A fresh look at the nation's formative years through the lens of the clash between Washington and Jefferson.

In the 1960s, A.B. Hodgetts in his groundbreaking What Culture? What Heritage? bemoaned the loss of our history. Some 30 years later, in this brilliant and impassioned new evaluation, J.L. Granatstein points to an even more appalling situation in both the educational system and in our daily lives. As he argues so articulately, Canada is one of the few nations in the Western world not to teach its history to its young people and to its new citizens. The result: a nation that does not understand and respect its own past. How bad is the situation? In a 1997 survey at York University's Glendon College, 66% of first-year students could not name a Canadian author, most could not name the first English- and French-speaking Prime Ministers, over 50% could not give the date of Confederation. In a Dominion Institute Poll of the same year, 77% were unaware that Remembrance Day commemorated the end of the First World War and only 10% could identify the Quiet Revolution. What is worse, when history is taught in our schools, it is too often processed through the filter of political correctness. Who is responsible for this unthinking conspiracy to eliminate our history? Granatstein lays the blame with a number of culprits: schools that are too busy teaching trendy subjects, and dealing with the needs of recent immigrants; universities where history has been reduced to a series of arcane subjects; ministries of education that have dropped Canadian history as a required course and approved dumbed-down textbooks; the federal government with its misguided multicultural policies; even the media, which should be above political pressures, too often uses history to search for villainy. Granatstein shows that other countries, much older than Canada, have understood how to treat history as a necessary and important condition of existence. He offers wise and reasoned solutions to a problem that undermines our sense of ourselves at a time when national understanding is essential. Parents who want their children well-educated, educators who face difficult decisions, policy makers who balance many needs and all those who care about their country must read this book.

Canada's transformation during World War II is an amazing piece of history, still recounted best by award-winning writer and scholar, J.L. Granatstein. Canada's War remains the only account of the domestic and world politics of World War II. At the outset of war, Canada was a nation of 11 million people, trapped in the morass of the Great Depression. Over the next half-dozen years, national income doubled and over a million men and women went into uniform. The war cost Canada $18 billion, yet the country emerged with a stronger economy, not to mention new provisions for unemployment insurance, health care, family allowance, and the Veterans' Charter. Granatstein describes the politics at home that enabled Canadian men and women to prevail abroad. Key topics include the conferences at Ogdensburg and Hyde Park, the billion-dollar gift to Britain, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and conscription. Granatstein also provides fascinating insight into the personalities that steered Canada through this nation-forging period, particularly Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. This Rock's Mills Press edition contains an entirely new introduction by the author, an updated reading list, contemporary portraits of key figures, as well as other archival photographs.

A lively and comprehensive study of the creation of the Canadian civil service by one of Canada's finest historians ... Granatstein's classic book remains the only comprehensive account of the formative years of the federal civil service. Drawing on extensive archival research and in-depth interviews with the surviving "Ottawa men" and their colleagues, Granatstein shows how a small group of individuals, including men such as Lester Pearson, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and become Prime Minister of Canada, worked to create what many observers acknowledged as the most effective public service in the Western world, leading Canada through the Great Depression and World War Two to full nationhood and a major role after the war as the world's leading "middle power." This re-issue includes a new introduction by the author that surveys research since the book was originally published, as well as a new portfolio of photographs.Extensive notes, a bibliographical essay dealing with primary sources, and a full index make the book a useful reference. Where necessary, corrections have been made to the text of the original edition.