the petitions and
the great demonstrations for
democracy; the early outcries
against United States domina-
tion; the movements for peace;
the international solidarity of
the British Chartists with the
Patriots of ’37; the support of
Canadian democrats :
great anti-slavery struggle in
the United States; the well-
merited tribute to the Metis
risings of the Northwest’ under
the leadership of Riel, “the only
instance of effective intervention
‘from below,’ by the masses in
the Confederation settlement.”

To conclude where we began,
no one can understand the forces
at work’and the issues at stake
in the federal election of 1968
without understanding the con-
nection in history of the strug-
gle of the Canadian people for
social advance with the strug-
gle for the national rights of
French Canada. In the conclud-
ing words of Unequal Union:

“The processes now working
for such a social transformation
in contemporary Canada are
interwoven and interact with
the struggle for national equal-
ity and self-determination. . .
The peoples of the Canadas,
facing the need to rectify the
‘ynequal union’ of a colonialist
Confederation, begin to sense
the need to call in question
something else as well: the so-
cial system of corporate-business
rule, the unequal society of
‘masters and men’,”” (N.C.)

In the April 3 edition of the
NDP paper The Common-
wealth I see where CCF-cum-
Liberal premier of Saskatche-
wan, Ross Thatcher, is tackl-
ing the problem of “inflation”
right down at the grass roots.

It appears that in some of
those places where retarded
children or other chronic
cases of unfortunate human-
ity must spend their drab
and lonely days, some for a
lifetime, Premier Thatcher
has decided to cut out their
bedtime snack of a hot choco-
late and bologna sandwich.
Such an “austerity” measures
ought to go quite a ways in
“stabilizing” the dollar — if
not the unfortunate inmates.

Thatcher and others of this
political ilk are alway ready
and willing to “save” the
country from inflation — by
the time-honoured process of
‘putting the economic squeeze
upon those already squeezed
dry; the wage earners, the

_ poor farmers, pensioners and
widows, the ailing and desti-
tute. For all such “saviours”
the old scriptural formula for
curing inflation still holds
good; ‘‘to him that hath, more
shall be given—and to him
that hath not, even that shall
be taken away,” down to the
last .miserable bologna sand-
wich.

Thatcher and his dollar
“savers” are right in the
“Christian” groove so _ to
speak. Just about the time he
was depriving a group of un-
fortunate boys of their bed-
time snack, all eleven of his
cabinet members were receiv-
ing absolutely free a shiny
brand new 1968 sedan, fully
equipped with licence plates,
car insurance, etc. and etc.,
all at the Saskatchewan tax-
payer’s expense, and all un-
doubtedly regarded as “non-
inflationary’ -— except the
tires.

As The Commonwealth cor-
rectly commented—“The first
year’s depreciation on eleven
big shiny sedans would have
paid for quite a bit of hot
chocolate, but then _ that
wouldn’t have been the Libe-
ral-Tory-Socred way of “‘curb-

for the

ing inflation’.

That fact was well illustrat-
ed during recent days with-
the publication of General
Motors (GM) balance sheet
on car sales, profits salaries
bonuses and so on, all under-
scoring the fact that “what is
good for GM .. .” isn’t neces-
sarily good for others.

Personally I have never
been much of an expert at
dissecting corporation bal-
ance sheets since there is gen-
erally much more hidden than
revealed in such documents.
But when I see the president
of GM pocketing an annual
salary of $708,316 plus other
“contingent expenses”, while
a whole raft of GM corpora-
tion officers, directors and
lesser under-strappers taking
home a total of $14,906,481
in salaries, bonuses, stock
credits and what not, then I
know that the prime “factory
defect” on my goddam “heap”
and .a few million others is
not a mechanical one; not one
that can be solved by depriv-
ing an under-privileged child
under the pretext of “curbing
inflation”.

In the April 21 New York
Worker is a news story en-
titled “Hogs at Chrysler Cor-
poration Trough.” The mono-
poly hogs we know, and ac-
cording to Chrysler there
were sure lots in the “trough,”
no less than $200.4 million in
net profit for 1967. after all
taxes have been deducted.

Of this vast boodle Chrys-
ler officers and _ directors
pocketed a cool $5,017,686
in salaries, bonuses and “‘oth-
er compensations.” Chrysler’s
president Boyd is reported to
have “earned” a mere annual
salary bagatelle of $292,700,
a mite below GM’s president
in round figures, but the dif-
ference in his case is made
up with a pocketful of stock
shares, with an_ estimated
market value of $264,576.
Just imagine what a mountain
of bologna and hot chocolate
he could have for that lot!

While we don’t expect the
Thatchers ever to learn—we
do hope the people will—and
soon.

Unequal Union debut

Stanley Brehaut Ryerson was
born in Toronto in 1911, attend-
ed Upper Canada College and
graduated in modern languages
from the University of Toronto
and the Paris Sorbonne. His
writings since 1937 have jnclud-
ed 1837: Birth of Canadian De-
mocracy; Le Réveil du Canada
francais; French Canada (in
English and French editions;) ;
A World to Win; The Open So-
ciety—Paradox and Challenge;
The Founding of Canada: Begin-
nings to 1815. A great-grandson
of Egerton Ryerson and grand-
nephew of Wm. McDougall, one
of the Fathers of Confederation,
his maternal forebears include a
Bréhaut “who came to New
France in 1636 the year after the
death of Champlain) . His under-
standable interest in Canadian
history turned to active research
and writing as a result of in-
volvement in the left-wing
movement in Quebec, and con-
frontation with the class and

have probed during the past
thirty years. He is at present
editor of HORIZONS: the Marx-
ist Quarterly and a director of
Le Centre de Recherches marx-
istes de Montréal.

Ryerson’s book, Unequal Un-
ion — Confederation and the
Roots of Conflict in the Can-
adas, 1815-1873, will be off the
press shortly and preparations
are under way for its debut,
right across the country.

Stanley Ryerson will be on
tour, and there will be auto-
graphing parties in the major
centres, Toronto has its kickoff
on: May 4, at the Horizons Re-
search, 171 Spadina Road.

Ryerson’s tour will include
Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmon-
ton and Regina. Watch for dates
of events in your area.

This will be a big book physic-
ally {approximately 475 pages)
and in another sense big, be-
cause it will have a major im-
pact on the present crisis of
Confederation. :