An adaptation of an old Abe Lincoln saying is that “you can’t please all the people all of the time”…and from the ivy-walled confines of Oxford, via the Globe and Mail, we learn that Taylor Owen is disappointed in The Canadian Century. The review’s main criticism seems to be that we didn’t write the book HE would have written. To that I can only say in my finest Oxford English…”Tosh“!
I would also hasten to add a “thank goodness we didn’t” write the volume he wishes because it would have been a boring academic tome of no interest except to a couple of Ph.D. candidates at, ummmm, say, Oxford. Instead, we wrote a compelling account of how Canada has positioned itself to be a world-beater among industrialized countries…if we play our cards right.
I persist in thinking that Canadian Century was a book worth writing, even if it does not send a frisson of pleasure down the spines of university seminar goers.
