While Canada Slept

For how much longer can Canada expect to get a free ride? With 9/11 and the international “war on terrorism,” the time has come to ask some hard questions. Should we continue to starve our military, reduce our humanitarian assistance, dilute our diplomacy, and absent ourselves from global intelligence-gathering? Can we expect to sit at the global table by virtue of our economic power without pursuing a foreign policy worthy of our history, geography, and diversity? Canada has been getting by on the cheap, writes Andrew Cohen in this timely, forceful, and insightful new book. Our reluctance to pay our own way has had a cost: it has eroded the pillars of our international stature. We are still trading on the reputation this country built two generations ago, but it is a reputation we no longer deserve. We claim to be engaged abroad, but for too long we have been a freeloader, trying to do the same for less, practising pinch-penny diplomacy and foreign policy on the cheap. Our capacity in these key areas has become glaringly inadequate, and now that weakness is compromising our ability to honour our traditional commitments overseas. The time is ripe for a thorough re-examination of our foreign policy, to affirm our values, to win the respect of our allies, to carry our weight.

For how much longer can Canada expect to get a free ride? With 9/11 and the international “war on terrorism,” the time has come to ask some hard questions. Should we continue to starve our military, reduce our humanitarian assistance, dilute our diplomacy, and absent ourselves from global intelligence-gathering? Can we expect to sit at the global table by virtue of our economic power without pursuing a foreign policy worthy of our history, geography, and diversity? Canada has been getting by on the cheap, writes Andrew Cohen in this timely, forceful, and insightful new book. Our reluctance to pay our own way has had a cost: it has eroded the pillars of our international stature. We are still trading on the reputation this country built two generations ago, but it is a reputation we no longer deserve. We claim to be engaged abroad, but for too long we have been a freeloader, trying to do the same for less, practising pinch-penny diplomacy and foreign policy on the cheap. Our capacity in these key areas has become glaringly inadequate, and now that weakness is compromising our ability to honour our traditional commitments overseas. The time is ripe for a thorough re-examination of our foreign policy, to affirm our values, to win the respect of our allies, to carry our weight.

On two consecutive days in June 1963, in two lyrical speeches, John F. Kennedy pivots dramatically and boldly on the two greatest issues of his time: nuclear arms and civil rights. In language unheard in lily white, Cold War America, he appeals to Americans to see both the Russians and the "Negroes" as human beings. His speech on June 10 leads to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963; his speech on June 11 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Based on new material—hours of recently uncovered documentary film shot in the White House and the Justice Department, fresh interviews, and a rediscovered draft speech—Two Days in June captures Kennedy at the high noon of his presidency in startling, granular detail which biographer Sally Bedell Smith calls "a seamless and riveting narrative, beautifully written, weaving together the consequential and the quotidian, with verve and authority." Moment by moment, JFK's feverish forty-eight hours unspools in cinematic clarity as he addresses "peace and freedom." In the tick-tock of the American presidency, we see Kennedy facing down George Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama, talking obsessively about sex and politics at a dinner party in Georgetown, recoiling at a newspaper photograph of a burning monk in Saigon, planning a secret diplomatic mission to Indonesia, and reeling from the midnight murder of Medgar Evers. There were 1,036 days in the presidency of John F. Kennedy. This is the story of two of them.

The story of the bold voyage of HMS Investigator and the modern-day discovery of its wreck by Parks Canada’s underwater archaeologists. When Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in the 1840s, the British Admiralty launched the largest rescue mission in its history. Among the search vessels was HMS Investigator, which left England in 1850 under the command of Captain Robert McClure. While the ambitious McClure never found Franklin, he and his crew did discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Like Franklin’s ships, though, Investigator disappeared in the most remote, bleak and unknown place on Earth. For three winters, its 66 souls were trapped in the unforgiving ice of Mercy Bay. They suffered cold, darkness, starvation, scurvy, boredom, depression and madness. When they were rescued in 1853, Investigator was abandoned. For more than a century and a half, the ship’s fate remained a mystery. Had it been crushed by the ice or swept out to sea? In 2010, Parks Canada sent a team of archaeologists to Mercy Bay to find out. It was a formidable challenge, demanding expertise and patience. There, off the shores of Aulavik National Park, they found Investigator. Lost Beneath the Ice is a tale of endurance, daring, deceit, courage, and irony. It is a story about a tempestuous crew, their mercurial captain, cynical surgeon and kind-hearted missionary. In the end, McClure found fame but lost his ship, some of his crew and much of his honour. Written with elegance and authority, illustrated with archival imagery and startling underwater photographs of Investigator and its artifacts, this is a sensational story of discovery and intrigue in Canada’s Arctic. Andrew Cohen is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. Among his books are While Canada Slept, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, The Unfinished Canadian, and Extraordinary Canadians: Lester B. Pearson. He writes a nationally syndicated column for The Ottawa Citizen and comments regularly on CTV. A professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University, he is founding president of the Historica-Dominion Institute. He has twice received Queen’s Jubilee Medals.

In his 2 terms as prime minister, from 1963–1968, Lester B. Pearson oversaw the revamping of Canada through the introduction of Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Auto Pact, and the new Maple Leaf flag. Pearson came to power after an impressive career as a diplomat, where he played a vital role in the creation of NATO and the United Nations, later serving as president of its General Assembly. He put Canada on the world stage when he won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his handling of the Suez Crisis, during which he brokered the formation of a UN peacekeeping force. Author Andrew Cohen, whose books have focused on Canada’s place in the world, is the perfect author to assess Pearson’s legacy.

The award-winning, bestselling author of While Canada Slept gives his view of a country wasted on Canadians. What is national character? What makes the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, and the Chinese who they are? In this homogenized world, where globalization is a byword for a deadening sameness, why do peoples who live in the same region, use the same money, read the same books, and watch the same movies remain different from one another? As much as Canada may be seen as a copy, clone, or colony of America, we are unquestionably distinctive. It is a result of our geography, history, and politics. It comes from our demography and prosperity. Most of all, it comes from our character. In The Unfinished Canadian, Andrew Cohen delves into our past and present in search of our defining national characteristics. He questions hoary shibboleths, soothing mythologies, and old saws with irreverence, humour, and flintiness, unencumbered by our proverbial politeness (itself a great misperception) and our suffocating political correctness. We are so much, in so many shades, and it’s time we took an honest look at ourselves. In this provocative, passionate, and elegant book, Cohen argues that our mythology, our jealousy, our complacency, our apathy, our amnesia, and our moderation are all part of the unbearable lightness of being Canadian.

The struggle for the soul of Europe today is every bit as dire and consequential as it was in the 1930s. Then, in Weimar, Germany, the center did not hold, and the light of civilization nearly went out. Today, the continent has entered yet another “Weimar moment.” Will Europeans rise to the challenge posed by radical Islam, or will they cave in once again to the extremists? As an American living in Europe since 1998, Bruce Bawer has seen this problem up close. Across the continent—in Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Stockholm—he encountered large, rapidly expanding Muslim enclaves in which women were oppressed and abused, homosexuals persecuted and killed, “infidels” threatened and vilified, Jews demonized and attacked, barbaric traditions (such as honor killing and forced marriage) widely practiced, and freedom of speech and religion firmly repudiated. The European political and media establishment turned a blind eye to all this, selling out women, Jews, gays, and democratic principles generally—even criminalizing free speech—in order to pacify the radical Islamists and preserve the illusion of multicultural harmony. The few heroic figures who dared to criticize Muslim extremists and speak up for true liberal values were systematically slandered as fascist bigots. Witnessing the disgraceful reaction of Europe’s elites to 9/11, to the terrorist attacks on Madrid, Beslan, and London, and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bawer concluded that Europe was heading inexorably down a path to cultural suicide. Europe's Muslim communities are powder kegs, brimming with an alienation born of the immigrants’ deep antagonism toward an infidel society that rejects them and compounded by misguided immigration policies that enforce their segregation and empower the extremists in their midst. The mounting crisis produced by these deeply perverse and irresponsible policies finally burst onto our television screens in October 2005, as Paris and other European cities erupted in flames. WHILE EUROPE SLEPT is the story of one American’s experience in Europe before and after 9/11, and of his many arguments with Europeans about the dangers of militant Islam and America’s role in combating it. This brave and invaluable book—with its riveting combination of eye-opening reportage and blunt, incisive analysis—is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of Europe and what it portends for the United States.

No other politician has ever had the impact on this country and its people that Pierre Elliott Trudeau did. This iconoclastic anti-politician emerged from nowhere in the mid-1960s, and from 1968-1984 governed Canada, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. Even after Trudeau left office, he remained a player, his infrequent speeches and public appearances sufficient still to alter the course of events. Now, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Trudeau's coming to power, Andrew Cohen and J.L. Granatstein have commissioned 23 new, never-before-published essays from a diverse group of Canadians, all of whom in some way or another have been influenced by this enigmatic leader. Among the esteemed essayists are Larry Zolf, Max Nemni, Michael Bliss, Richard Gwyn, Linda Griffiths, Mark Kingwell, Robert Mason Lee, Jim Coutts, Rick Salutin, Andrew Coyne, Linda McQuaig, Bob Rae, Donald Macdonald, James Raffan and B.W. Powe. As a whole, this is a stunning and important collection of work from an amazing scope of people -- controversial, hard-hitting, fascinating.