This article originally appeared in the National Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Christopher Dummitt, May 2, 2025
Imagine the scene that would have greeted any poor Scot who wandered off the street in Edinburgh to find himself in the middle of the annual British Association of Canadian Studies conference. Yes, there really is such a thing as the British Association of Canadian Studies (BACS) and 2025 is its 50th anniversary.
BACS is the well-worn but admirable remnants of the kind of soft power Canadian governments used to try to exercise — by getting people in other countries talking about Canada and encouraging academic links across the ocean.
The conference brings together Canadian expats living in the United Kingdom, Canadian academics who want to travel abroad and the small group of British and European academics who, for some reason or another, have decided that Canada is worth a little bit of their attention.
There’s a lot to be said for Canada’s British intellectual linkages and there were some excellent speakers here — historians, political scientists and others with some innovative thoughts on our country and, sometimes, its links to the wider world. But despite BACS’s once lofty goals, the vision of Canada it now displays is more than a little odd.
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